The Great ‘Home Heating’ Hunt: Do you know cheaper ways for LPG and oil

treefrogbandit

bracken wrote: »

Anyway besides the fact we are reasonable at DIY and can do most of the work ourselves thereby reducing the costs the cheapest we can get a woodfired ( not as good as pellets!) boiler installed is around £8000. This includes us getting a grant! We would also have to completely re-plumb our central heating system ( further increasing costs) so while I love the idea of biomass it is not yet a real alternative for normal people who do not earn large amounts of cash. It would also take us at least 4 years to pay for it self and thats if the price of oil goes up to £1 a Litre which hopefully it wont.

The lifespan of a typical woodfuel boiler is in the region of 20 years (if looked after). Yes they are more expensive to install but as the lifetime cost of a heating system is about 80% fuel and 20% capital investment, halving the cost of fuel (oil at 60p/litre wood chip at £80/tonne) may well be a sound financial investment long term. I can't realistically see the price of oil coming down for any length of time - one day we will just run out...

Granted that this is not the answer for everyone (there wouldn't be enough wood for everyone to switch in any case) but it could well be part of the solution.

do people normally look at a payback period for domestic heating in any case? Surely you just put money in and get central heating out - you're paying for a warm house, not investing in one...

~Treefrogbandit

treefrogbandit

bob715 wrote: »

you can get a eletric boiler now which will replace oil or gas and is 100 % efficent

only at the point of end use! - Most power stations work at about 35% efficient fuel to electricity the rest goes up the chimney. And then there's significant losses in transmissions through the grid...

The efficiency argument aside electricity is SOOO much more expensive than gas even with the price hikes we've been getting recently.
According to QuiteQuick's numbers above
~10p/kWh for electric vs
~6 or 7p/kWh for oil vs
~2 or 3p/Kwh for mains gas (not sure about LPG but It's clearly going to be a bit more than this...)

Bit of a no brainer really...

~TreeFrogBandit

gillyfish

I have been following the thread and thought I would check out oil prices today. Total Butler quoted just below 50p for 2000 litres (we have two tanks
and heat an office as well as our draughty old house) and Goff were able to beat it by a fraction of a penny. Apparently oil has dropped today quite
significantly which hopefully means it will keep on dropping. In the end I found I probably only need 1200 litres but Goff have stuck to the price for me. If you need oil for the winter it might be worth ringing round now. By the way neither boilerjuice.co.uk or heatingoil.co.uk reflect this drop in the oil price on the quoted prices on their websites so I would definitely ring round. Both the sales guys at Goff and Total Butler were shocked at the 'low' price. But it's a gamble whether the price will hold, drop, or go back up.

tryingtoretire

bracken wrote: »

Hello, I do not usually bother to post but feel quite strongly that this needs answering. WE need a new boiler and have spent the last 3 months investigating and getting quotes for biomass and also wood boilers. Also looked at Air source and ground source heat pumps( about £25k with a borehole!) but I have read that they do not keep either the house or hot water very hot so really should be used alongside eg biomass so no good for us even if we had the funding.

Anyway besides the fact we are reasonable at DIY and can do most of the work ourselves thereby reducing the costs the cheapest we can get a woodfired ( not as good as pellets!) boiler installed is around £8000. This includes us getting a grant! We would also have to completely re-plumb our central heating system ( further increasing costs) so while I love the idea of biomass it is not yet a real alternative for normal people who do not earn large amounts of cash. It would also take us at least 4 years to pay for it self and thats if the price of oil goes up to £1 a Litre which hopefully it wont. In the end we are going to have to replace with an oil fired boiler costing around £2.5k including fitting but very efficient one.

I am interested in trying running on biodeisel tho. Has/does anyone know how to do this. Our old boiler has a leak but I am considering keeping it and installing in a shed and trying it out running on biodeisel to see what happens. After all its pretty easy to make biodeisel and I have heard there are people collecting Waste oil and using this to run heating systems.

Also just for info: my investigations over the last few months turned up the fact that in the USA they have waste oil fired heating which is often used to back up another boiler system.

Anyway no idea if this is useful but hope it may help someone.

