Your thoughts on ducted gas heating....

I'm looking get ducted gas heating, just wondering if anyone has had it installed and what they thought of it?
is it more cost effective than using reverse cycle?

For a while we thought about this. It was over 2 years when we researched it so things may have changed. Basically it was a lot lot lot more expensive than getting a regular heating/cooling air con
I'm sure the running costs would be lower though but not sure in how many years it would pay itself off...

IMHO once you have it, you could probably never live without it again...

I agree with WBA. I grew up in Canberra and you don't cheap out on heating there - life is too short to be that cold!!

Depends on where you live though. If you expect to be cold most of the year, do it. If you live a bit further north and would only use it some of the time, it's probably not worth it.

We live in Adelaide. While it doesnt rain much it still gets bloody cold we are fairly close to the sea.

Gas Heater = Get it cant live with out it.

Both Gas heaters and electric heating come in high efficiency version. However GAS is cheaper to buy per kwatt. GAS is much cheaper to run.

I loved it, we set it to 15 at night so if it got below that it would come on then its set to 19 at half an hour before we got up so its warm to go into the bathroom as we put ducts in there.
Its good that you can set a few times in a day that it will come on and off.
The only thing is I am a very light sleeper so if it does come on at night i usually hear it firing up.
It is also good for drying washing, I put my airer underneath and by the next day washing is dry, no more shrinkage from tumble dryers I am doing the same in this house.
I does tend to make the air dry and dusty though, but worth it to be able to walk from room to room and be comfortable.
In the uk we had gas water radiators on the walls I think they were better as they were so quiet and not dry and you could put washing on them overnight and it was dry in the morning.
I think you can get them here but not sure of the price I didnt bother looking as I thought it would be very exy
With that system you loose a wall to place furniture against though!

That's what we have - hate it, would never have it again... too dusty and dirty..

Ed

I would like under floor heating if we could afford it.

Really! I've never noticed any dust from the last 4 houses I have lived in with ducted gas heating.

I disliked ducted heating from day one, grew up in Europe with hydronic heating, and just had to have it for our new house.

Wow do you mind me asking what sort of price that cost and for how many rooms?

A big tick...

I stayed at a friends apartment in Scotland for a few month over xmas, they had hydronic heating which was also their domestic hot water. It warmed the house after sometime but when you had a shower the water would be hot then freezing cold. I hated that. Aslo you have these big ugly radiator in every room of your house.

In our houses over time we have had an open wood fire (cosy once going but the bedrooms froze), a gas log fire which was beautiful to stand in front of but again only warmed up the living areas. Now we are renting with ducted heating and we love it and we are having ducted in our new house which I can't wait for

Taffy - I don't exactly know how much we paid for the heating (we had one bulk figure for our house) but when I spoke to a person in a hydronic heating shop, he estimated around $15,000 for a 30 square house, mind you, we did not go into any sort of details as to how many panels and what size. I think we have 11 panels, including bathrooms and hallways.

I agree the panels don't look all that great and can take up valuable space, but what else would you put under a window (which is where they should be placed ideally), but holes in the ceiling for ducted heating don't look any better, IMO.

Mrs B might have a better idea about the cost as she's just finished building and has hydronic.

For what it's worth, we've recently installed hydronic heating panels in our half-renovated Californian bungalow. Retro-fitted, not a new build obviously. My partner is a plumber, so that helped with the labour costs. But his rough guide to estimating the price for installation is about $1000 a panel when the system is all finished. This includes the boiler and pipework, everything - we have 10 panels, plus another one to install when we finally do our extension. That would be about a $10,000 system.
Acutally, it is exy when I think of it like that. It's fabbo though. We had a ******* old ducted heating system last year and this has been soooo much better. Gets the clothes dry too, as someone else mentioned.