New home, old heating system. What to do?

rdone

Lots of advice here but as we have plumbers here right now (currently drilling a hole in the wall as I type - oh it's loud!) I thought I'd give you our costs and reasonings.

We don't have natural gas here so our options were oil (what was here when we bought) LPG (either in a large tank or big orange bottles), electric, ground source or heat pump.  My ideal was a ground source or heat pump but when I looked into it and spoke to a lot of people who fit them we were going to need to reinsulate our entire house and would lose about 2 - 3 inches off each wall in every room, both work best with under floor heating so would need to rip up floor to put in and the grants don't cover any of that.  I've also found that (in Wales) grants are only available for means tested or medical issues - neither of which we (fortunately) fall into.  We were looking at around £20-30,000 which we just don't have.

Next I looked at electric and we'd need to have a hot water tank which is something I really didn't want.  They do make combi ones but our house is too big.  So this option was out too.

I despise the oil, it stinks and it's in an ugly green tank in our garden.  We've had nothing but issues with it since we moved in last August and we'd have to pay around £1000 for a new tank, let alone the cost of the boiler which is quite a bit more than gas.

So we've gone LPG - to have our system converted from oil to LPG, all current pipework ripped out and new added, take out old boiler and water tank, fit new LPG boiler, add stand alone shower to bathroom where old water tank was, run pipe work to attic (plan is to one day add another bathroom up there for the bedrooms that are already there) we're being charged just over £4,000.  That's including our boiler which is a combi, a very good and well known make but not including all the pipework.  Because we're LPG the boiler is slightly more expensive than natural gas too.  We're going to change the rads ourselves as and when we can afford to and some we'll just put TRVs on (they don't all have TRVs on them so all winter we have heated every room in a 5 bed house!).

I honestly think the best would be to just bite the bullet and put a new system in - especially if you aim to stay there for quite some time.  The suggestions of putting what you can't afford onto a 0% card is good - but remember to only do this if you can afford to repay it and don't put any other purchases on!

FreeBear

twopenny said: If you want a quick short term fix while you study the options have you asked a heating engineer whether a power flush and balancing the radiators would give you a year or two of better heating?
About £100

A power flush is likely to cost a lot more than £100. £500 seems to be about the ballpark around here, although I have heard the likes of BG charging upwards of £800.

FaceHead

Have you bled the radiators? This could be a cause of some of the cold spots, and is a simple job (with a 50p radiator key).

The next step is a bit of a DIY power flush: take the radiators outside and hose them through with the garden hose. Not half as good as a powerflush that does the pipes too, but still free (well, get a rubber mallet). 

I'd invest a day of DIY time before bitting the multi thousand pound bullet. If you can clean the system up and squeeze a couple of winters out of it, that would be a win. 

BUFF

Oakeshott said:

2) The more expensive option, but maybe cheaper in the long-run: Bite the bullet and get the whole system replaced with a new combi boiler and rads throughout. 
 

You don't have to go combi. Indeed, if you think that you will be in the house long enough to see this new system through to it's likely replacement by a heatpump in the future you may well want to have a tanked system.
Again, future-proofing for a future heatpump oversize new rads so that they provide adequate output at the lower flow temps that a heatpump needs for efficiency (this will also improve efficiency for a condensing boiler meantime). Similarly, don't have any microbore in the pipe runs

Bendy_House

And finally, there's...biomass

Oakshott, do you have a garage with space, or room for a wee outbuilding where a pellet boiler could be fitted? Expensive initial install - but there may be some help - but afterwards it should be one of the cheapest systems to run.

(Based on my very initial research.)

FreeBear

Bendy_House said:

And finally, there's...biomass

Oakshott, do you have a garage with space, or room for a wee outbuilding where a pellet boiler could be fitted? Expensive initial install - but there may be some help - but afterwards it should be one of the cheapest systems to run.

(Based on my very initial research.)

Wait until you see where a lot of the wood pellets come from. A fair chunk gets imported from North America and Europe, and Russia is one of the top five producers (according to some pundits). With more sanctions being imposed virtually every day, supply from the East is going to be restricted which will push up the prices.

If you are going to go for biomass, look for a system that can use pellets and wood chips rather than tying yourself down to one type.