How much do you spend on oil fuelled heating?

[AuntLucyInPeru]

I ask because I've just noticed that after a dec15 fill up of 1000l, I'm down to a quarter of a tank. This is a second home so the heating is on no more than 60hrs a week, on a lowish setting boiler on setting 3 of 5, TVRs on full downstairs, and on 2 upstairs. House is a 3 bed, well insulated, sash windows with no sec glazing, but with full internal wooden shutters which we use at night. Anyway, I worked out that my heating is costing around £20 per day, afive other fiver a day on logs for the woodburner. This is my first time with oil. Can this possibly be real, or is there a serious prob with my boiler (we're in rented..). Help!

We have a Direct Debit with the oil company for £200 a month. 6 bed drafty farmhouse

Is your tank accessible? There has been a lot of thefts from oil tanks recently, which would explain that cost a lot better!

We recenlt worked out that we use about £1800-£2000 per year on oil, and we have 4 bedrooms upstairs and 4 rooms downstairs. When our heating is on, it's on full. Is probably on for around 6-8 hours per day.

If we have our wood-burning stove on, we need the heating far less.

I think for 60 hours of heating a week your usage sounds about right to be honest.

What is your thermostat set at? Ours is also on for 5 hours a day, sometimes more, we had a 1000l put in at the end of December will need more at beginning of March

But we're only here at weekends?! So no more than 10 days here since the dec refill ( plus 3 hrs per day antifrost on low per weekday). It's a bloody fortune!

Yes, oil is expensive nearly double what it was this time last year. Your heating is on longer than ours maybe cut down the tie it is on.

We're in a big,modern (draughty) house and oil averages at £500 a month. In the winter can cost about £700 to fill the 1000 litre tank and this will need refilled within 4 weeks.

It's on 11 hours a day.

Yours does seem excessive - is there perhaps an oil leak from the tank/pipes? Smell of oil around tank? Plus if you're away from the property people can now see oil tanks via satellite maps and target you and steal it.

Bugger. Even with it on that much, the house temperature didn't get above 14oC this weekend

Where you live is a factor too. Was reading last week that heating bills in Scotland cost about 50% more than South of England - just due to being colder - that was the jist of it anyway.
Unfortunately (temperature wise) we live in North Scotland :(

Dorset

I have got through 750l since the end of Sept (had a refill last week) - not a very big house and we try and have the woodburner on as well! Your consumption seems a little high but not excessively so compared to lots of us on here - oil is SO expensive! I felt sick when I realised how much we had got through!

Over the last few months however, my 'D'S (he is a dear but not on this occasion!) was putting the thermostat up to horrendous levels when he got home from school and carefully putting it back down a couple of hours later just before I got home (I am nice - I usually phone the kids when I leave work so he had a good idea of timing!) The slight give away would be that the house was rocking with heat when I returned but strangely the thermostat would be very low..... However, my spy (otherwise known as DD) tipped me the wink!

We have a new regime now! LOTS of jumpers and socks and I think the penny has dropped re shutting doors etc

Last year ours averaged out at £200 per month. Our heating and water is oil fired and we also have an Aga type cooker.
We're in a detached 4 bed house with lots of windows and two conservatories so it probably isn't terribly heat efficient.
We sometimes use the open fire or log burner but the central heating is our main heat source.

We had 1300l in our tank in October. It has more than a third left now. So that's around 200l a month over winter. We'll probably top up in April/May then fill up in October again. So probably we use about 1700l a year.

Ours is on for 11 hours a day, but if I'm home it's usually on for more than that. And 1.5 hours of water heating.

We moved into our 4 bed new build last may, we filled the tank £650 and still have a quarter left - we are in rural scotland so need it on quite a bit!! Pleasantly surprised really as so far seems to be less than we paid for mains gas in Glasgow.

We've used 1000l since the beginning of September for a draughty detached 5 bed. We have the heating on for a couple of hours in the morning and then from 4pm to 10pm but with the thermostat at 20. Kitchen is heated by the Aga (not oil-fired). We have a 'watchman' in the tank so we can get an idea how quickly we are using oil and it is very obviously linked to the outside temperature, usually we use 1 unit over 3 weeks but the last unit was used up in 10 days as it has been so cold here.
Do you think that because you are not there during the week so the heating is on antifrost only, that the house is losing all it's heat so you are starting from scratch heating it up at weekends?

a bit off-topic, but you might think about changing to a Programmable Thermosat. They've only started gaining popularity in the last few years. Drayton, Danfoss and Honeywell all make them. They enable you to set different temperatures, for different times, for different days of the week, and also has a "holiday" setting where it will stay at the "antifrost" setting for a number of days of your choice (I think mine goes up to 99 days and my "holiday" setting is 8C). So you can for example have it at 18C between 5pm and 11pm, then 15C until 7am, then 18C again during the breakfast run, 12C from 9am to 5pm if you are out all day but don't want the house getting icy. For Saturdays and Sundays you can have different patterns, or for any day of the week when you are regularly home at different times. If the house is well insulated and weather is not exceptionally cold, the boiler will often not need to fire overnight or during the empty day, because the indoors temperature will not drop enough to for the stat to turn it on. But if you get an exceptionally cold period, it will stop the house getting too cold.

