Advice: Eco-Friendly replacements for oil tank, oil boiler & LPG

First_Time_Buyer_Advice

We're in the process of buying our first house (rural, late 19th-century semi-detached). The property has mains electricity and water but no gas, and drainage is to a septic tank shared with the adjoining property.

At present, the house has LPG (which is outside) for the kitchen’s cooker hob, as well as an oil tank and oil fired central heating boiler (which are both in outhouses).

I was wondering if anyone has any eco-friendly solutions to the oil tank, oil central heating and LPG. We’re interested in applying for the Green Homes Grant. One suggestion has been to get an air source heat pump – would that remove the need for the oil tank and boiler?

J_B

Sadly, most things MSE are NOT eco friendly - stick with oil and LPG to save money or ground/air source to save the planet!

greatcrested

heat pumps require all new internal piping and radiators (much larger than oil rads as the temperature is lower) or probably pull up the floor for underfloor heating.

Also require to be on for constant backgound heating. You can't just 'turn up the heating' if it's been off as it takes much longer to heat up th house (again, the lower temp of the heat source)

Do some googling for costs of both installation and running costs.

dunstonh

Financially, sticking with oil is the going to be the cheapest option for some time.   It is early days on the alternatives and you would be paying early adopter prices.    If you have money to burn, then that is fine but remember that the other problem with adopting early tech is that it will go obsolete quicker.   
A 19th century house may not have the insulation to be suitable for a heat pump yet. So, you may need to do a lot of work there first.
There will come a time when the technology and options are cheaper.   In the meantime, it can be more eco friendly to stick with what you have and change it later when its at end of life rather than whilst it is still working.

First_Time_Buyer_Advice

Thank you everyone for replying to my post! Someone mentioned to me about switching to gas (the house currently has an oil tank) and then having a combi boiler. We were thinking of moving the hot water cylinder that is currently in the bathroom - but by changing to a combi boiler we wouldn't need to keep the cylinder. Does anyone have any thoughts about this and the process?

Ectophile

Gas is lower carbon than oil - the ratio of hydrogen to carbon in the fuel is higher, so you get more steam and less CO2.  So in that sense, it's more eco-friendly.  Though propane isn't as good as methane (natural gas) in that respect.

matelodave

I have an "eco friendly" heatpump, but thats only because I had a very uneco friendly heap of rusty storage heaters and we were refurbing the place. Had there been either an oil or gas boiler together with its associated infrastructure then that's what I would have stayed with (although I might have been reluctuant to stay with LPG) because although my heatpump is reasonably economical to run, it nowhere as cheap as oil or mains gas but cheaper than LPG.

Be eco friendly if you want but it will cost a lot of money up front and it could easily take you 10-12 to recover your costs (even with the RHI). In my case the incremental cost over an above a conventional system wasn't as great as it would be to pull out what you've got and start again - we've now had it for 10 years and it's probably just about paid for it's self, but that also included £5k worth of RHI