New home - electric heating

[Gg127]

Hey all,
so I am potentially buying my first house very soon. However it has has electric heating. It appears to have the newish storage heaters but I don’t know much about any of this.
is it a bad idea to consider buying a house that’s fully electric given the current climate and cost of electricity a the moment?
I really do love the house but I am concerned about the potential costs.
should I consider reconnecting the gas and going back to that or something else?
suggestions are welcome 😊

https://www.gov.uk/find-energy-certificate

What does it say the kwH per year for heating and hot water are, and how many m2 is the house?

If you scroll to the bottom, is there a previous EPC, and is the kwH or m2 any different? (they are notoriously inaccurate)

If you download this: all postcodes electricity 2019

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/postcode-level-electricity-statistics-2019-experimental

and then this, all postcodes electricity 2022

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/postcode-level-electricity-statistics-2022

you will see the difference on your street between what people used when electricity was cheap in 2019, versus what they used when it became expensive. It's a real eye opener. One road I considered buying on used 28k kwH of gas in 2019 (big Victorian houses) and 18k in 2022! So, I consider 18k to be the bare minimum those houses can get away with.

Of course, for the data to be useful to you, the majority of postcodes need to also be on electric, which they might be if an entire estate has the same heating systems.

(there's a number on there that shows the number of meters the data was gathered from, the lower the number of meters, the less reliable the data, obvs)

A version for gas also exists.

I have electric storage heaters and had them replaced to new ones a few years ago. Id never buy another property with electric heaters. They're far too expensive.

interesting, I have had a look at the EPC certificate which was done last month and it says the annual usage for heating is 6165kwh and water is 2164kwh. I don’t even know if this is a lot?
would I be able to work out annual cost from that?
The house is 86 square meters.
I don’t think other houses are electric, I know people who live on the same street and also lived around the corner a couple years ago and none of us had electric heating.

it does seem to be the case from what I’m seeing. I have been getting quotes to see what it would be to go back to electric and I think it would be cheaper in the long run for sure

Check if there is a smart meter; if there is, then potentially you can use time of use tariffs which give you cheaper off peak rates; then think about when you will use the electric - will anyone be in the house during the day? If not, Do you have a hot water tank that you can heat off peak for showers vs electric showers, can you run washing machines off peak and so on. Also try and find out how the people before you lived - were they at home all day and so on as that will impact their usage. You can work out a worst case scenario by looking at the rate from your electricity supplier and multiplying the total number of KWH you’ve seen used previously by their standard rate, then adding the standing charge for 365 days. Add that lot up and divide by 12 for the monthly cost for their usage. Using off peak electric will reduce this. Bear in mind if you go back to gas (if you can) you’ll need to install an entire wet heating system (rads, pipe work etc.), not just a gas boiler and you may need a connection to the mains. That won’t be cheap and it will be disruptive, with redecorating costs etc. in you shoes I’d see how I got on for a year, so you get the summer/ winter etc. then think about whether restoring gas was actually worth it. You’ll also have an accurate picture of what you actually use at that point.

it sounds like the way to go is to get more information as you’ve said and see how it goes for a bit, especially over winter. I just don’t want to face huge bills as a result so it’s making me quite nervous.
generally the house isn’t used the most during the day all the time with the kids at school and me at work but I do work from home when I can which sometimes can be for a whole week. So this would definitely add onto costs.

im not sure if there is a hot water tank but it’s another question to ask and find out for sure.

No, that's a pretty low kilowatt usage for a house as a general rule, but electricity is hellishly expensive which basically cancels out the glee-like feeling of the low kwh that EPC quotes you.*

That exact usage is £2248 per year (for now - prices are reviewed quarterly - it could go up in autumn). £0.27 per kwh for electricity these days.

If I owned that house, my personal consumption would add £689 per year (7kwh of electricity on cooking, washing machine, tv, kettle, computer, lights, dishwasher per day on average) and the annual standing charge that you have to pay before you turn anything on is £193 for electricity, so

2248 - that EPC's heating and hot water
689 - consumption for 2 adults, reasonably low users
193 - standing charge that you have to pay

£3130 per year, BUT - that's just two of us at home, we don't have kids. We don't have an electric shower and our hot water comes off a combi boiler - that property might have immersion**? Last time I looked at the cost of one of those bastards (2022) it was £1.50 per hour to heat up my hot water, and it took 3 hours to get hot enough.

I made the mistake of leaving an immersion switch on 24/7 when I moved into a new house in late 2022 and it added an extra £600 to our bill over 2 months. I guess I really wanted hot water available to me all the time? Idk. Anyway, we didn't have any oil and I made an expensive mistake.

You really need to dig further into the setup of the house to get a better idea of costs. For example, in 2022 I literally watched the cost of my electric shower in my then-home, and it was costing around 40p per 10 minute shower, and obviously electricity has gone up a ton since then.

*every EPC I've ever had (since I've monitored it, across 4 rentals) has been wrong by at least 40% in kwh usage and I've been shocked by the bills as a result.

**can someone tell the OP if electric properties even have immersion switches? idk how HW is heated in an electric property

We've just updated our heating from 30 year old electric heaters to new energy efficient ones (some high heat retention). We're happy, much cheaper.