What Uses Gas In A House?
There’s only one reason you are here, you want to know what stuff in your house can be gas-powered. Well, let’s have a look together at everything that can be gas-powered in your house.
The Usual Suspects
These are all of the things in a house that are common gas users, later on I will get into some more uncommon items.
Boiler
Almost all boilers in the UK will be running on natural gas. Combi boilers and older boiler designs use gas to heat the water in your home.
If you have an older set-up with an immersion heater somewhere in the home then this will be electric. In this case, the boiler will be using gas to heat your home while the immersion heater uses electricity to create warm water for your taps.
There are also oil-fired boilers, but you won’t find these in areas with a connection to the grid. Oil boilers are usually used in remote off-grid areas.
Then there are also biomass boilers that use pellets as fuel. If you had one of these though you would know about it as you would be feeding it pellets regularly.
Another way in which your home could be heated is by storage heaters. These are common in older homes. If you have storage heaters you won’t have proper radiators. They will look like the below image.
These are electrically powered. The idea behind them is that they heat up some bricks during the night when the electricity is “off-peak” or cheaper. They then store this heat and slowly release it during the day, hence the name. They usually have special bricks which is what stores the heat.
Fires
If you have a real flame fire in your house that turns on without needing fuel like logs or coals then it will be a gas fire. Gas fires are very common in UK homes.
Electric fires are also common but these will not have a real flame. They tend to have an artificial flame effect designed to look like the real thing.
Cookers
It is common to have a gas oven and or hobs. Just because you have electric hobs doesn’t mean your oven couldn’t be electric and vice versa.
If you are unsure if your oven is gas or electric I have a handy article you can find here: Is my oven electric or gas?
Less Common Gas Uses In A House
So now we have had the usual gas-powered devices let’s have a look at a few more unusual ones.
Gas Clothes Dryers
I will be perfectly honest, I had no idea these even existed, but they do. Seemingly more common in the USA than over here they are apparently cheaper to run than an electric dryer.
They are more expensive to buy but can earn that money back by being cheaper to run.
One big problem I can forsee for anyone wanting a gas dryer is that you will probably need new gas piping installed to wherever you want your dryer. This will massively increase the installation cost.
You can read more about gs tumble dryers on which?
Outdoor BBQ’s
This one makes more sense but is very rarely seen in this country. You can have your outdoor BBQ plumbed into your main gas supply so you don’t need to have a separate gas bottle for the BBQ.
You can just run any BBQ off mains gas though, you have to get a special made natural gas BBQ and then get it set up by a professional.
Deep Fryer
You can also get natural gas-powered deep fryers. These are commercial though so it is very unlikely there will be one in your home. Unless your home had a previous life as a cafe that is.
