elec boilers re gas boilers

[AJH]

I just had a =A3900 dual fuel bill with most being the gas. The gas works out at around 145kWh daily which may be largely down to a 15year old Worcester boiler which is rated at 24kW. In considering a new boiler gas is the obvious option although maybe not the best one partly because gas prices are now more per kW than elec, and also because in The Daily Mail this week it was reported that HMG is proposing to impose a levy on all fossil fuels in a further move to make us all Carbon Zero at a future date. Does anyone have any recent experience of the new electric water heating systems such as Megaflow? If so how good are they at supplying continuous hot water as well as supplying radiators? AJ

[Ash]

Is your fuel bill for the quarter or is it a half yearly bill ? .... if it's a quarterly bill £3600 for the year seems huge in comparison to my turning off light bulbs to save a few watt.

Sorry I've no experience of the Megaflow ... we were wondering as to how much a new wood burning stove would (sorry for the pun) be to install in our

1900 house. We've heard about ones which provide all your heating and hot water but I think they're around £4 or £5000 to install but seem to be very efficient?

Ash

[AJH]

The bill is for a quarter, obviously it will go down in the summer but it's too high for us even so! We were thinking about replacing a log fire with a woodburning stove but at =A34-5K I'd rather invest in an efficient new heating system which includes the hot water.

AJ

[Ash]

AJ

Ouch ... agree about the bill. The woodburning stove we're thinking about is supposed to provide all the hot water for the central heating and the domestic hot water for the bathroom, kitchen etc. It obviously needs a lot of work to fit and we'd need to see a system installed and running before we took the plunge.

Ash

[AJH]

Wood burning stoves with a boiler are ok as a backup I suppose but I'm not sure I would want to have one as the main heat source (a lot of wood chopping, storage, cleaning etc!)

[Rod]

As much electricity is generated from gas, it seems inconceivable that any form of electricity being cheaper than gas is going to be more than a transient phenomenon due to tariff anomalies, delayed price changes, etc.

Further, it seems inconceivable that more than a small proportion electricity would come from non-carbon emitting sources in the near term. Thus any changes on carbon levies or whatever seem unlikely to make that much difference to the relative costs of gas and electricity.

Given your choice I would go for the best gas boiler I could find.

[AJH]

Yes I think you're right Rod a new gas boiler is the way to go, particularly as gas is about 2/3 the price of electricity per kWh. I suppose that makes sense really as if electricity is made from gas then it's always going to be more expensive. AJ