LPG gas bottles and heating.

Anything will be cheaper than renewable electricity.

Oddly enough while regulations have made oil and gas a nightmare, they havent touched coal.

Installing some coal and wood burning stoves with back boilers for a rad or two on simple twin walled flues might be an option.

so what is the cost of LPG/ oil then? I didnt think it was that cheap. My electricity bill on E7 is less than my mothers coal bill for central heating. As one gets older coal becomes a burden - carrying, getting rid of ash and making fires etc.

Coal fires are a bit of a problem for me as they have been long blocked up in my house and both fire places are now in what are used as bedrooms now ( bungalow , rooms changed around). I dont know what state the chimneys are in, what might be behind the blocked up walls ( if anything) and I dont have a coal house anymore.

Oil is around 50p a liter which is about equvalent to 10kWh. But leccy is now up aqround 15p a unit os 3x more pricey

yes. Coal is hard on the elderly bit it keeps you fit if you can deply it.

Ideally oil BUT as you have discovered they dont like letting you put tanks in ...

Modern stoves are fine in bedrooms

You would need to reline the chimneys with at least a corrugated flue.

Nothing beats a coal or wood fire slowly dying as you snuggle under the duvet

LPG is more expensive. 47 kg propane cylinders are even worse. Oil is cheaper.

We ran a 4-bedroom house on an oil boiler and the running costs were a *lot* less than running a smaller house (though with worse insulation) on 47 kg gas bottles. That smaller house was my parents' holiday cottage, where we lived between selling our old house and buying our new one, and with a mixture of gas central heating and coal stove, the running costs were astronomical. When the old gas boiler broke about 10 years ago, I urged my parents to change to oil, but they went for replacement gas-bottle system instead. :-(

Not practical though as to have a stove /firplace I wouldnt have room for a bed given where the chimney is.

Would a stove be practical in a kitchen? I have a chimney brest in the kitchen, once housed a boiler of some kind according to the original architects plans of the house.

Do modern stoves require vents in the floor? If so not practical as mice under floor and I do not intend to be over run with them.

Cheapest way is to fit a dedicated tank, if you have space.

It may be worth looking a LEGALLY refillable LPG cylinders. I'm not sure what the largest ones you can get are- certainly around 11kg, but the refill cost is a fraction (from memory 1/4) of an exchange full cylinder.

There are a number available, a few are designed for 'stand alone' use (rather than use in things like caravans/motorhomes). Safefill do one, I think Gasit and at least one more in the UK. You take them to a garage which sells LPG and just fill or top them up. They have safety valves to prevent overfilling.

They aren't cheap, the initial investment is quite high. They are really only worth it if you can justify the initial investment (from memory the Safefill one is about £190) factored across your usage. They have the advantage for caravans/motorhomes you can refill them in Europe, where exchange UK cylinders aren't available.

Of course, there is always the option of a bulk LPG tank, assuming you have the space. These can be buried but I doubt that is cheap.

Agas certainly are.

Some do. Some are balanced flue Alternatively just ensure adequate ventilation in te room

vents can be covered with steel grids

If she cant find easy space for an oil tank, she wont be able to fit an LPG one either..

The OP would arrange the civils.

Not had to buy oil recently, the last lot was 50p/l back in Feb. The sites I use to get a vauge idea of current price when buying indicate low 40's p/l currently. A litre of oil is about 10 kWHr,so 4 - 5 p kWHr.

A 47 kg won't last very long when space heating. If moving a bucket or two of coal per fire per day is too much. Moving 47 kg cyclinders of gas every week (or less) is going to be worse. And remeber that 47 kg is the nett weight of the gas in a full cyclinder it does *not* include the weight of the cylinder... One of the figures on the emobossed metal ring around the valve of cylinder is its weight.

It would be normal to have bulk LPG tank for space heating applications. I don't think the sitting requirements of a bulk LPG tank are quite as restrictive as an oil tank and its easier to bury. Snag is that the bulk tank tends to remian the property of the gas supplier and tiwes you into that supplier, preventing you shopping around for the best price. The rules *may* be changing on this though.

Decent quality coal isn't cheap, around £15/50kg bag. 50 years ago the 3 bed semi I was born and brought up in was heated by an open coal fire with back boiler for hot water. No central heating (jumpers, eider downs, blankets and frost on the inside of the windows was the order of the day). That would burn about 10 tonnes of coal over the winter, 200 x 1 cwt (50.8kg) bags.

OK burning it on an open fire isn't very effcient, most of the heat goes straight up the chimney. A stove is much better.

I think bottled LPG and electricity (using Economy 7 as far as possible) are comparable cost wise. We have both and tend to use electricity for short term boosts and the LPG boiler for main/long-term heating through the winter.

As I said earlier in the thread we have both with, as suggested here a big LPG tank is cheaper but I reckon LPG and E7 are fairly close in the price.

I have Flogas LPG deliveries to a big tank. I also have 47kg cylinders for back up. The cylinders are obviously more expensive, but not outrageously so.

Bill

LPG bottles will be expensive Friends in a rural area (no mains gas) moved into a house with probably

Various CH schemes were considered and with current pricing LPG or oil from a storage tank work out to be the cheapest running costs.

Their typical example for heating and hot water, 3 bed house and 12,000 kWh per year.

Propane in 47kg bottles = £1250/year (possible needing 22 refills) lpg (requires a tank) = £756/year heating oil (requires a tank) = approx £730

They finally had a new system for oil fitted a few weeks ago. The installation cost for oil was approx £2K more than the quote for propane in bottles.

Depending where you live finding someone to deliver tons of coal at an economical price may be problematic.

But LPG will give you heat when you really need it while relying on E7 electricity to reduce costs may not give you the heating in the evening.

The rules for LPG tanks certainly aren't less restrictive, though they're different. The main one is that the tank has to be 3 metres from the house, anything flammable (shed, plants, fence...) and any boundary. It also has to be close enough to the road for the tanker to get a hose to. I went for an underground tank as the only place meeting those criteria is the middle of the lawn. Calor charged £1500+VAT to install, with a two- year contract. The tanks are supposed to be transferable between suppliers now, though I've yet to try this. Most suppliers now seem to have automatic top-up, where they monitor the tank and send a delivery without you needing to order it.

Oil tanks can be closer to buildings - usually 1.5m but there are exceptions. However there's requirements about the bunding and base to stop oil escapes, and underground oil tanks have a whole stack of extra requirements. Plus oil can be stolen, so you need to think about security (Come to think of it, so can gas bottles).

Mike

They also need to be proof against floating away. Severe flooding can lift underground tanks if they aren't securely fixed to a concrete base.