Is it worth having a gas connection for self build house?

[joth]

2 hours ago, nod said:

The problem that you have with switching to HPs Is in most homes the the running costs are considerably more than gas and are better suited to UFH 

 

Isn't this topic about a new build self build where UFH can be installed and running costs will be much lower. I really can't see how debating hydrogen in some far off future is a useful thing to consider when building a brand new house at this point in time

[nod]

5 minutes ago, joth said:

Isn't this topic about a new build self build where UFH can be installed and running costs will be much lower. I really can't see how debating hydrogen in some far off future is a useful thing to consider when building a brand new house at this point in time

🥱

[Ed_]

Regarding gas cookers, the evidence shows that having a gas cooker is detrimental to your health, due to the emissions.

If, like many here, you are aiming for an airtight house with MVHR then the recommendation seems to be to have a recirculating hood.

I think the combination of the 2 would be bad news.

[SteamyTea]

8 hours ago, nod said:

government needs to be honest

Or the installers.

[JohnMo]

6 hours ago, LnP said:

Dunkelflauten

Are you German? Or just like using fancy words? So have to look then up.

[Temp]

We wanted a gas hob but there is no mains gas in the village so we opted for a pair of 47kg LPG cylinders. These work very well with a cylinder lasting at least 18 months when we had kids to feed. Now they have left home probably 2 years? Can't remember when we last had to change one.

 

They would probably be too expensive per kWH for heating but the absolute cost for running the hob is OK.

[Oz07]

Where I am in The country a gas connection is about 300 quid for newbuild. It's literally the cheapest service to bring on site. God knows why seems to be subsidised by govt. You'd think water was more important?!

 

It's a no brainer for me I'd get gas every time. As for standing charge that isn't the case. If you don't have a gas meter you won't be paying a standing charge. Isn't gas the cheapest energy per khw for a standard punter? Also cooking on gas is something I prefer but haven't tried induction tbf. 

[JohnMo]

18 minutes ago, Oz07 said:

Isn't gas the cheapest energy per khw for a standard punter

Depends. I pay 6p per kWh for gas and two rates for electricity 13p and 29p. 

 

Add to the gas cost and efficiency of 85% the actual cost is nearly 7p for heating.

 

If running a heat pump at night I get a CoP of between 3 and 4 depending on outside temperature. So 13/3 is 4.3p and 13/4 is 3.25p. So for a heat pump run on cheap rate, electric is quite a bit cheaper. Running in expensive period a heat pump is about the same cost on a cold day a limited expense.

 

On a standard tariff of 25p for a normal punter I would get an average SCoP of just over 4 to 5 so then it's cheaper at all times of the day, to heat via a heat pump.

 

Add a battery and PV it gets way more complex, but overall cheaper again for electric heating via heat pump.

 

So overall on a new build you are not correct.

[Wadrian]

Many Thanks everyone for your comments - looks gas will be a no, no for me. 

[JamesPa]

On 22/05/2025 at 12:55, Wadrian said:

With that in mind was wondering if it is still worthwhile having a gas connection to the property?

Definite no here.

 

Having just retrofitted an ASHP to my 1930s house there is no way I would bother with gas in a new build.  Its cheaper to run by about 20%, much more comfortable (because there are fewer thermal gradients due to the way it works) and can do cooling as well as heating.  Whats not to like?

 

Incidentally, ignore the people who falsely claim that hydrogen heating is the way forward.  Hydrogen does have a place but not for domestic heating, its for applications where there isnt an alternative.  There is a very simple reason for this -  to be green (which is the argument for swapping to it in the first place) it has to be made from electricity, and this is a factor of 3 less efficient than a heat pump, so is guaranteed to cost much more.  'Hydrogen ready' is just filibustering by vested interests in the oil industry so they can continue to sell gas boilers.

