The Great ‘Home Heating’ Hunt: Do you know cheaper ways for LPG and oil

treefrogbandit · 6 August 2008 at 8:56AM

If you do a basic calorific value conversion from fuel oil to wood chip (ignoring boiler efficiencies for the moment) 60p/litre :eek: is the equivalent of around £200/tonne for dry wood chip (more than double the current market price of around £80/tonne

).

You can get grants to help you install the new system see http://www.biomassenergycentre.org.uk for more details- it's the national hub for biomass technical information (run by the forestry commission)

Hope this helps!

Treefrogbandit

bracken · 6 August 2008 at 10:22AM

treefrogbandit wrote: »

If you do a basic calorific value conversion from fuel oil to wood chip (ignoring boiler efficiencies for the moment) 60p/litre :eek: is the equivalent of around £200/tonne for dry wood chip (more than double the current market price of around £80/tonne ).

You can get grants to help you install the new system see http://www.biomassenergycentre.org.uk for more details- it's the national hub for biomass technical information (run by the forestry commission)

Hope this helps!

Treefrogbandit

Hello, I do not usually bother to post but feel quite strongly that this needs answering. WE need a new boiler and have spent the last 3 months investigating and getting quotes for biomass and also wood boilers. Also looked at Air source and ground source heat pumps( about £25k with a borehole!) but I have read that they do not keep either the house or hot water very hot so really should be used alongside eg biomass so no good for us even if we had the funding.

Anyway besides the fact we are reasonable at DIY and can do most of the work ourselves thereby reducing the costs the cheapest we can get a woodfired ( not as good as pellets!) boiler installed is around £8000. This includes us getting a grant! We would also have to completely re-plumb our central heating system ( further increasing costs) so while I love the idea of biomass it is not yet a real alternative for normal people who do not earn large amounts of cash. It would also take us at least 4 years to pay for it self and thats if the price of oil goes up to £1 a Litre which hopefully it wont. In the end we are going to have to replace with an oil fired boiler costing around £2.5k including fitting but very efficient one.

I am interested in trying running on biodeisel tho. Has/does anyone know how to do this. Our old boiler has a leak but I am considering keeping it and installing in a shed and trying it out running on biodeisel to see what happens. After all its pretty easy to make biodeisel and I have heard there are people collecting Waste oil and using this to run heating systems.

Also just for info: my investigations over the last few months turned up the fact that in the USA they have waste oil fired heating which is often used to back up another boiler system.

Anyway no idea if this is useful but hope it may help someone.

Take care
Bracken

sailopio · 6 August 2008 at 10:24AM

:j I have been checking heating oil prices for the last few days, my normal suppliers quoting between 61 - 63p per litre plus vat for 1500 litres. I also tried boiler juice but as usual they where top price, I tried heatingoil.co.uk who last week quoted 59p yesterday they quoted 54.9p for delivery before next Tuesday. This is a fantastic saving also includes VAT. The only downside is that you have to pay in advance but I paid with my Tesco credit card so will get club points and still not have to pay until next month.

veritymeredith · 6 August 2008 at 10:41AM

If you have an Aga or Rayburn running on oil and would like to reduce your oil consumption then fit a snugburner. The snugburner is a boiler that lets you control when you want to use the cooker rather then having it ticking over all the time thus saving money. There is only one company who supplies the snugburner and only likes to sell them to plumbers who are familiar with them. They cost around £1800 to buy and install. Take a look at their website for technical info. Hope this helps.

the_laughing_cow · 6 August 2008 at 10:58AM

I have no gas in my area so changed from electric storage heating(had to be a long range weather forecaster) to an electric boiler with conventional radiators then switch to scottish hydro/southern electrics economy 10 tarrif which gives complete half price electricity for the whole house and not just the heating and hot water. half price times are,

4.30am-7.30am
1.30pm-4.30pm
8.30pm-12.30am

These times may very slightly

Retiredgasman · 6 August 2008 at 11:08AM

A bit cryptic as a heading BUT most people say they are getting cheaper gas or whatever and nevr grasp the fundamentals Gas is around 2.3p/kwhr (mine hasn't gone up yet) Electric is around 7p/kwhr, LPG is what we used to call a 'dump fuel' when I worked in the business is a residue from refining crude oil ergi it's usually around 7p/kwhr (same as electric) smokeless coal is approx 2.9p/kwhr -- it's a bit like driving your car, if you see the fuel advertised for xp/litre in one garage but it was at Yp/gallon in another how do you judge - me I've just filled my solid fuel bunkers up - sort of capping at +10% against mains gas.

klaatu · 6 August 2008 at 11:25AM

GolfingMonk wrote: »

He fitted a magnetic device from

You're not allowed to promote your own web site here, Mr McTaggart.

poohbear59 · 6 August 2008 at 11:49AM

I found that lpg 47kg bottles were becoming really pricy so I asked around at static caravan sites and I now buy from them at a much reduced rate than I could buy from my local supplier, probably because they buy in bulk.

We heat with oil and wood. We have an equaliser which means that we can heat the water using our wood burner stove but when that goes out overnight or at this time of the year when we don't want room heating the oil kicks in. We scavange for wood a lot of the time (wth land owner's pemission) and that then reduces the need for the oil boiler to be on.

We are busy building a new house and have found that because we don't have space for a header tank we can't have the wood and oil system linked together. We have been advised that a pressurised system is more fuel efficient and will reduce the amount of oil we use compared to an open system.

When buying oil we wait until a few people in the village need oil and then I ring around to get the best price. As was mentioned before, an order for 1500 litres can save quite a few pence per litre, compared to the price for 500 litres.

Middlers · 6 August 2008 at 12:14PM

Every year I forget to check the oil and then incur the wrath of she who must be obeyed as we have to survive a few days without heating. I know I can have regulated deliveries and devices which warn etc but wouldn't it be good if we could just pop down the local shop and buy a few litres to tide us over until the delivery arrives?

Grannycook · 6 August 2008 at 12:35PM

Hi
We've lived in our farmhouse now for over 20 years. When we first had an oil delivery it was 9p per litre - our latest payment was 53.77p.

There is no easy way to get oil cheaper - we now have a syndicate of 6 homes so try to buy at the same time and barter with the oil companies. I have a list of 7 companies - I ring them all, choose the cheapest and then ring back my favourite and say, hey how about matching this price? If they do, then I go back to the other one and say, hey, got a matching price, how about dropping your rate.
It doesn't always work ... but 9/10 it does!

There's also the worry now that people are stealing oil from storage tanks - its certainly happening in parts of the UK.

We'll not be using our central heating very much this winter - have to make do with the kitchen heated by the Aga and coal fires ......

The Great ‘Home Heating’ Hunt: Do you know cheaper ways for LPG and oil

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