Change to Electric Boiler or keep oil?

Active_Lad

old_wrinkly wrote: »

I am browsing the beetlejuice.com site to see if there would be any benefit in using their buyers weekend but don't want to do anything until I am certain I am not going to change.

BoilerJuice are a waste of time. Their "discounted" price is, in my experience, a lot more than you can get from a local supplier on a one-off delivery.

Our ordering scheme works on a bi-monthly basis with advertised dates, so everyone knows when the orders are going to be placed. doesn't take long for everyone to get into sync and it saves us on every order, into the £100's.

old_wrinkly_2

amtrakuk

Interesting reply, your figures don't seem that horrendous but would be interested to know what type of property you are heating etc. See my first post for my details as comparison.

Active_Lad

Thanks for the info on Beetlejuice. My problem with combined ordering is that my immediate neighbours I have contact with have swimming pools so they use a lot more oil than I do so don't think combined ordering would work.

amtrakuk

old wrinkly:

"Interesting reply, your figures don't seem that horrendous but would be interested to know what type of property you are heating etc. See my first post for my details as comparison."

My Property:

I live in a c1900 end terrace back to back, double glazed, High ceilings on the ground floor (8ft?), Gas Effect fire (drafty as hell - hopefully going to be blocked off this year), no cavity insulation.
As I'm in a back 2 back there are only 2 rooms on the ground floor (front room and Kitchen), 3 rooms on the 1st floor (Box room, Bathroom and master bedroom) and 2 rooms in the 2nd Floor.

Heater Spec:

The spec I made for the heaters was to keep it simple = reliable. All heaters are to be thermostatic controlled and wall mountable. I employed a sparky to come in and install power outlets as I wanted a professional, safe job (After I overloaded and blow the ground floor ring main!)

Heater Positioning:

1 x 3Kw Front room
1 x 2Kw Kitchen
1 x 2Kw Box Room
1 x 2Kw Master Bedroom
1 x 2Kw Attic Room(s)

I only really heat the rooms I'm in most, Front room and Kitchen. Despite the cold winter we had this year, I still kept the front room at about 20 -22 degrees and the kitchen at about 18 degrees - Both on about 50%
I don't heat the bathroom as I dont generally spend more than about 5-10 mins in there. My bedroom (above the front room) I put on an hour before going to bed and left it on 50% during the night. The attic room and box room were heated 24/7, left the heating on low 1/4

Why I chose convection heaters.

I tried the older Dimplex OFX oil filled radiators and found they were abit uneconomical in trying to heat the wall they were mounted on as well as the room - bit of a waste as it was mounted on outside wall. They really needed to be switched on 24/7 due to their slow reaction time, just regulating between 50% when I went out to turning the thermostat up to 100% when I was in. This is why I chose Regular wall mountable convection thermostatic controlled heaters - Instant heat. When I went out of the house or was leaving the room for a long period (ie goto bed), I just turned the heater off at the thermostat. If, when I came in I needed to warm up a cold room I cranked the thermostat to Full. When it was warm enough in the room I backed it off to between 2 and 3 and left it to click on and off as needed.
Tip - Don't use a heater with an integrated fan in your front room as this will drive you and you're neighbors crazy as you will keep having to turn the tele up and down when the fan turns on and off as well as vibrations on the wall!
About an hour before I went to bed I turned the heater on in the bedroom to 1/4. As this is above the front room It never really got cold in there. I left it on overnight as I slept.

Lifestyle:

I work most days (Mon - Fri) so leave the house at about 8:30-9. Get back home at about 6ish, goto bed at about 11pm. Weekends, usually go out to friends for most the day and spend the evenings at home. As I am living on my own the heating isn't required during the days usually.

Extra Electric Equipment:

At the moment I have an 12Kw Redring Powerstream on demand water heater to supply hot water. This obviously doesn't supply enough hot water for a power shower or a quick fill bath. It is however enough for a regular shower and the sink. During the cold winter we had recently I only used the hot tap and regulated it to about 2 - 3 litres a minute which gave water at about 50 degrees. Now the warmer weather is hear and the mains supply is warmer I can comfortably fill a bath in 10 mins. I chose this method of hot water as there is no standing heat loss - it only uses electricity when you turn the hot tap on

Although I now have an electric cooker I rarely use it unless others are coming round, I mainly stick to a table top induction hob I bought off ebay along with a table top oven.

Hope this helps.

A

samtheman1k

old_wrinkly wrote: »

Thanks for the update.

As any new oil boiler would have to be external the installation costs could be much less than you suggest although I take your point.

A new electric boiler might well involve higher installation costs than I had thought of to comply with the latest regulations etc.

Out of curiousity, what is the comparative cost of gas these days?

All in all it seems that oil remains the only viable option at the moment and I will have to just suffer the high unit price. The alternative is a high capital outlay with no appreciable gain in running costs.

Not sure there is much more I can do to reduce my overall heating costs, although I hope a new hot water cylinder will help but not sure by what amount, as I've already done the obvious things.

I am of course open to any suggestions for improvement.

If you are willing to have a high outlay (at least £5k, depending on type), then consider a ground source or air source heat pump. Will be similar cost to that of replacing your oil boiler, but, going by Cardew's figures, it will be considerably cheaper to run than that of your oil boiler, particularly the ground version. Search for air source heat pumps on this forum and you'll find a post by myself on the topic.

amtrakuk

Also unless you have Gas pipe into your house it can cost 10s of £k to have one put in depending how far away from the gas main you are.

old_wrinkly_2

Thanks for the latest replies and apologies for the slight delay in responding.

