Some things to consider.

First off, where are you located. Heating costs differ a lot, depending on where you live...ie South, or far North.

Would the gas be natural or propane?

What sort of floor covering will you have? I suggest you additionally post your question, about the heating part anyway, at the Heating & Air Conditioning Forum

Here is a link that might be useful: Hydronic Radiant Heating Floor Covering Options

"Natural" Gas is almost always both better and cheaper no matter where you are, IF you have propane though then you might be better off with electric.
and if I were forced to go electric stove again I would opt for Induction.

Aside from the fact that I like natural gas our utility bills would be way higher if everything were electric. I think we are saving about $50/month just for having switched our dryer to NG. I think our electricity prices here are average for a suburban area.

-Stooxie

Stooxie, I think that might be an exaggeration unless you do an awful lot of laundry. Trying to be conservative here, one load a day, one hour a load, 20 cents per KWH, 5000W dryer...

5*.2*30=$30/month for electric. To save $50 a month you'd have to do almost twice as much laundry and gas would have to be free.

Food,

Well, maybe it was $30, and yes, we easily run the dryer an average of once per day, sometimes more.

Sorry, I'll sharpen my pencil a bit more next time for you.

-Stooxie

Ah, Stooxie, no need to sharpen your pencil for me. The figure just caught my eye and I couldn't help but do some math. Sorry, don't mind me!

I know we saved probably about $20 a month switching from an old 28 year old electric range to our gas range.
Our electric bill dropped a good $20+ and it is easy to see exactly to the penny how much it cost to run the stove each month in the summer time because our Gas bill in the summer is the absolute minimum which is exactly $10.
So every penny after that is the stove.
Last month the bill was $12.89 so cost $2.89 for the month and I cook on it 7 days a week.
Month before we used a bit more was just over $3

Natural gas is WAY cheaper than electric.

If our dryer ever dies I think we are going NG with it also.

Nope sadly gas hookup was not already here but as you say it was well worth it for us and also will be for resale of the house when we are ready to sell.
The gas company wanted like $1300 to install the gas line, which is totally insane and they are out of their freaking minds and whats worse is they are the ones that would be profiting from installing the line in the first place.
I mean how utterly stupid is that?

So a friend of ours which my wife has known for like 35 years had their electric yanked out and a gas line put in about a month or so before we got ours.
She found a guy by word of mouth that turned out to be the perfect guy for the job.
He charged $300 for everything, install the gas line, installed a 120V outlet in the upper cabinet for the microwave which we bought at the same time as the stove and also to install both stove and microwave.
So basically the gasline probably cost about $100 as it was maybe $25 worth of tubing and metal tape to support it under the house and took him about an hour to do at $75 an hour.

Then he hauled all of the old microwave and stove away.

We have had the stove about 7 months and at $20 a month savings is about $140 so far.
So the gas line has paid for itself already.

Thing is though all of these cost savings add up.

We replaced our old AC and Furnace about 4 years ago and our Electric bill plummeted from as high as $450 the worst month down to the very highest being $295.
HUGE savings there.
Then replaced the old hot water heater which was 28 years old and electric, replaced with another electric because a gas one at that time was just way to cost prohibitive but what we replaced it with was a Marathon Electric water heater which is virtually the same efficiency as a gas one, requires zero zincs or anything like that because it is a very strong woven fiberglass tank inside that can not rust ever and has at lest 4" of very good hard foam insulation around it and has a lifetime guarantee on it.
That saved us easily $75 a month.

Then I just this year super insulated our attic with Ecco Blankets I bought from Costco that are 100% old plastic water bottles spun into a very nice none itchy, flame proof, and a R30 rating so now our attic is around R50+ insulation.
That has saved about $30 a month during the summer so far.
That cost was $175 and about 3 hours of my time.

Our highest electric bill this summer was our last bill which was $185 and we had the hottest summer on record with the longest days in a row of over 90 degrees ever recorded for here. Big improvement over $450 from 4+ years ago.
That of course includes the savings from the stove (about $20 a month) and a new Fridge but the savings from that is probably about $2.

But if we had never changed anything then our bill this last month would have probably hit somewhere between $450-500.

So from 4 years ago we probably saved about $300 just last month alone.

Interesting quotes, thanks.

