Oil v gas costs

[GreenF89]

Can anyone give me an idea of how much it will roughly cost in oil for a 3 bed house (Scotland) either per year or monthly? We are used to a conventional gas combi boiler and looking to move to a house without gas so its oil. Worried about a huge jump in utilities. We currently pay roughly £96 per month for gas and electricity. Someone just told us in the winter they use £250 worth of oil in 4/5 weeks!!!! Anyone any advice or willing to share their costs? The house we are looking at is a 3 bed, 2 livingrooms,mid terraced cottage which has been recently renovated and fully insulated.
Thank You

Good insulation makes huge difference.
My numbers not much help because I'm in East Anglia, not Scotland.
Big detached house in windy place, we pay about £700/yr on oil.

Thank you @lljkk. That’s a lot less than I was thinking. Makes me feel a bit better. Are you roughly £310 per 500litres ? Thanks for your help!

We're in Belgium, but until recently we had oil (switched to gas last year). We used around €2000 worth of oil a year to heat a big(ish) 4 bedroom house with mediocre insulation. Our winters are probably comparable to Southern Scotland - usually pretty cold, fairly regular snow...

The worst thing for me about oil is that you have to a) keep an eye on it so you don't run out (our first year with oil we ran out in winter!), and b) find a chunk of money to fill up the tank, rather than pay a small amount every month for your use.

We eventually switched to gas as out boiler was on its last legs....

Thank you @amyboo. I suppose I could have a seperate wee account for the oil and top it up a set amount each month and when we are ready to buy more there should be enough to cover it. I do like though that you are more in control than with the gas companies. I feel like you have what you have and use that with oil, whereas paying utilities companies upffront the same each month, i never really know what we are using when.

We pay around £250 per 500 litres, which lasts about 4/5 months over summer. We're in a 1 bed stone cottage with minimal insulation and smallish windows so we don't get a lot of natural heat from the sun and have had the heating on quite a few times this month. This is in Scotland.

Thanks @goldenshoes. I got a quote for £220 for 500l. Also hoping that as it’s insulated abs new double glazing it should help. Wood burner will be used too but wood is expensive too. Think jumpers and socks is the cheapest way I think lol

Oil will cost you roughly 1/3 more than the equivalent house to heat as compared to gas. If that helps.

oil prices fluctuate a lot. Go onto the boiler juice website and look at their historical price charts. When we first bought this house I remember we paid about 75p plus vat a litre. This summer we paid 40.35p plus vat per litre and the lowest we've paid was about 33p plus vat. You can't always take advantage of price drops because you might not have the tank space at the right time.

typically May-June is cheapest time of year to fill up

@GreenF89

Thanks *@goldenshoes*. I got a quote for £220 for 500l. Also hoping that as it’s insulated abs new double glazing it should help. Wood burner will be used too but wood is expensive too. Think jumpers and socks is the cheapest way I think lol

Regarding your wood burner, have it serviced before you start using it, and get the best wood you can - kiln dried. We burn through maybe 4 logs a night in winter, and that’s really cosy. A crate 2ms costs bout £200 and lasts around 6 months.

@Soontobe60 thanks. Our crates we used to get were 1cube whatever and about £90 would maybe last us 3 months depending how often we had it on. When we move we will rely on the wood burners more so will defo get a bigger bulk delivery and hopefully that will be cheaper than getting more smaller crates

@lljkk a 500l tank then it will possibly only last 4/5 months so if you fill up in June and it lasts you till november even then you still have to refill mid winter which is prob the highest price to get filled? Suppose you take the cheaper prices when you can. It’s a learning curve for someone who has never lived on oil before. Thanks for all the fab advice x

@HasaDigaEebowai I had a wee look at the site. It’s interesting isn’t it. Hopefully it stays fairly low. We would really love a more eco option but anything else eg ground source/ solar is such a high initial outlay we can’t afford it

We're rural Devon. Our village has an oil neighbourhood scheme which helps keep prices low. I think our most expensive year we spent £1000 on oil and last year (when oil prices dropped) we spent less than £500 in total.
We're in an old cottage which we've double glazed and insulated etc.

yes it's important to have a big tank and fill it up when price is cheap, so you can buy enough to last thru whole winter not have to buy when prices are high. I'm not sure how many litres we get thru each year, can't find the spreadsheet right now, maybe 1200-1500 litres? Our tank is 2000 or 2500.

I think you should assume that oil will always average out at more than gas in the longer term. Yes you might get a few odd blips like the covid blip last year but in general terms it will cost more, and often quite a lot more.
I would have a look at solar. Two different types one for water hearing and one for electricity. Eon do 3 years interest free credit though and you should recoup the initial outlay and more. Its future proofing your home and the prices of oil and gas are going to keep going up and are likely to be taxed as the government tries to move people away from fossil fuels and further towards renewables both for heating and for vehicles. The cost of wood is also likely to increase. It now has to be fully dried to be sold since people burn unseasoned wood and its also likely to be taxed in some way to move people away from it.

We have a large house and are mid renovation. We are replacing our oil boiler (no option for gas here) and are installing an ultra efficient condensing one. We are supplementing that with a large solar array. We also have a really efficient multi fuel burner which we burn our own logs on (from our own woodland using only trees that die off naturally). So it isn’t a perfect set up from a carbon footprint perspective but it should mean we use far less oil going forwards.

We have 4000l tanks. Used around 2500-3000l per winter ( regular hot water is electric).
We are changing soon to something like a heat pump

If you have a bigger tank you can usually get it cheaper. We used to get cheaper prices for 2000l or more. Our tank is/was 3300l. A 500l tank is very small.

On a super cold month, we can use 500l in one month. So only having 500l tank I would be worried about.

Also, how old are the tanks? Ours are fairly old, and there’s a build up of sediment now at bottom meaning we can’t go below 500l as it will start sucking up sediment. You can get it cleaned out but it costs more than just leaving oil there.

Where we live, we won’t be able to get oil after 2025. So I would also be worried about future proofing, ie I wouldn’t install new oil now.

Where we live, we won’t be able to get oil after 2025. So I would also be worried about future proofing, ie I wouldn’t install new oil now.

Where is that caspianberg?

@HasaDigaEebowai - Central Europe. There are lots of government grants to swap from oil, most our neighbours have already done so. Same for cars, electric being pushed a lot.

Sorry i got it wrong it’s a 1000 or 1100 l tank

We spend about £1500 a year on oil. Big old hard to insulate house. We also have a woodburner - which really helps.

Last year was first year living here - we had a long cold spell and also a conservatory on the back of the house that drained heat as it was open to the house.

The conservatory is gone replaced by a solid wall extension and we are hoping that will reduce costs.