Estimating cost benefit of oil:gas conversion

The cost of providing a gas supply, new boiler, redecoration and removal of old tank really do come into the 'how long is a piece of string' category. It depends how far you are from a gas main, type and position of boiler, and where your tank is situated.

However all you need to do is get some estimates from, say BG first and then other firms; however I suspect you are talking around £4,000.

Oil at today's prices costs about double the cost of gas per kWh; but who knows what the difference might be in the next few months - let alone the next few years. Interesting article here:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/property/main.jhtml?xml=/property/2005/10/12/pjeff12.xml&sSheet=/property/2005/10/12/ixpright12.html

paul_h wrote:

Interesting read that Cardew, it does back up some of the ideas I've been having recently.

It's worth noting too that British Gas's 'Click Energy' online tariff has incredibly low economy7 rates - 1.746p per kWh for my region, East Midlands. The incumbent supplier for this area, Powergen's rate for this area is 3.75p per kWh!

These rates, coupled with the improved storage heaters available, could work out very reasonable indeed. 20,000 kWh of heating per year (which is higher than average heating consumption) for around £350, or £30 per month...

I know Oil fired CH is far more user friendly, but the oil equivalent of 20,000 kWh would cost about £800 at today's prices, assuming an 80% efficient boiler.

(Divide the oil price per litre by 10.2 to find the per kWh equivalent.)

Agreed.

The problem is that you can only calculate costs using energy prices as they are today, and cannot predict what they might be in the future. I remember friends taking the advice of 'Which' and converting to oil CH as it was the cheapest. Within months they were regretting it as Middle East problems caused oil prices to soar.

I think if I were the OP (or in an area where gas was not available) I might consider fitting 3kW electric storage heater connected to 13 amp sockets via timers to take advantage of Economy 7 and keep my oil CH as backup.

That way you could take advantage of the 'cheap heat' and not have the disadvantages of 'running out of heat' and have to use daytime electricity rates to top up. The capital outlay for storage heaters would be much less than changing to gas.