What heating would you put in? No gas

[Cartref30]

I know this thread has been done to death but we have lived in our house for 7 months now and still don’t have an answer!

We have old storage heaters on economy 7, and a modern log burner for back up. I’m not going to debate the log burner - that is staying as back up.

My question is around our main source. We hate the storage heaters - having to think about whether they should be on the night before, running out of heat by 3pm, dangerously hot to touch etc. However they do work well and all we would gain from changing to new ones would be more control. What would you do?!

A) air source - we feel like this would be silly. 1900s cottage, never going to be insulated enough. Could be wrong.

B) stay as we are until renewable options develop

C) install oil - seems crazy in this day and age but is it?

D) change to new storage heaters slowly for purely aesthetic and controllable reasons

Any other ideas welcome!

@Cartref30 don't feel guilty about doing what you have to do. I would love to swap out for a heat pump, but the realistic expense is completely out of reach for us. We'd have to install the system, upgrade any insulation we didn't think about before, rip up the floors and put in underfloor heating on the ground floor at least, AND swap out the gas cooker for an electric model!

If my gas boiler packed in tomorrow, I'd have settle for a new gas boiler. And I say that as someone who is very pro-renewables and voted Green!

I need to look more into the "just transition" dialogue, but to me, it means supporting households to make these huge changes without financially ruining them.

We also have the Rointe heaters. They're really not hideously expensive. We had them installed to replace storage heaters on the assumption that they'd be more expensive to run- but much cheaper than installing a whole new heating system.

In fact our heating bills are very similar to our neighbours- who have a similar house but gas central heating. About £15 more a month (though this year? No idea!).

They're very efficient.

If you're going to have an oil tank and piping installed, you might want also to consider/compare cost and environmental impact with LPG. That also requires tank and piping, but just might fuel a more efficient gas boiler.

You can get BioLPG now, made from waste. (Similar concept to the waste veg oil mentioned by a previous poster.) Both are from renewable sources, but still emit greenhouse gases, however.

This is what Calor says about LPG; I expect other suppliers are available.
www.calor.co.uk/biolpg?gclid=Cj0KCQjwlOmLBhCHARIsAGiJg7nD9QxluZh2Di--CO2HbZTO_Pj6gWhCIviZ2m7MOpUm93n9yeXmuEcaAiMzEALw_wcB

We have the same radiators as @smartcar in the bedrooms
Or similar , DH has an app on his phone which controls them
Downstairs, we have an oil fire that looks like a log burner and a log burner in the sitting room , there are a few radiators that run off an oil boiler downstairs as well , we tend not to use them if possible
Insulate , yes that would be good . But not always easily done
Our house has no loft , the bedroom ceilings have the roof rafters showing and the walls are the 2 foot wide stone ( house built around 1830 )

We are in rural Wales, an old stone cottage with seventies extension. The central heating (oil) was from the seventies too. We have spent the last 5 years trying to work out what to have instead, we had a log burner installed 3 years again the only room we have finished in our renovation. We have 6 acres and a lot of tree/hedge boundary so a lot of wood available that needs managing. We haven't had the oil boiler working for 3 years and have removed half the radiator circuit while renovating.

We have swung from one not the best scheme to another but now we are really having to bite the bullet. We are going to spend a lot of money.

We are planning to renew our slate roof and in the process make it a warm roof, replace the seventies flat roof with a warm roof, insulate the seventies extension externally. In the old cottage which is stone with solid floors no insulation in floors we are installing a new radiator circuit, a second woodburner with a boiler linked to a thermal store, Navitron solar thermal linked to the thermal store, a Klover or MCS pellet boiler linked to the thermal store. We may also add solar panels and battery bank later if that seems viable. The installation cost for the above heating system will be in the region of 25k-30k and the roof works similar or more.

We are hoping to get in in time for the RHI. It's still a massive investment.

They're very efficient.

All electric heaters are 100% efficient, whether they cost £30 or £300.

They all turn 1kWh of electrical energy into 1kWh of heat energy.

But energy from electricity costs around four times as much as energy from gas so is not economically attractive. It is necessary for people who have no other option.