Electric heating system

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Hi all,
A friend of mine has a flat which he lets out. A long term tenant has just moved out and he wants to take the opportunity to install an electric heating system. At the moment it has just two gas fires - one in the lounge and one in the bedroom - probably the original 50 year old system.
I have seen storage, panel and radiator type heaters and it all seems a bit confusing.
If I state the room sizes, perhaps someone could point me in the right direction as to sizes and types of suitable heaters?

Hallway 2m x 1.8m (no outside walls or windows)
Bedroom 2.7m x 4m (one 2.7m outside wall, one window (single glazed) 1.7m x 1.3m) north facing
Kitchen 1.9m x 3.7m (one 1.9m outside wall, one window (single glazed) 0.8m x 1.3m) north facing
Lounge 3.5m x 5m (one 3.5m outside wall, one window (single glazed) 1.7m x 1.3m) south facing
Bathroom 2.5m x 1.6m (no outside walls or windows).

Thanks in advance,
Chris.
 
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The sensible option, would be a gas boiler and wet radiator system. I am surprised you are even considering electric heating, when there is a gas supply available.
 
Thanks for responding Harry.There's a few reasons for going electric. One is the pipework required for a wet system would probably be more expensive and difficult to install. Another is that any gas appliances are marked down in the Energy Performance Certificate and a third is that if the gas fires are replaced with electric the flat will have no gas appliances at all and therefore no need for the annual gas safety certificate.
Additionally, it is my feeling that 'green' policies will hold sway in the future forcing people away from gas and towards electric forms of heating.
 
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Agree that installing a wet system comes at a cost, as does an annual gas safety certificate. But this is soon swamped by the fact that electricity costs approx four (yes 4 times) as much as gas. Why do you think that electricity is greener than gas? Much electricity is generated using fossil fuels.

Heat loss calculations are complex. We need to know what the construction materials are as well as room sizes including heights. Also is it a ground floor, middle floor or top floor flat.

I would never rent an all electric flat if I was paying the bills.
 
The UK has been progressively moving away from fossil fuel Electricity and hasn't used Coal to produce electricity for 60 days hasn't it? http://grid.iamkate.com/

Thought a Combi boiler would suit best if the Water pressure is decent, can't be that difficult to put pipework into a flat? If it is perhaps an economy 7 System with a handful of storage heaters plus a Towel Radiator and a Blow heater for when it gets really cold to quickly take away the chill in the Bathroom?
 
Hi Winston/Chivers, Thanks for your replies.
I rent out a couple of flats myself and they are both heated with storage heaters. I think this is quite common in flats built in the 1970s. While benefiting from cheaper electricity, they are next to uncontrollable and therefore inefficient. I guess gas fired radiators are the best option from a comfort and cost option at the moment but I am sure that I read something somewhere regarding the planned phasing out of gas boilers. Also, when he got his last EPC - last November - my friend was told that within 10 years gas boilers would be rated poorly - maybe so poorly as to be legally un-lettable. I feel certain that the tax system will soon be used to ween folk off gas so I am looking at some kind of 'filled' electric radiator system with digital controls for temperature and times of operation.

Room sizes:

Hallway 2m x 1.8m (no outside walls or windows)
Bedroom 2.7m x 4m (one 2.7m outside wall, one window (single glazed) 1.7m x 1.3m) north facing
Kitchen 1.9m x 3.7m (one 1.9m outside wall, one window (single glazed) 0.8m x 1.3m) north facing
Lounge 3.5m x 5m (one 3.5m outside wall, one window (single glazed) 1.7m x 1.3m) south facing
Bathroom 2.5m x 1.6m (no outside walls or windows).

As for room heights, they are all 2.4m high. The flat is on the second floor of a 4 story block and its construction looks to be 1970s brick. All walls not stated as 'outside' are party with other flats.

If you need any further info let me know.
Chris.
 
Gas boilers are still sold and no one is going to be told to get rid of them.

Whatever your friend was told has not been substantiated, seems to be some vague rumour.
 
I can see as a land lord who is not paying heating bills electric does have some advantages, at the end of the day the interest is 1) how much a tenant will pay, 2) what will it sell for.

My son has moved into my old house and is going to rent out his, as the difference between what you can rent a 120k house and a 200k house is around £650 to £750 which seems to be disproportionate to cost of house.

But it's hard to quantify time left empty, there is not real chart where you can compare the rent over 10 years for a highly desirable property and one which just ticks the boxes. There is so much look involved.

However being without tenants is expensive, and the balance is if heating is electric will you get over a 10 year period the same rent as with gas, I think the answer is no, but who can tell.

So to sell the produce you want some thing that makes the tenant think "Oh that's good" even if it's not, I know buying a house under floor heating put me off, and no way would I heat with electric, it's oil or gas or solid fuel, but that's buying a house, what do people look for when renting, likely want to see the bills, so would think gas is still the way to go.
 
