Town Gas

[Quillan]

Just doing a bit of research in preparation for retirement.

Seems one of the places we are looking to move to has town gas. What I want to know is does it pay to do one of these deals combining gas and electricity as offered by GDF and EDF?

I would also like to know what the average cost, from experience, a town gas bill would be per year for an average three bed house with modern central heating boiler.

[nomoss]

We live in a small town not far from you which has had mains gas since about 2005 or so, so many older houses, including ours, are not connected, even though the gas main passes in front of our house.

When the gas main was being installed there were reduced prices for connecting, but they are now considerably higher, especially as digging a trench across the main road is now involved.

I asked the cost of bringing gas to the house when we moved here from a nearby village in 2010 and, although I can't remember the figure now, it was around €2,000 including work required on/in the house. I decided that that price did not justify any saving we might make, especially as at that time the price per kWh was almost the same for both electricity and gas.

Our supplier is Direct Energie, and looking at their current tariff [url]particuliers.direct-energie.com/fileadmin/Metiers/Particuliers/FIS-GT/grille_tarifaire_online_particuliers.pdf[/url] , I see that the price for gas has fallen substantially since my decision, so the calculation might be different today.

Of course, if a new installation is involved, you would have to consider whether gas is likely to stay at a lower price than electricity.

I think the house you describe would be on the tariff "B0" (>1 et <6 MWh annuelle).

[Quillan]

Thanks for that but it is not what I am after. I have no clue as to how much a boiler will use etc so to get the monthly or annual cost will help my calculations. I wouldn't fit gas CH I would go down the air to air route as I know how efficient it is but if something comes with a house I need to work out how much it will cost me to run before I make a decision. Its the only monthly figure left to complete on my spread sheet.

[Pommier]

We've got a modern, detached bungalow of about 100 square metres and our gas bill for the last 12 months (that's heating and hot water with a condensing boiler) was €265.

We have also had a wood burner fitted in March of last year, but that's for the niceness of having a fire in the evening. It will have reduced our gas consumption, but not by a great deal.

[nomoss]

If you are only planning to use gas for cooking and hot water you should be able to make a reasonable estimate of the cooking use if you now use bottled gas, as a 13kg bottle is equivalent to 179 kWh.

For reference, we use gas for a hob only (our oven is electric) cook a lot, and use just under four 10kg bottles per year. That is something under 550 kWh per year.

For hot water, there are some figures here [url]http://www.esru.strath.ac.uk/EandE/Web_sites/09-10/Hybrid_systems/elec-demand.htm[/url], suggesting between 8 and 10kWh per day per person which is high compared to our use.

We have a 1200W heater which is only on at off-peak times, that is 8 hours per day. Presumably it does sometimes cycle on and off on its thermostat, but assuming it is on all the time that makes a max of 9.6kWh per day for 2 people. 3500 kWh per year.

We have never completely run out of hot water, but have come close when doing a couple of laundry loads consecutively.

An efficient and properly installed gas water heater should use about the same amount of power (kWh)  per day as an electric heater.

[Quillan]

If there was no gas  would go down the route of bottled gas for the hob and electric water heater. Our five burner hob that is also used for guest evening meals gets through two bottles of gas every 14 months so thats cheap enough for me.

Its the heating side I am really interested in. It's a long time (14 years) since I have had gas fired central heating. As we will be looking to move in to town (so we can walk to the shops and only use the car once a week for the supermarket) we will most likely have gas and therefore gas fired central heating. I understand that the newer boilers are very economical and just want to get an idea as to running costs over a year.  I can then compare it to air to air heat pumps which I am a big fan of.

[idun]

We had 'town' gas and I know that it worked out cheaper than buying wood for our heating. IF I find a bill, I shall compare the units used to current prices.

We certainly converted to gas CH.

And gas bottles, well we used to buy the 13kg one about every six weeks as we left our gas hob on our cooker on bottled gas, just in case the gas ever went off.

I know I have used the term 'town' gas on here, because so much of rural France hasn't got gaz de ville. But it is quaint, so what should we call it now? When there was a change from real 'town' gas, ie from those gasometers all the towns had, the new 'gas' we called 'north sea gas'. Should gaz de ville really be called gaz de russie? Where does it come from?

[Chancer]

[quote user="Pommier"]We've got a modern, detached bungalow of about 100 square metres and our gas bill for the last 12 months (that's heating and hot water with a condensing boiler) was €265. We have also had a wood burner fitted in March of last year, but that's for the niceness of having a fire in the evening. It will have reduced our gas consumption, but not by a great deal.[/quote]

Its been a decade since I used gas for heating, now its my tenants in the UK that benefit from my new condensing boiler.

To put it into perspective this year I completed the first of my rental flats here in France,top floor loft conversion, studio flats of around 30m2, electric UFH,  well insulated but not to RT2012 standards, both occupied by Young girls who are frileuse, one heats the place like she is still in Agadir , they dont care because the electric is in with the rental, à volonté if you want.

Anyway the meter reading will be taken in the next couple of days, on the website I put in the figures and the bill for the Morocaine will be €265 for the last 2 months, and its only a 6kw abonnement so the standing charge is not a lot.

Your bungalow is 3 times the size yet your annual gas bill is the same as two winter months for my electric heated flats, even if I were using a pompe à chaleur it would not get anywhere near as cheap as that.

[PaulT]

Heating and hot water 265 euros per year - what price is gas in France.

Our UK house which we occupy for 7 months a year uses just under 8,000 kWh per year (£360 per year)

[Pommier]

We are VERY pleased with the quality and energy efficiency of our BBC (Batiment Basse Consommation) house - it retains any heat for ages, and it's not that it's a hot climate as the garage is absolutely perishing!

[nomoss]

[quote user="Pommier"]We are VERY pleased with the quality and energy

efficiency of our BBC (Batiment Basse Consommation) house - it retains

any heat for ages, and it's not that it's a hot climate as the garage is

absolutely perishing![/quote]

Simply goes to show what a huge difference good insulation makes.

We have a single story house, which had the outside walls doubled with concrete blocks, with styrofoam insulation between the two walls in about 1975.

I

have put 30cm of blown cellulose insulation above all the rooms, laid OSB floors above this, added 4cm of

fibreglass plus plasterboard with 4cm of insulation to all the outside

walls, and replaced some of the larger double glazed windows.

Our main heating is by a single pellet stove, controlled by a remote room thermostat, running at 21º by day and at 19º by night.

Before adding the extra insulation the stove used slightly more than one sack (15kg) per day. This year it is burning less than half a sack per day.

The only drawback is that the house is hotter inside in the summer.