Wood Pellet Boiler or Oil ? UFH or Radiators

motorguy

jwdale80 wrote: »

I just bought Oil at 46.8p per litre, and if I have worked it out correctly that is 4.68p per Kw. That is cheaper than gas at the moment which is 4.79p per Kw. Oil has come down massivley in price and appears to keep dropping. The big question is of course if this trend will continue.
I'm wondering if oil prices have reduced due to consumers converting to other alternatives, therefore reducing the demand for oil.
One option- find a decent well serviced 2nd hand oil boiler and tank. If there remains a shift in the price of oil over the comming years 'great'! If biomass still seems the best option in the next year or two then at least you will not have spent a large expenditure on your oil boiler, and you will have used oil while it was cheap.

http://fueloilnews.co.uk/2014/07/research-predicts-oil-price-drop-will-continue/

As I said it is now 46.8p per litre with one company.

Home heating isnt the main use of oil, so a small number of people changing to pellets isnt going to impact raw oil price.

Theres global influences at work on the price of crude.

There tends to be a lot of seasonal variation in heating oil prices and when we've a cold snap prices suspiciously tend to go UP.

Pellets tend to be relatively static in price.

Pellets are cheaper and to me more importantly, made from renewable sources. Also, its a local industry so you're helping local jobs.

I would personally recommend having an oil boiler as a secondary heat source - handy as a backup and if oil prices do go through the floor (which they wont) then you've the option of running on the cheaper fuel.

We've that set up as my wifes elderly parents live in an attached granny flat and we couldnt risk being without heat for them if there was any outage on the biomass burner. We also have water heating solar panels for hot water may -> October.

CEON44

jwdale80 wrote: »

I just bought Oil at 46.8p per litre, and if I have worked it out correctly that is 4.68p per Kw. That is cheaper than gas at the moment which is 4.79p per Kw. Oil has come down massivley in price and appears to keep dropping. The big question is of course if this trend will continue.
I'm wondering if oil prices have reduced due to consumers converting to other alternatives, therefore reducing the demand for oil.
One option- find a decent well serviced 2nd hand oil boiler and tank. If there remains a shift in the price of oil over the comming years 'great'! If biomass still seems the best option in the next year or two then at least you will not have spent a large expenditure on your oil boiler, and you will have used oil while it was cheap.

http://fueloilnews.co.uk/2014/07/research-predicts-oil-price-drop-will-continue/

As I said it is now 46.8p per litre with one company.

True that oil is dropping but not sure if its going to be sustained. And as usual the % drop in crude prices isnt being reflected in consumer products such as petrol, diesel, fuel oil etc etc. Greedy suppliers never pass on the savings to customers but are quick to hit us with the rises. Anyway, back to the biomass situation. I made some tentative enquiries. You can get a "basic" pellet boiler, with small hopper for about 4 grand. Add to that install costs of around 2 grand, so maybe 6 grand total is cheapest cost. So when install is completed you can get payback from Gov of £2500. Plus a payment every year for 7 years. so in effect you can make biomass pay for itself over time. My worry that the boiler at this price is the "cheap" option and may not be the best make, or the most efficient etc etc. Paying more than this though would make it uncompetitive and not worth the hassle. Maybe in time biomass boilers will become cheaper. Not sure why they cost so much more. you can buy a Grant condensing oil boiler for about £800, but a Grant biomass will cost you £8000. Big difference but not sure why

PaulBowen

I'd go for a wood pellet boiler, as long as you can source your dry wood from a local source for a fair price then you're sorted !

Easy !

CEON44

I thought I would resurrect this thread in light of recent developments regarding RHI payments

motorguy

CEON44 wrote: »

I thought I would resurrect this thread in light of recent developments regarding RHI payments

Doesn't impact me. We didn't get the grant.


Couple of things I would add in the two years since I posted on this.


Currently, its probably cheaper to run on oil. It was significantly cheaper at one point, and I think now its still fractionally cheaper. Therefore if you were to do this now and not getting a grant, it wouldn't make sense if you were looking for a financial ROI.


Also, we've stopped using Balcas for our pellets. We've an auger that pulls the pellets from the bin and then drops them in to the burner automatically. We found that their pellets aren't absolutely bone dry any more and therefore were inclined to block up our auger - sometimes several times a day - and thus knocked our burner off. We didn't have this problem when we first got the biomass burner and auger so we suspect they have changed their process or are struggling to get the wood dry enough. Of course they totally denied any changes (their customer service isn't great either anyway) however Carlisle Fuels now will blow in pellets so we use them. TOTAL transformation - no more blocked auger!


Granted, if you're putting them in by the bag load you're probably not going to have this problem, but the Balcas pellet did not agree with our auger (we've also heard of other people having the same problem).

CEON44

I dont have any problems with Balcas Brites. I am using 10kg bgs though. I was able to get pellets cheaper last year from England. They were ok but left a lot more ash than the brites. Havent tried Carlisle yet as Balcas are now a bit cheaper. Balcas only deliver 750kg pallets now in NI.at cost of £169. 975kg with Carlisle are £240

motorguy

CEON44 wrote: »

I dont have any problems with Balcas Brites. I am using 10kg bgs though. I was able to get pellets cheaper last year from England. They were ok but left a lot more ash than the brites. Havent tried Carlisle yet as Balcas are now a bit cheaper. Balcas only deliver 750kg pallets now in NI.at cost of £169. 975kg with Carlisle are £240

I'd say we'd have had no issues with Balcas if we were using bags but the pellets just didn't agree with our auger. Took us a long time to realise it was the pellets - we thought it was an auger fault.

thetope

captainhindsight wrote: »

...So in theory, you could leave you heating running all day long with the windows open etc and actually earn money.

Farmers do this with empty outbuildings and sheds, heat them even if they are empty because they are profiting by doing so.

the poster's username really made me chuckle... what a mess we're in now.

CEON44

Yes it was well known way back that it didnt make sense but there you go