 

 

Edited June 13 by JamesPa

[JohnMo]

To add to what @JamesPa says our new build (started in 2020) was originally gas. In 2023 we put in an ASHP. Messed about with hybrid and have now asked for the gas meter to be removed. 

 

Having gas meter standing charges are £110. Saving made running gas over ASHP near zero and below about £20 per year. Gas is costing me money (£90).

[Oz07]

While browsing online this afternoon I see this crop up. Apparently govt chef scientist says heat pumps won't save money. I'm sure there are nuances and I know that the high performance houses being built by members on this forum would be more suitable than others. 

 

How does this link square with what was being said here @JohnMo? Are they referring to cop with the figure of 2.8? Are they saying that it would have to be 4 to match gas? Excuse my ignorance I've never never ran a hp before. 

https://thegwpf.org/publications/new-paper-reveals-governments-heat-pump-plan-as-uneconomic/

 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/net-zero/not-clear-heat-pumps-save-people-money/

 

 

[JohnMo]

1 hour ago, Oz07 said:

How does this link square with what was being said here @JohnMo?

 

Gas costs you circa £100 for standing charge, just to have it connected. Not mention the report.

 

No idea where they get a CoP of 2.8 (well I do, see below). A typical well thought out simple system will get to a CoP of 4.0 and beyond.

 

A simple heat pump install is, no thermostats, single zone, run 24/7 on weather compensation. A 3 port diverter to switch between heating and DHW. Nothing else is needed. This will get you a cop of at least 4. Add into the mix the circulation pump switching off between compressor cycles gets closer to 5 on mild days. 

 

Running a heating circulation pump for a 180 days a year is around 70W x 24 x 180 = 302kWh or £75. This figure is never mentioned in the gas calculation, nor is any electrical running costs, associated with boiler. But is always included in ASHP CoP figure (or should be).

 

So you now have a fixed cost of £175 to have gas (standing charge and circulation pump), not included in the gas costs comparison.

 

So if you use 6000kWh of gas at 6p it will cost £360, plus £175 so £535.

 

Your good boiler install is getting 95% efficiency, so of the 6000kWh consumption only 5700kWh energy delivery.

 

So on a standard rate tariff you pay say £0.25 per kWh for electricity.

 

Let's use the 2.8 CoP figure and see the cost. 5700kWh/2.8 is 2035 kWh electric. 2035 x 0.25 is £509. So even with a cr@p install you are beating an gas boiler on running cost.

 

Now for a CoP of 4

1425kWh of electric needed

1425 x 0.25 is £356.

 

A system designed with hydraulic separation, buffers, low loss headers, the additional pump(s) needed, mixer valves, not having a low temperature heating system, on/off heating timing could get you at 2.8 or worse.

 

To get a decent efficiency from a gas boiler you need a low temperature heating system run on weather compensation, ideally a high gain cylinder run on priority demand. So one flow temp for heating and another to heat DHW. (Which is pretty much the same as a heat pump install). A boiler will yield 95% efficiency an ASHP around 400%.  So heating system install is the same cost.

 

Such a system will yield a gas efficiency of 95% and ASHP around 400 to 500%, not 280% mentioned.

 

Then the cost of heat source 

A good boiler is more than a £1000.

 

A high gain gas boiler cylinder and ASHP cylinder are basically the same cost.

 

Now ignoring grants an ASHP could cost £4-5k, but you really don't have to pay that. I paid £1300, you could get a really good Panasonic for around £2k.

 

So a heat pump is a little more expensive without any grants, but you do have a payback of 5 or less years which is a little different from the report which said never.

 

Time of use tariff, even E7 will give you electricity at 6p to 14p. Add some PV, a battery changes the cost profile again.

 

My cost for electric average this year is about 7p, so are now down to £100, compared £509.

 

Can a boiler give you cooling if you need or want it - no.

 

I voted with my feet today and had my gas disconnected.

