Would you buy a house without central heating?

It’s a question that rarely seems to get asked these days, as we all automatically expect to have nice warm houses. It’s not that long since it was rare to have central heating though and there are some properties coming on to the market that don’t have it.

Hopefully they will be reduced in price enough to make installing a central heating boiler and radiators a sensible option, but what if you won’t be able to afford to install this for a few months?
For some people it would be a disaster! If you’re nesh as they say in various parts of the UK, it’s unlikely you’d want to live in a house without heating.

Some houses have individual room heaters, even gas fires in each room to compensate, but it’s not as automatic as having heating come on a timer when you want it, or as thermostatically controlable.

Would you swap your central heating for a wood burning stove? There are some clever models that can heat water and radiators too so it’s possible to reduce your energy bills from £1000 a year to a few hundred or even less if you can savange free wood!
The disadvantages again are the effort involved in keeping the fire going, although you can buy systems that autofeed woodchips into the boiler!

When you next view a house, have a look to see where the radiators are – or what heating it has! It’s important to know before you put an offer in so you can adjust your offer accordingly!
Prices for a full new heating system are from a couple of grand upwards depending on the number of radiators and type of boiler you have installed. Gas systems should always be installed by Gas Safe engineers.

Don’t forget that having work done will disturb current decoration and other patching up work might be required. If the property doesn’t have a gas supply then this can cost several hundred pounds upwards to get installed depending on the location of the nearest gas main!

Would I live in a property without central heating? I might if it was otherwise my dream property – but I’d want to be installing some renewable energy systems like solar hot water, maybe ground source heat pumps for underfloor heating and lots of lovely wood burning stoves!

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