cost of installing gas central heating?

[Pacific]

We are considering buying a small mid terrace, three bed house. It currently has white meter electric heating. Is that any good?

Does anyone have any idea how much it would cost to install gas central heating? There is no gas supply to the house but there is gas in the street.

I have absolutely no idea about this having never lived in a house without gas heating!
TIA

[Janek]

You will have to pay to have the gas connected to your house, this cost around £400 when we did it in 2002, which annoyed me greatly. We then paid about £3600 for fitting central heating and shower. The central heating comprised 5 radiators and a boiler - our house is two up two down.

I presume some of these prices will have risen in the meantime...

[Pacific]

Yikes! I think we will probably have to walk away from this house. What about the white meter heating? Is it livable with?

[georgedawes]

3.5k ish, maybe more

[LadyKooKoo]

Had new central heating installed in April but house did already have a gas supply. New boiler and 8 radiators was £3,400.00.

[MrsTaraPlumbing]

To get accurate price engineers would have to visit your property but you should budget for £4k as other suggested for this.

Electric heating in an old house is going to be very expensive to run.

I don't know much about them but there are a few different finance schemes available to help people pay for the cost of gas central heating.
You may be able to get a home improvemet loan from your bank and this may be the cheapest finance.
Some big companies like British Gas offer finance.
Finance via the Green Deal is also worth looking at and is ideal if you are on a very low income and could not afford or be approved for a private loan. Some info about it is here:
www.moneysavingexpert.com/utilities/green-deal

[PigletJohn]

storage heaters are annoying unless you are at home all day, as they give out their heat all day, when many people are out at work, and run down by evening. Very many people who have had them hate them. Some pensioners like them, apart from the running cost. You must not put anything on top, such as washing or towels, as they will overhat and the fuse will melt. This needs an electrician to replace. ££.

They are also more expensive than gas to run, because energy from electricity costs about three times as much as energy from gas. With a White meter you might get about 50% discount for the night-time use only but it will still be dearer.
Electrical heaters run on daytime tarfiff are very very expensive to run.

You will also need a hot-water cylinder with immersion heater, preferably a very big one so it can be heated overnight and last all day.

If the existing storage heaters are old and you want to buy new ones they will not be very cheap. Some people will try to sell you magic ones that generate more heat energy than the electric energy you put in, but this is a lie marketing story. The efficiency of electrical heaters does not vary with their cost, though they may have better controls and insulation to delay the daytime heat output, the amount of heat you get out will be exactly proportional to the amount and cost of electricity you put in.

Houses are quite expensive to buy, so £4,000 for GCH on a £400,000 house is not much and you will appreciate it more and for longer, than most other things you'd spend money on. One day you will want to sell the house, and your buyers will look on the absence of GCH with horror.

[Pacific]

Thank you everyone. Heating costs will be a major deciding factor whether to buy this house. I think there are some grants available too.

Any further info gratefully received!

[Clargo55]

We have just had GCH installed. Gas supply to house cost £600. Then the installation of Worcester Bosch boiler and seven rads was around £3600. It took around fours days for installation by one man.

[purplesun]

Hi,
to install the radiators: did they damage floors/walls?

[Clargo55]

Purple, we did not have any damage to walls but our plumber has to take up most of the floor to run the piping under. However, he put the floorboards back down perfectly and luckily discovered a leak in our bathroom whilst having the floorboards up.

Over all it was generally damage and mess free. No cleaning up by us required as our guy hovered up after himself at the end of everyday. We only had one day of cold water the other three days was as normal.

[valiumredhead]

Storage heaters are awful and expensive and a general pita.

I would on at least 5-6k add I can't imagine it being anything like 400 quid these days to get gas to the house.

I would walk away from any house with no gas personally.

[valiumredhead]

Sorry x posted with clargo

[Pacific]

Thanks all. Have taken note of all your comments. I have just discovered that there is gas into the house but no meter so that makes things a bit easier.

It now boils down to reducing the asking price to account for the gas heating installation.

Any more advice? I will continue to watch this thread.
Thank you all.

[valiumredhead]

I think most purple would try and knock the price down tbh and I imagine the vendors are expecting it.

[valiumredhead]

People!