 

To summarize, reports like the one linked to, are uneducated drivel, biased against heat pumps, no proper analysis completed. Rubbish in rubbish out. A typical gas boiler installed on S or Y plan will getting closer to 85% efficiency, so now quite a bit more expensive than an ASHP.

 

A new build, a simple ASHP install is a winner. 

 

Edited Thursday at 20:39 by JohnMo

[LnP]

2 hours ago, Oz07 said:

While browsing online this afternoon I see this crop up. Apparently govt chef scientist says heat pumps won't save money. I'm sure there are nuances and I know that the high performance houses being built by members on this forum would be more suitable than others. 

 

How does this link square with what was being said here @JohnMo? Are they referring to cop with the figure of 2.8? Are they saying that it would have to be 4 to match gas? Excuse my ignorance I've never never ran a hp before. 

https://thegwpf.org/publications/new-paper-reveals-governments-heat-pump-plan-as-uneconomic/

 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/net-zero/not-clear-heat-pumps-save-people-money/

 

 

You've landed on two of the least trustworthy commentators on matters related to climate change. I wouldn't trust The Daily Telegraph journalism on climate change, net zero or heat pumps ... or much else to be honest. They have a well documented anti green track record. See this criticism for example from Desmog.

And the Global Warming Policy Foundation are no better. Just look at who their trustees are - founded by the late Nigel Lawson, Tony Abbott, John Redwood ... all renowned climate sceptics. They share real estate at Tufton Street with other right of centre lobby groups.

You're better off with the real world and honest advice you get here on Buildhub, for example @JohnMo 's well argued post above 🙂.

[Gus Potter]

12 minutes ago, LnP said:

You're better off with the real world and honest advice you get here on Buildhub

A good "woodsperson.. woke" woodsman will always choose an axe head made from a steel that can be made reasonably sharp but also be durable. While they may not get the edge perfectly sharp and keen it will still out perfom a steel that can take a good edge but is not durable in the long run.

 

There is little point in installing complex systems which on the face of it will work for a few years and then become difficult to service, suffer from a large drop off in performace or need replacement.

21 minutes ago, LnP said:

I wouldn't trust

Take a step back and use your common sense. 

[marshian]

2 hours ago, JohnMo said:

Running a heating circulation pump for a 180 days a year is around 70W x 24 x 180 = 302kWh or £75. This figure is never mentioned in the gas calculation, nor is any electrical running costs, associated with boiler. But is always included in ASHP CoP figure (or should be).

 

 

70W is a pretty high usage for a modern circulation pump on a gas central heating circuit - mines using 13W

 

13W x 24 x 180 = 56kWh or £14

 

It was one of the factors I worked out before going 24/7 on CH

 

The old pump I will grant you was a Watt hungry little sod..........

 

Imagine if all the houses in the UK adopted modern pumps saving £50 a year - the payback would be under 3 years.............

[Gus Potter]

3 hours ago, JohnMo said:

Running a heating circulation pump for a 180 days a year is around 70W x 24 x 180 = 302kWh or £75. This figure is never mentioned in the gas calculation, nor is any electrical running costs, associated with boiler. But is always included in ASHP CoP figure (or should be).

It is massively hard to get your head around this. I've been dabbling in UFH and stuff for 40 years and the learning curve is hard to keep up with.

 

John makes a valid point about how much it costs (£75.00) to run a circulation pump. Now pumps give out heat. If they are inside the insulation envelope then it is fair game to count that heat in the calculation. To be pedantic.. say gas is 1/3 the price of electricity. Now your £75 quid is more like £50 quid nett, one problem is though.. you don't live in the boiler cupboard... I hope. 

 

@LnP earlier and on another thread put forward a proposal that certain publications were using flawed data to argue against climate change. Now what we are doing on BH is building our own houses and extending say. Over my adult life I've come to recognise that the political landscape changes a lot, at the moment with Reform UK this has the potential to be quite dramatic. Govenment policy could change a lot. No matter where you sit on the polical spectrum things won't stay the same as they are now. 

