Installing radiators in house with none - cost

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Currently looking at new houses and have seen one that ticks all the boxes. It need a bit of modernisation with new carpets and walls all round but I have the luxury of not needing to move so can do all the work.

Only problem is it has an old ducted air system with no radiators. So does anyone have any idea how much this would cost in an average 3 bed house? The house is cheap for this fact I imagine but trying to work out if it's worth it.
 
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I think it would depend on how easy it is to lay piping and that is also a factored on if you're using plastic pipe or soldered copper, plus where they can put a combi boiler.

Worst case - channelling screed, ripping out plasterboard to lay vertical pipes and pulling up floor boards (assuming 'old'=boards rather than sheets) for copper runs. Also I take it there's some form of hot water system? Will that need plumbing in too? Lastly people also forget that the boilers now use 22mm gas pipe rather than 15mm so another pipe to lay.

It may be worth simply biting the bullet and before you do anything - simply have a month of destruction, it will be cheaper than trying to save everything.

We had a new boiler (3 bed house), old open system removed and had pipes re-routed to the new boiler position - ~3.2K IIRC in the south east. Yours is likely to be higher due to the cost of the radiators - do you know how many you will need?
 
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It may be worth simply biting the bullet and before you do anything - simply have a month of destruction, it will be cheaper than trying to save everything.

We had a new boiler (3 bed house), old open system removed and had pipes re-routed to the new boiler position - ~3.2K IIRC in the south east. Yours is likely to be higher due to the cost of the radiators - do you know how many you will need?
Yeah, as I say I do have the luxury of having somewhere else and can easily do the work for however long it takes with a blank canvas. It's probably going to need 7 radiators I'd say. Definitely 5 but may as well get the other done just in case.

Completely new heating system, new rads in all rooms, boiler and all new pipe runs 5-7k ballpark.
Seems reasonable to me. Probably a redundant question as It'll likely need doing anyway but I'm guessing that doesn't include replastering and what not from any pipes in the walls?
 
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Yeah, as I say I do have the luxury of having somewhere else and can easily do the work for however long it takes with a blank canvas. It's probably going to need 7 radiators I'd say. Definitely 5 but may as well get the other done just in case.


Seems reasonable to me. Probably a redundant question as It'll likely need doing anyway but I'm guessing that doesn't include replastering and what not from any pipes in the walls?

I doubt it. Ours didn’t.

You may also find an additional cost of electrics and possibly a new consumer unit if you’re doing it all..
 
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In my renovation house the only upstairs rad was in the bathroom. To install 3 new rads in each of the bedrooms and all the upstairs pipework was about ~£1500.
That also included 2 x new rads repositioned downstairs on existing pipework.
Later I renewed all ground floor pipework and that came to £500.
There may have small amounts of ancillary work here and there.
So excluding boiler I'd estimate in the £2500 range for rads and pipework.
I don't have any pipes in the wall, the only pipe run from ground floor to first floor is pipes going from the boiler to the upstairs subfloor.
Floorboards will obviously have to be lifted all over the house.
 
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Check if there’s any grants available , my parents just had central heating installed along with the attic insulated , it cost them a few hundred quid and the rest covered by the grant
 
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Thanks for the advice everyone. Seems that it's definitely a viable option as it'll still be cheaper than other properties on the street/area and since it's pretty much a blank canvas, I can essentially do what I want with it.

Assuming there are no major problems elsewhere that is.
 
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I would suggest you be careful with this one, are you hoping to get a mortgage on the property? some lenders will not lend on a property with no `heating` as it would be considered as unhabitable.

With regard for the installation of the radiators and pipe work. I did exactly what you are referring to on the house I now live in. We had the opportunity to rip out the old back boiler and install a brand new boiler. We ended up putting the boiler in the loft space on the gable end wall. We actually ended up working with a local plumber who was happy for us to do most of the dog work ourselves. I used plastic push fit pipes to feed all the rads to the point where they come up in the room I also actually choose at the time to surface mount the pipe work going to the upstairs simple because there were only 2 falls from the boiler to feed 3 rads one side and 2 the other, it was a bit lazy on my part at the time but it has enabled me to have a small boxed in area to run additional cables (Cat 6) up to the upper rooms. I also opted for an unvented hot water cylinder at the time because if the boiler was to fail we would still have hot water via the immersion on the tank. From what I remember the work was fairly easy. I mean who cant mount a rad on the wall? I think the plumber ended up being here for about 2 or 3 days in the end just piping everything in and then it was all up and running. He actually said at the time I could do with you (me and my father in law) on all my jobs, I could send you in a few days before hand and we could make a killing because we spend about a week before hand doing all the drilling of all the floor joists and stuff and laying all of the pipe work and all he really had to do was pipe the ends up.
 
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I had to do this a while back.

No C\H, just open fires and electrical heaters. No issue with mortgage.

17 cast rads, combi boiler, copper throughout. Main issue was chasing pipework as others have said. Makes a mess of walls\floors so you have to redecorate everywere if you want to hide pipes. Can't recall what it cost, as it was past of a larger rennovation, probably 8K ballpark, but this was a large 4 bed detached.
 
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Choose another house! Really, installing heating in a house is a pretty big undertaking and you will probably end up with visible pipes all over the place. Also, does the house even have gas? Many houses that were built with electric air heating didn't have it.
 
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If you're looking for a new boiler, rads, piping, thermostatic valves and fitting, over £5k.

Radiators need to be sized for the room and double panels are better.

You can find a rad size calculator on the net. You need approximate room dimensions and know how many windows in each room to use those properly.
 
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Install an aircon system that can heat as well as cool instead... it'll be easier and cheaper to install than central heating, pretty effective and as an added bonus you can use it to keep the house cool in the summer
 
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Install an aircon system that can heat as well as cool instead... it'll be easier and cheaper to install than central heating, pretty effective and as an added bonus you can use it to keep the house cool in the summer

This is what I'd do next time. The air con system is so much cheaper to run.
 
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This is what I'd do next time. The air con system is so much cheaper to run.

The guys who installed ours (not in place of central heating, but still) were telling me that a lot of their business comes from rural areas with night storage heating because replacing that with aircon is such a great option
 
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When we bought our house it had an old air duct system also, 3 bed end of terrace, I think it cost us around 7.5k which was to rip out the old system and remove etc. 9 radiators, new boiler, all the pipework etc, smart thermostat, combimate to help with the limescale (hard water area) and new digital shower installed. Some quotes were over 10k though, so get yourself a few quotes.
 
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Install an aircon system that can heat as well as cool instead... it'll be easier and cheaper to install than central heating, pretty effective and as an added bonus you can use it to keep the house cool in the summer

I have to say that if I was doing this, this is what I would do. The old electric storage air duct systems are HUGE and you have tons of space to fit a nice system. Possibly look at a government grant and more energy efficient systems. Certainly fitting a standard boiler, pipes and radiators would be the last thing I would do.
 
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