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I am thinking of moving to a house with an oil heating system. Having never used oil heating before. I'm not sure how much to budget. The house is an end terrace stone built not too sure on the insulation. There is also a wood fire, but I don't think there is a back boiler. Could anyone give me a rough idea of cost, or any other tips for anyone new to oil heating?
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Ideally you want a tank capable of holding at least 1500 litres; this gives you the capacity to buy 1,000 litres when prices are low around this time of year, whilst still having enough to avoid running out.
I have a condensing boiler (Worcester Heatslave) which is as good as they get. You will need to have your boiler serviced annually to get the best out of it, more important with oil than gas. I pay about £65 for that with a local independent.
Wood stoves are great, we have two; you will however need free wood to make them worth having. If your new house is in a rural location this shouldn't be a problem. Also decent covered storage for the logs; hardwood is best but of course it needs to stand for a year so think of how much space you'll need and double it. There is no such thing as having too much firewood! :-)
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>>Also decent covered storage for the logs; hardwood is best but of course it needs to stand for a year so think of how much space you'll need and double it. There is no such thing as having too much firewood! :-)<<
The other thing about wood is that you get warmer cutting it up than you do by burning it!
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In a former life I used to be able to negotiate a small discount with a local supplier for doing a delivery split between nearby houses and totaling over 500 gallons. Depends how many oil fired neighbours you have; a lot of mine seemed to think I must be on commission, which I wasn't!
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harleyman thanks would you say 1000 litres is about average for your house in 1 year? What sort of house do you have? No i don't think getting hold of free wood will be a problem.
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We burn roughly 1500 to 2000 litres a year, at a cost of about £1000 to £1500 i suppose but I've posted before about our house being a cold un and detached.
An end terrace, possibly smaller, with decent insulation would be significantly less I would think.
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I have a modern ish 4 bed detached and a 1200 ltr tank. I get through two tanks of oil a year and order 900/1000 ltr a go. I also have a small woodburner in the living room which does supply some heat to the house. Have UPVC double glazing and 4" of insulation in the loft. Another 4" is on the "to do" list. The biggest hit for oil consumption is the central heating. So a tank lasts from March to November and then another tank over the real winter period. Family of 4 with teenage girls who can drain the hot water tank without a thinking about it.
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>>There is no such thing as having too much firewood! :-)
>>
+10
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thanks all. No the house doesn't look that well insulated but it was hard to judge. The house will be rented. Helpfully the last tenants have left us a bit of wood. Not much but i can get my hands on quite a bit that's been dried out. I think the best time is a year isn't it? There's only 2 of us so shouldn't be too much on the hot water front. At a guess the tank would be 2500 litres. The system looks quite old so possible not good efficiency wise.
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I can echo Fullchat's post.
We moved in to a 4 bed detached at the end of March, with a wood burner in the living room. The oil tank was bone dry, so we put a 1,000 litres in (1250 litre tank), cost about £640.
In two months, the tank had gone from 3/4 full to a 1/3rd full....yikes!....although it was coldish in April/May.
So our old system of having the heating and water on 24/7 and just adjusting temperature with a thermostat has now gone out the window. Water is on a timer and all the rads have been turned down a bit.
I think i'm going to have to budget for two tanks a year and at today's prices...£1,500. I put £150 per month away for it, in a separate account, in case her indoors moans too much when it gets colder and I have to turn things up a bit.
I burn coal and wood in the wood burner. Coal is noticeably more expensive but burns hotter. Both obviously have their costs over and above the oil. When I first tried out the wood burner, I overdid it with coal and got the truly enormous living room so hot, that I set the smoke alarm off, with just heat. Blo0dy hot it was, even wifey thought so and that's a first, believe me.
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>> I have a condensing boiler (Worcester Heatslave) which is as good as they get.
Did they get that name from the poor sods that used to manually turn the spits for Henry VIII?
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I have a poorly insulated 1880's 4 bed semi with oil fired heating, hot water and cooking via a Rayburn - but we don't use the cooker much. We budget for 3 litres/day in the warmer months and up to 10 litres/day in the winter. Last time I filled up it was about 52p/litre for 2000 litres. I have 2x1300 litre tanks. As others have said, I sometimes club together with neighbours to get the best price. The price breaks appear to be at 500, 1000 and 2000 litres and above but that might just be my supplier.