The gas company wanted like $1300 to install the gas line, which is totally insane and they are out of their freaking minds and whats worse is they are the ones that would be profiting from installing the line in the first place. I mean how utterly stupid is that?

Probably not stupid at all. I'd guess it would take a heck of a lot more than $3/month increase in gas sales to earn you preferred customer status.

Not sure what that means exactly, but in the winter we spend probably $75-100 on the gas bill to heat the house. But that gas line has been there since the house was built.
and because that gas line was there for 28 years the gas company has made a crap load of money off just our house which was probably about $2 worth of pipe and a few dollars for a meter at the time.

The stupid part to me is that why would the GAS company charge that much to install about $25 worth of pipe (retail cost) and with 2 people working on it probably about 30-45 minutes MAX in labor cost.
Number one they still get the work at $75 an hour they charge me $25 retail for probably about $10 worth of pipe their cost.
It is a win/win/win situation for them if they simply charged a normal and reasonable fee to install the pipe.
From that point on for decades that house is now piped completely for gas and is a potential costumer.

If gas companies only dealt with businesses that used $1000 of dollars worth of gas every month they would basically fold up and go broke tomorrow because their money comes from the 10s of 1000s that pay them $10 - $100 a month every month.

The guy who you got was probably happy to make a few bucks off of a small job. Evidently that job wasn't worth the gas company's time at that price in light of opportunity cost. Happens every day in every trade, and I suppose it's often how the little uy stays in business. So all I was getting at is that a measly $3/month increase in gross sales isn't incentive enough for them to give you preferred pricing on the job.

Hmmm so maybe if I used $1000 a month worth of gas they would have only charged me $900 eh?

LOL no matter how you look at it they should be ashamed of themselves basically charging about $1,300 an hour for opening up a source of revenue for THEM.
and again like I said its those $3 and $10 a month bills that actually keep them in business, because that is what almost EVERYBODY uses.
In that case the GAS company of which only exist because of 10s of 1000s of people paying them $10 to maybe $100 a month
have their priority's dead wrong.
Also the people at the gas company who's job it is to install gas lines are paid probably $20 an hour of which the gas company gets the rest.
So charging a reasonable rate like any body else ($75 an hour) the gas company makes about $50 for about 45 minutes and then gets to tap that gas line for an extra $3 per month they would never get otherwise and not at a "cost" to them but actually a $50 profit.

For some reason you don't really seem to quite grasp the economics of lots and lots of $3 dollar bills times 10s of 1000s of customers adds up to 10s of 1000s times $3.

The more of those you have the more money you make and if you made $50 off each one to start I fail to see the downside or I should say I fail to see why anybody in their right mind would have the gall to charge $1300 for $100 worth of work.

That is how the post office stays afloat is .45 cents times several million.
It is actually how most businesses stay afloat is lots and lots of small sales.

I remember looking at a house for sale that had no gas. They had left out copies of electric bills to show that it wasn't very expensive...but they didn't say what their thermostat was set at. And the effect was further spoiled by seeing their laundry hung out to dry on a clothesline in the basement.

Nunyabiz - You're missing the point. They quoted you $1300 not because they prefer their workers sitting on the the bench rather than making money, but rather because that's what their worker's time is worth to them under current market conditions.

You think they care that you turned down their work? Nope, their workers made them money on another job and they STILL get an extra $3/month from you. You got cheap work, they get increased revenue. Everyone's happy.

There are some strange "facts" being bandied about here.

While NG appliances are less expensive to operate than electric ones, be realistic about the savings. Typically, a dryer load will cost between $0.40-$0.50 per load using electricity. It will be around half that with gas. Even at a 0.25 savings per load, it would take 120 loads a month to save $30 per month.

The average 40-50 gallon electric water heater costs between $550 and $600/yr to operate. An average gas water heater between $250 and $300. The most you can expect to save by switching to gas is about $25 to $30/month (not negligible, but certainly not $75/month).

Propane is usually much less expensive than electricity. Based on BTUs, propane has to sell for more than $3.24/gallon to cost more to use than 0.12/KWH electricity. While peak propane prices can go over $3/gal, most propane users fill their tanks during non-peak times when the price is MUCH lower (I paid $1.69/gal a few months ago). There *is* a reason why millions of people use propane instead of electricity.

