Buying a house with no gas

[Sew109]

Have a look at infared panels thegreenage/tech/i...eating-panels/ we have one of these in our basement I dont know what it costs to run but seems pretty effective

[YorkshireT]

Watch those oil tanks don’t leak. I once dealt with a big one that leaked, and it polluted all the land, a neighbouring property, and a river. Cost a lot to sort out.

[Loulou127]

Originally Posted by YorkshireT

Watch those oil tanks don’t leak. I once dealt with a big one that leaked, and it polluted all the land, a neighbouring property, and a river. Cost a lot to sort out.

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That’s why I mentioned checking your house insurance covers it, I had to read an awful lot of policies to find one that specifically said all of what you mentioned was covered.

Our neighbour had his punctured when an 80mph gust of wind demolished his greenhouse and one piece of glass was embedded in his tank!

[tfmay]

If the house is well insulated (or can be, ie loft and cavity with full double glazed windows an ASHP (air source heat pump) would be ok and much more sustainable for the future than oil central heating however they are still more expensive to run than both gas or oil - even with recent gas price increases, to the point it’s almost double of gas in an average sized house.
They require larger radiators to heat the rooms as they run at a lower ambient temperature hence why the house needs to be insulated however the system will struggle to heat the house and cost more to run if not insulated

gov.uk/domestic-renewable-heat-incentive

I work at a local council offering grants for them, they should check if they could be eligible, if their council has funding it would be under the governments Green Homes Grant local authority delivery - either directly with their council or maybe an energy hub. ( don’t confuse this with the voucher scheme they did)

If not, you can install and recover the costs via the renewable heat incentive over 7 yrs however be aware it could be anything from £9-15k to install.

We are now putting a new bid together that would offer swapping people in off gas areas from solid fuel or oil to ASHP but installing solar panels to offset the running costs, that would be a good option but obviously not cheap to install all of this however will massively lower your carbon usage!

[Jakey Neverland]

My house had no gas when we moved it, we actually had full central heating put in ourselves with an electric boiler.

Let me say when I found out we could have gas we got it as I think the norm is gas. My heating bills more or less doubled afterwards, the electric boiler worked exactly the same way but was an awful lot cheaper to run. I do regret moving the boiler over to a gas one.

[Scotty]

We are rural, have oil for heating but I have a gas hob, we have a large calor gas bottle outside the house, purely for cooking. I insisted when we built the house. DS is the same.
Bit of a pain if it runs out mid meal prep but we can generally tell when it's getting low.

[wdw-wanderer]

No gas in the village so I’ve had oil for over 30 years with no problems. I replaced the boiler and oil tank 5years ago and the new boiler is so much more efficient and hardly seems to use any oil. New oil tanks are bunded so leaks should be contained and not cause pollution. I like the fact that there’s no pilot light constantly burning in the boiler - in the previous house (gas) it was always blowing out.

[LOU LOU DISNEY]

We had oil fired central heating for 20 years before gas came to our area. Now we have gas I wouldn’t dream of going back to oil. I find the house is much warmer with gas & no more worrying about running out or leaks out of the tank which we’ve had in the past. Also there was a period when thieves were going round stealing oil from peoples tanks even though some had locks on, thankfully we never had this.

[mickey house]

Thank you guys for the very helpful/informative replies. I’m going with them for a second viewing because it’s a good size house for first time buyers, at a good price (no doubt the lack of gas puts people off) in a nice road/area so it’s worth considering.

[daytonababe]

We have storage heaters and never had a issue with them .

My bills aren’t excessive, no more than having gas and electric or oil and electric

I just changed our heaters to new more efficient ones, so they should also be cheaper to run.

I find often that people who say they wouldn’t have storage heaters have never actually used them, Or if they have them don’t use correctly

Ours heat up over night using economy 7