Where is heating oil used?

[IHateWasps]

Stupid question but I keep seeing people talking on MN about heating oil and I've never know anyone who has this system. Is it mainly in rural areas? Also how long does a tank last you? Is this system more expensive?

A lot of east Yorkshire doesn't have mains gas, even quite close to Hull.

My parents are in Surrey, about 20 miles from London, in a semi rural area, but less than 4 miles in either direction of good sized town with commuter station, and they have no mains gas, and so use oil. The bigger village approx 1 mile down the road is on mains gas, but their smaller more rural village is not.

27 million houses in Britain. 22 million have mains gas heating. About 15 per cent of houses in England don't have mains gas and about 22 per cent of houses in Scotland don't. From 2025,it will be illegal to have gas connections for new house. They'll have to have electric heating or if they've enough room in their garden electric powered ground heat pump. It's thought mains gas heating for all houses could be made illegal around 2040. Roll on nuclear power stations and a fashion for wearing cosy balaclavas and anoraks indoors.

Everyone I know in NI has oil - oil tank size depends on your property size etc. My family tend to get their oil tank filled a couple of times a year.

I'm an estate agents any many of the villages in my area don't have gas supply so quite a lot of them have oil heating.

We're semi rural with no gas option here (sw/Wales border), we find it pretty much the same as when we had a house with gas central heating, but you obviously pay upfront to fill the tank.

I'm.in notfolk, and not on mains gas.

Norfolk!

@romdowa where are you situated? I'm in Dublin and everyone I know has gas heating, except me because it was in the house when we bought it.

We have oil as there is no gas connected to our village. Not overly rural; 3 miles to the nearest town and 25 to the nearest city. In Nottinghamshire.

Don’t know about cost comparisons, we spend around £50 a month to heat a 4 bedroom detached house.

Lots of it in mid Wales

Rural village in mid Wales no mains gas in the village or surrounding area! We fill the tank a couple of times a year, absolute nightmare when you forget to check it and run out!

It would be a standard enough heating system in Ireland.

@EmmaStone

Yup, rural here. When we moved I enquired about getting the village connected to the mains gas (which is about 100m away). It would cost £345k, so I said we'd think about it lol!

That’s an obscene amount. I used to live in an ex-Council property with electric storage heating, but in the middle of a city so mains gas was available. I was quoted around £15k for connecting in! Couldn’t afford it at the time but would be doable for a forever home.

Rural here, and have an oil tank for heating. We fill it twice a year. We pay £100 a month by direct debit to the oil company, but we’re always in credit so I’d say it’s about £1000 a year it costs. We need electricity to run the system too. My parents have electrical storage heaters only, and when I compared the cost of our oil bill + total electrical bill to their electric bill, it was pretty much the same.

Cornwall it’s very common. Costs a fortune but equally to have a new heating system installed isn’t often possible due to no gas mains. I grew up with no gas near us for miles. Didn’t know how to use it when I moved to a city!!

Rural village in East Yorkshire here. We don't have oil heating but quite a few houses aren't on the gas main and use oil instead. Connecting to the gas main costs a couple of thousand quid.

I'm on Salisbury Plain and I don't know anyone with mains gas. We all have oil.

Rural, but close to reasonably sized towns, we have no mains gas. Oil fired heating/hot water is the only option, unless you fit your own gas.

One of the main downsides is you are completely at the mercy of oil price fluctuations, so there can be large variation in pricing, which can be mitigated slightly by joining a local buying group to save a couple of pence per litre.

Rural Cambridgeshire and on oil, as is my grandmother in rural Kent. Even my parents just on the outskirts of a large town in Kent are on a septic tank. We all have mains water though, thankfully!

My cousin's oil tank leaked into their garden and a neighbouring property a few years ago - resulted in an eye watering insurance claim.

North Lincolnshire and none of the villages have gas, only the towns. Pretty much everyone I know is on oil.

Have you seen the price now though! It's not that many months since it was a nice 28p a litre.

No gas in our village so private dwellings mostly have oil. Us poor HA residents have electric heating - costs a bloomin fortune!!

@cortex10 - that happened to my parents when they were away. It was malicious - the cctv captured them. They’d drilled a hole in the tank. I had to sort it all out - it was a nightmare. Had to get the environmental people from the council involved as well due to there being a number of natural ponds nearby.

In Cornwall. No mains gas, so you have electric heaters or oil fired central heating.
We have oil with a tank in the garden.