Heating system for house with no gas

Ryan._2

We're buying a house in a village just outside Bath with no gas supply. It's a 4 bed house which currently only has 2 NSHs.
We're feeling so confused about the best/cheapest system to put in! The options we're considering are oil, LPG, NSHs or an electric boiler. Does anyone have advice about these options? We are getting so much conflicting advice! We want to weigh up installation costs vs running costs.

Cardew

Welcome to the forum.


There are loads of threads asking essentially the same subject if you do a search; and conflicting advice is not surprising because there are many factors to consider.


IMO


1. Firstly dismiss an electric boiler!


2. The cheapest option to install, but most expensive to run, are plug in panel heaters/ fan heaters. DO NOT under any circumstances believe there are electrical heaters filled/coated with exotic substances that are cheaper to run than normal electrical heaters. All electrical heaters are 100% efficient and you will get EXACTLY the same amount of heat, for the same running cost, from a £10 heater from Argos or a heater costing upwards of £1,000 marketed with all manner of exotic claims.


3. An Air Source Heat Pump(ASHP) is very expensive to install - could be up to £10,000 and will need very large radiators or Under-floor heating. Generally if one is installed properly, and your house is suitable, you could expect to get around 2.5 times the heat output for every unit(kWh). The system needs to run very long hours during the day as the water temperature is low.


4. Your present system of NSH is OK, but not popular with many people, and the modern NSHs are pretty expensive. You might need modification of the house electrical wiring.


5. Oil CH. At the moment oil is the cheapest it has been for years at around 40p/litre - so 4p/kWh; albeit oil prices have been pretty volatile and could rise dramatically overnight! Will be pretty expensive to install boiler, rads etc. However that would be my preferred system.


Lastly whatever funds you have to spare, spend it on insulation!

Smiley_Dan

I realise I'm banging my head against a brick wall here, but another option is to not have a complicated heating system and invest in insulation and air tightness instead to the point that all you need on the very coldest days are a little top up (some houses don't even need that).

It takes a big big investment but it's the best long term solution for all of us, imo.

Whether it's the best solution for you depends on a lot of things.

I just want to publicise that it is at least possible.

[Deleted User]

First off... How about getting a log burner/multi-fuel stove installed? Depending of fuel source could be very cheap to run until a final decisions is made as to what heating system is required.

That's what we did and lived in the house for a year and get to know it taking time to research what is best and suits your circumstances/budget.

With one of the things being insulation

Cheers

PS Under no circumstances get LPG...

snowscreamer

I agree with Cardew. I had various advice in a previous thread about ways forward when we discovered our house-to-be was currently using electric wet central heating. Lots of renewals enthusiasts suggested ASHP / GSHP etc but we went with our gut instinct and had an oil boiler installed and connected up to the existing central heating system, and the electric boiler removed (this is the worst possible option - standard rate electricity is at least twice the price of gas/oil even when slightly lower efficiency is taken into account - not to mention I suspect if we had a really cold winter the 6kW boiler would not have coped). See this helpful webpage for fuel comparison - http://www.nottenergy.com/energy_cost_comparison.

We understand (from a conversation with our next door neighbours) that the tenant in our house before we bought it didn't actually use the central heating due the the horrendous bills and just had open fires and a couple of oil-filled electric radiators. Essentially only heating the living room and kitchen - brrrrrrr.

Anyway we have been really pleased with our decision. Here's a breakdown of our costs (we are in Surrey so expect some of the installation costs are likely to be cheaper in other areas!):

1. New steel oil tank 1360 litres - installation and lines back to the house (bear in mind we did already have a suitable site in the garden as oil had previously been used years ago) - £1074
2. Oil boiler, installation, commission and all connecting pipework to heating system, oil tank etc - £4100
3. New hot water tank, installation and connection to boiler and hot water pipework - £1385

Total installation costs: £6559


Running costs:
Over the last twelve months we have used 900 litres of oil. From this we can deduct that ~9000 kWh is required to heat our house and provide hot water. We did buy 1000 litres for £600 last year but the same quantity at today's prices would be around £400. So if we go with last year's higher prices then we spent £540 on oil for one year or £45/month. We also had an annual service on our boiler at £90.
Total running costs for one year: £630

An additional 9000 kWh of standard rate electricity to run an electric boiler would have cost us around £1100 on our current tariff. And I guess no service would have been required. Either way it's still a saving of £500 this year and it was quite a mild winter. If we'd used a lot more fuel due to a harsh winter then the savings would have been even greater. This year we are adding an additional radiator to the system for our living room as one end was cold and we spent £200 on electricity to keep an electric convector heater running over the winter. So I suspect next year's oil usage to be a bit higher but will save at least £100 using oil for that part of the house rather than electricity.

