Alternatives to electric heating

[Jess825]

I've recently bought a property that is electric only. The street I'm on has no gas but the bottom of the road does.

I've spoken to the gas board who quoted me £1k to connect me to the gas (this would involve digging the path to lay the pipes). They they came back and said they made a mistake, the quote was for 20m or less away from the mains, and as I am 100m away the cost will be £75k!

I'm not sure how they worked that out... Anyway, if that is accurate then there is no way I can afford to have that done. Does anyone have any suggestions for alternative heating? The house used to have storage heaters but the last owner put in electric radiators.

@Jess825 I agree with @scottishnames either LNG/Bio or ASHP are probably your best options. Both will require changes to the radiators. LNG/Bio will be cheaper to install and more expensive to run while ASHP will the other way round.

Yes and no. Ours was very expensive at first because it was heating water all the time. Now it’s quite reasonable, we heat water once a day but often we don’t have any hot water but that’s due to the tank within a tank we have rather than the ASHP. We used about 760kwh in December and it was providing background heat at about 17 degrees. One room is set to 20 because it’s a long way from the log burner. That was the total electricity use for the house.

The skill of engineer who designs the system for your house is key. Ours is very badly designed. It’s worth joining the heat pump uk group on Facebook as there’s load of knowledgeable folk there and links to videos and articles. You need to fully understand the options before you have one installed and how they work for example we probably need a buffer tank in addition to the tank within a tank. The controls on newer systems are much better. There are pros and cons to zoning, are you going to use weather compensation or room stats?
I hated the ASHP at first but now quite like it and now I almost understand how to get the best out of it.

During colder spells it might be 1 unit of electricity for 1 unit of heat but the newer models will give a cop of 4 or more in better weather.