Fitting oil central heating

[damduck-egg]

I don't find you annoying, but if you are unenthusiastic about doing it in the first place and come up with reasons "Like Mice will get in" , and then" I'll lose space in the Bungalow" looks like you would rather adopt glass half empty rather than glass half full attitude.

I would have thought that you and your other half agreeing on what route to take would be the first thing to do before asking how to do something.

I don't want to know your personal details , but even people who own thier own property can sometimes get help with upgrading heating systems if they are elderley or disabled. Father and Mother got help with new windows , rewiring and a stairlift and the existing heating off a Rayburn modernised. I think it was the Anchor housing association that gave them the grant.

If you sell up before ISTR 11 years you have to pay some of it back.

G.Harman

[Mark Allread]

It is a big job and not for the faint-hearted.

Like you we have no gas and rely on NSH plus stoves. We had looked at oil/bottle gas and decided that the total costs of installation, maintenance and running could not be justified.

We have looked at both Ground and Air source heating. These are also costly to install and, at present, I'm not yet convinced of their ability to meet claims so we are sticking with what we've got.

Air or ground source are both real options for us though at some point in the future.

Agreed.

[mechanic]

Mice/rats happily chew away at plastic pipework so ensure everything out of sight is copper pipe and soldered connections.

[Bill]

In message , Andy Bennet writes

As might electricity if the greenies continue to have their way.

[sweetheart]

Not in my house. I always have to start from the defensive posaition as he does not agree things, he just decides that its what he wants to do and I have to argue the way back.

There would be no such help available. My circumstances are not such that any benefits are forthcoming.

[S Viemeister]

We have an Grant exterior model, installed outside the utility room. It has been working well, and (it's a combi) freed up space in the hall cupboard, where the hot water cylinder had been.

[Muddymike]

You said your home is a bungalow. If you don't mind two pipes running down the wall to every radiator the plumbing could mostly be in the loft. The down pipes are often easily placed next to windows behind the open curtains.

Oil boilers can be quite compact, no larger then a 600mm kitchen wall cupboard, but would have to be mounted on an outside wall.

The tank is the big bit and has to be accessible to the delivery tanker. The oil supply pipe doesn't have to be 100% underground. It can be clipped along the outside wall of the house, garage, whatever.

Mike

[Tim Streater]

That is a very good suggestion and would reduce the cost a lot.

[sweetheart]

ground - dig up the ground to put them in?

hem and now I have managed to seal them out completely ( although I know th ey are still there as when a door was replaced they found their way into th e kitchen again. Holes in floors means room for the little blighters to inv ade doesnt it?

Thanks for the replies. I will take them under consideration.

[harry]

plain it in simple terms so I am sure what I am talking about:

d from the boiler to the radiators etc please.

n the gas grid).

ike it. Its simple, doesnt disrupt the house, never goes wrong and its simp le for me to switch on and off and its clean.

OH thinks he can do it himself but I fear this is a job with a lot of disr uption.... and cost to fabric of the house and decoration etc ???

osts please).

****************************************** The best thing you can do is stick with the electric. Oil fired heating may be slightly cheaper to run but you have additional ma intenance costs and the installation cost will be high. Also the bother of ordering and receiving oil deliveries. Electric heating is inherently simpler and more reliable. And cheaper to re pair. If there's a power cut, the oil heating won't run.

Even a small house won't see much change out of £10,000 for installati on costs. As a DIY project, it would be quite advanced. It would still cost £5000-£6000. And yes, lots of disruption.

[Harry Bloomfield]

sweetheart formulated the question :

Have you considered stored LPG gas as an alternative to oil?

[Dave Liquorice]

ATM. It was fckng expensive a few years ago... Oil is volatile. B-)

Yep, 5k DIY maybe. Savings of maybe £500 year if your lucky, pay back

Most companies offer a service where they keep you supplied automatically, the amout you use at a given time of year doesn't vary much.

Niether will electric... But a small genset will power an oil system. Wire the boiler supply via a 13 A plug so you can simply plu it into an extension lead from the genset.

You'd need a large genset to keep several storeage heaters topped up and there are interesting issues interfacing a genset to the fixed house wiring during a powercut.

[Dave Liquorice]

I woudn't be to sure about that. OK many are based on age and in receipt of certain State Benefits but not all.

[ARW]

Sounds fine to me.

[John Rumm]

It will likely be cheaper to run - but its not quite as cut'n'dried as comparing say mains gas CH with storage heating. If the current system works well enough, then it really comes down to a cost projection on the payback time of the installation. Even with DIY and a cheap boiler he is probably looking at 2K minimum in pipes and radiators etc.

[Huge]

Ought?

[John Rumm]

There is a huge variation in the difficulty and hence cost of laying in a CH system from scratch. Much of that depends on the nature of the property. The rest of the spec you are after. A boiler and rads for heating only, is cheaper than one for heating and hot water. That in turn is cheaper than opting for unvented hot water etc.

If we are talking about a bungalow with a solid ground floor, then piping up the primary water circuit in the loft, with drops to each rad would actually be fairly straight forward and not make much mess. You would need to mount brackets on the wall for each rad. Drop a pair of pipes to each through the ceiling - these can often be in corners or close to windows etc. They can also be microbore pipe if you want to keep them less visible.

The boiler itself will take some space and probably needs to be on an outside wall or close to one.

If OH is a former professional plumber / fitter then this type of job should be routine for him and reasonably quick.

[Vir Campestris]

You need a microbore (~1/4 inch) pipe from the tank to the boiler.

It's the pipes _inside_ the house that will cause all the disruption. You need two between each radiator and the boiler - though with careful planning they can be shared.

Andy

[dennis]

Its not as disruptive if you run them in plastic microbore. No joints and easy to bend. The modern stuff is quite happy on a pressurised system.

[Steve Walker]

But doing it yourself means you can run the feed and return to each floor and then fit a radiator and pipes one room at a time. No need to have the whole house in a mess at once.

For me, the upstairs radiators were the worst (and only took a couple of days to fit) - one floorboard up from front to back of house, radiators installed either side of walls and tails fed under and up where needed.

Downstairs I could get under the floor, so each radiator just took drilling four holes in the wall for mounting and two holes in the floor for the pipes. All the rest of the work was done from underneath.

The biggest part of the job was fitting pump, air-separator, motorised valves, etc. in the airing cupboard.

Later I re-jigged the piping a bit and fitted 5 motorised valves in the airing cupboard (4 rads and hot-water tank) and 4 more under the downstairs floor (3 rads and one underfloor heating system). Timer/stats for each room have been fitted using alarm cable, which is easily hidden down the edge of door frames, etc. (transformers and relays to effectively make it a SELV system). I am slowly working on burying conduits as rooms are re-decorated over the years.

SteveW