do you have?

We have ducted gas, and I am wondering whether this is the most economical heating (probably not!)
So what type of heating does everyone else have that gets them through these Canberra winters?
I was thinking of getting one of those column oil heaters, but not sure whether these will chew up the electricity?
I really want to get my gas bills down, as we have gas heating, water and stove and our gas bills are quite large (put mildly)
I would be interested for everyone elses opinions


DD Brenna Rose 24/09/2004
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we have a gas wall heater which is great. i always thought gas was cheapest?

Yes I think gas is the cheapest, but DUCTED gas? It heats the entire house... It would be nice just to heat the lounge room since that is where we spend the most time...
It is lovely having the entire house warm, but then I feel guilty (and scared) when I think of the gas bill

DD Brenna Rose 24/09/2004
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Hi,

You might not be able to do this with your system, but the last place I lived in had ducted gas and we could shut the ducts off. We shut the ducts off in our spare room and opened the ducts in our bedroom a few hours before bedtime. We found it really cheap to run and plan to get it installed here when we can afford it!

Sarah (Bueller), do you have 3 split systems? We currently have one, in our lounge room, and are considering putting another one in at the other end of the house although we don't have anywhere (other than a bedroom) to put it. So we were thinking electric oil/water heaters on the walls in each bedroom down there.

ahhh yes. we rented a house once that had ducted gas but it was just a cheapo system so that shutting the vents achieved nothing the living areas would be quite cool and the bedrooms stifling hot.

Hi BrennaBoo,

I tell you what, I'll swap you our ducted electric heating for
your ducted gas heating.....deal? ;p

This monstrous contraption came with the house and sucks
in a massive amount of electricity...the house has 3 phase
power just to be able to support it. I think it is 18kw or
something like that. SO.....last winter, when DD was just born,
I had it on a LOT, and we ended up with a quarterly bill that
was almost $800 :gasp: Needless to say DH does not want
me to use it so much this winter !

Anyway, I was being pretty good this year until I recently read
a thread on here about what people love about Canberra
winters!! Some innocent person said they loved sitting inside
in t.shirt and shorts and watching the cold people outside (or
something along these lines). At this point, I broke off the
icicle growing from my nose, threw off the 4 quilts and
waddled (in my snowsuit) to the central heating unit and
flicked it on to TWENTY DEGREES! Off course it took ages
for it to make the house warm because it was only ELEVEN
DEGREES inside.

My advice, dont buy ducted electric..in fact I'm pretty sure
they stopped selling them in about the 1970's so this is not a
problem for you. We have a slow combustion fireplace which
we sometimes use in the evenings (to help pollute the
tuggeranong valley . Mostly our house is freezing cold, and
I use a five bar oil column heater in DD's room.

I'll be dreaming of your ducted gas heating tonight!

Oh Tinka, you made me laugh!! Of course I love the fact that it is lovely and warm in our house, I just feel so guilty for using it! I hate getting big bills, and our gas bill is always the biggest of them all!
I was toying with the idea of a column heater, but think I will just see how things go this winter. Im back at work so can afford the bills, it just HURTS!

DD Brenna Rose 24/09/2004
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We have ducted gas heating in our place and it works really well. We close off the rooms and the vents in those rooms that we don't use. We also keep the temp at 19 degrees. We have it on a timer where it comes on at 6:30am (15-30 mins before we get up) and shuts off at 10am. Then it comes back on around 4:00pm and stays on 'til around 9:30pm. As we're home during the day alot, if it drops below 16 degrees then I'm likely to manually switch it on for a little while 'til it reaches 19 or 20.

As for running costs .......

The first winter we spent in this house and because we hadn't lived in a place with this sort of heating system, we overused it (turned it on first thing, turned it off last thing and often forgot to switch it off while we were at work) and our bill of $500+ shocked the hell out of us.

So the following winter (and from then on) we set up the timer and the bill reflected this by literally halving.

Another thing we did which has worked really well was to have ActewAGL take out a certain monetary amount each month. The amount is set based on your previous year's usage and is adjusted each year. This means that we are never hit with a big bill in winter and a tiny bill in summer - it is averaged out over the twelve months. In the four years that we've been using this system we have never had a bill for additional usage. And we have never had to come up with a lump sum and remember to pay it by a certain date. Definitely a great help for budgeting.

HTH.

Cheers,
Helen.
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Contrary to Tinka's post, we have ducted electric and it's great.

We run the house at 21 degrees from 7.30am to 10.30pm all winter, dropping back to 17 overnight. The heating doesn't run all day because we have lots of north facing windows - on sunny days it probably doesn't run at all between 10am and 4pm.

In summer we rarely let the house get hotter than about 28 and from memory we usually run the a/c about 25 but usually only in the afternoon and evening.