Take care
Bracken

I think you'll find that your old oil boiler runs on 28 second kerosene and biodiesel, which is normally used as an alternative for diesel-engined motor vehicles, would be unsuitable. You would need to change the burner etc as bio diesel/gas oil is a lot thicker.
The other point is that if you do have a boiler which will burn bio diesel then I think you'll find that gas oil is cheaper than bio diesel.

RaspberryFool

A small 3kW air source heat pump used in the summer can be four times more efficient than a 3kW immersion heater and 50 deg C temperature is more like the output. Given that a shower is usually set at 39 deg C, it should be satisfactory.

Our central heating engineer told us that the hot water in the tank should be heated to at least 60 deg C to kill off any bacteria. Luke warm water could become a breeding ground for the Legionella bacteria. Perhaps you ought to check?

RF

paceinternet

RaspberryFool wrote: »

A small 3kW air source heat pump used in the summer can be four times more efficient than a 3kW immersion heater and 50 deg C temperature is more like the output. Given that a shower is usually set at 39 deg C, it should be satisfactory.

Our central heating engineer told us that the hot water in the tank should be heated to at least 60 deg C to kill off any bacteria. Luke warm water could become a breeding ground for the Legionella bacteria. Perhaps you ought to check?

RF

The major brand heat pump suppliers build an immersion heater into their systems for this purpose, but I am not yet clear how often it is energised as most seem to say it is required periodically to prevent bacteria.
The principle being that for example, 6 days you run at 50 deg C, then on the 7th after the heat pump has raised the temperature to 50 deg c, it is automatically raised to 60 or 70 by the immersion. This is well documented by the system providers in Sweden where it is more widely used than in the UK at present.

aitch-aitch

manc.girl wrote: »

We are experiencing the highest price for domestic fuel. Does anyone know how oil compares against gas? My dilema is this: our oil boiler is due to be replaced. Do we take the plunge and switch to gas (of which there is none presently in the house, but it is in the road) or buy a new replacement oil boiler?

We moved into our house about 4 years ago and switched from LPG to oil as we were told it was more efficient even though the pence per litre was roughly the same at the time.

I would assume that if the ppl for LPG is still the same as oil then it would be best sticking to oil.

Incidentally we have the LPG boiler we took out sitting in our garage. It was only a couple of years old when it was removed so if you are interested send me a pm and we could do a deal.

the_jogger

SusieH wrote: »

Hi LizM

Thank you for your response. We have looked at solar collectors but they are an expensive option and pay back period can be lengthy. Plus the sun can be a little elusive - cold showers could come into it!!

A small 3kW air source heat pump used in the summer can be four times more efficient than a 3kW immersion heater and 50 deg C temperature is more like the output. Given that a shower is usually set at 39 deg C, it should be satisfactory.

Its all down to cost and saving - we can get the ashp supplied and fitted for £2,000 - the cost of two tank fill-ups of oil!

Regards
SusieH

Susie,

Where can you get an air source heat pump installed for £2000? Is this just for hot water. I was quoted over £8000 for a full heating system but have now found one that looks like it will be considerably lower, but not that low.

Paul

redfraggle_2

the_jogger wrote: »

Susie,

Where can you get an air source heat pump installed for £2000? Is this just for hot water. I was quoted over £8000 for a full heating system but have now found one that looks like it will be considerably lower, but not that low.

Paul

I'd be interested too as I had a ballpark quote for £5k without any of the ground works

BTW - I'm on LPG - about a year ago I persuaded my OH to actually look at our LPG costs - turns out Countrywide were charging us 44p a litre when Calor were charging 30p! At that difference it was worth our while paying the £150 charge to swap suppliers, but we called Countrywide's bluff and they came down to 33p without much effort

Alykes

The only way I can get cheaper oil is by getting together with friends in my area to bulk buy. However I would just like to tell you a liittle tale which should be an eye opener, and really makes me wonder about wether we are getting ripped off in the UK.

I recently returned from a 4 month stay on a remote Greek Island. (no we're not rich, but due to having visited this Island for 20 years we have many friends and contacts there, and manage 4 months for about the same cost as many tourists pay for a family fortnight.) Anyway, I digress.

At home we use a 15Kg gas bottle for our kitchen hob, as we have no natural gas. I bought 2 bottles, and paid £17.50 per bottle. We had been buying the same gas on this remote Greek Island, where everything has to come in by ferry. How much? £10 per bottle !!!! You figure it out.