Costs of oil heating

ciarac

Hi,

I'm buying a new house and am trying to decide whether to convert from oil to gas or not. It would need to make a substantial difference to my costs each month to be worth it.

I wonder if you could tell me roughly how much you pay for oil heating/water per month or year, and how much you have it on during the day, please?
I'm in N.Ireland in case that makes a difference.

Thanks!

Ciara

reeac

We have a 1996 vintage 3 brm. Bungalow, don,t stint on heating and h.w. And are retired and so at home a lot of the time. we use 1800 to2000 litres of oil per annum which costs us around 1100 to 1200 pounds. Call it 20,000kWh per annum in order to calculate a price for gas. If gas is readily available then it will be a cheaper fuel. A small plus point for oil is that you buy it one delivery at a time ... No cumbersome long term contract with an energy company.

Smiley_Dan

OP, are you talking about natural gas from the gas grid or LPG?

If the former, gas is certainly cheaper.

If the latter, you're best off with oil.

We use a similar amount of oil to reeac for a five bedroom house although we don't heat all the rooms. Oil is cheaper for us, about £950 a year.

If you have the EPC for your house you can get an estimate of the cost by taking the estimated yearly space heating demand, divide by 10 to give the number of litres of oil required, divide by boiler efficiency /100 (see http://www.ncm-pcdb.org.uk/sap/pcdbsearch.jsp?pid=26) then multiply by the price per litre.

E.g. consider:

yearly heat requirement of 20,000 kWh
boiler efficiency of 85%
ppl of 53p

Litres required: 20000 / 10 = 2000
Increase by boiler efficiency: 2000 / (85/100) = 2353 litres
Cost of that: 2353 * 0.53 = £1247

I should add: that only covers space heating, not DHW. You can do a separate calculation for that using the DHW demand estimated in the EPC.

These figures won't be accurate of course but may give you some idea.

ciarac

Thanks so much for your replies, both of you - particularly the calculations - that's brilliant. I've since found out that the boiler is from 1993, so it's 22 years old and is likely on its last legs! I think I'll have to replace it regardless.

Many thanks,

Ciara

bobmedley

If you replace the boiler, you will have to install a condensing model which potentially could be more troublesome (search the threads for more info). Also, it may cost around £2k or more & you have to compare this to the efficiency gain you may (or may not) get - the payback period on the saved oil could be an awfully long time.


Old boilers are simple & can be kept going for decades with appropriate servicing.

snowscreamer

There was an electric boiler in our house when we moved in (long story - estate agent lied and told us it was gas, yada yada - grrrrr)

Anyway before we moved in we estimated 23,000 kWh a year for heating and hot water based on various online calculators and advice on this forum (3 bed semi, cavity wall insulation and loft insulation) and worked out the costs for various fuels:

Electricity - 100% efficient boiler - 12p/kWh: 23000 / 1 * 0.12 = £2760
Mains gas - 90% efficient boiler - 3.8p/kWh: 23000 / 0.9 * 0.038 = £971
Oil - 93% efficient boiler - 5p/kWh (52p/litre): 23000 / 0.92 * 0.05 = £1237
LPG - 91% efficient boiler - 6p/kWh (40p/litre): 23000 / 0.91 * 0.06 = £1516

Have a look at this website http://www.nottenergy.com/energy_cost_comparison/ which has a great comparison of different fuels with up-to-date prices. Of course prices fluctuate but generally oil is around 25-30% more expensive than mains gas (don't forget there will be a standard charge levied for mains gas supply too) and LPG is generally more expensive than oil. Plus with oil you can shop around at each refill whereas with LPG you tend to end up in a contract with a single supplier and they retain ownership of your tank.

Mains gas wasn't an option for us as there is no gas on our road. In the end we ditched the electric boiler before we moved in (nearly £3000 a year!!! - not a chance) and had a new oil tank, new oil condensing boiler and new hot water cylinder installed (previous cylinder was immersion-only otherwise could have reused that). In total we spent £6500. With hugely reduced fuel costs we hope to make that back in less than 4 years.

If I were you, with an ancient oil boiler, if mains gas was an option and total installation costs not significantly more than for a new oil boiler I'd go for that. However if the installation costs are significantly higher it may be better to stick with oil (work out approximately what the payback time is likely to be vs sticking with oil and contrast that with how long you expect to stay). Probably worth getting two quotes - one for a mains gas connection and new gas boiler, the other for a new oil boiler (assuming tank is sound you can reuse that). Don't bother with LPG.

Cardew

The pricing structure for oil and gas is (or at least was) different in Northern Ireland to mainland UK. So figures given on this thread could be misleading.


So you need to get hold of current NI prices for gas(kWh) and oil(litre) before making any decisions. As said above a litre of oil is approx. 10kWh


From this link it would appear that oil is only 5% more expensive than natural gas at today's prices. (in fact it could be even less as oil prices have dropped even more)


http://www.phoenixnaturalgas.com/why-natural-gas/gas-vs-oil/

snowscreamer

I have seen oil prices for our local oil club dropping steadily over the summer and still dropping now, when I would have expected them to start rising due to imminent need to switch on the central heating! So I am watching with interest... all new to this but I have to say so far I don't feel like I'm missing out using oil rather than mains gas (moved from town centre to rural location).

Now cesspits on the other hand...

daniel80

Same as you snowscreamer, just filled up my oil tank at 49.1 p per litre . Quite cheap compared with last year, also have a cesspool which gets emptied about 6 times a year at £100 a go but if you take off the waste water rates not that much dearer. I have just diverted my washing machine water into a soak away under a new patio so this will help.

snowscreamer

daniel80 wrote: »

Same as you snowscreamer, just filled up my oil tank at 49.1 p per litre . Quite cheap compared with last year, also have a cesspool which gets emptied about 6 times a year at £100 a go but if you take off the waste water rates not that much dearer. I have just diverted my washing machine water into a soak away under a new patio so this will help.

Ours is also £100 a pop but we have to empty it about once every 6 weeks, so 8 times a year. Mains sewerage would be £150/year. We are hoping to change to a sewage plant when we have raised funds, which will only need emptying every few years. Our neighbours all have septic tanks - we are the only house that still has a cesspit!

buglawton

daniel80 wrote: »

Same as you snowscreamer, just filled up my oil tank at 49.1 p per litre . Quite cheap compared with last year, also have a cesspool which gets emptied about 6 times a year at £100 a go but if you take off the waste water rates not that much dearer. I have just diverted my washing machine water into a soak away under a new patio so this will help.

Are you allowed to send waste washing machine water into a soakaway?