The system is 16MJ (I think) which is over powered for a 125sqm 3br house, but it will cater for an extension when/if we ever do one. We did have to upgrade to three phase power *and* get a new meter to install it, the bonus of that is we now have electrical safety switches on every power circuit.

My DH cannot control his body temperature, hence it might appear we are pretty "soft" about climate control in our house. Everything in our house runs on electricity except the cooktop.

We get two rebates on electricity, but even without taking those into account our electricity bills aren't too bad - last year was $400 for April to July, $470 for July to October, $315 for October to January and $300 for January to April (the rebates save us a total of about $350 per year). Those prices are to have the house comfortably warm or cool day and night all year around.

I also thought ducted gas was pretty economical. How big is the house and how well insulated is it?

Steph

Hey Steph,

Sounds like you have the climate control all sorted. I should
try and pay more attention to it and see if I can't get it under
control too.

We have raked ceilings in all of the living areas so we lose a
lot of heat up there. There is only approx 20cm between us
and the outside world (such a thin space means the very
thinnest insulation, so not very good). DH has invested in a
kit which has an extraction fan and ducting and he is going to
duct the heat from the high part of the ceilings (mainly
generated from the slow combustion heater on the evenings
we use it) into the bedrooms. It should work really well
(fingers crossed).

Our house faces east and 90% of this wall is glass...not
double glazed. We lose a lot of heat through here because
we dont have good window coverings (DH won't have
curtains, and it is my opinion that blinds - although we do
have them - dont do much at all). We only have one north
facing window so there is not much heat generated here.

Can I ask what your average indoors temp is during the day,
with no heaters running and relying on sun heating on
northfacing windows? I'm not 100% sure what our is. It
depends on the day of course, but I know it often hovers
around 13/14/15 on a nice day, and I find this cold unless I'm
super busy running about.

Can I also ask about your rebates? Are they related to your
DH or are they some other package deal?

Have a warm day everyone!

Hi,
I'd always thought that the price of gas had risen a bit from what it used to be (ie used to be cheap) and that the difference between gas and electric wasn't that big? As Steph I think it was said, costs depend on size of house and insulation. Actually, Canberra is really bad in terms of insulation I think, my german DP is often shocked that Canberra is not insulated well (Germans love to insulate ceiling, walls and floor and have double glazing on all windows). Perhaps this is something to check?

We live in an apartment, so it is easier to heat than a big house. We have one of those reverse cycle thingies which heats our lounge/dining and kitchen (and does the job very well). In the bedrooms, we have little wall mounted heater things. For all our heating, we have timers so that we don't waste energy and get big bills, and so that we are warm when we get up, and when we get home from work.

I too thought that those oil heaters were economical, but in our old place we used them and had horrendous bills. All that said, instead of getting warmer with pregnancy, I am colder than ever - who is going to have a huge electricity bill this quarter ;p

Nicole

This message was edited by Bimbogirl on Monday, 20 June 2005 @ 8:37 AM

We have inslab heating
its lovely but expensive,
for the winter months its about $1000 for electricity, you just cant turn it off because it takes 5 days to reheat.

I have no idea what the daytime temp would be at our place if the heater didn't crank up to 21deg at 7.30am. It's not something we could experiment with either as DH would just get too cold in the morning.

The rebates are mostly due to us having a concession card - a saving of $200 per year. Also because DH has a prescription for climate control from an Occupational Therapist he gets a "life support rebate" as we have to have the power on. Life support rebates are also available on electricity for people on ventilators or home oxygen, and for water customers eg people on home dialysis. The life support rebate is $150 per year.

After the Jan 03 bushfires DH had to be admitted to Canberra Hospital and stay there until the power came back on 12 days later. I think our street was the 2nd last in Duffy to get the power back on. At least as priority Telstra customers, they actually rigged up a temp connection for us and our immediate neighbours so that our phone line was only out for about 3 days.

Steph
DD Alex (March 04)

OK now I am thoroughly confused!

Yes our gas is VERY expensive - his is from teh ActewAGLK website:
Home Electricity plan
Supply charge
42.24¢ per day GST inclusive
All consumption
10.89¢ per kWh GST inclusive

Home Gas plan
Supply charge
$37.29 per quarter GST inclusive
Usage rate
1.4344¢ per MJ GST inclusive

In other states gas is $0.96 per MJ.

I just got the ACTEWAGL quote for ducted central gas heating (the smallest Braemar 5 star) which is $4700 (and I get $400 free gas because Braemar give ATEWAGL a $400 discount). I asked about ducted reverse cycle and was told it's $8800 for my tiny 110m2 house. But he said reverse cycle electric is much cheaper to run.

eg 65 MJ/hour = $0.94/hour for a gas heater
eg 3.8kwh input = 41c/hour for an electric reverse cycle

He also said that on cold days like last Thursday the reverse cycle systems struggled (not sure how he knew this)? Can anyone confirm this?

