gas fire or electric fire ? that is the question.

kevplumb said:

all thats needed is a 1/4 plug in the restrictor elbow
then a TT

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Well, something's definately needed.

... failed to safely isolate and cap the live gas pipe, and left the work partially completed.... fined a total of £4,000 and ordered to pay costs of £1,787 ... "The pipework left in the flat was extremely dangerous and could have led to a major gas explosion if one of the children had simply twisted the valve to let the gas escape."

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HSE

Sorry to revive this old thread, butI am currently facing the same debate. At the moment I am think a nice looking electric fire with a very realistic 'flame' effect, but the only problem is that the fire would sit below my TV which is also mounted on the wall. How do I hide the power cable? I want it to look like gas fire (if the power cable shows it would be obvious its an electric one). Also, it would look much tidier without the cable showing.

newfireplace said:

Sorry to revive this old thread, butI am currently facing the same debate. At the moment I am think a nice looking electric fire with a very realistic 'flame' effect, but the only problem is that the fire would sit below my TV which is also mounted on the wall. How do I hide the power cable? I want it to look like gas fire (if the power cable shows it would be obvious its an electric one). Also, it would look much tidier without the cable showing.

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Even the better ones won't look anything like the flame effect on a gas gas fire. Although I don't like Dimplex as a company,their "opti-mist" range is very good,although it requires a little maintenance from the home owner.

Hiding the power cable is normally straightforward, with a little common sense and planning. What you can't hide is the cost of running an electric fan heater - but that is ony relevant if you intend to use it in a regular basis as a heater.

In my old house we had a gas fire 4.5 kW, we could not have got an electric fire that big, and could not have had a solid fuel fire as only a flue brick, it was used on coming home, as it was fast heating up the room while waiting for the central heating to get up to temperature, it looked better than electric and the radiant heat resulted in 5 minutes before room felt warm.

However there was one problem, there was no thermostatic control. So there was a tendency for room to get hotter and hotter, and until you walked out of room and back in again you did not notice how hot it was.

But the massive advantage was if we had a power cut, we still had heat, so even if there was a really nice electric fire, would still want the gas one, the house was designed so whole house could be heated by the single gas fire, although central heating has better control, it still needs electric to work, we wanted one fire which will work when the electric fails.

This house no gas, and we have a board in the solid fuel fire with a hole for the AC flue in the summer, it is left blocked off and has never been used, but we have some logs, and should we loose electric we do have a back up.

mr.greenfingers said:

I'd go with the gas fire if you want it as a heat source

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This was asked 10 years ago!! Did you not see the red warning before you posted!

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mr.greenfingers said:

I'd go with the gas fire if you want it as a heat source. Electric fires on gives of a heat output of about 1-2kW. The gas fire might be a bit expensive to install compared, but in the end it's worth it.

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Given that this thread is over 10 years old, and the last post before yours was 8½ years ago, I suspect they've probably got it sorted by now