Oil or LPG?

Shavenuw

I am currently building a large 4 bedroom house in a rural location which has no mains gas. What will be the most economic (and most reliable) form of heating - Oil or LPG? I have used oil for many years in other properties but am becoming more reluctant to use it in future as supplies seem to be less abundant than gas.
Whatever I use it will need a whole new system installed so installation costs don't really come into it. Any advie would be welcome. Thanks.

macman

When the oil runs out, LPG will run out too. They're both derived from the same fossil source.

justjohn

use oil and also suppliment with solar,wind or wood

Look at using a system that will allow use of waste oil(not just bio) as well as kero.

david29dpo

I went with LPG. Difficult decision but the boilers were cheaper, gas hob (no oil hobs!!) plus i fill my LPG car from it.

Canucklehead

Biomass....more here. Renewable heat incentive available in 2012.

Canucklehead

ilikecookies

Whilst you'll know from your previous experiences that oil is expensive I can assure you that LPG will be even more expensive in the long run!

Doing all the calcs we recently converted from LPG to oil and expect payback in 4-5 years assuming that oil and lpg prices continue to rise relative to one another.

My feeling is that whilst oil has its issues LPG has these and more, eg:

1) Standing charge for the LPG tank which is anywhere between £60-120/yr. From what I saw and what others report no real maintenance is actually done for this money.

2) 2-year fixed term contracts for your supply so that unlike oil you can't ring around suppliers in this time and benefit from competition. You'll simply be forced to accept whatever price increases your supplier imposes - last winter Flogas increased our price per litre almost 60% between Oct and Jan! Most contracts have clauses in them so you can move if they jack the price up beyond a certain amount but all suppliers seem to play silly beggars so you only jump out of one frying pan and into the fire of another plus switching takes time ...

3) Limitations on the size of the tank - I believe the biggest LPG tank you can have for domestic purposes is about 2000 litres. This however can only be filled to 85% of its capacity so your talking 1700 litres. With oil you can at least have a have larger tank (eg. 2000 litres, 2500, 5000 etc). A smaller tank obviously means you'll need to fill up more often which means you may find it hard to ride out price increases in the winter. At least with oil you can stock up in the summer when prices are a bit cheaper.

4) LPG is more expensive in relation to the energy it produces. According to the nottingham energy partnership 1 litre of LPG can produce 6.6 khw vs 1 litre of fuel producing 9.8 khw. As such LPG should be about 1/3 cheaper per litre than oil per litre - however it is not. Currently price of LPG per litre seems to be around the 50p mark yet I can get a litre of oil for 52p.

The only real benefits I can think of with LPG are that the installation costs are lower (which you're said doesn't affect you per se) and you can have a real flame.

I was tempted to go down the renewables route to take advantage of the RHI but my preferred option here (biomass boiler) would have meant a lot of expense to retrofit but you don't have this issue so may be worth exploring.

Hope that is some help (admittedly I'm very biased against LPG but I'm not alone in this so check out some of the LPG threads!).

albyota

No doubt you will be building to current building regs or better, put in as much insulation as you can afford, fit the best double glazing you can get. This is a perfect opportunity to install a wet underfloor heating system (ground floor) (Rads upstairs if you like) and heat it with an air source heat pump, UFH, if fitted at the correct pipe spacing only needs 35 - 40 degree water flowing through it, ideal for the best efficiencies from an ASHP, it is what I have used (8.5kW Mitsubishi Ecodan) since October 08 in a four bedroom detached house self build, low whole house bills (2009 £840, 2010 £900) all DHW from it too, there are currently 40 manufacturers of ASHP's, some big players like Mitsubishi Ecodan, Daikin Altherma, LG Therma V, Panasonic Aquarea, Vaillant, Worcester bosch, Danfoss, Dimplex, choose wisely, only use inverter driven kit with low sound levels 45 -55 dBA, steer clear of the cheapo far eastern rubbish. Then if your budget can stretch to it, go for solar PV 'in roof' system. 12 Mitsubishi 255W panels 3kWp south-facing system should return c£1,200+/yr for a good few years.(25)

Good luck

G_M

When a brand new poster starts sticking company recommendations on more than one thread, my instinct says spam.

If I'm wrong simon, I apologise!

edit: I see "simon's" post has been deleted so assume it WAS spam.

CharlieBilly

:spam: post 9