The reason why we have two tanks leads me on to the other point you might need to consider. The regulations governing the siting of oil tanks have changed over the last few years. (Possibly 10 but don't quote me.) You mention that the system is quite old. If you need to replace the oil tank, you might not be allowed to put it in the same place as the old one. From memory, there are restrictions on the minimum distance from a property boundary and your own property, possibily with a requirement for a fire resistant wall or lining. I was forced to site the tanks 40 yards away at the bottom of my garden alongside a garage. Fortunately, there was enough room (just) to accommodate two tanks in tandem to give us the capacity I wanted. The contractor who fitted the tanks told me that siting oil tanks in terraced properties could be troublesome and some people, allegedly, had no option but to place them in the middle of the rear garden. In short, worth checking the condition of the oil tank and options for re-siting it if it needs replacement. HTH.
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>> If you need to replace the oil tank, you might not be allowed to put it in the same place as the old one. From memory, there are restrictions on the minimum distance from a property boundary and your own property......
What about if you don't tell the authorities that you are changing your tank?
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Yes, Duncan, that describes me in 2003.
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I take it you all know that you can monitor the price on 'boiler juice'. Obviously you can't tell which way it's going to go but it helps greatly. I bought at 51p a litre about a month ago guessing it was unlikely to go lower, which was right.
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>> I take it you all know that you can monitor the price on 'boiler juice'.
>> Obviously you can't tell which way it's going to go but it helps greatly. I
>> bought at 51p a litre about a month ago guessing it was unlikely to go
>> lower, which was right.
>>
Likewise; I rarely buy through them but the guide is useful. One great advantage of oil over LPG as a fuel is that you are not tied to one supplier. I often find that across the four or five suppliers in this area, the price differential can be as much as 7p/litre; that's £70 before VAT on a 1000 litre delivery, so well worth the twenty minute ring-round.
Some companies will try and talk you into a "Watchman" , a device which monitors your tank level and sends a signal to the supplier when it needs a top-up. My neighbour had one, but found out that it tends to kick in a couple of weeks before the price drops, regardless of the level in the tank. Draw your own conclusions.
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We live in a mid 1800s semi detached 2 bedroom sandstone cottage, with no cavity walls or double glazing, but we do have loft insulation. Both heating and hot water are provided by oil. Our tank hold 2250 litres but we never buy more than 500 at a time just in case some low life comes and drains it. We last put 500 litres in around the start of March and I estimate we still have two thirds of that left. Winter is a different story, we tend to get through 1000 litres between October and March.
We're moving on Thursday to a similarly aged, but brick built, 4 bed detached. Still no double glazing but all external walls are insulated as is the loft. I'm (probably somewhat misguidedly) hoping we won't be spending that much more on oil.
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>> Both heating and hot water are provided by oil. >>
Is that why you are called Dieselboy?
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>> What about if you don't tell the authorities that you are changing your tank?
>>
I suppose you run the risk that some busy body will grass you to the local authorities.
My neighbour replaced her tank a few years ago but the new one was the same size and shape and in the same position as the old one so live and let live.
The most practical problem that you could face is that reputable installers might refuse to position your replacement tank other than in accordance with regulations. Not an issue if it's a DIY job.
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After reading these numbers, I will never complain about an annual gas bill of £750 (heating, hot water, hob) again.
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no-one has mentioned the real risk of oil theft. I know someone who had to chain a very large, very bad tempered, very mean dog to his tank every time the fair was in town.
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>> no-one has mentioned the real risk of oil theft. I know someone who had to
>> chain a very large, very bad tempered, very mean dog to his tank every time
>> the fair was in town.
>>
Just after we moved in and a week or so after I'd filled the tank...a heard the chippings going on the driveway (which doesn't always happen, but luckily I had the windows open) and noticed the local Transit pick up, (with orange lights on the roof, Motorway Maintenance sticker on the back and his mother sells 'lucky heather') with the driver having got out and started walking around the back of the property...right past the front door, no attempt to knock or press the doorbell.
I challenged him and he came back and said some old cobblers about did I have any scrap metal for sale.
I assured him not...and off he went, cheeky sod.
At some point I think I'll have to invest in some cameras, as we had a mate replace all our gutters. He turned up unexpectedly a few days later, to affix something he'd had to order..took his ladders off the van, drilled something at 1st floor roof height..and we didn't even know he was there. It was only him putting his head through the door asking if the kettle was on, that we knew he'd turned up.
