Anyone with oil-fired central heating?

[SingingBabooshkaBadly]

DH and I have had an offer accepted on a house we love. One thing I’m a little wary of is that it has oil-fired central heating. The vendors have shown us their oil bills and they are quite low but I’m assuming they probably use their heating less than we do. DH is disabled so doesn’t get warm moving around much and we’re at home all day so when the heating’s needed it tends to be on from the moment we get up until we go to bed.

Anyone out there with experience of this? The boiler is an old-style floor-standing one which we might replace with a wall mounted one though I’ve also heard oil boilers can be sited outside. The other option is to convert to gas of course.

Any words of wisdom greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Just to add that our oil boiler produces instant hot water with no need for an immersion or the heating to be on. It works exactly as our combi gas boiler did.

Yes yoi cam have hot water without the heating being on

it is cheaper per unit heat than gas .

how old is the boiler? floor standing does not tell you.
house insulation? orientation? epc? windows? decent curtains? double glazed?

We live in a little stone cottage with an oil tank.

Far cheaper, just don't ever let it run out! Mechanics are harder to find x

I've never had gas central heating but grew up with and now have my own home with oil. We need about 3 fills every 2 years -1200 litre tank so at current prices that's roughly £70 per month. We don't have heating on during the day but over the winter could easily have it on for 7 hours at night - plus daytimes at weekends and (school) holidays so we probably use a fair bit more than some will. Hot water only use at this time of year barely makes a dent in the tank. Old stone built 3 bed lower villa with quite old double glazing for context.

I'd suggest looking at a wood pellet boiler if you want to change - I believe they are expensive to install but cheaper long term to run. I think there are also grants available to help fund the replacement of an oil boiler.

lijkk. I think the neighbours both sides have gas but couldn’t swear to it. Clearly needs a bit more investigation...Must admit it hadn’t occurred to me that I’d need to change the radiators so that would be an additional cost. It doesn’t put me off the house nut it’s an additional complication and potential expense we could do without...

why would you need to change the radiators? hot water is the same regardless of which fuel heats it.

the other factors I mentiondd are very important.

Mum's house has it (very isolated property). Since she got her new boiler I can honestly say I notice no difference between her house and ours in terms of warmth (ours is bog standard suburbia gas CH)... before her boiler was shit but it's been replaced now.

She's on a monthly payment deal with a sensor in the tank where they top it up when it calls in as running low (after one very frosty in more ways than one Christmas where my stepfather forgot to check tank levels and it was running really low) and then she gets a refund if the cost of oil's gone down. Their boiler's one of the outdoor types now which has freed up a huge chunk of space inside the house.

Is there a real fire or anything in the living room? We have a three bed two living room and huge kitchen 300 yr old damp, draughty (but gorgeous) farmhouse. We spend about £1000/yr on oil. We use the log burner a lot though. The heating is probably on four or five hours in winter, not at all in summer.

Oil boilers are often floor standing as they're bigger than a gas boiler. You can get outside sited boilers, but they need to be well insulated.

not wood pellet, major eco disaster. look it up under ' green wash'.

I don't think you need to change the radiators to switch from oil to gas, however if you switch to air source or ground source heating you need oversize radiators as the water is heated to a lower temperature and more is needed!
If you go for a boiler in the garage make sure that you have a feedback thermostat outside. The idiot builder who installed ours put in the thermostat to monitor the boiler but didn't bother with the feedsback. When the boiler turned itself on the the middle of the night to stop the oil in the boiler from freezing it did not turn off when it warmed up. We then had the heating on full pelt for the rest of the night.

Thanks again everyone.

I’ve spoken to the local gas transporter who confirmed the mains gas is very close to the property and that connection would be straightforward and would cost between £400 - £600. Then of course there would be the cost of a new boiler but I think we’d need that even if we stuck with oil - I suspect good oil boilers may be more costly than a gas one (no idea why I think that - talking from a position of utter ignorance! ). No idea what it would cost to have the oil tank removed though....

Thanks for the advice re the feedback thermostat Daisymay and good to know the rads should be ok if we go down the gas route.

all a waste of time if the insulation, orientation, windows and other things which may be on the EPC are bad.

Insulation is fine. Some windows are original with very good secondary glazing. The others are triple glazed.

Oil boilers aren't that expensive, if I remember rightly. Personally I'd give it a go before you go to the trouble of changing everything. People seem very scared of oil, it's no big deal really.

We had oil for 23 years in our house and the tanker was struggling to get to us and had to park in another property.

We converted to air source heat pumps. They are not boilers. We have two. They are essentially the opposite of fridges and are electric. They are the size of two American style fridges - we have a big house! We have mostly underfloor heating on the ground floor and a few radiators. We had three new radiators in the lounge but I don’t think they are oversized. They are calculated to be the right size. We had them because we gutted the lounge. We didn’t change a single one upstairs.

Air source heat pumps do heat the water to a lower temperature but we are well insulated and double glazed. We notice the cold air coming out of the pumps but they are not noisy.

If you stay with oil, get a modern boiler. It makes a huge difference and put it in the utility or it’s own room. Our old one had a boiler room. I would investigate gas. If it goes past you, it might be worth getting a survey done for connection and a new boiler.

interesting. how is your electricity bill with the 10-30% annual rise in unit prices that never makes it into inflation figures?

We have oil ch and a multi fuel stove. The boiler is 2 years old now and is much more efficient than the old one we had. We spend about £800 a year on oil, and then a few hundred more on logs and coal. We are never cold, quite the opposite in fact! Our house is very well insulated.
We have no gas where we live.
I don't think I have ever seen a wall mounted oil boiler, they are generally quite large.

I don't think wall mounted oil boilers are common, if they exist at all. Mainly because the oil tanks are big and heavy so are sat on the ground, and oil needs to run into the boiler. Our tank is a teeny bit higher than the boiler to allow the oil to flow to the boiler simply due to gravity. You'd need some sort of pump to get the oil into a wall mounted boiler.

Electric bill isn’t much different to oil, but we couldn’t get the tanker to the house any more! We have no gas. We don’t need to keep an eye on the tank and it’s clean and efficient. It works for us!

Our oil bill was several thousand £s 7 years ago!

I've had oil in our last 3 houses.

It takes a bit of getting used to as you have to plan to make sure you don't run out - and prices go up and down all the time so buying at the right time is important to keep costs down. Fill up in Summer!

Doesn't put me off houses at all - although we are in the process of moving and new house does have air source heating.

We have no choice for gas here though.