The pluses and minuses of electric heating
In its most basic format, electric heating has one major advantage, and that is its ease of installation. If you have just moved house or are about to move house and there is no form of central heating installed, before the winter hits, you can run out to your nearest electric superstore and buy yourself as many radiators as you need, plug them in and you have instant heat. There are even wide selections of oil-filled electric heaters on the market these days that will retain heat for long after the power has been switched off.
That's all very well, but the truth is that electric radiators are very far away from being cost effective, and really should be used as a short term method of heating a home.
There are a lot of families that have opted for an electric operated boiler to heat up their water and to control their central heating system during the winter. Electricity has its pluses in that situation also, because once again the initial lay out costs are much lower than gas, and if the home owner us not thinking long term or needs lower than average amounts of hot water or has a small house that requires little heating then electricity might well be a reasonable alternative.
For those people who can afford to spoil themselves, one of the ways that has grown in popularity in recent years is under floor heating, either as an auxiliary method or the sole means of warming their home. Overall the advantage is that there are no unsightly radiators around, but that applies to both electricity and gas.
For someone moving into a newly built house, then their options of whether to choose electricity or gas are far more open, as the system can be installed as the house is being built, mostly in the later stages. If the house has been completed then the whole story becomes a lot more complicated, as carpets have to be taken up, and even floor tiles in the kitchen and bathrooms.
Once that decision has been made, then the next choice will be to opt for electric or gas, and once again the same equation comes into play, with electric under floor heating being much cheaper as well as profoundly less complicated to install than gas, which requires hundreds of feet of under floor piping to be spread throughout the house, These days there are plastic and polybutylene piping available which are much less expensive than copper or brass, but still will cost a pretty penny.
Because of the cost of piping is much higher than electric wiring, electrically operated under floor heating currently has the edge on water heated systems.
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