Hmmm. At the moment, gas price/kwh is about a quarter of the price of electricty/kwh so the running costs for the tenant of GCH vs electric will be lower.
As an established landlord your mate can lose the installation costs of renewing the heating system against his tax bill.
A CP12 is not an onerous inspection regime for a well installed system.
Any modern gas boiler will score better on the EPC than gas wall heaters
You'll notice estate agents always feature wet central heating positively & tend not to mention electric heating.
Right here right now if you have mains gas then GCH is the most cost effective. Future-who knows. We might all need aircon..
 
My daughter rented a flat without double glazing, they were not permitted to fit it as listed building, also had floors which were not level, narrow stairs etc. It was a stop gap until they could get some thing better, and that is normally the case with flats which are expensive to heat. It was a cheap flat but not very cheap by time you heated it.

There is clearly more than just the method of heating, single glazed windows went out in the 80's and now we are looking at this house with the view to changing double glazed windows to more modern type and gap between pains rather small.

It seems clear some upgrade required, but as to what brings in the money, hard to say, in a deprived area does not matter how good the home is, it is the area which will reduce the income. As said it seems daft, the rent from a home does not seem the reflect the valve of the home, one would think the rent on a 500K house would be double the rent of a 250k house, but that is not the case.
 
My daughter rented a flat without double glazing, they were not permitted to fit it as listed building ...
As a generalisation, that is a myth, so maybe was just being used as an excuse by the landlord. My daughter lives in a Grade II listed cottage, in which she has installed double glazing - it's the appearance of the result, not the number of sheets of glass, which is what matters to the PTB.

Kind Regards, John
 
he wants to take the opportunity to install an electric heating system.
If that is really wanted, then the only sensible option is modern storage heaters such as Dimplex Quantum.
Installation costs will be similar to a gas boiler and radiators, and so will the disruption, as the heaters will require new circuits installing.

Whatever heating system is installed, the insulation of the building will need to be upgraded, including new windows.
 
My eldest daughter worked for Cadw as an archaeologist, and her job was to decide what could and could not be done to buildings, I am sure if the windows could have been upgraded she would have told my youngest daughter it did not need to be left as single glazing. Although house in question was in England and Cadw is the Welsh thing, I am sure they use same criteria.

Listing is odd, as it is listed because of some thing which is of special interest, so one house I lived in, he could rip out and change the stairs, but could not level the floor.

Basic fact as @flameport has pointed out, energy does not travel by magic, and to heat the home be it plastic pipes or plastic coated wires, there is a lot of work involved.

The Building Regulations Statutory Instrument SI 2000-531. ... Minimum provision In this document 'minimum provisions' refers to the provisions needed to demonstrate compliance of space heating and hot water service systems installed in dwellings with the Building Regulations energy efficiency requirements.
The problem is, be it heating, electrics, or a host of other items, if the home is yours, there is very little the local authority can do to make you upgrade, but once the property is rented then there are minimum standards, I did consider renting out a house, and it seems either I have to sit an exam, or I need to employ an agent who has sat and passed the exam.
As from the 1st April 2018 there is a requirement for any properties rented out in the private rented sector to normally have a minimum energy performance rating of E on an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC).
E is quite low, but the ratings seem to have nothing to do with how much energy they use, it says my house with cost £1600 per year to heat, in real terms it costs third to half that figure, it is so far out to be silly, as to how they work it out I don't know, but my father-in-laws house with triple glazing and solar panels said £2805 for three years heating and my old house same style with double glazing and no solar panels £3805 for three years, but I had TRV in upstarts rooms, and better quality doors, so in real terms we paid less than him, the solar panels (water) were useless, and he stored DHW where ours was instant.

So daft the EPC is, that is what the person renting the house looks at.

What I would really like to know, is how we have a EPC for my old house done by some one from Wigan when we live in Mold when it has never been ordered nor have we ever let anyone in the house to inspect it? Clearly guess work, as could not know boiler type, and father-in-laws house it says solar water heating would save £40 per year when he already had it, and mine it would save £37 per year.

If it was not for both houses being in my control I would have said some one paid the inspector a back hander. But I know that did not happen.
 
My eldest daughter worked for Cadw as an archaeologist, and her job was to decide what could and could not be done to buildings, I am sure if the windows could have been upgraded she would have told my youngest daughter it did not need to be left as single glazing. Although house in question was in England and Cadw is the Welsh thing, I am sure they use same criteria.
I think the important point here is that the 'rules' about work on listed buildings are very vague (essentially just talking about "things which change the character" etc.), so that there is a lot of discretion on the part of the LA (advised by Historic England when necessary) as regards applications for 'Listed Buildings Consent' - hence a lot of variation in how particular applications are treated.

It obviously also depends upon the nature of the listed building. Many/most Grade II listed building are, like my daughter's house, listed only because of their age (built earlier than 1800), not because they are of any particular or specific 'historical or architectural interest' and I think that they are much more lenient in decisions about such properties. My daughter's house is in the middle of a terrace of listed cottages, and many of them have had extensive things (like loft conversions and installation of dormer windows etc.) done to them, with permission, over the years.

There are plenty of specialist firms around who produce replica windows for listed buildings (even Grade I listed ones), and they commonly use 'slimline double glazing units', which look like a single pane of glass, for them.

Kind Regards, John
 

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