Hi, I own a flat and rent individual rooms to people. These rooms currently have individual electric heaters and I am considering having central heating installed.
Does anyone know the cost comparison between electric and gas central heating? This site suggests that in fuel terms gas heating is half the cost of electric but that when all factors are considered electric heating is cheaper.
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Electric heaters also seem to me be more flexible as timers can be set for the heaters as the occupiers wish.
Well, it's written by a manufacturer of electric heaters. That's not to say I'd dismiss it, but you must read it with that bias in mind. There's not enough info in the article, but it could well be comparing a brand new electrical installation with a 30 year old gas boiler -- you just can't tell.
You can do the same with a zoned heating system, but it will be more expensive. On the other hand, you can't really just heat parts of a house very successfully, as the internal parts won't be well insulated from each other, and if you have some areas which are significantly colder than others, you'll quite likely start getting condensation/damp problems.
If you broke down your current costs, people might be better able to comment on comparisons, such as: Number of kWh's per year, and how much you pay per kWh. Cost of maintenance and depreciation/replacement of electric heaters and related controls/wiring. Are the existing heaters on timers/thermostats/storage? Is each tennent separately metered, or how do you split the heating bill?
Generally speaking electricity is more expensive than gas, electric heating is cheaper to install than GCH, and GCH costs less to run in the long term once the initial higher cost of installing a GCH system has been recouped by lower running costs. As you say, electric heaters can be controlled individually by timers whereas the only way of controlling the individual radiators for GCH is by thermostatic radiator valves. Get some estimates for installing a GCH system then calculate how long it might take to break even in comparison with running individual electric heaters, based on the claim that gas heating costs half of electric heating.
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