oil or lpg

Mister_G

I must admit, that living in a rural area where three of my neighbours have just had about 10,000 litres of oil stolen, maybe my pretty dear LPG isn't quite as expensive as oil overall!

debtfreenewbie

I am confused, I have had oil for years but currently on normal gas.I am looking to move into a lpg property, they seem to share the supplier so I wouldn't be able to shop round for a deal.
I am wondering wether it will cost me the same to heat me home as the current tenant said she pays on a monthly basis, I am so confused...

matelodave

Whatever she uses is a good starting point if you got no other idea of what you are going to use. However your heating, cooking and hot water demands may be completely different. As you haven't really got a choice then ideally you need to read the meter at least weekly for the first couple of months to get an idea of your consumption and to allow you to calculate what your bill might be. It will also help you identify when you are using the most gas and enable you to reduce your consumption.

MoiraMan

Space and water heating costs for a 'typical' 3 bed house with condensing boiler:

LPG £1,923pa
Heating Oil £1,275pa
Mains Gas £1,136pa

Calculations by Sutherland Tables via Rural Energy News website - published 17.02.14.

pinkmami

Were on LPG as the tank was here when we moved in. Costs us £70 a month in DD & covers our usage. We refill a 1400L tanks every 6-8 months, but we've only been here one hard winter (2012 - 2013) and I'm a stickler for switching off the heating - DH would have it on all day & night and complain about the price!!

We use it for cooking/heating and we have an 8Kw multifuel stove which only heats the living room.

ilikecookies

As someone who has used both LPG and oil the key points are:

1) In terms of installation costs yes it is generally cheaper to install an LPG system. The boilers are usually slightly cheaper than the oil equivalent and ground-level LPG tanks are "free" from the LPG suppliers (there is usually a charge for underground tanks and the cost of digging the trench). With an oil system you have to buy the oil tank and obviously these cannot go underground.

2) In terms of running costs oil works out cheaper per kw/h in the region of 8-12% over LPG (depending on the relative cost of each). Some folks point out that oil boilers require an annual service each year whilst LPG boilers do not and so this should be factored into the equation. I'm skeptical about this and think ALL boilers should be serviced to avoid big repair bills down the line. In addition with LPG you have a tank rental cost each year of around £50-100 which is around the price of an oil boiler service anyway.

3) In a sense LPG is more flexible than oil in that you can use LPG to power a hob or fire (though you could do this with LPG bottles just as easily). In addition LPG cannot be stolen. However in other ways oil is more flexible: eg:

(a) you are not tied to a supplier and so can always ring round for the best price, take advantage of community buying groups, etc. With LPG you are tied into a contract and will almost certainly see price rises regardless of what the LPG price (I've never seen anyone in a LPG contract on this forum say the price has been reduced in the summer for example when demand is lower).
(b) you can get bigger oil tanks than LPG tanks (hence you can fill up in the summer and ride out the whole winter)
(c) i've never had a supply problem with oil but did with LPG with the supplier rationing us in winter/having long lead times

In sum when I did the figures oil was definitely cheaper for our needs. So much so that even with the higher installation costs I ripped out the LPG and installed oil (new tank, boiler, etc) as it won't taken that long for us to break even and then be saving (especially as our old LPG boiler was on it's last legs anyway).

Hope that helps someone!

Silent_Dancer

@ilikecookies a good summary of LPG vs oil. Just one comment currently LPG is 50% more expensive than oil.

macman

Silent_Dancer wrote: »

@ilikecookies a good summary of LPG vs oil. Just one comment currently LPG is 50% more expensive than oil.

I don't think so. Could you support that statement please?

Silent_Dancer

macman wrote: »

I don't think so. Could you support that statement please?

Yes see post from @moiraman.

Space and water heating costs for a 'typical' 3 bed house with condensing boiler:

LPG £1,923pa
Heating Oil £1,275pa
Mains Gas £1,136pa

Calculations by Sutherland Tables via Rural Energy News website - published 17.02.14.

To be precise I make it that LPG is 51% more expensive than oil.

macman

Perhaps MoiraMan could post a link to that site, as the figures don't bear scrutiny. LPG is typically 8-12% more than oil, and oil is typically 18% more than mains gas.
So, if gas were £1,136pa, oil would be £1,340 and LPG would be £1,447 to £1,500.
LPG totals may of course be including such extra items as tank rental, which are not part of the base fuel costs per kWh, which is what I'm quoting based on.
These figures may be useful:
http://www.biomassenergycentre.org.uk/portal/page?_pageid=75,59188&_dad=portal