Just about to move to a new house that has an ancient solid fuel boiler and no mains gas. Toying with the idea of some of these fancy new electric radiators. Are they any good ? If so which are the best and are there any significant efficiency differences across manufacturers.

Been looking at water filled ones with a circulation pump and some other German ones filled with bricks.

Like the idea of not having a boiler and having the whole central heating timer and thermostat controlled separately for each room.

Electric heating is one of the most expensive forms of heating, only being bettered by burning £20 notes!

Is that actually true ?

Is that actually true ?

Pretty much.

Hmm seems it is:
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/experts/article-2022039/Gas-electric-central-heating-What-cheaper.html

More expensive than oil ?

Wat about chance of getting mains gas ? If its n your street its a fixed price for from the street to your house.

We are on oil but in all honesty its used solely in the morning – one bloody expensive install for all the use it gets.

We use the wood burner to heat the house as much as we can . Got a good supplier and its costing about 1/8 th of the price of heating with oil.

Bear, thats shite. We are all electric and use the liquid filled radiators with timers and thermostats. We run a two bed flat with two adults for all water heating, showers, heating etc basically all our energy for £50 a month. The old storage brick ones were crap though. Plus we could add pv panels and generate our own unlike gas.

i have fitted variouse electrical heating systems, yes they can be expensive but they can also be cheaper than gas depending on which system you go for. IMO stay away from the water system,i believe these usually use a electric boiler?

the “brick” systems are storage heater, these typically run on you off peak electricity so they charge up at night on the cheaper electric, these arnt all that expensive to run but the down fall is once they use up there heat thats it untill the next day, so they get some getting use to, its not as bad as i make out so its something to look into

the other option that i have fitted recently and look very nice is a oil filled system that look like really fancy radiators. these can heat up anytime but they can be expensive but if you get your electricity meter change to a “economy 10” system you can run the system cost effectivly.

any system be it gas or electricity is expensive but if you make your house well insulated ie cavity, loft, double glazing etc they can work very well, hope this helps

Cheers guys. Its a farmhouse about 150 metres from the nearest gas main so I’m not sure bringing gas up would be either possible or economical. Have also considered a wood pellet boiler, looks like the government is gearing up to help in 2013 too.

The oil-filled jobs are pretty good, Le Longhi make some good ones. Not sure about cost though. We have two because my son as a baby barfed on one and the thermostat shorted out and went bang so I bought a new one. Later on I took the old one apart, cleaned off the puke and found it still worked fine.

Cupra – let me clarify, anything using daytime electricity is around about 15p per kw, far more than any other fuel, that is a fact. Your house would be cheaper to heat with nearly any other fuel, the fact that it only costs £50 a month probably means that it is either very well insulated or you live in a fridge.

Using an economy tariff is a lot cheaper though.

Take a look at this link for a comparison of costs per kw
http://www.biomassenergycentre.org.uk/portal/page?_pageid=75,59188&_dad=portal

I would investigate the mains gas cost because the install of a gas fired heating system will be considerably cheaper than a biomass or oil fired install.
Do not rule out biomass though but capital costs are high, and if it is a farmhouse are there any other buildings that could be heated / converted so that you can get on the commercial RHI scheme?

By the fact that it is a farmhouse suggests that the heating requirement will be quite high. In all the jobs that I price anything that is off the mains gas grid I always look at the biomass option (as most are in old buildings that do not lend themselves to heat pumps), but people are usually put off by the high capital costs and end up with oil.

If you spend a good amount of cash you can get some pretty good state of the art rads. Roiente make some with very sensitive digital stats and programmers and these when sited correctly can be quite efficient. Look to spend £300-£400 on a rad though.
I have used all electric heating schemes on new hotel builds recently that actually flew through part L calcs for efficiency.

Being honest 50 quid for a month is hardly ground breaking

We paid less than this when on gas in an old granite high ceeling ground floor 1 bed that was litterally stone then plaster n lathe.

A farmhouse will be expensive to run what ever you do to it so minimising those costs is wise.

+1 wot bear said.

After efficiency adjustment fuel cost per kWh in pence

Stoner – linky no worky.

But this will give some idea: http://www.energysavingtrust.org.uk/Energy-Saving-Trust/Our-calculations

I recently rented a cottage with an old wood fired back boiler which was crap, but have friends with a modern system and in terms of comfort it is as good as gas / oil would be with a margin of extra hassle in loading the fire, but if you plan to keep the fire anyway.

Stoner – linky no worky.

oops, sorry. Think I havent set it to public somewhere. Anyway this is the source data for it:

http://www.nottenergy.com/energy_cost_comparison/

Stoner that’s a cracking comparison – thanks for that. Have submitted a quotation request to Northern Gas Networks to get us on mains gas, hopefully the price won’t be prohibitive.