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>>we didn't even know he was there. It was only him putting his head through the door asking if the kettle was on, that we knew he'd turned up<<
www.nhs.uk/Livewell/hearing-problems/Pages/hearing-aids.aspx
:-)
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>>I know someone who had to chain a very large, very bad tempered, very mean dog to his tank every time the fair was in town.
>>
You could have sat there in a deck chair Zero, same attributes, same effect!
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I wouldn't call 5 hours "nearly"
"I nearly caught him sarge"
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An article on Heating Oil in yesterday's Sunday Times mentioned this for clubs who formed to get oil discounts. www.oil-club.co.uk.
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'Average' domestic energy heating and HW use is around 20,000 kWh / year. Kerosene contains around 33MJ/litre, which would give an average useage of 2182 litres. Current price appears to be around 60p inc VAT, giving an annual average cost of £1300 - prices appear much more volatile than mains gas prices, so best to avoid panic buys in mid winter....
This would seem to be in line with experiences noted on here. I shall avoid buying a house with oil fired heating!
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We use about 26,000 kWh of gas per year for heating and hot water, in a probably badly insulated small bungalow (the worst kind of house to heat of course). Gas currrently costs us £1100 a year. Assuming similar efficiency and using your oil energy content and cost, oil would cost us £1700 or 55% more. Did you include VAT? (I did. Gas for us is c. 22p/day + 3.31p/kWh + VAT at present).
I used oil from 1993-1996 or thereabouts. I think I recall paying about 12p/litre!
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We pay about £1200 a year for gas and electric.We don't skimp on heating I don't like to sit in the cold.This oil lark looks expensive to me.
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>> We pay about £1200 a year for gas and electric.We don't skimp on heating I
>> don't like to sit in the cold.This oil lark looks expensive to me.
>>
Oil heating is expensive. The total cost of our oil and electricity is over £2000 per year, and as I said earlier we try to economise on the oil.
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No way to change it Les? Our house is three bedroom detached well insulated 29 years old.
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>> No way to change it Les? Our house is three bedroom detached well insulated 29
>> years old.
>>
There is no mains gas down our road. We only recently got mains sewerage.
Last edited by: L'escargot on Mon 6 Aug 12 at 14:19
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We have a medium-size three-bedroomed bungalow which is well insulated (including the floor) and try to economise on the heating. We pay for our oil by monthly direct debit, which is currently £95 per month. Admittedly modern boilers are more efficient than ours, but I'm not sure that changing ours for the sake of it would make economic sense. In winter we have to keep a fairly close watch on the oil level in our 1135 litre tank ~ it drops about 4 mm per day .The following website gives a useful comparison of the cost per kWh of most (if not all) domestic heating fuels. tinyurl.com/cvh7qnq
Last edited by: L'escargot on Mon 6 Aug 12 at 13:57
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>> In winter we have to keep a fairly close watch on the oil level in our
>> 1135 litre tank ~ it drops about 4 mm per day.
Watching the oil level in winter is a bit of a pain compared with gas which, of course, doesn't need watching at all.
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After reading some of the above replies I am feeling quite happy with my £72.00 a month for gas and electricity !
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>> After reading some of the above replies I am feeling quite happy with my £72.00
>> a month for gas and electricity !
Combined?
We currently pay £115.00 a month for the two, which seems to balance out about right over the year (builds credit in summer months, doesn't quite cover it in winter months.
We did recently discover it is cheaper to run a gas hob kettle than a leccy one though. It's actually quite incredible how our electricity bill has fallen since we binned our electric kettle. The corresponding increase in our gas bill has been negligible by comparison.
3 bed semi, two small kids, heavy use of tumble dryer when it's wet (think the past 3 months)
Last edited by: DP on Mon 6 Aug 12 at 17:38
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We use a electric kettle are you sure the kettle makes that much difference in electricity use?
Tumble dryers yes.
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I estimate we boil a pint of water about half a dozen times a day, at most. It takes about a minute and a half I think. Call it 10 minutes of a 2 kW load, that's 2.33kWh per week, using the rate of 13p/kWh from l'Es's site that's 30p a week, £16 a year.
