Heating a large old house! Thinking about electric radiators.....

[Swifey40]

We have a 40 year old gas boiler which is on its last legs so are thinking about a new one. Unfortunately the house is fairly large and we will need one of about 50kw. This is causing a few issues, as the size is verging on commercial, and few companies now do conventional flues, so holes will need to be drilled into the outside wall which is s problem as the house is grade 2 listed. I have therefore been leaning towards having electric radiators instead, as there would be no ugly pipework, no conservation issues, and they would be cheaper too. We already heat our water off of three separate cylinders, which works really well for us, as the surplus two only get turned on when we have guests.
So my question is; has anyone used them or has experience of them; the good the bad and the ugly please. Tia

I also had to replace a boiler in a Grade 2 listed and had similar flue issues. I couldn't get permission to flue on any of the external walls.

My problem was resolved by fitting a condensing flue within the chimney, with a pump to remove the condensate through the internal drainage. The additional cost was approx £1k.

Given that Electric radiators ate likely to be very expensive to run, would that solution possibly work for you.

I loved my economy 7 storage heaters. You could replace the boiler with a small conventional boiler for part of the house, and use storage heaters for other parts. That would be a great combination- instant heat when you need it, with economy 7 keeping a gentle heat ticking over.

I’d go with Flyingsouthwiththeswallows sugguestion if poss.

Or depending how your heating loop is split could you run 2 smaller boilers?

I’m guessing you want to put electric elements into your existing radiators? I’m imagining old cast iron rads in my head? Storage heaters won’t look too nice in a lovely old house.

If you are, you may want to consider a bank of electric boilers. You’ll need 3 phase power to them but I imagine you’d have to upgrade your electrics to run that many single radiators as well.

Electric boilers are crap for large amounts of hot water but sounds like you already heat this via immersion?

Brochures will say it will cost you a 1/3 more to heat your house with electric. But it’s greener and 100% efficient. In reality it will be nearer double in my experience. So I’d avoid electric if I had the choice at this present moment in time.

If you have a 50kw heating requirement you must indeed live in a castle! 1kw gas heating for an hour would be 3.5p so 50kw if sustained would be £1.75 an hour. On the other hand normal electric would be about 14p a unit so 7 pounds an hour. And on a meaty three phase supply as mentioned above as that would be 70+amps per phase.
Electric is almost never more economical in the long term except for well insulated or flats or if you have your own power station.
Even with the issues to surmount, the thousands of pounds you save on fuel will pay for anything fancy.

We have separate central heating circuits and boilers for different parts of our house. Similar to your hot water we only have unused part of house on frost setting