The "holiday" setting is very handy for a second home, and will warm up the house prior to your planned arrival on (say) Friday night.

It also has the ability to change the setting for 1,2 or 3 hours if you are in (or out) outside the usual pattern, then will go back to the program.

This stat will wire into the same place that you have your current wall stat without needing wiring changes. It will usually have an internal standby battery to keep the clock going during power cuts. This gives greater control than you get with an ordinary timer and wall stat. If you want to you can have a Wireless one at extra cost, but I am a bit suspicious that it gives something else to go wrong.

In my experience this means there is not much fiddling with the stat, and has also cut fuel usage because there is no need to turn it up at night or in cold weather "just in case"

I now feel very guilty as I have one of those programmeable things and have never got to grips with the whole thing!

Now there's a good job for a cold Sunday afternoon!

Sounds like a lot of useage to me - we use about 1200 litres a year - 3 bed bungalow - east of england. 60 hours a week is much much more than I would use - about 4 hrs max per day here - little more over the last few colder days.

I second YouCantTeuchThis though - oil theft is a real danger.

We filled a 2000 litre tank at the end of october and we have 6/10ths left (so have used 800 litres in three months). The oil runs the heating and hot water in a large six bed detatched house. To fill up cost us over £1300. We have it on for half an hour in the mornings and then its on from 4 in the afternoon until about 10 in the evening. At weekends it tends to be on all day at the moment. Its very expensive.

We have noticed a drop in our consumption though since having cavity wall insulation installed.

Yes yes yes yes to what Piglet John says. Not cheap, though.

However, I have to say that our boiler stays around the '2' or '2.5' setting, and our non-programmable TVRs are certainly not usually up at full setting. (They are this weekend.) But we're way warmer than you - we're cosy (by our standards) at around 19 degrees.

Oil is horrendously expensive.

If you are in Dorset the heating definitely doesn't need to be on for 60 hours a week, half that if that. Do you have anyone that keeps an eye on the house for you? If so then they just need to go in ona Friday and put the heating on for you. When we go away we set it for an hour in the morning and a couple of hours at night.

£20/day is insane. We have a large modern build det. house & probably use somewhere between 600 & 1200 litres/annum. Heating is on typically in winter about... 15-18 hours/week? Tiny woodburner going similar number of hours.

FB page for HeatingOil.

It's on one hour a day to stop pipes freezing from mon-thurs, then comes on via the timer at 3pm on Friday in anticipation of our arrival, and if the outdoor temp is under 5oC then we leave it on a low setting overnight. The it's back up to full downstairs all day on Sat, and on full in the bedrooms for an just an hour before bed, and back down to low throughout Sat night. Then it comes on full again downstairs for 4 hours on Sun morning, before going back to frost setting as we leave for the week. We light the woodburner and the open fire in the two downstairs rooms at around 6pm on fri and Sat, and have them going til bedtme. This, with the doors shut and shutters shut, gets the room temp to around 18oC. But the indoors daytime temperature over the last few weekends really hasn;t got above 14oC so we're not exactly all lounging around in bikinis - I wore my skiing thermals under clothes all day yesterday, and the kids never take their fleeces off, and sleep with their dressing gowns on and two duvets. looking at others' consumtion, I reckon we have a knackered inefficient old boiler. It;s got to be 15 years old. Time to call the heating engineer, I think. Thnaks for all your helpful input :-)

Oil heating is horrendously expensive. However, your consumption sounds excessive - I have paid £300 per month this year in October, January and payment is due February 15th. We have ours on an hour in the morning and then between 4.30 pm to 8 pm. We have cut back and use our coal fire as a supplement (also expensive but nice).

Another way forward is that some companies allow you to order on the 1st of the month and pay on the 15th of the next so you may be able to skip months although I accept you have to pay for it in the end. I don't know where you are but WCF company do this credit - however, be late with payment and there is a surcharge.

A plus is that we generally order March/April and then have to order no more until September/October.

Averages out at 200 a month
Modern bungalow good insulation new boiler
Like to be warm though.