 

Research funds etc get directed to deliver certain outcomes. This landscape changes more frequently than the lifespan of the house and probably a mortgage. As a designer I would encourage Clients to think about energy policy and costs and recognise that they will change for good.. or bad and try and design for the long term. Design for durability, ease of part replacement and mitigate servicing cost. This is one key aspect that underpins sustainable and environmental design. 

Edited yesterday at 00:16 by Gus Potter

[Oz07]

6 hours ago, LnP said:

You've landed on two of the least trustworthy commentators on matters related to climate change. I wouldn't trust The Daily Telegraph journalism on climate change, net zero or heat pumps ... or much else to be honest. They have a well documented anti green track record. See this criticism for example from Desmog.

And the Global Warming Policy Foundation are no better. Just look at who their trustees are - founded by the late Nigel Lawson, Tony Abbott, John Redwood ... all renowned climate sceptics. They share real estate at Tufton Street with other right of centre lobby groups.

You're better off with the real world and honest advice you get here on Buildhub, for example @JohnMo 's well argued post above 🙂.

I just came across a post on x and it had both these articles linked 

[Oz07]

8 hours ago, JohnMo said:

 

Gas costs you circa £100 for standing charge, just to have it connected. Not mention the report.

 

No idea where they get a CoP of 2.8 (well I do, see below). A typical well thought out simple system will get to a CoP of 4.0 and beyond.

 

A simple heat pump install is, no thermostats, single zone, run 24/7 on weather compensation. A 3 port diverter to switch between heating and DHW. Nothing else is needed. This will get you a cop of at least 4. Add into the mix the circulation pump switching off between compressor cycles gets closer to 5 on mild days. 

 

Running a heating circulation pump for a 180 days a year is around 70W x 24 x 180 = 302kWh or £75. This figure is never mentioned in the gas calculation, nor is any electrical running costs, associated with boiler. But is always included in ASHP CoP figure (or should be).

 

So you now have a fixed cost of £175 to have gas (standing charge and circulation pump), not included in the gas costs comparison.

 

So if you use 6000kWh of gas at 6p it will cost £360, plus £175 so £535.

 

Your good boiler install is getting 95% efficiency, so of the 6000kWh consumption only 5700kWh energy delivery.

 

So on a standard rate tariff you pay say £0.25 per kWh for electricity.

 

Let's use the 2.8 CoP figure and see the cost. 5700kWh/2.8 is 2035 kWh electric. 2035 x 0.25 is £509. So even with a cr@p install you are beating an gas boiler on running cost.

 

Now for a CoP of 4

1425kWh of electric needed

1425 x 0.25 is £356.

 

A system designed with hydraulic separation, buffers, low loss headers, the additional pump(s) needed, mixer valves, not having a low temperature heating system, on/off heating timing could get you at 2.8 or worse.

 

To get a decent efficiency from a gas boiler you need a low temperature heating system run on weather compensation, ideally a high gain cylinder run on priority demand. So one flow temp for heating and another to heat DHW. (Which is pretty much the same as a heat pump install). A boiler will yield 95% efficiency an ASHP around 400%.  So heating system install is the same cost.

 

Such a system will yield a gas efficiency of 95% and ASHP around 400 to 500%, not 280% mentioned.

 

Then the cost of heat source 

A good boiler is more than a £1000.

 

A high gain gas boiler cylinder and ASHP cylinder are basically the same cost.

 

Now ignoring grants an ASHP could cost £4-5k, but you really don't have to pay that. I paid £1300, you could get a really good Panasonic for around £2k.

 

So a heat pump is a little more expensive without any grants, but you do have a payback of 5 or less years which is a little different from the report which said never.

 

Time of use tariff, even E7 will give you electricity at 6p to 14p. Add some PV, a battery changes the cost profile again.

 

My cost for electric average this year is about 7p, so are now down to £100, compared £509.

 

Can a boiler give you cooling if you need or want it - no.

