Some advice on oil central heating!

ReflexReaction

Berwynview wrote: »

Hi
We live in a 5 bedroomed rambling old welsh farmhouse with an ancient oil-fired CH boiler. We used to use at least 4000l of oil a year but have now got that down to about 500l, as we've now got log burners in the living rooms and a wood-fired cooker (which is also linked into the CH & heats the HW & "airs" a few of the upstairs radiators). We tend to use the oil boiler for about an hour in the morning & 2 hours in the evening from about October to April, depending on the weather.

Thanks for the reply! so you've actually found log burners economical then? everything i've read has suggested they are the most uneconomical way to hear your home / living room, although I personally like the idea of them

bobthedambuilder

ReflexReaction wrote: »

Thanks for the reply! so you've actually found log burners economical then? everything i've read has suggested they are the most uneconomical way to hear your home / living room, although I personally like the idea of them

Depends whether you have access to free / cheap logs.

I took down a bunch of mature trees while I was renovating my property, and it's taken me 5 years to get through the logs (admittedly not full-time use of the stove). Cost = £0:cool:.

ReflexReaction

bobthedambuilder wrote: »

Depends whether you have access to free / cheap logs.

I took down a bunch of mature trees while I was renovating my property, and it's taken me 5 years to get through the logs (admittedly not full-time use of the stove). Cost = £0:cool:.

Haha, well the neighbours to this property have a massive garden with loads of trees in it, maybe they'll be willing to let me go nuts with a chain saw

G_M

* 150 year old house. Solid (cold) stone walls with no cavity insulation.
* well insulated attic, apart from sloping ceilings sections upstairs
* secondary glazing
* 15 rads/4 bedrooms. Unused rooms the rads are turned on/off in sequence (ie each turned on to give them a warm up periodically in winter)
* showers not baths
* in summer boiler is mostly off and water heated by immersion on 3 day-time switch (water tank is treble-insulated!)
* boiler is 8 years old (non-condensing but reasonably efficient/well maintained)
* tank size 2500, so I tend to top up 2100 to 2300 at a time for cost reasons
* I fill it about once a year though needed a bit extra last year due to the extended very cold winter - say 2500 litres per annum?

malc_b

Slightly off topic but E7 electric is now cheaper than oil. The whole story is here but unless you have a condensing boiler at buy oil at 50p/l then cheapest E7 undercuts it. With oil at 60p/l and a non-condensing boiler (83% eff) oil is 6.9p/kWhr compare to 5.2p/kWhr for E7 night.

That's not the whole picture as E7 day is more so you need 20% to break even to single rate. So you need to heat water at night and run washing machine, dishwasher etc. all over night on time clocks.

Usefully E7 ends at 7.30am/8.30am so I now do the house warm up in the morning with a few fan heaters (you can only run 3 on one ring). The morning electric shower is on cheap too. My only oil burn is in the evening. I'm think that a E7 storage unit for base load might be a good idea too.

Cardew

malc_b wrote: »

That's not the whole picture as E7 day is more so you need 20% to break even to single rate. So you need to heat water at night and run washing machine, dishwasher etc. all over night on time clocks.

That 20% break even figure varies. There are tariffs where it is considerably less - particularly the Scottish Power tariffs.

malc_b

Cardew wrote: »

That 20% break even figure varies. There are tariffs where it is considerably less - particularly the Scottish Power tariffs.

Well, yes as per the other figures this is in my area, but FYI the ~20% is for Scottish power compared to OVO. For my area cheapest single rate today is OVO at 9.69p/kWhr, cheapest E7 is Scottish Power at 10.812/5.45 which compared to OVO is 112%/56% so 12/56 is 21% (79% x 112% + 21% x 56% ~ 100%). Standing charges are near enough the same for OVO and Scottish Power.

YORKSHIRELASS

Hi, just a few points I thought I would throw in! We live in a much smaller house than yours (3 bed semi with 8 radiators). Our house is in rural Yorkshire and backs onto open fields, our insulation is probably not the best as we have wood double glazed windows. Oh and our boiler is a few years old.

A typical year we will go through about 1600 litres of oil. We do have a multi-fuel stove which is my main source of heat when I am at home during the day, supplemented by electric oil radiators. Woodburners are great but fuel for them is not cheap.

Like another poster we switch off the boiler during the summer and use the immersion heater twice a day for half an hour which gives us enough hot water and has definitely saved us money.

In summary I would think that 2500 litres isnt enough. And a word of warning. Last winter over the Christmas period when everyone was at home and the weather was exceptionally cold we managed to go through £400 worth of oil in a month. I am now much more careful about how often we have the heating on!