Hi all,

We are thinking of renting anthen buying a house in aargao but the house has oil instead of gas heating system. I wanted to know if it is a good idea to buy a house with oil heating system. And is leasing or mitkauf a good idea? thanks

You don't heat houses/apartments with gas here. Oil and electric are the two standards (of course you have also others available).

Mitkauf? I guess you mean mietkauf (hire-purchase).... this is a loaded question and not really one that I'm sure that anyone can answer for you as it depends on your own personal situation.

thanks for the reply. i meant to ask if oil heating system is more expensive than the usual heating systems in swiss.

As far as I know, heating systems in Swiss aircraft are driven by bleed air from the high pressure turbine stage and oil-air heat exchangers.

If you meant heating systems in Switzerland, then oil is the usual heating system.

At the moment yes. If Oil comes back down in price then no. Wärmepumpe is the most economical but it takes years for the investment to pay off.

Homes are indeed heated with gas (Erdgas) in Switzerland. It comes by pipeline form the North Sea and other places.

Gas is preferable to oil, as it tends to be cheaper and cleaner and although gas is linked to oil, gas prices have remained stable over the years.

However, if there is no gas mains supply near a property, you can't have it.

If you are thinking of buying, what is wring with a conventional mortgage? These are very competitive in Switzerland...

Didn't know that. Based my answer on real estate hunting two years ago. No place we looked at had gas so guess it isn't that common in my neck of the woods

Hi Smitty,

ehem, gas heating is available wherever "Erdgas" is available. I have a colleague in Neuchâtel who recently bought a house with gas fired heating.

We have oil heating at home and with the hike of oil proices I've been looking into changing for "pompe à chaleur", i.e a 100m deep sonde in the earth with a heat exchanger. Now they've a announced a rice in electricity prices next year of 25%. So maybe I'll start looking at wood pellets?

Apart from our heating breaking down over the weekend because it needed a new spark plug type thingy, I can thoroughly recommend oil heating. We have a little "club" around where I live for ordering the oil. You get a good discount if you can order 30,000 ltr at a go!

Cheers

Piv

PS

We also heat by oil, which I think is the most commen thing in our area. When the oil prices went sky high we looked into the wooden pellets, but found out although they're produced locally, or we could also by them in Germany as we're close to the boarder (what we do for wood for our stove that we use in this kind of weather) they are still expensive. We're now looking into a solar panels. There are 3 main systems though - just warm water, water and heating, or also electricity. Of course the more you want, the more you pay and it does take a 'few' years to pay out - therefore a real longterm investment.
A note to ordering oil as a group - most companies ask for an extra fee for each house they deliver to -so it really only makes sense when you happen to have lots of households that need oil at the same time (never works out for us) so that you can order a very large amount.
Regarding buying, renting or rent-buy option. That really depends on how your finances look, how long you're planning to stay in CH, and what area you're living in. I live out in the country in Aargau, and the property market is very slow here. I can imagine that in the cities it's not as bad, but still not as fast as in the UK. Rent-buy option might be a good idea as you normaly have the chance to end the contract, maybe you'll decide Switzerland isn't the place for you - and then you'll only have paid 'rent', and if you stay you've already paid some money towards your house...
Tina

Yes, there are houses and apartments heated with natural gas, not as many as those heated by other means, such as oil, heat pump, or Refuna (Kanton Aarau only). I have been in them, I know someone building a new house with gas heating.

Our house(not new) is gas centrally heated so it must be the pretty common around Zürich then but not other areas.. didn't know that.