High-Efficiency Fires Help Gas Bills Fall By 2 Percent

According to British Gas, average gas bills fell 2% in the first three months of 2010, despite the coldest winter for a generation. The average gas bill – between January and March of this year – for the 8m homes supplied by the company fell to £373, compared to £381 in the same period of 2009.

A large part of the reason for this is that consumers are increasingly seeing the benefits of installing more efficient central heating boilers and gas fires. For example, if you have an open fronted gas fire that is over 5 years old, it could be as little as 25% efficient, using as much as 9.45kW of energy to generate only 2.4kW of heat, with the rest of the heat going straight up your chimney.Fireplace Supermarket's latest gas fires, such as the innovative Apex Capacious and Verine Orbis models are contributing towards this gas efficiency trend. They are incredibly energy efficient of up to 89% so under 5kW of gas being used to put 4kW of heat into your living room. This means that by upgrading your old open fronted gas fire to a high efficiency glass fronted fire, you can save 57% on your gas fuel costs and have 46% more heat.