He also said my house is too small to be zoned and that the Braemar can't sense when you close off vents. I want to heat lounge room only during the day and both lounge and bedrooms in the evening and morning, and bedrooms only at night.

Now I'm wondering if I should put a split system r/c electric in the lounge and all 3 bedrooms?


Can anyone offer advice? Please? The guy said "single mm?" then proceeded to tell me all sorts of tales...

We have ducted gas in our house and it is fantastic. This will be the first year I am home all day but I only heat my house to 17 degrees during the day and wear a jumper. At night we turn it up until we go to bed and then it turns off at night. Not sure how this will go once we have a newborn. We also have a split system but can't use the heating part because it freezes up outside and then blows cold air into the house.

I think it really depends on how hot you have your house and how good your insulation is. We just upgraded our insulation and the house stays a lot hotter now and the heater doesn't come on as much.

Good luck with finding what is right for you.

Lara

we had one of those wall units in our last house which was absotlutely fabulous, though our house was a bit more compact and open plan than yours. but still might be worth looking into as a cheaper option.

the thing that has made a huge difference here is having good curatins. last winter the previous owners only had vertical blinds and they had the temp set at a good 5' warmer day and night than we need to.

Sarah - I forgot to say that our split system is a piece of cr*p. When they came to repair it nobody even knew the brand. I am sure if you have a good quality system it is great

Brazen - I agree about the curtains as well. We have rubber backed curtains through our whole house and it makes a huge difference.

Lara

Thanks.

It's a tricky house to heat because it's not open plan I think.

We have lined curtains in all but the kitchen/meals area and the spare bedroom and I'm investigating wall insulation. I can't get floor insulation put in existing homes with low timber floors like mine apparently. An I have R3 in the ceiling. My problem is that the lounge gets really warm but it doesn't flow out to the rest of the house, even with a ceiling fan on. Plus the existing heater hasn't got a timer.

So I'm thinking either a gas wall furnace with a timer in the lounge room (so long as it heats the kitchen too) and electric panel heaters in the bedroom (I'm still iffy about their safety with Ryan as they are hot to touch). Or ducted gas central heating. Or ducted electric heating with an inverter. Cooling isn't an issue as the house has wide eaves so it doesn't get too hot.

I'm no better off than I was this time yesterday ARGH!

alice we have a large column heater you're welcome to borrow til you get it sorted out if you like, just say

Years ago, in my pre-baby I'm a greenie days (lol) I wanted hydronic heating (can't retrofit a house with it) followed by electric panel heating, followed by gas. Thing is, those electric panel heaters actaully use a lot of energy for the heat they output and I'm worried about the surface temeprateure beng 75*C with a toddler about the place. I use oil-filled column (electric) heaters in our bedrooms ATM but they use up a lot of electricity and I trip over the darned cords every night! So thanks Karen, but we're right for now _ I'm looking at solving my problem with heating, I've got a short term fix.

Thanks!

Can anyone with split cycle air con tell me if they blow air around corners? I can't figure out how you put one in a bedroom and get it to heat 2 rooms! Will I need 4 split sytems? I hope not! My house is so small...

Thank you Sarah. I went into the Belconnen ACTEWAGL shop this afternoon and a very bored saleswoman looked at me like I had another head when I asked if any heaters blow around corners LOL. Her answer was no, for a house with lots of small rooms I need ducted central heating.

I am tempted to get my existing gas wall heater fan fixed for this winter and leave putting central reverse cycle in until September when the winter rush is over but before the summer rush. IYKWIM. It will be painful to get up EVERY morning to a house that's 6*C all winter, but I've done it for the past 28 years... I HATE THE CANERRA WINTER!!!! lol Yet I still live here.

I might be able to save up the $8000 by September. OMG! Somehow.

Alice & Ryan

We have a gas wall-furnace out the front that does the lounge/dining/kitchen/hallway. We can close off the hallway to BRs with a sliding door. The BRs are all heated with little thermostat-controlled electric fan-heaters. You can pick these up for as little as $13-00 & do a fantastic job in our BRs. ACA once did a comparison & apart from ducted-gas, these were the fastest-acting heaters available. Also cheaper to run than the oil-column heaters according to my Sparky Brother.

I'm still undecided on which heating system to use. I think the special offer of $400 gas back ends today but I haven't heard from ACTEWAGL in a week so don't know what's going on there!

Also - for general interest. Has anyone used the HEAT program (Home Energy Advisory Teams)? You can get $500 rebate from the ACT government for implementing some things, like pelmets, solar hot water, and replacing electric heating with gas. Only thing is, I read the fine print and you can't have any quotes BEFORE HEAT visit you or they don't pay.

We use ducted gas and so far out bills are the lowest they have been in any house we've been in so far.

We close off the vents in the rooms that we are not in all the time so they don't get heated. Heating basically goes through the lounge, hall and study and we leave the vent in the dining room and kitchen open as well...