New gas boiler

[puppylambkins]

Recently bought my own first house, has oil boiler that will need replacing within a year or so. Most neighbours have gas, but I'm hearing so much on news about trying to phase out gas, but realistically what is the alternative. It's a two up two down terrace.

if you have gas in the street, I think that will be your best option.

I wonder why a previous owner chose oil. was it many years ago?

Yes the house is quite old as is the boiler so I think everyone else has gradually changed to gas

We've just had a new gas boiler fitted, it's a late Victorian mid-terrace house with no insulation and an old loft conversion that leaks heat. Gas is the only sensible & cheap option - our boiler was £2300 fitted including a new extra-long external flue & a 10 year warranty (and you can get cheaper than that). No other heating solution at the moment comes close to gas in an old property, certainly not financially. Most other heat sources require a far higher standard of insulation than the majority of homes currently have. I'll deal with future regulation when it comes!

Just read that you've got an oil boiler - ditch it as soon as you can, it's cheaper to burn £20 notes for heat than to burn oil - oil costs an absolute fortune! Gas sounds the best solution for you, a combi-boiler will be fine and will do both your heating and hot water (no water tank required, it heats the water as it goes through the boiler).

Gas might make most sense in medium term, but in the longer run they will be phased out in favour of heat pumps so it's not quite as simple as installing a combi-boiler now. The very least I'd do would be to install a system with a tank and ensure that it's future-proofed for heat pumps. Similarly, I'd make sure that the new gas boiler is located in such a position that replacing it with a heat pump in 20 or 25 years' time is as simple as possible with respect to pipework.

But none of this will be sensible without getting your insulation up to scratch.

You can buy gas boilers now that are hydrogen ready, and can operate on a mixture of natural gas and hydrogen.

I'm hoping that won't be too tricky. Whenever I've bought a gas cooker it's come with a spare set of jets to be fitted if you use bottled gas.

If the manufacturers know hydrogen is coming, I suppose they can built-in flexibility.

Yes, there are boilers that already run on a mix of hydrogen and methane, but pure hydrogen boilers are still barely more than experimental as is - crucially - the transmission and distribution of pure hydrogen. I think there's one small scale trial running at present, in model homes that aren't even occupied. I seriously doubt that hydrogen will ever be much more than a way of mildly reducing the CO2 impact of natural gas by mixing it in, the same way as biofuel is added to petrol and diesel.

Happy to be rebutted, but as I understand it hydrogen requires much tighter tolerances in the pipelines, junctions and switches that make up the transmission network and if there's one thing we can all be sure of it's that making a public announcement about phasing out gas will kill off any investment in the network beyond the absolute bare minimum, and certainly nothing like the upgrades required for pure hydrogen.

Heat pumps really need underfloor heating or big radiators so I'd replace the boiler with gas now if you can afford it. Insulate the house as well as you can possibly manage as gas heating is going to get expensive. Start by checking your loft is well insulated.