LPG heating costs extremely high -trying to find out why

Fire9water

Hi there, we moved into a three bedroom house out in a remote village back in Nov. we've got the heating running, using LPG no more than two hours max per day (and we're timing it!), the shower is electric and the bath rarely used.

However we are going through a large canister every 8 days- that's about £212 roughly each month.

We were told when we had the place surveyed that the boiler was 25kw and that the chances were that we'd be able to have the heating on all day for 2-3 canisters a month (not that we would)

It's a real expensive puzzle- if anyone has any ideas we would really appreciate some insight into how we're using so much fuel on only 2 hours use per day plus the odd bit of washing up!?

lovesgshp

It's not unusual with LPG. When we first moved to Italy, we had a small apartment, maybe 40m2. 2x 47kg bottles in the winter would maybe last 2 weeks and that was plus using a woodburner, gas heater and a parrafin type stove.

macman

You are spending £212pm in winter, but that doesn't equate to £2,544pa, because once the heating goes off in Spring, your usage will decrease greatly. Given that LPG is the single most expensive way of heating a home, short of burning piles of five pound notes, I don't think your costs are that high-I'd be amazed if you could heat a property like that on LPG for less than £1200pa.

Fire9water

We knew that LPG was the most expensive way to heat your home- and we were prepared for that- but just two hours a day running a 25 kW boiler seems odd? I'm basically living in the lounge with the wood burner and just keeping that room warm.....if we had the boiler running a lot I could understand it- but I guess that's the price you pay for living somewhere a bit off the beaten track!

thozza

1kg of LPG equates to approximately 14kWh of energy so a full 47kg bottle would be 660kWh which would run a 25kW boiler at full tilt for 26 hours, even given losses and efficiency, 16 hours from one bottle sounds a little on the low side.

Your fuel costs at £212/4 bottles means you are paying £0.08/kWh for you LPG

macman

Your only sensible option is to look at conversion to oil CH, or use E7 with NSH's and an immersion heater.

poppasmurf_bewdley

Could you not use your logburner more, and leave all the doors in the house open so the heat travels through your home.

This is precisely what I have done, and I haven't used my LPG central heating once this winter. All the LPG is used for now is heating hot water and showers, and my bill for the last quarter was £38!

Mister_G

We have a 4 bed house in the middle of nowhere. Our average LPG bulk consumption is about three 1000 litre fills per year at 30ppl, so about £900 for the year. This is with a 65% efficient old Baxi boiler.

Whilst LPG may be marginally more expensive than oil, the boiler maintenance costs are less and of course it doesn't get nicked!

Perhaps the OP could look into getting a bulk tank, assuming that he has somewhere to put it. This would certainly work out a lot cheaper than the 47kg bottles.