viewing houses - oil fired central heating

bs0u0128

many houses i am interested in have oil fired central heating, but seem to say its a benefit?

is this better than normal central heating? i spend around 80 quid a yr on electric and gas, would it be obscenely more expensive with oil with standard charges, tank rents etc?

pusscat

1000 litres of kerosene round here is about £320 delivered.

Cost of tank is about £500 (needs replacing every 10 years or so)

It is the same as gas central heating, just uses an oil burner rather than a natural gas burner (AFAIK!)

Have always combined OFCH with wood burning stoves, AGA and electric storage heaters so not a scientific survey, but I would say it is more expensive!

HTH

Puss

tanith

£80 per year for gas and electric... :T :T Wish I was that frugal..... I think its safe to say oil fired would be more expensive that this.....

sured

tanith wrote:

£80 per year for gas and electric... :T :T Wish I was that frugal..... I think its safe to say oil fired would be more expensive that this.....

i'll second that!

MJMum

We are about to buy a house with oil fired CH, and I'm sure it will be more expensive than gas.

We hope eventually to put in something "greener" though...oil & gas prices are only going one way in the longer term :eek:

Jeewhizz

We have just placed an offer on a 4 bed detatched house with oil fired heating. The current owner provided us with bills showing that approximately 2000 litres were used per year, costing about £600.

DawnW

My previous house had oil central heating, and now we have gas. Both were similar re controllability etc. I preferred oil, because it is SO easy to change suppliers, bargain down prices etc, and to budget (ie buy it in the summer when cheaper). This year gas prices have been totally out of control - except those of the OP that is! I would definitely have oil again. I know you can change gas suppliers (and do) but it is such a hassle in comparison with making a few phone calls to get prices per litre, then a couple more to bargain down the prices! You buy the tank, not rent it, and ours was just over £400, a few years ago. It was plastic, and you could open it and immediately see how much was in there, rather than trying to decipher energy companies' tricksy tariffs. Much better IMHO. Sometimes gas is cheaper, sometimes oil. I suspect oil might have been for this winter, if bought in advance as I used to do.

ABN

We are thinking of moving to the country and a lot of the interesting properties have either oil or lpg central heating which is kind of putting us off. But the costs quoted in this thread don't seem to bad atm but its what it will be in the future as the oil runs out that also worries me.

Out of interest can you run oil fired central heating off of say recycled chip fat or similar?

sured

dont be put off moving to the country because of oil or lpg, we have it and its great,
electric storage heaters are a big no no imo,
dont know if you can use recycled chip fat, but if you can i think you would need to cook a lot of chips.

sured

just wanted to add, that alot of rural properties have oil or lpg because there is no gas supply, well there isnt in our village.

TJ27

The newer oil fired condensing boilers are the most efficient boilers available. This doesn't necesarily mean that they are any more or less expensive of course. An oil fred boiler certainly wouldn't put me off buying a house though.