Gas or electricity which is cheaper now?

[PLANT]

Hi all, I was educated that gas heating is cheaper than electricity. I have gas fire place and roof ducted electric heating.
I recently spoke to electric duct maintenance man and he stated that gas has gone up and actually electricity duct heating is cheaper to run?

What's your advice/thoughts/info?

Mod can you place this in playground please.

 

[horseman]

I'm in the industry. Natural Gas is cheaper for sure, however there is talk that gas prices will rise the the point that it is no longer competitive in price. All other thing being equall, if you have gas installed to your house, you will be better off with gas.

 

[AVC]

Electric by what means?

A bar heater (or panel/fan heater) basically burns all the electricity into heat.

A reverse cycle aircon (also known as a heat pump), transfers heat energy from outside the home (yes even at cold temps heat energy is still there) and moves it indoors. So you get more efficiency per watt. Rather than creating the heat, you are using power to simply move it around by refrigeration.

We have gas heating as well as reverse cycle splits. Gas still wins, but not by as greater margin as previously.

A lot also depends on the type of gas heater (flued/unflued), or the design of the A/C.

If your gas is unflued you need to keep a window cracked open lest you die from lack of O2, or CO poisoning. Whichever occurs first.

 

[knasty]

We have 7 Fujitsu split systems (it was the previous owner, not me...) in a 5 bedroom house but our winter quarter electricity usage is only.about $100 more than spring or.autumn so I.am very happy to stick with this rather than a gas heater despite having mains gas. Having said that on a cold day I have been known to fire up every element on the gas cooktop for a couple of minutes to kick things off.

 

[PLANT]

They also said that Mitsubishi is the only split system you should buy due to being made still in Japan..... Where the others are China made.
I was told that a filter is not required in winter and will of course improve output flow if removed. Must have in summer.
The filter is original/old and looks like a grey scour sponge. He said that they are now using fly screen material as filters and this can be used on my system.
Is this correct?
So I was in the roof and note the aluminium duct pipes had worn/torn......I have placed aluminium foil around them to repair. I have 3 ducts at the front and 3 at three back via switch... The front have the air travel the furthest. Yet last night the front zone warmed up but the shorter rear zone was less effective?
I did not see any leaks... But have to check again while on. Any suggestions to work out the cause?

 

[Warks]

Good topic for me at present. We've got an old wall A/C that a mouse decided to occupy in the summer, rip up a lot of insulating material and die in there. It is somewhat stuffed now. We also have a small gas heater (mains gas) on which one of the elements no longer seems to light so we are wary of using it. Of course now it's just gone colder than I recall for a few winters in Sydney so the pressure is on to do something. Thinking about a split system - the reviews I read generally say Fujitsu make the best systems however I am open to suggestion. A 6kW system costs around $1800 (with a $200 cash card) at Betta at present.

Coincidentally my mother's Kelvinator split system has decided it no longer wants to provide heating and can't be fixed apparently. So I might be going for a "how much for two?" price.

 

[knasty]

I have experience with Nec Lg and Fujitsu. I wouldn't touch Nec or any other cheap a/c again. Would also avoid Lg. I have had no issues whatsoever with Fujitsu and would not hesitate to buy Fujitsu again. I have found retailers and installers tend to upsell on output. My bedrooms have 3kw and this is really overkill 1.5kw would easily do the job. 7kw in the open plan living room works a treat.