LOL OK the gas company workers time is worth $1300 an hour, gottcha. The current market conditions are the worst its been since 1930, if anything they should have come out and installed the gas line for cost of materials if "market conditions" had anything to do with it.
and they only got the extra $3 a month because I managed to find someone that would do it for about $100.

Most people would call the gas company, hear them say $1300, cuss them out and hang up in shock and go buy an electric stove. There is no way possible I would have paid $1300 to hook the gas up, that would have made the cost of the stove FAR too expensive.

That is bad business and there is no sane excuse for it.
You are the one missing the point I am afraid.

Or really, makes no difference what you think its actually the gas company that is missing the point, because they make 95% of their money "selling you gas" not selling you pathetically over priced service.
What they actually tried to do was called highway robbery and should be illegal.

Its sorta like lets say the Oil Companies at gas stations made it mandatory for gas to be pumped by an employee at the station (which they do in Oregon)and they charged you $3 a gallon for gas and then at $1300 an hour labor for pumping the gas took 4 minutes so charged you $45 for 15 gallons of gas and that'll be $86 for pumping it.

""The average 40-50 gallon electric water heater costs between $550 and $600/yr to operate. An average gas water heater between $250 and $300. The most you can expect to save by switching to gas is about $25 to $30/month (not negligible, but certainly not $75/month).""
===============================================
Now factor in that it was a 28 year old water heater that was rusty with the insulation about as good as a sheet of newspaper, VS a "Marathon Water Heater" which is the best in the business as far as tank water heaters.
We saved easily $75 a month from what that old thing was sucking down. the new one rarely even cycles until we actually use it and cold water comes in.
Being that we both are retired and at home most of the time we do use a lot of water.
Our old water heater, rusty, leaking slightly, virtually zero insulation was costing us about $100 a month those last few months to operate. So more like $1200 a year to operate.
The Marathon is about $30 a month and the marathon is electric not gas, although it is virtually as cheap to operate as a gas one.

The difference was substantial, but it was from a 28 year old long past its useful life electric water heater Vs a brand new best there is Marathon electric.
That is why we replaced it, and should have done it years earlier but you know how it is when money is kinda tight you let things go far longer than they really should and usually you end up paying more because of it.

We paid an extra $60-75 per month for several years which would have paid for the new water heater in no time.

nunyabiz1 - so you hired some private guy to hook up your gas - how did that work - was he licensed to install gas? was he legally able to tap into the main gas line? did he install a gas meter for you? was this all done with the gas company's approval?

Yes he was licensed and had been for more than 25 years. In fact he had worked for the gas company decades ago and was probably more experienced than anyone the gas company would have sent. I was fortunate to find him.
The gas meter was already there and had been since the house was built back in 1983.
all that needed to be done was simply tap into the gas line running to the Furnace under the house which is very tall under there, we live on a hillside so when you enter under the house it is about 8-9' tall at the door and then wedges down to about 4' up towards the front of house.
So all very easy access.
He just tapped into the line and ran a straight pipe to the area under the floor where the stove is which is like 25-30' at most, drilled a hole in the floor behind the stove area, secured everything with steel strapping hanging down and then tested each joint with soap to make sure no leaks and he was done.

No approval needed.

Oh, so you already had gas coming into the house for the furnace and you just needed an additional pipe to the kitchen, is that correct? In that case, the $1300 the gas company wanted is outrageous. Are you sure they knew you already had gas coming to the house - they might have thought they need to run a gas line to your house. For your job, any plumber licensed for gas could have done the job for you.

Yes they knew because when the woman said that I immediately thought she figured I did not even have gas coming to the house, so I said, Ohh no no no I mean just to have a line run to where the stove is from our Furnace line, we already have a gas meter and a furnace hooked up to it and we need maybe 25-30' of line run.

Then she said no they charge something like $40 a foot and I then had to ask her again because I thought something had to be missing in translation here.
But nope, they were simply out of their freaking minds and I said as much to her.

I was at that point very disappointed because we really wanted to get this new gas stove and I figured well the price difference couldn't be THAT much different if I have someone else do it.
I had called a few places but they didn't even do gas lines and they told me to call the gas company of which I said been there done that and they want $1300.
But fortunately this friend of ours had their stove installed and she had a gas line run.

