Electric or gas?

[Timlouth]

I have just moved into a house that needs a fair bit of work doing on the central heating system.
It is gas at the moment but I am wondering whether to go all electric.
Some points to consider are pipework around the house, availability of gas supplies in the future, price of gas in the future, efficiency of electric heating, flexibility of electric heating, cost of electricity, gas safety, maintenance, ready supply of hot water.
Does anyone out there have any opinions to add to the discussion between myself and 'er indoors'.

Many thanks

Tim

 

[JohnD]

Electricity is more expensive.

If you go for storage heaters, they tend to make the house warm during the day (which is fine if you have children or old people at home) and run out by evening (which is useless if you're out at work all day) and are not very controllable since you have to fill them up with heat the night before you want it.

 

[big-all]

electricity is about 3 times the price per kwh

i would'nt worry about gas prices as they are set to fall within the year

aaannnddd if the gas runs out i wouldnt worry as they use gas to generate a lot of the electricity we use
so no gas = eletricity shortages and as i cant see a mad dash to build neuclear or coal fired power stations we can assume the experts think we have well in excess of 10 years gas left

and on top of that there is now a second pipe line connecting to the continent

 

[sm1thson]

you can make good use of electricity for heating using heatpumps, it works like a fridge moving heat from one place (the garden) to another (your house) (or inside the fridge to behind the fridge in the case of a fridge) 1KW of electricty to drive the pump can move 4KW of heat into your house. if you are starting from scratch it may be worth a look. Ive only looked into them a bit, i expect they would pay off quicker in a large house.

Also if your starting from scratch look at solar water heating, but dont bother with solar electricity or wind.