Electricity heating is a bit more expensive but nowhere near as more expensive as people believe before digging into it and the flexibility it offers is a saver in itself. Differential charges (economy 7 bis.) Is typically one Third of normal charges and with modern storage heaters WILL heat a house more than adequately when correctly specified and installed plus for the very few times we have extreme cold spells use of portable electric fires is the solution.
Then in addition to the controllable costs the recurring fixed costs need to be considered.
Maintenance contract charges which can easily run to well over £100 pa and then being told your installation is “beyond economic repair” at a surprisingly early date and get offered a refund on the current year “but we can also give you a discount of — on a new installation”.
Then there’s the cost of eventual replacement to consider. Boiler life of 10 to 15 years is claimed but that is not the time before failure, it’s the time to being clapped out and is much more likely to be closer to ten - either way - it’s another £2500 which means a sum of £250 has to be added to the annual recurring cost.
Sorta gives a different picture when these things are opened up eh?
Interesting point about £250 actual additional hidden “running” cost in terms of replacement fund.
How does this compare in terms of the replacement costs of electric heaters coupled with the higher price of fuel? It’s also worth noting that cables do not have an indefinite working life and might need replacing too!
I think you’ve already decided to do this, but I’d suggest a replacement worcester bosch with a guarantee (I think it’s ten years) and fitted by an accredited worcester bosch engineer who can then service it once a year. I recommend annual service for the guarantee, but not the waste of time maintenance contracts.
In the meantime looking into improving your home insulation. That way you won’t need to use so much energy.
They won’t be replacing existing gas boilers any time soon and certainly not for the life of the boiler. It’s only new builds that are 2025.
This is based on “all other things being equal”, which they never are.
I’d rather have jam today. In the future anything could change so best not make any assumptions. The fact that electricity is being pushed now doesn’t mean that will always be the case. It could be a bit like the diesel car fiasco.
It would be a wonderful thing if a boiler could be designed based on dual fuel so that, for example, it can utilise cheaper electricity rates overnight and thus reduce the amount of gas burn during these times.
They have said that the dual fuel cars are a waste of space. It’s just complicates matters and leads to problems that you wouldn’t have with a simpler system. It’s like combi boilers or washer dryers. One thing goes wrong and the whole thing breaks.
In fairness, not everyone has the same experience and indeed the fact that the op’s WB boiler seems to have failed beyond economic repair is an indicator.
As suggested earlier, a quick look on diynot will enable a more informed choce to be made with advice from a plethora of time served professionals.
Considerably less. The life of a storage heater is very long, typically 25 years plus, and the cost for a good, ie non basic thing, is £200 - £250. About in the event of failure it would be exceptional that the whole thing would need to be replaced instead it would usually just be the heating element
The question of how often electric feeds to them need to be replaced can be answered by how often does a house need to be rewired because domestic night storage heaters generally use the existing house ring main.
Differential charging is achieved at the electricity meter, especially straightforward in the case of Smart meters.
Then there is the unquestionable benefit to our environment of avoiding the pollution resulting from burning fossil fuel. For us that was the BIG one.
I think a lot depends on one’s property and lifestyle. We have a small terraced house in London. For about eight months of the year we have heating coming on at 06:20 for 20 minutes, that’s enough to warm the place for an hour or two. We are out a lot, sometimes in & out a lot, I removed thermostat batteries years ago, we put the boiler on when we need it, the place is warm in 5 minutes and we turn it off after 15-20 minutes. We don’t sit around watching TV for hours on end.
Unless you have your own wind turbine or solar you do burn fossil fuels or damage the planet with nuclear waste. With solar they have to be replaced every ten years max and the material used to create them is also scarce. Unless they have worked out how to make them with a different technology. But it’s swings and roundabouts. There’s an environmental cost to everything. The ideal solution is to use less. So insulation and more efficient systems.
The cost of a basic water radiator to be replaced isn’t too different from an electric storage heater, once you’ve priced in all the materials required.
The more I think about it, the less inclined I am to endorse central heating systems with a single point of heat source. Heat loss/wastage in the pipes feeding rads, excessive time lags in getting the system to full temperature, pipework failure which leads to a real ballache to locate it and the inevitable damage to decoration etc.
Given that it is ridiculously easy to operate electric outlets on a wifi/remote control basis nowadays, which makes it far easier to control the heat source in individual rooms without even leaving your armchair, it makes little sense not to install electric single room heaters.
Of course there are similar wifi/smart controllers for wet systems, but these are a lot more expensive to install on individual radiators.
Although some may say that all you’ve got to do is go and turn the rad off manually, in reality this isn’t anywhere as easy as pressing a button on a remote control or via an app.
Also, just how stupid is it that when we turn a tap or shower on, we have to wait for so much cold water to work its way through before it gets hot? Localised heaters (especially in kitchens) are far more efficient, plus they don’t involve leaving a load of heated water (which then cools, thus adding to heat loss) in pipes when the tap gets turned off.
On the other hand, we had our Hive system fitted by a BG engineer (included in the Amazon price). He did the job well, explained things thoroughly and, having advised us that we ought to have a support bracket (internally) for the flue, fitted one for us gratis!
