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Original poster

Would you buy a new house without central heating?

42 replies

oricella · 21/01/2011 09:46

i.e. a really well insulated one, with a good log burning stove that will heat up the place brilliantly (and with thermostatic remote control); possibly some electric heaters as a back up and solar hot water & electricity?

The only thing missing would be ability to set a thermostatic timer to have the house at a certain temperature at a certain time; but instead you would have a generally warm house and very low bills

Would it put you off buying or would you jump at the opportunity?

OP posts:
expatinscotland · 21/01/2011 09:47

yes

Original poster
oricella · 21/01/2011 09:49

you mean you'd buy it or it would put you off?

(shouldn't have put another question in at the end should I?)

OP posts:
PaisleyLeaf · 21/01/2011 09:49

I'd jump at it.
Aren't we going to run out of gas anyway?

arentfanny · 21/01/2011 09:49

I would jump at it.

KirstyJC · 21/01/2011 09:51

I would buy it. Worst case, you find it too cold and need to get heating installed in the future. If you love it, buy it.

bibbitybobbityhat · 21/01/2011 09:51

How would the water be heated in the summer when you are not using the woodburner?

Would you be able to get a good reliable supply of very cheap logs?

Wood to burn is expensive.

Woodburners are hard work, tbh.

I wouldn't.

MollysChambers · 21/01/2011 09:51

No. Way too much work in a log burner imo. Yes to a ground or air source heat pump with solar to boost the water. No to any type of solid fuel as main heat source.

mousymouse · 21/01/2011 09:52

if it is well insulated, yes.
how is the water heated? maybe consider having solar water heating installed. very cheap to run.

Original poster
oricella · 21/01/2011 09:53

oh.. lots of jumpers; great - we're trying to decide whether we can build our new house and do without putting in underfloor heating with some type of heatpump. I know the house would work for us, but am a bit concerned if not having CH would scare people off if it came to selling

OP posts:
Original poster
oricella · 21/01/2011 09:55

We would have solar thermal and solar PV - which would both earn us money; with the solar PV I think we could justify running an electric heater if we couldn't be bothered to get the stove going

The house will be so well insulated it only needs a small stove anyway

OP posts:
Fiddledee · 21/01/2011 10:10

I would put in underfloor heating and not necessarily turn it on and use it but for it to be there. I would prefer that over electric heaters which never look good.

DuplicitousBitch · 21/01/2011 10:15

i don't find our wood burner too much work. you light it and put wood in it. not exactly hard.

i would definitely buy it

lalalonglegs · 21/01/2011 10:40

I've been to some super-insulated houses that don't need any heating at all - if it was one of those, and its specification could be proved, I would definitely go ahead>

systemsaddict · 21/01/2011 10:51

sounds fantastic!

GrendelsMum · 21/01/2011 11:01

Just one log burning stove for the whole house? Based in one particular room? How does it heat the rest of the house?

I'd be worried that you'd have to reheat the house from scratch every morning and every evening, and that you'd have to keep popping through to put logs on the fire.

PamelaE · 21/01/2011 11:36

We used to have a real fire attached to the boiler that heated the whole house. It was brillient but annoying to keep going.

It really depends if you are happy to put in the time and effort.

I purchased a house without any central heating but for the purpose of selling it in the future was advised by the bank to get it kitted out.

As a compromise I have a lovely real open fire and central heating. I can turn the radiators off or down when the fire is going.

DisparityCausesInstability · 21/01/2011 13:02

My db has just built a house with the best insulation he could find - he has a ground heat exchanger and uses it to heat his underfloor heating and water. He doesn't have access to piped gas, so this makes sense for him. He has a couple of wood burning stoves too. Not sure if this is cheaper than gas though as a ground heat exchanger needs electricty to convert the energy and electricity costs quite a bit more than gas...Can't quite remember the multiples involved, I think the heat exchanger may make his house as cheap to heat as a GCH - he has superior insulation but you also need good ventilation.

Beware of green bling - lots of these systems cost so much money to purchase and install, you will never make the money back.

Indith · 21/01/2011 13:13

I would I think so long as the insulation was bloody good. My current house is solid fuel heated but it is a boiler stove with a pump and heats the radiators too so we do have heating. I think perhaps that may be the wisest route to take rather than dispensing with heating. It can still be done byt he stove so no gas but it does give an option for cold spells. My stove can heat the downstairs of my house very well by itself but with the extreme cold we had this winter we were very grateful for the radiators too!

