Oil Boiler replacement

Ace135

Hi, I am off grid for gas and have a very old oil boiler. (approx. 30 this year). A heating engineer last year said the burner was falling to bits and didn't want to repair it, it is still chugging along but makes a puttering sound nowadays and the walls of the pantry where it lives are quite dark / sooty in some places. My original heating engineer who serviced it for years said the burner was ok and fixed it in January 2024 and seems a bit reluctant to quote for a new one as it is running ok at present. I've had a few winters where it conks out and I have no heating or hot water for 2 to 3 weeks at a time so am feeling more towards replacing it now before winter 2024. It's a Worcester Bosch heat slave. I have had a couple of quotes and these are in the £6000 to £8000 ball park. The quotes are from WB accredited engineers locally whose firms have good reputation and reviews so I guess there's an element of paying for that but it does seem a lot of money to find. I am a single low income household. My main questions are - does the price seem about right in today's market? and should I go for internal or external boiler? It is in a pantry in the kitchen and I had wondered about taking out the wall to create more space in the kitchen and having the boiler outside, but I am worried that maybe there are drawbacks to an external boiler that I may be unaware of or that it may put future house buyers off should I come to sell the house in the future? Are external oil combi boilers as reliable as internal and is WB a good brand to stick with? I have heard good things about WB and also Grants oil boilers. I may need to replace my single skinned oil storage tank too - I am guessing this is around 30 years old based on what previous owner of the house said, what is usual life expectancy for these tanks does anyone know? I have been quoted £4k to remove old tank and put a new 650 litre double skinned tank in.
Thanks in advance for any help / advice in making these decisions - very much appreciated. 

lohr500

Both your quotes sound on the expensive side.

Due to a leak in 2020 we had our single skin 2500 litre oil tank replaced with a double skinned tank.
Price to pump out the oil from the old tank into storage containers, extend the base/install the 25000 litre bunded tank and pump oil back into new tank was £2400.

Cost to replace our ancient 30 year old + internal oil boiler with a new Grant external oil boiler (with 10 year parts and labour warranty) was just over £5k in2021.
The work included replacing one internal radiator with a larger one, modifying the system from gravity feed to a Y plan, adding a magnetic filter and relocating the boiler outside. That was for a 35kW boiler.

Best thing we ever did was to relocate the boiler outside. Much quieter in the kitchen and no oil fumes.

The external boiler has worked faultlessly since the instal and we are saving around 30% on our oil costs due to the increased efficiency from the boiler and the Y plan setup.

Ours isn't a combi boiler though so I can't comment on the reliability of external combi boilers.

FreeBear

At £10K-12K (boiler+tank), I'd suggest looking at a heat pump as an alternative. Whilst you'll need larger radiators and possibly new pipework in places, you'll gain by not having an oil tank and having to get fuel pumped in.

Yes, heat pumps work best in a well insulated property, but so does any other form of heating. If sized correctly and coupled with appropriately sized radiators, one will keep you warm.

Veteransaver

We found replacing our old internal boiler which flued via a chimney was expensive partly due to having to reline the flue due to them all having to be condensing boilers now.. So we went for an external boiler in the end, still probably around £5k to fit one now though. I did consider a heat pump, and I would do now considering the £7.5k grant available.

Ace135

Thanks both I appreciate your thoughts. I did look into an air source heat pump last year but it was a big undertaking and with it being a small house there were difficulties getting the correct size radiator in some areas, etc.
I wish there was some way of getting more reasonable quotes for the oil boiler as what I have had so far do seem quite steep. Any recommendations on that much appreciated thanks again 

Veteransaver

What's the issue with your radiators? Small bore pipes or something?
For a small house I'd consider getting a few air conditioner units (these can heat in winter and cool in summer and are actually more efficient than "wet" systems. No grant though but likely cheaper than £6-8k
Then get a large hot water tank and heat It on off peak electricity.

Ace135

It was just they could not fit bigger radiators in some locations due to space, door clearance etc 
I would like to find an oil boiler just wondered the best most cost effective way to do it. I have been quoted around £7700 for external Grants Vortex Pro 26kw 

lohr500

Whereabouts in the country do you live?

We had our work done by Aztec Gas in Colne, Lancashire..
I have no affiliation with them, but can only speak highly of the work they carried out both in replacing our boiler and more recently replacing our immersion tank which had started to leak do to previous acidic water problems.

Reed_Richards

I replaced an external oil boiler with an ASHP in the same location.  The alternative would have been to replace my oil tank at considerable cost immediately and, in all probability, replace the boiler itself a few years later. 

My ASHP has kept the house just as warm as my oil boiler did and it is a bit cheaper to run.  But I did have to replace nearly all of my existing radiators.  Fortunately in my case those were mostly double panel and by replacing them with double panel double convector radiators ("Type 22") I did not need that much more wall space in most cases.  However I do realise that fitting the radiators in can be a really significant issue.  You can get really fat radiators ("Type 33") or radiators with integrated fans which makes the radiator more efficient so allows it to be sized smaller - but then you get a bit of noise from the fan.  I didn't use the fan-assisted type and only two "fat" radiators, but I did have to add an extra radiator in two rooms.

A big advantage of the ASHP is that you should be able to get a grant of £7,500 towards the cost.  Octopus seem to be offering competitive quotes for ASHP installations if you live in a region where they operate.

   

Ace135

Thanks all. I live in county Durham. 

Kiran

Last year I replaced an old Worcester Heatslave 26/32 internal boiler with a Worcester Danestor heat only boiler, new efficient 250L tank and 2 solar thermal panels for £10k so on the surface that quote sounds a bit high, but I'm geographically a long way away. I did it this way to allow my hot water to be heater by solar thermal in the summer and solar PV in the winter months. That being said, a combi would almost certainly work out better in a small house or with fewer people