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£16 a year is not bad.We have one elelectric kettle with a filter needs replacing every ten weeks.So extra for the filter which I think is worth it.
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>> After reading some of the above replies I am feeling quite happy with my £72.00
>> a month for gas and electricity !
Combined?
Yes, for both !
Small 2 bed 30's semi, only me here during the week but 2 of us at weekends.
Getting rid of the tumble dryer made a huge difference to the electricity comsumption (though being honest the only reason for getting rid of it was that I took it apart to trace a noise and couldn't put it back together again !).
Also having worked in a chilled warehouse for 7 years I never seem to feel the cold !
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I've got a 3000 litre tank in the cellar that was welded together in situ, as the house was built before the heating went in. I only use oil for emergencies, or when visitors stay, the rest of the time it's wood.
It's 13 SEK a litre, so only marginally cheaper than diesel. But I can't get the tank filled anyway, as they now require an inspection every 5 years. They want to climb inside to check it and require at least 50cm above the tank hatch, and there's only 40cm. So all I do is fill the jerry can every so often when I fill with diesel, and tip that in. My waste oil goes in there as well.
Of course, I could swap the oil burner for a pellet one, but the price of pellets always seems to be going up alongside the increase in demand. Easier and cheaper to sling a bit of diesel in there when required.
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Ermm! what do you lot do to have bills like that! - do you have doors fitted?
The Hostess and I live in a "modest" 3 bed terraced Hovel, our Gas is £500pa and our leccy 3-400pa. We have been with BG for alot of years, who run a 2-tier system, tier 1 is 8.7p per kw/ for the first 2680kw`s then tier 2 kicks in at 3.8p.
This means that we rarely see tier 2 and are paying 8.7p for all our gas, so we have just switched to Ebico energy who have a flat rate of 4.5p per kw, instantly just about halving our gas bill! - now it means We can have it on twice as long and be positively Tropical this back -end!
Last edited by: devonite on Mon 6 Aug 12 at 14:43
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Talking of oil theft and woodburners ,this past winter at the office we lost a complete wooden plank fence which went down the side of the warehouse and car park. Because the majority of the fence was to the side of the warehouse it was only when it started disappearing in the car park that we noticed !
It was pretty obvious that the culprits were a couple of local winos / dossers who were thrown out of the local open house and were camping in tents in the woods behind the office. As the weather got colder and they were freezing , more and more of the fence disappeared until the whole lot went---- we now have a chain link and barbed wire fence ........
Just a little pointer for those of you who have woodburners...I needed some substantial pallets for an export shipment recently and phoned my local Jewsons a couple of units down to see if they had any .
I was literally told help myself free of charge so I went round with my warehouse guy and fork lift and selected a dozen of the best out of what must have been 200 pallets in the corner of the yard which they were glad to get rid of.....
I also took a few broken ones to leave out in the car park on cold nights........
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>>I also took a few broken ones to leave out in the car park on cold nights........
<<
That's made my day and deserves a thumbs up!
Pat
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they would have preferred a bottle of cider
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Thanks Pat....
We had a death of one of these guys three years ago .. caused quite a stir in the local paper and then he was forgotten ...
I cannot imagine how violent or high on drink or drugs you have to fall before being thrown out of the open house and being forced to live rough .... but live and let live is my motto.
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>> Just a little pointer for those of you who have woodburners...I needed some substantial pallets
>> for an export shipment recently and phoned my local Jewsons a couple of units down
>> to see if they had any .
>>
>> I was literally told help myself free of charge so I went round with my
>> warehouse guy and fork lift and selected a dozen of the best out of what
>> must have been 200 pallets in the corner of the yard which they were glad
>> to get rid of.....
>>
Some firms will do that, but there can be issues if an overly anal manager gets a bee in his bonnet about waste disposal licences. No harm in asking though; one of the side-effects of current environmental legislation is that oil-drum incinerators, once so common on industrial estates, are now a thing of the past, and many smaller companies are only too pleased to have someone take scrap wood away.
Pallets are OK for kindling, but it goes without saying that they're made of softwood so don't tend to last long. They're also full of nails so unless you clean the fire out regularly you end up with the base full of rusty iron. The best ones to get are what are known as "two-way" pallets, i.e. solid runners on two sides; many of the four-way type have the blocks made out of MDF-type stuff which, trust me, does not burn.
