My oil bill has gone up by over 50% in the last couple of years and I'd love to get rid of our stinky old boiler and the monstrous tank which feeds it -- one heating company has suggested a Trianco Aztec electric boiler
Does anyone have any experience of these?
Do the maths: full-price electricity versus oil!
If you were to go for electricity you could at least go for off-peak, via a large heat store (which would also be a slot in replacement for your existing boiler).
without
I installed a new system last year using two of the 6kw aztec boilers. The customer had considered oil/lpg but there was insufficient space to locate the fuel tanks. There is a special electricity tarriff, economy
10, which gives cheaper rate electricity during the daytime at specific times. Since they already had storage heaters they were unlikely to see much higher electric bills and they had more control with a wet system. For some reason most people seem to hate storage heaters!I kept the cylinder on the off-peak meter as there is little point using electric boilers to indirectly heat the cylinder!
The central heating was controlled by a programmable roomstat which was set to coincide with the off-peak electric periods. The wet side of the heating system is a standard sealed system. I used oversized radiators to reduce the required flow temp which should help with running costs.
I keep meaning to give them a call to see how it worked over the winter. If you want any more information let me know.
Martyn
"via a large heat store (which would also be a slot in replacement for your existing boiler)."
Such a heat store would be inadequate. You may have a better chance if the heat store was of a volume such that it replaced your existing oil tank.
If I were stuck with so few options that I had to consider electric heating, I think I'd be looking at ground source heat pumps. Many heat pumps/refrigeration plants have a coefficient of performance of around
3, so you'd get 3kW of usable heat for every 1 kW of electricity consumed by the compressor motor.However, also consider that most electricity is produced by burning oil, gas and coal. If your oil price has increased by 50% in 2 years, where do you think the electricity price might be heading? You may be better off sticking with oil, or hedging your bets by keeping the oil boiler as a stand-by to the electric.
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