Rural Living-Heating our home what's cheaper to run- electric or LPG gas?

[mummyoftwo]

Hi there

We're about to begin building our new home on our property- country NSW. At the moment I am looking into heating and cooling options & the associated running costs. we don't have natural gas so our only options are electric reverse cycle systems or bottled LPG. I don't know which way to go, I have heard that both are expensive to run. I want to know which option is the cheapest to run. We run our heating and cooling 24/7 so we're comfortable and I don't want to skimp on doing this.
I know the electricity tariff's are higher in country NSW. The house we are building is 350sq meters, 2.7 ceiling height, so I know it's going to be expensive to heat and cool. But how much I don't know? One person I spoke to at the electricity supplier told me that his MIL has an electric ducted system and her bill for winter was $3000 :eek:, could this be right????
So my question is:
How do you heat your home?
How big is your home?
How much does it cost you over winter?
Do you use an electric reverse cycle ducted heating and cooling system or do you heat your home using a ducted gas system (using LPG)?
We have never lived in the country before so any information on this would be great. We have no idea :confused: LOL...

Thanks for sharing information

[FionaV]

We live in the western Riverina of New South Wales.

How do you heat your home? Wood burning stove. We get the fuel off the property and it's basically free. We maybe buy a ton or so of wood a year.

How big is your home? Big. Five bedroom weatherboard farmhouse with several extensions.

How much does it cost you over winter? Like I said, basically free. A ton of wood is about $100.

Do you use an electric reverse cycle ducted heating and cooling system or do you heat your home using a ducted gas system (using LPG)? The thought of the cost of running either of these day and night makes me turn pale and need to sit down. We used to have a gas stove, using bottled gas, and it was ferociously expensive - the bottles are over $100 each and last less than a fortnight. Using them for heating would be even worse.

We cool the house with an evaporative cooler on the roof. It's much cheaper than reverse cycle, and easier to live with, but you do need a separate heating option.

[Mopoke]

We live in the western Riverina of New South Wales.

How do you heat your home? Wood burning stove. We get the fuel off the property and it's basically free. We maybe buy a ton or so of wood a year.

How big is your home? Big. Five bedroom weatherboard farmhouse with several extensions.

How much does it cost you over winter? Like I said, basically free. A ton of wood is about $100.

Do you use an electric reverse cycle ducted heating and cooling system or do you heat your home using a ducted gas system (using LPG)? The thought of the cost of running either of these day and night makes me turn pale and need to sit down. We used to have a gas stove, using bottled gas, and it was ferociously expensive - the bottles are over $100 each and last less than a fortnight. Using them for heating would be even worse.

We cool the house with an evaporative cooler on the roof. It's much cheaper than reverse cycle, and easier to live with, but you do need a separate heating option.

basically ditto.

dh sells a bit of wood to a couple of older neighbours, $100/load, which is about a tonne. this is realatively cheap though, the general price i see in the paper is $120-150/load. a load lasts 1 couple just under 2 weeks, it lasts another 3 weeks.

a new wood fire is fairly expensive though, think they start at $900, up to $3000. i think ours was just over 2k and it heats our 4 bedroom house really well, most of the time we keep it turned down.

ETA i remember something the guy that installed our fire said about gas 'its instant heat but its instantly gone when you turn it off'. having never used gas, i dont know if its right or not.
i think it would be a reall PIA to keep getting gas. depending on where you live, you might have to pay heaps for delivery of bottles or get them yourself. gotta love freight charges in the country:rolleyes:

[amyd]

We're in rural vic and use wood too. Have just put a new heater in and we paid about $500 extra and got an extra fitting to go on the flue to allow us to use the heat from the fire to heat our hot water too. Saves us a bit extra on the power bill that way.
Summer we use an evap cooler.

[Tildy]

I only have a small house and our wood heater heats the place up to the point where we are down to singlets in like half hour. Have you considered solar in combination with a wood fire so that you can doubly cut your bills. $3000 sounds pretty average for a electric heating bill and it could even be more now. I would sus out wood availability in your area and seriously look into the wood fire option. It is by far the cheapest.

Spend a lot of time planning your house position too to make the most of the sun's postition and any regular breezes. Things like deciduous trees work well too around the house. They are full of leaves to cut the sun in the sumer and then drop all the leaves to let the sun in in winter.

[Buttoneska]

we use wood heater too. We do have a split system but we don't use it much.