Should I Bother Replacing Storage Heaters?

It’s no secret that households all over the country are having to replace their old storage heaters. Storage heating came in at a time when there was no concern about environmental factors and technology was far less sophisticated. Storage heater models have not been updated for decades and have become increasingly inefficient and expensive to run, mostly due to the large amount of power they use. The question many people ask is whether to switch to gas or electric heating. Long-term, the answer is electric and here are a few reasons why.

The Trouble With Gas

The main argument people use for switching to gas is that gas is cheaper to buy per unit than electricity. However, when you factor in the running costs, a gas heating system is more costly than an electric one. Gas heaters are expensive to install and because they use energy less efficiently, they end up running high bills without even heating your home to a high standard. They can also be noisy and have to be replaced after five years, which given the cost of installation is a lot of money to fork out every five years. Many homes cannot even access main gas, which means they have to install LPG (liquefied petroleum gas), a more expensive option than accessing the mains. Looking at it through the long term, due to the damaging carbon emissions caused by gas heating, gas systems could become obsolete by 2030, by which time the only alternative will be electric.

Choosing the Right Heater

It’s natural to want to find the cheapest deal when heating your home. The temptation for some is to keep their old storage heater or switch to gas as the cheaper option. But because of the way the old heaters and gas systems run, they are more expensive in the long run than switching to electricity. In the case of gas heaters, the worst that can happen is you install a gas system only to have it keep breaking periodically, incurring more costs to fix and maintain, not to mention the high bills incurred simply by turning it on. Gas radiators take a while to heat up and you cannot vary the room temperature, offering less flexibility and meaning you get less value for money. Electric heaters may look more expensive because of the cost per unit of electricity, but when you factor in how easy they are to install and their efficiency when it comes to energy usage, the electric radiator easily wins out.

Gas Versus Electric

There are multiple comparison websites where different sides debate the pros and cons of choosing gas or electric heaters. As a long-term investment, electric is probably the better option due to its reliability and the relatively low cost of installation. This guide highlights a few of the problems incurred by using gas, which will hopefully be useful if you are still debating whether to go electric.

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