Oil or Gas ... again

IvanOpinion

It appears that gas lines are being brought into our area in the near future.  Our oil fired boiler is over 20 years old, but is running fine.  The oil tank is looking a bit dozed and I believe we may have to replace that next year.  So all-in-all it is possibly a good time to have to decide on whether to switch to gas.

I reckon we use about 2000L of oil per year (a couple of fills does us 11 months) - about £80 per month.  We have a pressurised water system and solar panels on a 4 bedroom detached house.  I am wondering, especially given the latest price rises, if gas would be a good choice and, in particular
- what sort of price bracket would it be to remove the oil and install gas#;
- how does gas pricing compare with oil ?
- would gas still be able to provide a pressurised water system?
- any issues with solar panels that currently help to heat water?

BTW I searched the forum and found a couple of threads from 2-4 years ago on this subject and they seemed quite positive about the gas option (but that was before the latest price rises).

Thanks

anotherquestion

Have oil myself, and don't think I would want to change at the moment, I notice even the gas companies have stopped the advertising, probably nothing good to say to draw the customers.

qwert_yuiop

Gas will probably get cheaper again when Vladimir gets his nordstream pipeline under the Baltic, direct to the heart of Europe.

qwert_yuiop

Meanwhile, the price of fertiliser, derived from gas, has sprouted like nitrogen fed grass. We may end up with organic food by accident. 

snowmen

Still happier with gas over oil even with the price increases - radiators used to take an age to warm up and not stay warm when we were on oil, and to have the option of bathing the kids in the summer without having to use the immersion were major selling points for us.

moneytalks

Hi
This is my personal opinion. Had oil for 30 years but had to replace tank, boiler etc. so decided to go for gas.

I no longer have a water tank in the roof space or hot press. When gas is on it just heats radiators. Unlike oil when heat is on rads and water are heated.

With gas when you turn on the hot tap the gas heats up the mains water and you get hot water after 15 seconds approx. I’m not sure if this an additional cost.

Radiators have TRV on them. The settings are from 1 to 5. I have them at 3. These valves heat the room to whatever setting you have them to. When the room reaches required temperature,they turn themselves off as no hot water flows through the rad.

I have just got a bill of £250.00 for one month of gas. I now have upstairs rads turned off.

Luckily I have a multi fuel stove, and am using it.

Gas is really expensive, and if I had to do it again, I would have kept the oil.

skycatcher

I switched from oil to gas last spring. This was purely to free up space in our small back garden. This is my first winter using it and it seems roughly the same cost as oil. I'm in a 3 bed semi and its runing around £2.50 a day using the heating for 6 hours plus showers/baths/dishes. I have a multi fuel stove which gets lit for the weekend and it costs about £2 a day for smokeless coal. I don't use the gas when the stove is lit. The gas main was out into our street last spring and out of 80 houses about 10 have converted and my neighbour has just signed up in the last week! I'm in Co.Down.

KiwiCoop

moneytalks said:

Hi
This is my personal opinion. Had oil for 30 years but had to replace tank, boiler etc. so decided to go for gas.

I no longer have a water tank in the roof space or hot press. When gas is on it just heats radiators. Unlike oil when heat is on rads and water are heated.

With gas when you turn on the hot tap the gas heats up the mains water and you get hot water after 15 seconds approx. I’m not sure if this an additional cost.

Radiators have TRV on them. The settings are from 1 to 5. I have them at 3. These valves heat the room to whatever setting you have them to. When the room reaches required temperature,they turn themselves off as no hot water flows through the rad.

I have just got a bill of £250.00 for one month of gas. I now have upstairs rads turned off.

Luckily I have a multi fuel stove, and am using it.

Gas is really expensive, and if I had to do it again, I would have kept the oil.

£250 a quarter surely?!