If you do acquire pallets, avoid taking the blue ones marked "Chep"; they're rented out, and the owning company have been known to send hefty bills to anyone they find possessing them without permission, or burning them. They don't burn very well anyway.
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I buys 60 bags o' Taybrite at summer prices for the multi-fuel stove = £435 - sees me through the black season.
Oy've got a very efficient Grant oil broiler + 8 rads, but I didn't fire it once in last years mild winter.
Leccie ere, only about £16 pm, woss that about say between £191 to £193 pa.
I also have a gas hob using LPG, a bottle of that seems to go on for ever here.
So that's about, what - under £650 pa :)
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>> Oy've got a very efficient Grant oil broiler ..............
Be wary about broiling oil!
:-D
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A friend of mine changed to using an electric air source heat pump instead of replacing his oil tank and now saves a fortune on heating.
Another friend is refurbishing a derelict building and will go all electric - not even hooking up to mains gas by using induction hobs for cooking and ASHP for heating.
Basically an ASHP will give a COP or around 5 times (i.e. heat out of approximately 5 x what you put in. Newer ones give even more). So if electricity is around 15p per KWh that brings in heating at 3p/KWh. Even gas is double that.
The only only small matter you have is the purchase of the unit and installation.
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>>
>> Basically an ASHP will give a COP or around 5 times (i.e. heat out of
>> approximately 5 x what you put in. Newer ones give even more). So if electricity
>> is around 15p per KWh that brings in heating at 3p/KWh. Even gas is double
>> that.
>>
>> The only only small matter you have is the purchase of the unit and installation.
>>
>>
They're very popular here, and I have an air/air one in both houses. But... the COP value is calculated at outside temp of 7 degC, and drops quite quickly below that figure. They also need a fairly open plan house. But they're available to heat water, so can be used with a traditional radiator set up, although better with water based underfloor heating as they struggle to reach much temperature. The big problem with them here is the life span. When it's below zero for a few months they really struggle, as trying to get any heat from -15 is difficult. So the poor thing grunts away 24/7, caked in ice, for 3 months of the year.
They seem to last on average maybe 6 years, and no-one seems particularly interested in fixing them. Spares are silly money, not to mention the cost of getting someone to diagnose and fix. As with cars, they're getting more complicated by the minute, and it seems to be affecting the reliability as well, as sensors etc fail.
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As you say, the period you want the heating most is when it's cold. That makes the unit work much harder and give lower COP values with the risk of icing up completely.
The ones designed for our climate now have automatic defrost, periodically causing the unit to reverse to break off any attached ice.
We use our office aircon in winter for heating. I changed the unit this year because the older unit didn't have this defrost function and the newer ones also have so-called "inverter" technology where heating/cooling control is proportional rather than on/off.
I have also - rather extravagantly - just bought a 7 kWh unit for our pond, just to keep the fish happy in winter, but that's another story...
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One disadvantage of our oil system is that because the tank outlet is below the level of the boiler the oil feed to the boiler would have to be primed if ever the tank ran dry.
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Haven't you got a Watchman L'es?
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>> Haven't you got a Watchman L'es?
>>
I'm the watchman. The oil tank's got a sight tube and I've got a steel tape measure. I record the oil depth and the date, calculate the rate of fall of the oil depth, and predict when I will need to re-order. I plot graphs of the oil depth, the rate of fall, and the predicted re-order date, using Microsoft Excel.
It helps to exercise my brain.
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you have donated your brain to excell?
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You need a Watchman my gastropod friend - especially with the position your tank is sited.
I'm on my 3rd oil broiler now (3rd property with) and they've all had Watchmans fitted.
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>> You need a Watchman ................
Thanks my Canis lupus familiaris friend, I'll think about it.
Last edited by: L'escargot on Tue 7 Aug 12 at 10:04
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In actual factual L'es, I've just realised (thanks 2 U) that my present tank is a fair bit lower than my boiler but,
I never let the Watchman go below 2 anyway.
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Barrel tank or straight sided?
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>> Barrel tank or straight sided?
>>
Barrel shape laid on its side ~ a bit like a fat dog (sorry, Dog) with no legs, head, or tail! Balmoral BRM H1135. As per this .......... tinyurl.com/cage2de
Last edited by: L'escargot on Thu 9 Aug 12 at 06:54
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Domestic oil use and cost? - Harleyman
