Would anyone still buy a house with oil central heating?

Contessa

This would not have bothered me over much until recently, but now I discount any houses with oil or LPG heating. I want to spend my retirement in comfort (both physical and financial).
Or perhaps I'm being too cautious?

googler

Depends on where you want to buy.

There's still areas without gas supplies, so coal, LPG and oil are the only CH choices.

lincroft1710

As Googler says, lot of rural areas don't have mains gas.

megzmam

my in laws recently moved into a lovely little cottage and that has oil central heating, they said compared to their old gas bills it is actually working out cheaper not by much but cheaper all the same

MobileSaver

Contessa wrote: »

This would not have bothered me over much until recently, but now I discount any houses with oil or LPG heating. I want to spend my retirement in comfort (both physical and financial).

No offence but I think this has to be one of the daftest reasons I've heard for discounting a house in a long time. :rotfl:

Especially for retirement you are probably discounting some of the nicest houses and nicest locations in the entire country!

I didn't actually understand the "physical comfort" reason or why having oil not gas would make a difference?

kkgree1

You don't have a lot of choice if you live in a rural village! Oil is considerably cheaper than the other alternatives (LPG or electricity).


Our village looked into getting mains gas last year but the costs for each household was over £600 just from the road to your house. There was very little interest to converting.

Rhino666

Moving to the South Hams, one of the nicest areas, IMO of course :-), in the country.

No gas supply so a choice of oil or LPG. These two are more inconvenient but cheaper that electricity to heat your home and the only viable choices if no gas supply - a small price to pay :-)

Contessa

MobileSaver wrote: »

No offence but I think this has to be one of the daftest reasons I've heard for discounting a house in a long time. :rotfl:

Especially for retirement you are probably discounting some of the nicest houses and nicest locations in the entire country!

I didn't actually understand the "physical comfort" reason or why having oil not gas would make a difference?

Oh, I could come up with some other reasons you might find even more daft.....
I would love to have an old house full of character, woodburner, Aga, large garden, countryside views etc. However, I don't want the work involved. I would be less comfortable physically if I couldn't afford to run oil CH as much as gas.
I'm fortunate that I have some choice in where I decide to move, and there are still some nice houses in beautiful locations which do have a gas supply!

woodsey2002

We rented a house from January to August this year. Granted it was a large modern open plan 5 bedroom detached house with underfloor heating but we were told by the EA that from an energy efficiency point of view it couldn't be improved..it cost us £2700 in LPG for the 7 months we were there which was more than double the cost of heating a similar size draughty barn conversion on mains gas we'd rented prior which also had an Aga permanently on..
We also found the supplier very unreliable as twice when we'd been away for a few days we came back to empty tanks which when you have underfloor means it takes ages to warm the house back up.
It wouldn't stop me viewing a property but it would certainly be something to consider as I found myself constantly worrying about how much gas was left in the tanks especially during the bad weather as when we had the really bad snow there was no way the tanker would have got anywhere near the house.
The neighbouring house was run on oil and he said his oil bill had tripled in the 6 years he'd lived there and he was thinking of selling but said he was worried that people would be put off because of not being mains connected.

PasturesNew

I am turned off by houses with oil, I've never used/experienced it and would find it all a bit "scarey". There's an ugly tank in the garden. You have to keep an eye on the levels, order it, get it delivered and pay a big chunk right then. And then there's the risk of theft.

gooner63_2

Oil is expensive......but then again...... you'll probably have a septic tank as well in a rural location ....so won't being paying for drainage back into a main sewer.......balance the costs out.....and I'll think you'll find oil is cheaper .....than any eco type alternative.....such as wind power !!!