Contrasting oil versus tank LPG central heating costs

[Andrew Mawson]

Has anyone done the figures contrasting running costs of oil or LPG in a big tank for central heating?

Place we may be moving to has no gas, it was oil back in the 1980's but the current owner has totally destroyed the C/H system - cut off copper pipes flush with the solid floors - and installed wall mounted electric convector heaters "oh they don't cost much to run at all" - now do I believe that ! Also they are all on the 1970's ring mains so no doubt grossly overloaded. As it's going to be a total strip out and refurbish I will probably put a wet system in and fully re-wire but which fuel is the best choice - no problems with siting tanks as it's a large plot.

AWEM

[Nigel Molesworth]

Running costs are about the same (they come from the same source). Oil boilers are more expensive, gas tanks are more expensive.

If I was starting again, I'd go for gas.

[Phil Anthropist]

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[Phil Anthropist]

Google found

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[Robert]

In article , Andrew Mawson writes

Whether you install LPG or oil it's going to cost you an arm and a leg in installation costs that will never be repaid by any savings that you make on the reduced running costs of LPG or oil compared to electric heating. I would suggest that the very first thing that you need to do is have the existing system checked out by an electrician. It may be perfectly OK.

[Grunff]

This is of course complete crap...

[Dave Liquorice]

See the URLs already posted but note that they might have axes to grind...

On basic fuel costs LPG is normally more expensive than oil. But recently both prices have leapt up. Is this going to be a place you are going to foreseably stay in for the long term? I'd look at some form of "bio boiler", perhaps wood chip or wood pellet. Or even just a wood burner with boiler or provision for one. Think about solar panels as well. The messy hard bit is running pipes etc, do it now whilst you have the place completely in pieces.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Utter bollocks.

With heating bills up around 1200 quid a year for electric, and 600 quid a year for oil, and probably 700 quid a year for LPG, in ten years you will easily repay the costs of fuel run system. Thats just for a smallish house.

Not to mention that fact that as far as I am concerned, s decent fuel run CH system adds at least £8k to the property value.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Sound advice.

Get a wet system in, and leave the actual boiler and fuel till later.

LPG is still more expensive than oil, and electricity is about double either..or more. With power stations operating at 50% eff or thereabouts, its always going to be that way unless electricity via nuclear or some other form of energy comes available.

I'd also strongly advise a pressurised hot water system as well..either a heatbank/combi for a small property, or proper pressurised tank for a larger.

Frankly oil is cheaper to install and run than LPG - the LPG tanks ave to me made to withstand pressure, and there are tighter regs surrounding their use.

If you have a few acres of woodland and don't mind chainsawing and carting the stuff around, and dealing with the daily ash, wood burners are good.

[Andrew Sinclair]

In message , The Natural Philosopher writes

Have you considered a biomass fired system? There are an increasing number of wood pellet suppliers around the country and these modern wood burners are little more trouble than oil boilers as they are largely automated.

A quick Google threw this link up;

was the project manager installing a biomass co-firing system at Rugeley Power Station and we regularly manage to replace 10% of the coal we burn with environmentally friendly biomass (effectively carbon neutral). With most of the big coal fired power stations doing this in the UK there is quite a network of biomass (mainly wood pellets) suppliers springing up all over the place.

Indicative costs are here;

works out cheaper but the hardware is significantly more expensive.

Cheers,

Andy

[Robert]

Utter bollocks

My house is 1700 sq ft total floor area and uses 2000 litres of heating oil a year. At 11.53 KW/litre for light heating oil that amounts to

11530 KW a year.

The cost of 2000 litres of oil at my last fill was .38p per litre total cost of £798 including 5% VAT.

As my boiler was checked at 93.1% efficiency at the last service that means the actual total annual heating load for my house is 10737KW.

If I were to have heated my house by electricity the price per unit at that time was 6.75p with no standing charge. The cost of 10737KW of electricity would have been £760.98 including VAT

- an annual saving of £37.02 when comparing electricity to oil.

At an annual loss of £37.02 I would therefore never recover the installation costs of an oil heating system and would actually be £370.20 out of pocket after ten years rather than breaking even as you state.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Yup. If you put a basic 'wet' system in while things are fluid ;-) decorating wise, the boiler/fuel choice can come later.

[<me9]

23060 shirley.

More like £7000 in pocket. Can't be bad.

[Robert]

In article , [e-mail] writes

You are quite right of course. I am enrolling for a maths evening class.

[Guy King]

The message from Robert contains these words:

I know it's nitpicking, but can get we this sorted...

kW (small k) is a measure of power - the amount of energy in Joules (big J) that an appliance uses (or produces) in one second. One Joule is a Watt Second - one Watt for one second, enough to lift a kilogram just under 10cm in a second[1].

You can't say that a litre of fuel is the equivalent of 11.53 kW. This is because you may be, for example, running an 11kW output heater, but there's no indication of /how long/ it would run on a litre of fuel. In this case, a little over an hour. There has to be something in an energy measure that tells us over how long the number quoted can be sustained.

Thus - energy is paid for in kiloWatt hours - kWh. The energy density of your fuel oil is 11.53kWh/litre.

Sorry - I'm sure you just slipped, but it really winds me up!

[1] In what passes for standard earth gravity round here.

[John Rumm]

And you know the trouble with nitpicking[1]....

Well no, its the amount of energy in *kilo* Joules... ;-)

[1] anyone an do it!

[AJH]

At the risk of appearing to tout pellet stove installations: the installation of a 24kW(t) wood pellet boiler costing GBP2000 will be above GBP4000 installed, to the best of my knowledge no successful installations of these cheapest models remain in place. The next step up is an Italian model which costs GBP3k and I have no experience of them. A decent 25kW(t) dedicated pellet boiler (the others are really stoves with back boilers) will cost GBP6k and installation will add another GBP4K. Any d-i-y installations would require certification by a BCO.

The installations I deal with have had a few snagging troubles and some have had fundamental problems where the installing company has tried to plumb them in to emulate a gas boiler, this has caused problems of short cycling, overheating in the boiler and short igniter life. A great big thermal buffer seems the easiest way around this.

Fuel availability can be a problem unless there is a local supplier.

AJH

[Guy King]

The message from John Rumm contains these words:

Bugger. You know - it's not safe to rant anywhere these days.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Mine is 4000 sq ft and uses about 5000 liters a year.

Also remember that your oil boiler is at best only about 60% efficient.

My last fill of 2400 lites was 900 quid, and its getting worse.

I went lower because I assumed that a decentluy insulated house of half te square footage could get by with a bit less.

Yours seems fairly poorly insulated.

I very much doubt that it is, in overall energy terms.

Electricity is nearer 13p a unit right now.

There is no way that an electrical power station that runs at 50% efficiency more or less can compete with a 60-70% efficient boiler.

YOur figures are plain wrong