I asked on one ng, was sent to another and the one answer there
suggested here, and I see that there are several vaguely similar
questions here, so here goes.....

I'm here to ask for advice about heating. Our gas back-boiler system
died with a spectacular bang recently, and we have a couple of estimates
for replacement. One estimate was firmly for Combi, the other firmly for
a wall-mounted boiler feeding our trad system. I think I favour trad,
wife and son think Combi as it sounds newer and might sound that to a
future purchaser of the house. So the central heating part will have to
be one of the types of gas installation and we will fight that out, but
I've been getting really confused about whether to replace the fire part
with a gas or electric unit. It needs a quick decision because of
chimney liners etc. As an aside, I'm not really sure that I understand
why the not-all-that-old chimney liner for the back boiler system can't
be re-used for a new gas fire and would have to be replaced.

The requirement for the fire is that it should produce efficient radiant
heat to please the daughter or whoever else wants to lie on the rug in
front of it. General circulating air type heat will be from the central
heating radiators.
All the info on the web I've looked at seems very vague about real
efficiency, and a lot of the 'efficient' fires seem to get the name from
their heat exchange convection features.

The British Gas estimator seemed to be saying that electric was the more
cost effective type of fire after the fuel price rises. We looked at
fires in B & Q today, but got totally depressed at the fake flame
effects and general cheap and phoney look of the offerings. This also
applied to their selection of gas fires.

I'm not particularly bothered about which supplier of gas or electricity
is the cheapest, as any decision about that can come later.

Any advice about cost-effectiveness for a system? Are there any really
useful websites or other sources of info?

Sorry to be so long winded (lots of hot air) in my first post here.
--
Bill