House without central heating - anyone live in one?

[CrunchyNut39]

Hi all,

We're thinking about offering on a house that has no central heating - it has a big log burner in the lounge, then all the rooms are heated by electric radiators fixed to the walls. They are fully programmable eg to switch on and off at certain times each day.

The house isn't particularly old - early 1970's, but its huge with a huge plot and garden so its really what we're looking for.....but I do like to be warm at home, and i'm worried that it might cost us the earth to heat. Anyone with any experience of this?

None, but do check the locations of the radiators. No point paying the earth If they are underneath windows or in front hall and just heat the street or outside walls.

Also, check that the walls are properly insulated.

Radiators are often sited under windows to aid convection. A decent front door, windows and insulation will stop a lot of heat loss.

You can add central heating but you can't add garden or plot size, so don't let that stop you.
Electric heating is often on an economy tariff which warms the heaters overnight the releases the heat in the day. It might take a bit of getting used to but it shouldn't be too cold just not as flexible.
Gas radiator type central heating doesn't cost much to install.

electric heating comes out pricey. do some sums:

the kw rating of the radiators
how many there are

then work it out at a unit price of (say) 15p, which is where it is heading.

how is the insulation otherwise? The EPC will tell you a little.

what is the scope for installing central heating; gas, oil etc?

My friends lived in a flat with storage heaters for a few years, and they were the bane of their lives. Never hot when they wanted them, boiling when they didn't.

It sounds like the electric heaters are better than storage, but I would be factoring in the cost (and stress) of adding central heating to the property when making an offer.

You can always add the central heating. And in a way it's better to have it added than inherit an old system from a house that age (many systems of which are due an upgrade) as we had to have ours completely stripped out and replaced which means more cost than just putting a fresh system in.

Our house now had no central heating, we just have one wood stove, which heats the hot water too. We live in Northern USA where it gets cold and snowy in the winter.

We get through 4-5 chords of wood between October and March. A chord of wood is a 4x4x8ft pile.

We cut our own wood so it's free.

The house is fairly warm, has a nice smoke smell about it. In the depths of winter the rule is if you get up for a pee in the night add a log to the stove. As we have woken up before with frost on the bed.

Is there anything stopping you putting in heating? It's a smaller and cheaper job than a lot of people assume it to be...

Thanks for all the advice - we've had a quote for installing oil central heating (no gas - village location) which comes in around £15k, so not too pricey (we didn't think? Unless anyone could tell me otherwise!), we could add this to the mortgage so that we can do it sooner rather than later.

A friend of ours who used to live in Germany says this is how lots of houses are heated in Germany and its quite common and not considered a problem at all. We didn't think it to be that much of a problem, but just wanted to know that it does heat the house up to a good temperature! The vendors have offered us their electricity bill for review to see how it costs over the year, only they're a family of 3 who don't use half the bedrooms and we're a family of 6! I guess we'll have to double it!

I know you're talking about oil, but energy from electricity is very expensive. It currently costs more than four times as much as energy from gas.

for example I pay 2.62p plus VAT per kWh for gas, and 11.46p plus VAT per kWh for electricity. Interestingly, about half the nations electricity is currently generated from gas-powered turbines. The UK government's contract with the French and Chinese building our new nuclear guarantees to pay them substantially above the market price for their electricity, index-linked, for the next 35 years, so I don't see the price coming down.

You would get a cheaper tariff for your night-time electricity if you moved to an economy 7 type of tariff and storage heaters; but then your daytime rate would be even higher. You will hear terrible stories about the annoying and wasteful way storage heaters work. Lots of people wouldn't touch them.

How many years of electricity bills will £15K buy you? ( installation seems very expensive to me)
Then add the cost of oil, which fluctuates alarmingly.
Make sure your insulation is the highest you can get.
Can you add another multi fuel wood burner? When we have our on, in Scotland in the depths of winter, we have to turn the CH down or off!

Thanks Piglet and JT05 - I guess another burner could be added actually. My parents also have one that is so hot they have to turn the CH off! And you're right - the payback for central heating might not be that long if we went for that option! I think its a good house and we'll offer, just wanted to make sure we have all the facts before we go ahead (the EPC is pretty dreadful as it stands!)

I have a relative with a detached rural house and good access to timber. She had a big multifuel put in. It heats all the radiators, plus the cylinder. It does tend to overheat the living room when burning high.

