About Home Comfort Lab
Home Comfort Lab is an independent website run by Pete Harvey. It publishes plain guides to damp, mould, heating and keeping cool in UK homes, with calculators that use the current Ofgem price cap. Each quarter it publishes the Home Comfort Cost Index, a table of what it costs to heat, dry and cool a home at the new cap. The site earns from Amazon affiliate links (how it's paid for).
Spokesperson
Pete Harvey, editor of Home Comfort Lab. Pete has spent most of his working life around homes and the people who live in them. The site comes from a simple interest: helping people live in happy, healthy spaces. More about Pete and the site.
Contact
For comment, interviews or the data behind the Index, email hello@homecomfortlab.co.uk.
Latest Index: Q4 2026: October to December
Published 15 October 2026, using the Ofgem price cap for 1 October to 31 December 2026.
- 13p to £5.26 Keeping warm for a 4-hour evening costs 13p with a heated throw and £5.26 heating the whole house with electric heaters or an electric boiler.
- 44.9p vs 47.4p An air source heat pump costs 44.9p an hour to heat the whole house, 2.5p less than a gas boiler at 47.4p. Last quarter gas was cheaper, at 43.6p against 44.6p.
- +3.8p an hour The cost of whole-house gas heating rose the most since last quarter, by 3.8p an hour (8.7%), as the gas unit rate went from 7.33p to 7.97p per kWh.
Read the full Index, with the table and charts.
Downloads
Free to use with credit to Home Comfort Lab and a link to the Index. Suggested citation: Home Comfort Cost Index, Q4 2026 (October to December), Home Comfort Lab. homecomfortlab.co.uk/home-comfort-cost-index/
Data
- home-comfort-cost-index-q4-2026.csv: every row of the Index, with this quarter's and last quarter's cost per hour.
Charts
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A DC motor fan costs 0.6p an hour; whole-house electric heating costs £1.32
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In our Index, an air source heat pump is the cheapest way to heat the whole house this quarter, at 44.9p an hour
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A night with a 7,000 BTU portable air conditioner costs £1.68; a night with a tower fan costs 8.4p
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Whole-house gas heating rose the most, by 3.8p an hour (8.7%); every electric appliance rose 0.8%
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Method
The Index works out what each appliance or heating system costs to run at the Ofgem price cap, from its typical power, or for whole-house heating from 5kW of heat, the real-world heat pump efficiency from the government-funded Electrification of Heat field trial and a typical boiler efficiency. A typical use is an evening of 4 hours, a night of 8 hours or 5 hours to dry a load of washing, and a month is one typical use a day. Heating oil isn't capped, so it uses a national average price, and standing charges are left out. Full method.
Ready-to-use quotes
Attribute to Pete Harvey, editor of Home Comfort Lab.
“A heated throw costs about 13p for a 4-hour evening. Heating the whole house with a gas boiler for the same evening costs £1.90 in our Index, and £5.26 with electric heaters or an electric boiler. If you're the only one at home, warming yourself rather than the whole house costs far less.”
“At this quarter's prices, an air source heat pump costs 44.9p an hour to heat the house in our Index and a gas boiler 47.4p. Last quarter it was the other way round. The gap is 2.5p an hour, and a well set-up system of either kind can do better than these averages.”
“Whole-house gas heating rose by 3.8p an hour this quarter (8.7%). For the 5kW house in our Index, that's 15p more for a 4-hour evening with the heating on.”