 

I voted with my feet today and had my gas disconnected.

 

To summarize, reports like the one linked to, are uneducated drivel, biased against heat pumps, no proper analysis completed. Rubbish in rubbish out. A typical gas boiler installed on S or Y plan will getting closer to 85% efficiency, so now quite a bit more expensive than an ASHP.

 

A new build, a simple ASHP install is a winner. 

 

Thanks for detailed reply. Looks like heat pump is the winner for new build if you are on the right tariff. I will consider for my next place. Maybe bottled gas is the way forward for cooking. In those articles are they saying that the price difference between gas and leccy is growing? To me it seems like the more renewables they turn on the higher energy prices go. Subsidies and linking the price to gas is killing us on these. I remember years ago jeremy saying how the gas price was only going to increase relative to leccy. My argument was if it went too high the govt would end up subsidising it. When the Ukraine business happened and energy shot up this is exactly what happened. It's stupid because we're only subsidising our energy bills with debt or future taxes but that's how daft politics can be. 

[AliG]

With the right programming it is quite easy to get your average electricity cost down to 11-12p per kWh using cheap overnight tariffs so you only need a CoP of 2 for a heat pump to be cheaper to run than a boiler.

 

My parent’s system is programmed to heat all hot water at night and I have set the thermostats artificially high overnight so that most heating demand is overnight also.

 

This would be harder in an older less well insulated house.

 

The bit about the electricity/gas price ratio increasing over time is nonsense. It should fall over time as renewables are cheaper to run. Only the weird historic contracts have prevented this happening. There is also a chance they put a carbon tax on gas to push people to using ASHPs. When I built my house electricity was more than 5x, the price of gas and there were no ultra cheap overnight tariffs so I went with gas. On today’s tariffs an ASHP would probably be cheaper to run.

 

Th cost of installing gas is way higher than the connection charge. You have costs to put in pipework, the meter and so on. Gas work is incredibly regulated. It’s very difficult to run any gas pipes inside a house. The average total cost is likely to be closer to £2000 all in.

[JohnMo]

1 hour ago, Oz07 said:

Looks like heat pump is the winner for new build if you are on the right tariff

You can be on almost any tariff. 

 

I am not saying don't install a gas boiler and gas hob, if that's what you want go for it. My reply last night was in direct response to your challenge on the report.

 

What does stand irrespective of heat source is

 

Run weather compensation, (alternatively batch charge floor if you have thick screed run via a 0.1 hysterisis thermostat) run a single heating zone. Run system on priority domestic hot water (PDHW). Get a heat pump cylinder (for gas or ASHP), store water at 50 degs or lower. So run an oversized cylinder (2 to 3 bed min 200L, 3 to 4 bed 300L)

 

Do not do on off timings on the heating. Do not do S or Y plan.

[JohnMo]

8 hours ago, marshian said:

70W is a pretty high usage for a modern circulation pump

True, I just use what my ASHP seems to be using, churning around 1m³/HR.

 

 

[Dave Jones]

On 22/05/2025 at 12:55, Wadrian said:

Hi everyone

 

we are soon to be starting on our self build re: services connection being one of first tasks. I know the regs are changing re gas heating - boilers etc and the need to have heat pumps installed. With that in mind was wondering if it is still worthwhile having a gas connection to the property?

 

be hard to pass SAP calcs with gas. You will have to spend a LOT on other measures to bring the score up. Not viable really.

[marshian]

32 minutes ago, JohnMo said:

True, I just use what my ASHP seems to be using, churning around 1m³/HR.

 

 

Yeah that’s a little bit more flow than the average rad based gas boiler circuit due to a very low dt (for clarification my usage was based on boiler dt of 5-7 deg c - a flow rate of 0.4 m3 / hr at a WC flow temp of 23 to 32 deg C.

 

My old grundfos pump was 35W at similar flow rates (modern pumps are witchcraft)