Oil heating getting me down!

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Hi

We moved into a village with no gas supply back in August last year, and since then we have bought 2300 litres of oil! Its horrendous, and makes me really want to move back to somewhere with mains gas. Back in my old house with gas central heating we could have the whole house nice and toasty and the cost was ok. Now admittedly we do have a bigger house, well bungalow now, but its not huge! We are in a 3 bed detached bungalow, we had cavity wall insulation put in last November for free through British Gas, we have plenty of loft insulation as my husband did that not long after we moved in. We also have a wood burner in the front room, but this only heats that room. Luckily my husband is a builder and is always coming across free wood!

We have underfloor heating in the new part of the bungalow, I have the temperature set at 18 in two zones, and at 20 in my baby's room. The rest of the bungalow is on radiators. The heating comes on for 2-3 hours in the morning, and another 3 - 4 hours in the evening, obviously only if the thermostat says its cold enough to come on. In all honesty I have never been so cold as I am in this property. We did wonder if someone was taking our oil so we have now got a watchman thing fitted. The boiler heats the water too, we do not have an emmersion heater. Am beginning to think I would be better off putting some oil filled radiators in some rooms!

Any ideas on where we could save on our oil comsumption!!

grey_lady

One thing about oil - you use a lot more of it when its really cold, so in the summer you may hardly use any but in the winter especially with something like a rayburn you can go through a tank in a couple of months in freezing tempretures which is something that i never noticed with gas.

To the op - if you know someone handy with a drill and some spare time then its possible to do internal insulation on solid walls quite cheaply yourself, we've recently done it so pm me if you want more info.