Rodders53

Oil today is probably around 60p/litre for 10.35 kWh of energy (6p/kWh). Check you supplier prices.  It's winter and usually at a premium over summer prices.
Gas on the capped Standard Variable Tariff is around the 4.5p/kWh mark so should be cheaper for the same amount of energy.
Your crystal ball on what fuel prices will do in the future may be better than mine? But I've no idea so it'll be a gamble whatever you do.

Gas boilers are slightly cheaper than oil burners I believe.  A gas system boiler works with a HW storage tank, just as an oil system boiler does.  Personally I'd no want a combi boiler and installing one to replace a tank is more work and needs a more powerful boiler to instant heat the hot water.

Hot water storage tanks and the plumbing will be essential for use with heat pumps at some time in the future and maybe ought to be costed out, too.  NB solar water heating (whether solar thermal or solar voltaic) needs a HW storage tank ... and you already have solar so it's a no brainer to keep it.

Call a few Oftec installers for ball park costs of removal and safe disposal of the Kerosene, Tank, and Boiler.  Plus others for the cost of a gas boiler install.  Not forgetting the price of the pipe and meter install to your property from the Transco.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/categories/lpg-heating-oil-solid-other-fuels is worth looking through (and it's parent Energy sub forum) to see some relevant (and I believe fairly recent) discussions on similar lines...

donnac2558

moneytalks said:

Hi
This is my personal opinion. Had oil for 30 years but had to replace tank, boiler etc. so decided to go for gas.

I no longer have a water tank in the roof space or hot press. When gas is on it just heats radiators. Unlike oil when heat is on rads and water are heated.

With gas when you turn on the hot tap the gas heats up the mains water and you get hot water after 15 seconds approx. I’m not sure if this an additional cost.

Radiators have TRV on them. The settings are from 1 to 5. I have them at 3. These valves heat the room to whatever setting you have them to. When the room reaches required temperature,they turn themselves off as no hot water flows through the rad.

I have just got a bill of £250.00 for one month of gas. I now have upstairs rads turned off.

Luckily I have a multi fuel stove, and am using it.

Gas is really expensive, and if I had to do it again, I would have kept the oil.

WOW!!!!  That is really high.  

You seem to have a combi boiler, which is what I have.   The boiler does turn on when you turn your taps on so if you are using loads of water it will us gas.

Look at your boiler, there will be dials three for water and one for heat.   The middle dial should have E in the middle if you turn to that, it might help?    When I got my new gas in NIHE the workmen told me to turn the dial to E for economy,  it gives you the same heat etc, but you use less gas.    A neighbour was not told this and used £40 a week knew this because they used the pay as you go card.

The oil system you had sounds like a friend, but she cannot heat the water without putting the heating on.  Nightmare in the summer, sitting with the heat blasting.  She has an electric water heating, but it eats the electric, so it's put the heating on to heat the water.

IvanOpinion

Just an update.  We eventually decided to go with gas and have just had it installed. With my usual skilful timing we have managed to get the 40% price rise from SSE - how lucky am I. On the other hand first impressions are good: the new hive system works well; the boiler is pretty much silent; and the radiators heat a lot quicker.

We kept the pressurised system we already had and replaced the boiler with a regular gas boiler (as opposed to combi or system boiler).

I am now able to answer my own queries, which may be useful to someone else

what sort of price bracket would it be to remove the oil and install gas? 
About £2500 +/- 10%.
We went for a fitter at the upper end of the price bracket because he came across as very professional. He did a first class job and was finished in under a day (inc. removal of old boiler and tank). One shock is that you need planning permission (about £85 - or £100 if you did not know you needed it and apply for it retrospectively )

The costs of running a pipe from the mains to our house was covered by Phoenix including relaying brickwork and tarmacking a strip on the drive. Phoenix has some incentive offers available - see their web site.

how does gas pricing compare with oil ? 
It is too early to tell, but both are playing silly buggers with pricing at the minute.

would gas still be able to provide a pressurised water system?
Yes, no problem, we simply swapped out the boiler and kept everything else

any issues with solar panels that currently help to heat water?
  no change for us at all