Any mumsnetters out there with oil fired central heating?

[kitsmummy]

Hello all

We're in the process of a rural move (just sold and had our offer accepted) and the new place is a (large) 3 bed old converted pub which has really really thick walls, all double glazed, with a log burner and with oil fired central heating. Now I know Oil fired central heating costs more to run than gas, but can anyone give me an idea of how much more expensive it is? I'm hoping that the house is going to be quite a warm house, given the thick walls, double glazing etc, and I also hope that the wood burner would heat up the ground floor on its own (the rooms all flow nicely off of the main room, eg they're not miles away from it along big corridors etc), so I'm hoping that we might get away with just using the oil fired heating for upstairs and for hot water. Can anyone give me some clues of possible usage/bills? ta

We have used about £600 worth since 1 January. However, it was the coldest winter for 50 years, so I am hoping that the cost will reduce. I have to be honest and say I find it horrifically expensive compared to GCH. We are thinking of moving to a house which has an electric heater in each room, which will be easier to control, though probably at least as dear.

We use the open fire a lot, to try and keep the cost down.

The annoying thing is that if the oil runs dry, you then have to get all the radiators bled (which happened to us once), which hikes up the overall costs, so we are constantly checking the amount we have left.

The downside of rural living, but there are loads of benfits to make it worthwhile.

2000 l is a very big tank, though -- ours only takes 1200, so check your size before ordering in more than will fit!

We asked the people who owned our house how much they spent on oil whilst we were buying and used that to help budget. They used twice as much as us though.
I use boilerjuice.co.uk to keep an eye on oil prices and order 1500-2000 litres at a time.

We spend around £160 a month averaged out over year- for well insulated four bedroomed 2 lounge house.

Keep eye on price and top up when cheap-