She bought some Kenmore stove and Sears told her they do not install gas lines BUT they have a licensed contractor that does all their gas line installations for them that they recommended.
We asked her what it cost for her to have her gas line run and she said $300 which sounded like a steal compared to what we just heard from the dang gas company.
Then we asked well did he install the stove or did Sears come back out to install it.
Then she said oh no the same guy put in the line and installed the stove and microwave all for $300.
So installing the gas line was only about $100 which is reasonable and normal.

Yikes, so we of course immediately called the guy to get it set up for when our stove came in.
So he ran our gas line, ran another electric line and installed an outlet from the fuse box for the Microwave, and installed both Microwave and Stove, then hauled away the carcass all for $300.00

Ok, this tangent of the conversation is well past getting tired but I'll make one final attempt. I'm not saying $1300 is a reasonable quote. It's just my assumption that the gas company's business model is such that they're not set up to make money off of a small job like that. So where does that leave them? Either refuse the job altogether (now THAT would be bad business) or quote you an outrageous price on a job that they don't want. Figuring that in the slim chance you actually take the bait, the outrageous profit makes it worth their while.

Over the past year I've had a driveway widened and replaced, a new oil burner installed, and clearing/landscaping done in the back yard. I got multiple quotes on each of these jobs. In each case, the highest quote came from the largest company. And in each case, I never got a follow-up sales call from the company with the highest quote. Kind of tells you something, no?

I paid $2,700 to have my gas line put in and I think it is a bargain. They had to drill under the road and down to the house. Nobody else could have done it. In Florida, electricity goes out in hurricanes. Gas does not!

WOW, this discussion has really gotten off topic. Back to the first answer. chemocurl is correct with the addition of nunyabiz1's comment "Natural" Gas is almost always both better and cheaper no matter where you are, IF you have propane though then you might be better off with electric.
I do have LP and in my case it is still cheaper than electric for heating, and cost doesn't matter for cooking I like gas. For the dryer, a gas dryer cost more and then there was the additional cost to convert it to LP which was more than it cost me to run a circuit for the dryer. Most of the problems with the old dryer were with the stupid glow worm anyway, so I opted to go for Electric on the new one. I can't say I really noticed a differance in the electric bill though. I admit a am a bit of an energy hog, alwaws running welders, big air compressors etc. so I haven't seen less than a $100 electric bill in years.

Foodonastump You are still not getting a clue, so I will leave it there since it appears to be of no use.

And yes LP "could" be better in some situations depends on where you are in the country how much you spend on Electric KW and what LP cost plus the TANK and where you can even put it.

Where I am we could not even have LP because we are in a Town Home.

That is all I meant by "If you have propane though then you might be better of with electric"

nunyabiz1 I wasn't disgreeing with you. Depending on cost factors Lp could be more than electric. In our case it's cheaper. Tank rent on a 500 gal tank is only $10 a year, must be more of an administrative charge, they make their money selling the propane. The gas company wanted around $9000 to run gas to our house, but they would have to run it about 1/8 of a mile down the road plus to the house.

Back on topic...If it were me and gas were an option, I'd go with gas for heating, hot water, cooking and laundry. I'm not going to debate cost savings. The merits of gas vs. electric are all out there and in the end, the decision is yours.

I'm old school when it comes to cooking and me like fire, unk! But, if gas were not an option and I had to cook with electricity, it would be with induction, without a doubt.

Caddidaddy - Consider yourself lucky; last quote I got was $13500. And that was several years ago. It would be less frustrating if my backdoor neighbors didn't have gas.

I was thinking about going with induction, but I can't seem to get the electric company over to run a 50 amp line to the kitchen. Let alone even give me a quote. Don't those idiots realize the business they're losing?! ;-)

On our Electric Bill each month we pay a $3.95 fee that covers up to $500 worth of work if needed each year which includes installing a 50amp fuse if we needed it. Everything after that $500 is billed at a 15% discount.
We had them come out a few months ago to replace a GFCI outlet and about a year ago to fix a ceiling light fixture box that fried, all part of the $3.95 a month fee.
So for us the fee for that would have been basically $47 which we paid for in monthly installments of $3.95.
If we had called an electrician to do both of those things would have cost probably at least $100 for each time coming out if not more.

The gas company does install gas line to the house and inside the house and for each branch they install to a stove a fireplace a furnace a out door grill etc is more profit for them for many many years to come, in fact it is virtually their entire business.

