Would you buy a house heated by storage heaters?

[IloveStaceySolomon]

Found a lovely house, good location, layout works for our family, but is has no gas and is heated by old-fashioned storage heaters, so has a very low EPC rating. We currently have full gas central heating in our existing house, rated EPC C. I'm worried about the energy costs. Would it be unreasonable to ask to see some bills? Would storage heaters put you off? I know I could get gas laid on and fit radiators but buying the house would leave us no budget to do this.

I did, but I had them replaced with gas central heating before I moved in.

How low is the EPC rating?

Storage heaters are not great, however, the main drawback is controllability. Lots of people are saying that they are inefficient but that’s not true, they turn almost all the electricity they use into heat, so they are actually very efficient. It’s just that electricity is an expensive way to heat a home vs mains gas. You can also find your house is hot when you don’t want it to be and that you ‘run out’ if heat late in the day (if they are night storage heaters). My mum has night storage heaters and a wood burning stove so when it’s chilly she lights the fire in the evening whfn the storage heaters have got cold.

i wouldn’t not buy a house because it had storage heaters if I loved everything else about it and it wouldn’t be easy to find another one as good with a central heating system. Id probably look at replacing with a heat pump if I had the funds to install the plumbing etc.

I'd only buy the house if the price was reduced by the same as the cost of replacing with an oil or gas system.

I've had storage heaters three times in my life and no times have they worked.

No! Storage heaters are awful. We had them once in a rented property and they were rubbish. Great bulky things that never got properly hot. The whole house was damp which I partly blame on the stupid heaters. Only buy the property if you can rip the things out asap.

NO!!!

Yes. I had them in a small, well-insulated flat and they were just about OK. But for a family-sized house? No way.

I have a house with them. We moved in and found that none of them worked, so had to replace them. We had conversations with neighbours, some had gone to electric radiators and others just got new storage heaters. We opted for the latter, and they are very efficient We can set what time of day they come on, and at what temperature they need to make the house. They are not perfect though, and I would much prefer gas, but that is not possible.

When they are on for a few hours in the morning, and a few hours in the evening, it generally keeps the house at about 18 degrees throughout. Our energy bill for the months like this, for 2 adults who WFH full time, is about £130. The house is detached, if that makes a difference.

We also have a big woodburner, which gets used when it is very cold.

If helpful, we paid about £13k to replace 11 old ones with Dimplex Quantum storage heaters in early 2023.

NO. Had them here when I moved in years ago. They're useless - especially in the spring and autumn when the weather is unpredictable.

I had them removed.

Yes, assuming I could get the house for a price that I could afford to put in an alternative heating system

A definite no from me.

Wouldn't be my first choice but not a definite no.
My DH had a flat that was all electric with night storage heaters it was OK mostly unless it was really cold out. Wasn't helped by him only using the heater in the sitting room.
I think the modern ones are more efficient and rather than looking at alternative heating I think I'd look to see if I could install solar panels.

It is rated "E" our current house is rated "C" condensing gas boiler for hot water and gas central heating and modern insulation

I will say, I'd be cautious of taking energy ratings too literally.

My former house was rated C. My current property, when I moved in, was F. It just squeaked into E - with some creative form-filling - when my LL sold it to me.

The house that's cost the least to heat? My current one!

EPC ratings are quite a crude measure. I'd go so far as to say it's not really meaningful in this situation.

They're awful and definitely need replacing but if you replace with new electric might actually be better in terms of epc rating than a gas system.

We have two houses, one in a village without gas, one in a village with gas.

We put in a top of range new gas boiler radiator heating system to our house on the gas system and when we had the epc done he said we would have had a better epc rating if we'd put in electric radiators.

The new electric rads are really good and if you replace the old ones where the plugs already are it's better.

I was shocked because it seems so much more electric but the new systems are really good apparently and tick the right boxes.

Look into it before you write them off. It's probably cheaper to swap the old storage heaters to new electric rads than put in a central heating system.

I've just replaced the electric storage heaters in my mother's house with electric radiators which work fine. My step mother has infra red radiators which are better but the initial cost is higher.

All heating is better if the house is insulated but with any sort of electric radiator it is a lot easier to heat just the room you are in, not waste heating the entire house by running water around pipes (even if you turn down individual radiators).

The old 1970 style ones? Not a chance. But mil moved into a new build with brand new simplex storage heaters and they were bloody excellent, highly efficient and kept everything very toasty for very low bills. But it was a new build and the insulation was in excess of the minimum required.
In your situation I would be wanting to upgrade them and have a multi fuel stove as back up - which may or may not be behind your budget. Imo those in your picture are borderline too old.

Hard no from me but my mum and stepdad bought a 2 bedroom Victorian terrace 3 years ago and the first thing they did was replace the storage heaters.

We bought a doer upper with no gas. We had 1 winter with storage heaters and it was miserable, but we planned to put GCH in when we bought it and had budgeted for that.

Like any house buying.
If the house were perfect in every other way, then I would try to find a way to buy the house and replace the storage heaters with a better system. Never say no, as they say.
But if you've done the maths any which way you can and really can't envisage being able to save over the following year or borrow the extra or negotiate the price of the house down, and HAD to live with them, then I wouldn't.

Totally agree with this.

The old storage heaters are rubbish and inefficient. The new ones are much better but expensive to replace. You could just remove them and replace with normal electric or infrared heaters? Doesn't have to be gas.

No

Ds & sil are moving to a flat that his in laws have bought as an investment property, it has storage heaters but they are swapping them for the latest electric panel radiators. They have smart connection & can be programmed & controlled just like normal central heating & look just like normal radiators.