So what did I do in the end? I did further research and discovered three important things. Firstly, the company that quoted me seventeen grand for a system of electric radiators and hot water were not being entirely honest. In their literature they quoted data from the Energy Saving Trust. I checked the veracity of their claims with EST and they were most perturbed to see their data being entirely mis-quoted! Secondly, whilst their rads are guaranteed for ten years, the programmers and stats are guaranteed for just two years. A small fact hidden deep in the small-print! Thirdly, ceramic core radiators are readily available from many suppliers and manufacturers at considerably lower prices than I had been quoted.
After much deliberation I settled upon Technotherm radiators, manufactured in Germany and supplied by some helpful chaps in Harrogate. You order what you want from the website and they deliver FOC - next day. You screw them to the wall, plug them in and hey-presto, heat! They are guaranteed for fifteen years (programmers for two years - that seems standard) and all the heat is delivered to the room without any wastage along many metres of copper pipe.
We have 3 x 1.2kWh rads for the upstairs rooms and a 1.2kWh vertical one for the bathroom. The downstairs has a 1.8kWh and a long low 2.0kWh rad. What did it all cost? About £3,000 so far. A saving of fourteen grand buys quite a lot of electricity. At 25p/kWh (it was 'only' 14p when I started this project) that's 56,000 units. We used an average of 350kWh per month in 2021 giving us 13 years of 'free' electricity at current prices, and this doesn't account for servicing and maintenance costs that we would have needed with the heat pump. Please note that I do light the wood stove each evening.
We haven't as yet sorted the hot water. A 120l mains pressure tank with a 3kWh immersion heater costs about £4-500 pounds. Getting a plumber out here is impossible, but that's another story...
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