oil central heating installation costs?

[Duncan Di Saudelli]

Hello

We have a "room heater" fire made by Parkray which powers our central heating: you load it up with coal, the back boiler in it gets heated (as well as the room) and you shut a glass door on the front to keep the heat & smoke in. It works well - the central heating pump sends water in a sealed system round the radiators in each room and through the back boiler. It looks a bit like this one:

- you have to load it once or twice a day and you can't automate it, so we want to fit an oil central heating system instead.

so: how much (typically) will it cost to fit a boiler in place of the room heater, plumb in an outside oil tank big enough to drive a 3 bed semi, and plumb the tank and boiler together with water and electricity as needed?

Or would LPG be a better bet (no mains gas available and electricity is too costly)?

Thanks for any pointers or best guesses or experience

DDS

[Jim K]

3 grand? 1k for boiler etc 1k for tank etc (too small you always filling it, too big won't fit in the space available) 1k for p'ing around and profit??

best idea is to get some quotes from local installers

Cheers Jim K

[The Natural Philosopher]

1/. Keep the Parkray for backup. You can put an oil boiler in series, or even make up a split system. 2/. Use oil. LPG far too expensive 3/. £1500-£3000 depending I would estimate.

A lot depends on what you want and how much existing pipework can be used, and where the boiler can be sited and where the HW tank is. And how much you can do yourself.

The main bits would be at the most about £1300. plus £600 more if you decide to change HW tanks for a pressurised system, Depending where that is, may be worthwhile resiting in a loft, or in an external boiler room,removing the need for header tanks etc.

The rest is labour: that's a big variable depending on how easy/awkward it all is and what standard you wants pipes and cables laid to.

The work should be subject to building control: I am not sure if self certification works for oil and pressurized water installations however.

[dennis]

Consider ground sourced heat pumps as grants are available to some.

Consider air sourced heat pumps as they use about one third of the electricity a plain electric heater uses.

[cynic]

A new boiler will invoke building regs and efficiency directives which leads to separation of the heating and hot water controls and usually pipework modifications etc. Find a few properly qualified oil installers from the OFTEC website and get quotes. Don't forget also the cost of installing a suitable oil storage tank in an appropriate location. Despite oil being one of the safest fuels for many years it has attracted a raft of new(ish) standards to satisfy the idiot Bliars eagerness to tie us up with legislative obligations. Kyoto, Energy efficiency, Environmental protection, Part P, its all gone severely over the top and should be culled with the cancelling bill being talked about

[Duncan Di Saudelli]

A lot of useful advice there - thanks for all of this feedback.Oil sounds like the best bet but I will look at economy 7 storage; I'll start looking up some companies to quote.

Thanks

DDS

[robgraham]

messagenews: [e-mail]...

Duncan Two additional bits of info - my house is much the same size and I installed an oil boiler a bit over 15 years ago to solve much the same problem as you have except that I was using wood.

I did all the installation myself - it was very straightforward just coupling the boiler output to the DHW tank and to the existing CH system with suitable valving.

We wanted to retain out wood burning stove with its back boiler. I think it was Jim K that suggested above doing the same but he is quite wrong in suggesting that the two heat sources should be put in series; they should either be run into a heat bank type HW tank, or a Dunsley Neutraliser used which could be considered a mini heat bank tank. The plumbing to either does become a bit of a challenge.

My fuel consumption for the year (central belt Scotland) is 1300 l of oil and 150 quid's worth of logs.

Rob