Which type of central heating to go for?

RomaN

Hello all,

Me and my girlfriend have recently bought a house which we both adore. The only downside to the house is that there is no central heating currently in the property. There is a fireplace in the living room which is fed by gas cannisters that sit outside. When it gets a bit chilly we put this on and it does the job of heating the room up. Our bedroom is directly above the living room and we find that the fireplace does the job of heating the bedroom up to a certain degree as well.

The one thing we would prefer is to have a central heating system that:

a) Worked on a timer so that we could come home from work to have it on.
b) Heated up all the rooms.

Where we live there is no gas in the area as I would have preferred to have installed GCH (don't worry, I knew this before we bought the property)

Now my friend who convientley lives next door has oil central heating that was installed by the previous owner. Would this be the way to go? How much should we be looking at to have the heating system installed? Can source out the rads/boiler from a friend but was wondering how much we should be looking at purely for the installation costs

gas4you

LPG should be a lot cheaper to install than oil. Oil boilers are more expensive and you also need a tank and a pad laid for the tank.

Depending how close you live to a stream ect, you may need a bunded tank, even dearer.

Personally I would go for LPG everytime, but I am not sure these days what, if any, difference in running costs there are.

k66

We have electric economy 7 storage heaters in a well insulated 3 bed detached, our water is heated at night by immersion heater, our house is cosy and we pay just £50 a month - all electric. Suits us fine.

Owain_Moneysaver

You can have an oil, LPG, or solid fuel boiler and conventional radiators.

Oil has tank siting and bunding requirements.

LPG has tank siting requirements but you can have an underground tank if you have the space.

Solid fuel is less controllable, but not uncontrollable. You can get pellet boilers which could go in a lean-to and need refuelling and emptying not even daily.

LPG especially, oil to a lesser degree, tend to have a limited range of prices. Usually you rent the LPG tank which ties you in to one supplier. Both oil and solid fuel can be a fair bit cheaper if you can buy in largeer quantities in summer and store it.

Economy 7 / storage heating is another option, but not so suitable for people out during the day. If you have wet radiators you can choose between gas/oil/solid fuel and just change the boiler. It is also possible to link a gas or oil boiler into a solid fuel radiator system using a dunsley neutraliser or similar.

Air source heatpump may be worth considering especially with the Feed In Tariffs that are becoming available. However ongoing maintenance charges may be higher.

But lots of insulation is your first priority :-)

LittleVermin

Not all LPG companies are the same!

You can find out who would supply you by putting your postcode in http://www.uklpg.org/supplier-search/

I suggest you look at the posts on the sticky on "Bulk LPG ...". Some horror stories from all the majors but many people suggest you give Flogas a wide berth. Shell seems to be doing good deals at present but you need to be check TWO things: the initial price but almost more importantly the maximum rate of price rise.

As Owain Moneysaver says the tank is almost always owned by the supplier - and you are then tied in to that supplier for 2 years. You pay for putting in the hard-standing for an above-ground tank or digging the hole for an underground tank - and also you are responsible for all the pipework from tank to your boiler.

lamplighter2

LittleVermin wrote: »

Not all LPG companies are the same!

You can find out who would supply you by putting your postcode in http://www.uklpg.org/supplier-search/

I suggest you look at the posts on the sticky on "Bulk LPG ...". Some horror stories from all the majors but many people suggest you give Flogas a wide berth. Shell seems to be doing good deals at present but you need to be check TWO things: the initial price but almost more importantly the maximum rate of price rise.

As Owain Moneysaver says the tank is almost always owned by the supplier - and you are then tied in to that supplier for 2 years. You pay for putting in the hard-standing for an above-ground tank or digging the hole for an underground tank - and also you are responsible for all the pipework from tank to your boiler.

yes to all above but you can by lpg tanks but then they need inspecting yearly for safty go to a lpg supplier they do this for you so ther responsibilty but do not have bottles if running a central heating will cost the earth and will run out when you do not want it to lpg is cheaper than oil at present depends were you get the supply from

samtheman1k

LPG also needs a tank, and also costs a fortune! Go for GSHP, it is expensive to install, but cheap to run. Failing that, an ASHP, cheap to install, cheap to run if you don't mind the noise.

shegar

k66 wrote: »

We have electric economy 7 storage heaters in a well insulated 3 bed detached, our water is heated at night by immersion heater, our house is cosy and we pay just £50 a month - all electric. Suits us fine.

How many storage heaters do you have ? I use to have them and it cost me £50 per WEEK :eek: including hot water and that was 9 yrs ago.....perhaps you dont have many on ..........

sloan

Does anyone know anything about horizontal heat exchange pumps and underfloor heating? We are extending our house and want to change the system. We have a field at the back.

spinningsheep

Have you considered a solid fuel boiler as someone else suggested? Trianco do one that runs on anthracite, burns clean with no smoke or ash, the ash fuses into "clinker" which needs emptying once a week from the pan below and the boiler feeds itself with tarmac sized bits of anthracite from a hopper on the top that you fill up every few days.

crphillips

I've seen a few air source heat pumps running and was quite impressed with them. Pretty cheap to run. One issue is they're best suited to underfloor heating. The other issue is that they're fairly new and it's a struggle to find people experienced in them to carry out any work on them.

Due to the line of business I'm in I've met many people changing away from oil/lpg and moving to solid fuel but I don't honestly think solid fuel is any cheaper and it's a bit of a pain using it and you'll not have the convenience that your looking for.

I'd be tempted to go down the route of air source if I were starting from scratch with a heating system.

From what I can gather from my customers, lpg seems to be more expensive to run than oil. Air source is the cheapest to run by far.

As mentioned above, insulation is very important.