Alternatives to oil Central Heating and Water

dunstonh

I've commented on here before, but the cost to install two 17kW air source heat pumps, including switching to a  three phase electrical supply and changing nearly every radiator in the property was massive.

Our electricians, who install systems, told us that the heat pumps were unsuitable for our house.  Current technology (this was  2 years ago) was that the house would never get up to temperature.       The property is a mixture of 17th to 19th century.

The estimated cost to bring the property up to standard was over £100k not including the cost of installation or replacement fittings and decoration.    

Our worst year for oil was 3700 litres, with the best being 1700 litres.      We also have an AGA running chucking out 24-hour heat apart from summer, and from around September to May at least one of the burners is running morning to night (to delay the central heating being used).  Often two or three are going during the coldest points.

But hopefully you are in a minority amongst those who heat their property with oil.  I'm not arguing against oil heating, I'm arguing against the suggestion that a heat pump could not replace an oil boiler in the vast majority of dwellings.

I used the word "many".  Not vast majority.    We don't have any neighbours but most of the properties in our parish and surrounding parishes are 17th to 19th century with similar issues.  There are some 20th-century builds which would find it easier to modernise and switch, but the older historic builds are going to struggle without some destruction of their history and/or very high cost.  That is until the improvements in heat pumps make it viable (which do appear to be happening).    It is probably more likely that synthetic oils will fill the gap in time.

My understanding is that around 10% of UK housing is believed to be unsuitable for heat pumps.  I suspect (and its only a guess) that the majority of that 10% will be the older rural properties that use oil.


 

Reed_Richards

I made a very crude estimate that if your oil consumption exceeds 8.5 litres per day on average then your property would be unsuitable for heating with a single heat pump.  3700 litres in a year is just over 10 litres per day so possibly not suitable.  And the cost would be £1850 if you could get oil at 50p per litre so @dunstonh had an expensive house to heat; maybe it is better now?

Of course, @dunstonh doesn't have a house that is unsuitable for heat pumps, but it might need two rather than one to provide enough heat.  I suspect (and it's also only a guess) that the majority of the 10% of houses deemed to be unsuitable for heat pumps have nowhere to site a heat pump that doesn't place it too close to the neighbours to comply with current regulations.  That's not likely to be the issue with older historic builds, which tend to come with much more land than a modern home.

Edit: E.g. see https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6548089/octopus-heat-pump-cant-fit-alternatives#latest      

ispookie666

You could also do what we did—change our ancient oil boiler a few years ago, followed by an A2A heat pump.  
We use the Mitsi air conditioner for heating. We do have solar and batteries, which help in colder months. The boiler only comes on when it's near zero; the rest of the time, it's for heating water.  
We last purchased oil in April 2023 and were just about to place an order for 1000L,  we cut the oil consumption by half.