One concern for me too would be that it was a multifuel burner and not just a wood burner, simply because wood is more expensive than coal to buy and gives a lower output. At the moment we run ours on coal because although I would dearly love to go to wood for environmental reasons we can't afford to.

WithManyTots · 21/01/2011 13:48

We have a very well insulated house, built to a Danish design. 90% of the time we rely on our small (5kW) wood stove. Even over the big freeze during December, just this alone was enough to keep the whole house, upstairs and downstairs, warm and comfortable.

We only use the central heating to warm the house for an hour at 6:30 in the morning before you get up. If you have electric heaters you could still do this, possibly on Economy 7 to keep it cheap too.

However, as others have noted, heating you house with wood, needs lots of space to store the huge volume of wood you need and you have to be prepared for carrying basket loads of wood in regularly and tending and loading the fire every hour or so. It's a bit like having another baby Smile, but if we didn't have a boiler and radiators, I'm not sure I'd miss them

Original poster
oricella · 21/01/2011 14:06

Thanks all - lots of interesting responses

I think we might end up with a middle way; put in the UHF pipes - but give it a winter to see if we can live with just a woodburner. The house is designed with the stove in the centre of the house, under a void to the upstairs landing which leads to all the bedrooms - so I'm quite confident that it will adequately heat all rooms. We have even been warned that a 5kW stove would end up overheating the place. The ventilation system will also help to move warm air around

I'm really keen to avoid overspecifiying the heating - I don't want to spend £10k on a heat pump which would really only be needed a couple of days a year; I'd much rather bring out a couple of elecric heaters on those days (£10k would buy a LOT of electricity!)

It's all about lifestyle in the end - and am encouraged that what I know will work for us seems to be appealing to quite a few more people

thanks again

OP posts:
Indith · 21/01/2011 14:19

Wow amazing the difference insulation makes Envy Our house is late 1890s so doesn't quite have the same levels of insulation! It isn't bad at all (well the main house isn't, kitchen extension is like the North Pole) and is the warmest house we've lived in but part of me would love to be able to embark on your sort of project. I would dearly love a more ecological house, we seem to be very behind in this country on that sort of building, I'm Envy!

frenchfancy · 21/01/2011 18:36

Another possiblitiy could be to get a woodberner which you can run central heating off. That is what we have, all our radiators are fueled by the woodburner.

TBH I think if you are building a house you should build it for you, and not future sale. After all what people look for in a house today will not necessarily be the same as in ten years time, especially with the price of fuel going the way it is.

£10K sounds like alot for a heat exchanger. Prices here are more like £5k installed.

snorkie · 21/01/2011 18:57

We have a wood burner in our downstairs room and have hardly run the CH at all this winter. It keeps the downstairs lovely and warm, but our bedrooms are cold (brr!). But our house is 20+yrs old and not brilliantly insulated and the wood burner isn't near the stairs, so I think yours probably would work much better. Your plan is what I would do - ie: put in the infrastructure for CH, but hold off installing it until you've seen how it goes. That would probably appeal to potential purchasers who might want alternate heating too as even if you had been fine without it they could easily add it without major disruption.

BendyBob · 21/01/2011 19:00

Yes I would. My inlaws (many years ago) had theirs taken out and now heat up rooms on an ad hoc basis with portable heaters. Their house is never cold and according to them their heating bills are managable.

ecobatty · 21/01/2011 19:08

I'm thinking of doing this for our next house, but possibly connecting a boiler to the stove to heat some radiators in the bedrooms - my sister has her heating from a central source in the layout you describe and the rooms can be a bit cold if you forget to keep open all the doors all day.

Another possibility is putting those heat recovering tubes that blow hot air into the room, but you do get issues with noise travelling that way.

We currently have underfloor heating (solar) as well as the stoves, but we find that the lag with the underfloor heating is too long - ufh really only works if you are going to keep it on more or less permanently, whereas we only occasionally want a bit of a boost.

Those electric ceramic storage heaters are pretty efficient these days and can be used as a secondary source.

Ufh can be a bit of an issue if you don't use it regularly, so I would think twice before spending a whole load of money on that.