cost of oil versus gas?

laurence_2

A friend is househunting and one of the houses he is considering has oil fired central heating. It was formally heated by storage radiators as there is no gas supply in that area, but these were removed and the oil fired boiler and radiators was put in.

What are the comparable costs of oil versus gas?

And what are the pros and cons?

would anyone buy a house that had oil central heating instead of gas?

Cardew

The problem is that CH oil prices are volatile.

Currently it is about 45p a litre. A litre contains approx 10.2 kWh so 4.5p/kWh, so about 50% more expensive than gas.

Not long ago it was briefly cheaper than gas, before that double the price of gas - I believe it went as high as 70p litre. Tomorrow? who knows.

Cons are that you have to buy a bulk load to get it as cheap as possible - about £500 at a time. Servicing is required for max efficiency of boiler.

laurence_2

Cons are

so no pros then?

That might explain why the house has been on the market for 2 years

A._Badger

Look on the bright side. If your alternative is bottled gas (which it sounds like it is) oil is a far better option than that. People looking for houses in country areas where there is no mains gas are used to the idea of oil - there are probably other factors inhibiting the sale of this house.

Cardew

laurence wrote: »

so no pros then?

That might explain why the house has been on the market for 2 years

It is probably worthwhile to get the costs into perspective.

The average annual heating/hot water bill with gas is around £500 - £600, so currently oil is, say £250 to £300 pa more expensive.

That should be reflected in the price against a comparable gas CH property, but it is not a 'show stopper' IMO.

In any case many rural areas don't have gas so if you want to live there

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laurence_2

The thing is that it is not rural, it is on the outskirts of town, there are even buses every 5 minutes during the day. It is actually nearer the town centre than my house and I have gas. The house is about 45 years old and gas was never laid to that part of the town. No idea why not.

albyota

There is another option of course, if the house is well insulated with good double glazing, an air source heat pump, Mitsubishi Ecodan, Sanyo CO2 Eco, Daikin Altherma, LG Therma V, all very reliable equipment, cost effective, low running costs. Quite expensive to install at the moment but it is worth investigating further. Costs for a four bed house including 10 radiators is around £8,850. If the proposed RHI comes in, (payed to heat the house with ASHP), your friend could be in pocket sooner.

laurence_2

Solved.

He has decided not to buy the house, it needed too much done to it anyway.