Lets say the cable company would charge you $1300 to run 30' of cable to your house and hook it up.
Time Warner would obviously be out of business today.

Instead they charge a very reasonable fee, many times its actually free, all of their service is free if you have a problem. The only time you are charged a huge fee is if you are just one person down a long country road.

But if you need to be hooked up its usually free because amazingly they want your business.

The gas company gets virtually ALL of its income from selling you GAS.
It would have cost them maybe $30 tops to send someone out and install the line and could have charged $100 and made $70 profit plus now have that extra line of gas that will be there until this house gets bulldozed over probably 100 years from now. $3-$6 a month for many many decades is worth making $70 "profit" for an hour to most businesses.

Just got our gas bill today and it was $5.12 for the stove this month, my wife had to admit to me that she left the stove on for about 15+ hours 2-3 weeks ago when I hurt my back and she cooked. :)

That is how business works, especially a service business that sells you a product every month, like cable, gas, etc.

Like Caddy just stated, the LP company comes out and rents him/her a very expensive tank for .80 cents a month, installs it for free, then comes out to timbuktwo to deliver propane when you need it and the only charge is just for the GAS because they want your business and like the NG company their business is selling you gas every month.

Pretty simple concept, for most people.

Also I might add all of this conversation is actually on topic as the cost of installation, IF you can even get NG, or if LP is the only option and what electricity cost etc is really one of the biggest deciding factors in going with KW/NG/LP.

It would have cost them maybe $30 tops to send someone out and install the line and could have charged $100 and made $70 profit plus now have that extra line of gas that will be there until this house gets bulldozed over probably 100 years from now. $3-$6 a month for many many decades is worth making $70 "profit" for an hour to most businesses.

Guess what, they're getting the extra $3-$6 a month ANYWAY and they didn't have to do a darned thing to earn your your business. And perhaps they were able to schedule plumbers to work on slightly larger scale new revenue, say new construction or a whole house gas conversion? I have no way of knowing, of course, but that's the work I'd be focusing on if I ran their service department.

We're obviously never going to agree on this one. I just think $100 means something very different to your small independent plumber versus the gas company. I'd have to believe that somewhere in the gas company there are folks more business savvy than both you and I, and for whatever reason they've decided that it's not worth quoting competitive prices on small jobs such as yours.

OK, I'll leave it at that. For good. Outta here!

LOL, Okie Dokie.

If every service business like cable TV and LP etc charged $1300 for less than $100 worth of work they would be nonexistent today.
Especially since selling gas IS their entire business.

There is no excuse for it, there is no defending it nor is it business savvy.

Teah but the gas and electric companies are essentially monopolies - they don't have to go out of their way to solicit your business. While the cable company may also be a monopoly, you do have the choice to go without cable.

I could also opt to run everything off of Solar Panels and a small Wind Turbine including my car and screw em all.

If your homeowners association won't let you have an LP tank they surely won't let you cover the roof with solar panels. (humor)

This is true, would certainly not be able to do that here for sure. Was just a suggestion as to how one can also get around the other 2 monopolies.

Actually that is our plan for hopefully the near future, we were already supposed to have sold this house and moved a year ago but it ended up that my mother needed our help FAR more than we ever thought plus now our house has dropped in value a bit and also the market is bad to say the least for "selling" a home right now.
So we are fixing up our downstairs bedroom for my mother to move in with us and will just have to stick it out here until things turn around.

This is also why our kitchen renovation was put on hold because we needed the money to get the bedroom fixed up for her.
All we need is the Granite counter tops, sink and fresh paint now though.

But our plan was to move to Oregon, buy a 1 acre or so piece of land near the Deshutes river in Bend Oregon and build a small, 2 Bedroom, 2 1/2 bath very efficient Log Home, super insulated all around, all energy star rated appliances.
Nice woodstove for heat, biggest electric draw would be the AC but in a very well insulated Log Home even that is minimized.
Then slowly build up enough Solar Panels to more than handle all our electric needs and have a small wind turbine as an extra boost during rainy/cloudy, winter days and at night to keep the batteries topped off.

We were going to keep my Toyota 4Runner and sell my wifes Lexus and buy a plug in electric for everyday transportation except for winter which is when we break out the 4Runner.

So our only need for anything other than solar/wind powered electric would be winter travel in the 4Runner.

Oh well maybe someday.