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What Are The Heating Options For Homes Without Mains Gas?

Business TalkNovember 28, 201942 Comments11.5k

It may surprise you that there are in fact plenty of options available even if your home is is connected to the national gas grid. And it’s simply to discover all the different options and then decide what’s right for you and your home. In this article we’ve included a wide range of choices.

The Traditional Choices In Off-Gas Options.

If you’re living in one of the significant minority of properties in the UK, around 15%, that aren’t connected to the national gas grid, heating your home can be expensive if you don’t make the right choice from the off-gas options available.

Switching from an inefficient old oil or LPG boiler to a new modern condensing boiler using the same fuel type can deliver you very similar savings to running a standard on-grid has boiler, so it’s certainly worth thinking about this option if your current boiler is getting old.

However, because of the higher cost of LPG and oil over gas usually means that even with a new boiler there may be even cheaper options for you whatever your type and style of home. So have a look at other heating options such as those listed below before opting for a straight boiler switch.

Wood Burning Stoves and Coal Fire Options

It is perhaps surprising to discover that a wood burning stove can be a cheap and effective way of heating your home. The best modern options are biomass boilers, which can utilise the same use of fuel and can heat your water as well as your home via a central heating system.

Electric Options

There are many ways of heating your home with electricity, but unless you’re on a cheaper tariff electricity can be 3-4 times the price of heating your home compared with national grid gas. Listed below are the many different solutions to consider.

INFRARED HEATING PANELS

If you can’t access national grid gas and for whatever reason you can’t install a heat pump or biomass boiler, then installing infrared heating panels can be one of the cheapest ways of heating your home.

ELECTRIC BOILERS

Because electric boilers work in a similar way to traditional gas boilers, by heating the water in a tank with an element, they can have similar energy efficiencies to gas boilers. However, because of the cost of electricity being up to three times more than the price of gas, they are much more expensive to run than the equivalent cost of gas boilers unless you can install them at the same time as solar PV (see below) so that your home produces free electricity direct from the rays of the sun.

STORAGE HEATERS

Compared with an electric boiler, the modern steak lined storage heaters can be a much more cost-effective way of heating your home. And that’s because of the significantly cheaper night rate electricity tariff that storage heaters are designed to use.

Renewable options – the different choices

Whatever your reason for thinking about renewable options, it is a great time to think about because of the range of choices in renewable energy for your home. These include:

HEAT PUMPS – these are a very reliable all year-round way of self-generation because they use heat differentials which exist in all four seasons.

2. BIOMASS BOILERS – because they use recycled materials as fuel, although initially more expensive to install, they really can get a quick pay back on the cost of installing the boiler that could well justify your initial expenditure.

SOLAR THERMAL – because it is often used as an option to heat your hot water and so helps to complement your existing heating system it can be an option to consider.

4. SOLAR PV – because Solar PV produces your home’s electricity directly from sunlight it probably won’t be able to heat the whole of your home unless it’s used in conjunction with other heating sources such as infrared heating panels, storage heaters, electric boiler, or air source heat pump.

What’s right for your home both now and in the future?