Gas or Electric? Which type of heating is the best?
Do you want to find out if gas or electric heating is cheaper? If you want to save a lot of money every year, a little trick is to be careful in choosing the most convenient contract for the supply of electricity and gas.
Gas heating
The gas boiler is able to heat the surrounding environment using a special internal gas combustion mechanism.
From a structural point of view, there are various types of gas boilers, such as open chamber ones, mostly used in the domestic environment, and closed chamber ones, which are the most ecological type of boiler in existence. The main difference between these boilers consists in the fact that the former use a natural draft system, as the air used for combustion is taken from the same room where the boiler is located, while the closed chamber boilers use the system of the forced draft, that is, they take the air from the outside through a special pipe.
Depending on the type of gas used as fuel, there are methane boilers, the most used given their cheapness, and LPG boilers, less common because they are particularly bulky, since, for their operation, they require a large cylinder or a tank to store the gas.
Advantages and disadvantages of the gas boiler
The greatest advantage of owning a gas boiler consists in the fact that, once the cost of its purchase and installation has been incurred, the cost will be amortized over time, as no special maintenance will be required and the boiler will work for many years.
The disadvantage of owning a gas boiler, however, is certainly its consumption: in fact, by exploiting the gas, it will be necessary to count an expense of at least 1,000 euros per year more on the bill. Furthermore, in the case of boilers running on LPG, there will also be the need to change the cylinders frequently.
Electric heating
Another heating system particularly appreciated especially in recent years is the electric boiler.
Its operation is very similar to that of the gas boiler, with the difference, however, that, not using the combustion system but precisely the electricity, this type of boiler has the advantage of not producing exhaust fumes.
Furthermore, precisely due to the fact that in order to use this type of boiler it is sufficient to connect it to an electrical network with the meter, it will not be necessary to install pipes or carry out modifications to the room in which the electric boiler is located.
Advantages and disadvantages of the electric boiler
The advantages of using the electric boiler are certainly many: first of all, it can be installed anywhere, without the need for pipes or exhaust ducts as with gas boilers. In this way it is possible to have an important cost saving, in addition to the fact of not having to carry out further expenses for maintenance checks.
Furthermore, despite their small size, electric boilers have a very high thermal efficiency (equal to almost 99% in the more advanced models), because, unlike gas boilers, they do not lose heat during the water heating process.
However, even electric boilers have disadvantages, first of all the cost of the electricity they consume, which is much higher than that of gas.
Secondly, their price must also be taken into consideration, much higher than that of gas boilers: the cost of electric boilers, in fact, ranges from 500 € for the most basic models to almost 3000 € for the more sophisticated ones.