We plan to stock up on another 1000 litres of oil in August (unless prices start to edge up between now and then) and hopefully will secure this for around £400. It's a risk you take with the oil prices but even if they do rise I doubt they will be anywhere near as high as electricity so it's still a saving. The installation costs for an electric boiler will be lower but the higher running cost would soon wipe that out.

I would do it all again for peace of mind on running costs. LPG is pointless - it costs more than oil to run and I imagine about the same to install so it's a no-brainer to go for oil over LPG.

If I were in your situation I probably would investigate the ASHP/GSHP route more than we did simply because with no existing central heating system to reuse you have more flexibility to add underfloor heating or the larger radiators required. We ruled it out due to poor results when retrofitting to existing radiators.

Good luck - and if you have any questions about oil CH then don't hesitate to ask - I've learned a lot!!

Silent_Dancer

As others have said oil wins hands down.

silverwhistle

jeepjunkie's suggestion isn't a bad one, and combine it with smileydan's point about insulation. Can I add solar panels into the mix, along with a diverter to an immersion tank for excess power.

My combined gas and electric bill for the year will be about £260 for a 3-bed house, plus another £60 for briquets for co-firing in my stove alongside scrounged wood. I only had the central heating on when aged parent visited at Christmas as there was sufficient heat from the woodburner in the lounge. If it had been a really cold winter I could have retreated in there even more. Whatever you chose after a year a stove would still act as a back-up and supplementary source, and it's a gorgeous focus to have in your lounge.

macman

Given the potential volatility of oil prices, I would suggest that NSH's and an immersion heater running on E7 is the cheapest long term option.
That said, I would rather have oil because it is more flexible.
You are asking two different questions; which is 'best' and which is 'cheapest'-there are accordingly two different answers.

Smiley_Dan

And the answer to both is we don't know!

There's only one way to reduce risk though, and that's to reduce energy use.

matelodave

You've also got to take into account the type of house, age, insulation possibilities and lifestyle.

Ideally get it insulated to the highest level (loft, floor, cavity wall, double glazing, draught proofing etc) - that will reduce your energy consumption and allow you to have either smaller boilers, rads, heaters or whatever.

Is this your "forever house", if so then it might be worth spending a bit more for long term economy

Look at your life style, do you need heating on all day every day or is everyone out and so all you need is a quick burst mornings and evenings with possibly a bit longer at weekends.

Can you fit a log burner if that's your choice. They aren't everso cheap especially if you've got to sort out the flues. Have you space to store all the fuel - ideally sheltered for wood but bone dry if you decide to use briquettes.

Most people wouldn't recommend LPG as it's expensive but it ,like oil, will need space for the tank and access for filling (check the regs)

Storage heaters are probably the cheapest to install and can be fairly economical although they are running out of heat when you need them most in the evenings.

If you want to be green then a heat pump (air source are cheaper to install than ground source) or biomass (wood pellet boiler) might be a solution although expensive up front can be economical to run especially if you get RHI payments. You need a dry space to store the wood pellets for biomass.

As Cardew says a heatpump is better suited to all day heating. We had a similar dilemma when we moved out into a large detached three bedroomed bungalow five years ago.

We had a clean sheet (well manky old NSH which had to go anyway) as we were doing a big refurb. After a lot of deliberation we chose an air source heatpump with an overlay hotwater underfloor system. radiators would have been cheaper but we liked the idea of not having any rads, no requirement for fuel storage or deliveries and I fancied one as the running costs are about the same as mains gas.

Our total leccy bill (heating, hotwater, cooking and everything else was just under £700 last year of which about £300 was heating. our worst year was 2012 when it was very cold and our bill went up to £950 making the heating about £550. We are at home all day so low level gentle heating suits our lifestyle


I also felt quite smug watching squadrons of Calor or oil tankers whizzing up and down our road making late deliveries to those who had run or were running out of fuel in the winter months. The guy over the road pays Calor about £175 a month just for his gas and he's got a smaller semi-detached house with external wall insulation, double glazing and decent loft insulation.

The heatpump,water tank and installation was about £7300 which sounsd a lot but if you take away the cost of an oil boiler, fuel tank and installation it's about £2-3k more expensive. However we are now getting about £700 a year for 7 years (£4900) back in RHI payments so it works out significantly less.

You've got to add in the cost of rads or U/F, our U/f was about £7k for 140 square metres = about £50 square metre. Rads would be cheaper but U/F was our choice.

captainhindsight_2

Going for anything other than an ASHP, GSHP or Biomass boiler is mad. Yes the capital install costs are higher but the ongoing running costs, fuel costs and RHI income make it the only option for central heating and in some cases even on grid properties.