It's possible to have one connected to the radiators, as well as a gas or oil boiler, but it needs to be correctly done and most heating engineers will not have this experience.

I've had a multifuel, and you need to keep a stock of solid fuel you can use if you run out of dry logs, or weather is bad, or you are too ill to bring it in. Solid fuel contains more heat per load, and burns longer and hotter than wood, especially overnight. Mine was quite small and kept the main room cosy, plus the hot water cylinder.

I had a detached rural very old house. It had an open fire and storage heaters when we moved in. I reckoned it cost us the same to heat a 2-bed house this way as it did to heat a 5-bed rented with oil. And the storage heaters seemed to only keep themselves warm really.
Soon as we could we installed a multi-fuel burner which runs all the radiators and hot water. (As piglet John mentions above) We can get the heating on and house warm in under 10mins and the fuel costs (wood and/or coal) are tiny.

We live in an old pit village. The house is heated by a coal burner which in turn heats the water and the radiators. We would fill it up each morning at 7 and the embers would still be there at 6 when we got home. We could then "catch" it again for the evening. We did the same at 11 to keep us toasty at night. £400 per year for coal leaves us with excess coal. Long winded way of saying, could this be an option for you? Or log burner, does the same job.

Ok very interesting all - will research those options, didnt realise this was an option

I lived in a 1970's build maisonette without central heating for two years. It also had single glazing. We used electric storage radiators but as we were having to be frugal, didn't run them constantly. I have never been so cold. I experienced frost on the inside of the windows, you could see your breath in the house and I would wear tights under trousers under wrap skirts in the house, with fingerless gloves and a shawl. Exterior walls got mouldy from condensation so we had to do various dances with opening and closing doors and windows to stop warm noisy air hitting cold surfaces.

I would mentally add on £15k for additional energy efficiencies, alternative fuel systems, whatever option works best for your circumstances. I would not live in an under insulated house with just electric storage radiators again!

We had exactly the setup that you describe in our house until last year. We live in north Aberdeenshire and it wasn't too bad!
We did get through a lot of wood though.
We put in an air heat source pump and some central heating last year - which was absolute bliss, and reduced the use of jumpers somewhat.

If you're starting from scratch ( no boiler, central heating network or oil tank) then I wouldn't put in oil. Look at renewable sources - air source or ground source ( since you've got the land) heat pumps, wood pellet boiler. You can get renewable heat incentive payments (google RHI) for any of these which will partly largely recoup the cost of installing them, whereas with oil you won't get anything back. And you'll have a big ugly oil tank in your garden which on its own can cost a few thousand if it needs to be bunded.

Wood pellets are greenwash, research carefully.

Heat pumps are a possible but need electricity. Incentive payments need very careful study. Oil is currently the cheapest form of heat although that can change.

Looks are irrelevant. At least an oil tank doesn't annoy the neighbours like a wind farm does.

PIL have this kind of set up (although more fires and an aga) and it is freezing! Even in the summer it is cold.

When you check their electricity bills also check their work habits. Are they out of the house all day? What time do they leave,come back. I guess if there are six of you then if you have little ones you will need the house warm during the day as well as early evenings when people come home from school. do your older kids spend time studying in their rooms, which will need to be warmed

Adding to my post above, if I were you I'd see how we got on for the first few months after moving before deciding on any changes. You could take daily electricity meter readings for a week or two over the winter and compare with your typical usage in summer to see how much extra the storage heaters are costing.
As a guide, we have a 5 bedroom rural detached in East Anglia on an air source heat pump which uses electricity to extract heat from the air outside and heat the water in the central heating system and hot water cylinder with it. Like a fridge or freezer but in reverse. Although it uses electricity, it's far more efficient than electric heaters. In winter our total daily electricity usage ( 6 person household) is 50-60kW/h. In summer it is about 12kw/h per day so that would be for hot water, lights, sockets etc. Annual electricity consumption about 9000kw/h.
We had the heat pump installed to replace an oil fired boiler and tank when we extended the house 4 years ago. Total cost including the heat pump, 6 new oversized radiators and a large underfloor heating manifold and all labour costs was about £15k off the top of my head. We get approx £1200 per year back in RHI payments and this is guaranteed for 7 years. So provided we stay here for the full 7 years, most of the cost of the installation will be recouped. Or another way of looking at it is we paid the cost of the installation ourselves but get free electricity bills for 7 years. Whichever way, it's a great deal. And no, I don't work for any company involved in this!