The very detailed information provided by amtrakuk shows that with careful planning an electric heating system can be designed that has reasonable running costs. Would be interesting to know what the standard rate kWh is and who the supplier is.

Obviously other users would have different needs. For example, as I am older and retired my heating needs would be greater so it might not suit my lifestyle.

Not heard of the air source heat pump mentioned by samtheman1k. Did take a quick looks and will revisit but don't think the other half would go a great bundle on having large units hanging from the walls.

Still been unable to get any info on the Economy 10 tariff from Scottish & Southern. This is crucial and without it I can't go any further in costings, as this is the only viable option for having an electric boiler according to the boiler manufacturer I spoke to. I have a couple of months before I need to order oil but as things stand it looks like I will just have to bear the brunt of higher oil. and have an extra pair of woolly socks handy!!

I have been on a couple of price comparison sites to see if I can reduce my electricity bill and at the moment, depending on which supplier I switch to, I could make savings of about £150 per annum. However, having just switched my E.ON tariff to one capped until October 2009, I need to be careful I don't jump and find the rate going up beyond what I thought.

I've also been on a couple of energy saving sites and was surprised to see that the central heating pump is a fairly heavy user of electricty and that by fitting an a-rated pump savings of about £45 per annum can be made. The initial capital outlay would be around £140 but that would soon pay for itself. If I couple that with an new efficient hot water cylinder (and heating a full tank on Economy 7) I could, with a reasonable capital outlay, offset some of the oil increase by reducing my electricity bill

SueJS

Hi All
I have been reading with interest all your comments on alternative heating to oil secifically the viability of changing to electric. Being a household with no gas available and central heating with oil, we have also been looking at possible alternatives but finding it quite difficult to make comparisons.

We ran out of heating oil around early March this year and refused to buy more oil due to the high prices, hoping that the prices would come down in the Summer (alas as you all know they have infact risen). We bought 2 electric convector heaters with thermostats for around £20 each and found them to be extremely efficient as far as heating the room (we don't have large rooms). We have been unable though to make any sort of comparison as to whether it is more expensive or not.

Our dilema is whether to buy another tank of oil for the coming winter (doesn't look like prices will come down) or continue to use electric for the whole of the winter - could turn out to be more expensive!

I would also like to say, I am surprised that more have not stopped buying oil through the summer months - we continually see oil delivery tankers around our village. Surely if more of us refused to buy (relatively easy through the summer) the price would have to come down?

Thanks for reading

Sue

amtrakuk

Hi there Old Wrinkly...

Im on eons Price Protection 1 Oct 2009 tariff. I have however moved from British gas of recent.

The projected electricity usage this quarter is about 120-150 which is a bit over my prediction but still cheaper than the combined real ownership of the life of my gas combi (90-95 / month (inc depreciation (£10/month), homecare (£10/month) and my gas bill))

It is dependent on how many rooms you want to heat.

The 3 KW heater I installed is from Argos:052/1936 - 29.99.
The 2 KW heaters I installed from Argos : 415/9122 - 14.97.

As they are thermostatically controlled they only come on as and when required, though in a cold room they clicked on and off at an alarming rate - 30 seconds on, 20 seconds off but as the room warmed up the timings changed to 30 seconds on and 2 minutes off.

As I mentioned in my previous post I had them professionally installed for safety reasons. At the price of the heaters I am happy if they last 3 years let along the projected 10-12 years for basic convection heating.

A

amtrakuk

Hi Sue.

Interesting what you said about convection heating. I Did an experiment (plenty of meter readings after I asked my electric supplier how much a unit i was paying).

I then used electric heating and played around until I got the balance for each room I wanted to heat right then ran with electric heating for a week, took a meter reading at the end of the week and multiplied the reading by 4 for a months worth of usage. Worked out how much it was going to cost (remember this is total house usage).

I calculated how much cost of gas I was using a month, calculated the depreciation of a replacement gas boiler (10 years life), added the monthly cost of the boiler insurance (I had BG home care at £12/month).

Compared one with the other and worked out the savings over a month were well within boundaries. I then worked out my hot water requirements, (How many baths/showers/washing up I had and how long I ran the hot water for) and it still worked out cheaper.

The way things are going with oil, I feel it can only get worse, Its the amount of refining the oil companies do dictates the price

MountainMan101

I live in the East Midlands area and am in a similar position to you. I have radiators in place from a wood burner boiler and am having either electric or oil boiler installed in the next few week.

I started wanting oil, then when trying to find space for the tank and having an unrealistic quote of £6k for the boiler, tank and installation, I decided to look at electric.

Was going to go ahead with electric, but the plumber suggested a requote from his mate for oil.

Economy 10 (Scottish and Southern) is different from other Economy 10 type things. S&S is cheap elec 13:30-16:30, 20:00-22:00, 0:00-5:00 (about 6p / kWh) + standing charge.

Oil is 65p a litre x 10.5 (ish) kW per litre x 0.92 (92% efficiency of a new combi condensing boiler) = 6.7p / kWh. However, oil is the same price whatever time of day you use it, whereas the elec is only cheap at sometimes.

If you switch Oil->Elec you may have to rethink how you power your bath/shower if you currently rely on high pressure on-demand.

Also, if 10 hours a day at 12kwh is enough power to warm the hosue then you're okay. If you need anything more than 10hours you start paying premium price.

Philip