Is oil heating relatively cheap?

[Wagsandclaws]

Just that really, we love rurally and last summer 500 litres were £140 via boiler juice.

I've just paid £430 to fill up again ( have done a couple of times since summer ) but it was never this expensive.

Sorry to sound stupid but is it the same as gas in terms of how expensive it's likely to be?

We always lived in a place that had mains gas before so is Oil hearing the most cost effective way of hearing a house with prices being so high?

We have to keep the house warm at all times due to my 82 year old Mum living with us. Our electric is about £230 per month with utility warehouse so it's really adding up atm.

@Scrunchcake

You could see if there's a syndicate you can join locally - they take orders every month and put in a bulk order for everyone at a better price. Saves you having to shop around too.

Yes do check the Oil Club - https://www.oil-club.co.uk there are loads of rural villages signed up and you usually get a few pence per litre off on their bill orders. No dramatic discounts though.

Yep we use oil club here and one thing I like about it is the regular emails prompting me to think about whether I need to order or not

I've found that LPG (or BioLPG, which includes gas made from waste) is cheaper than oil. We have a 2000 litre tank. We were lucky; we signed a 2-year fixed price contract with Calor last summer; price is 38 p per litre plus 5% vat plus 0.172 pence per day standing charge for the tank.

We normally order around 1500 litres; that lasts approx a year (central heating and all hot water, including shower).
So that would add up to £570 +28.5 +62.78 = £661.28

Prices for new LPG contracts have gone up -one website says by 17%, but I can't confirm this ; you can get an up to date quote online from the Calor website. There are of course other LPG suppliers - though that will depend where you live. I'm not advertising Calor!

If the reported 17% increase is true, it would add £112.37 to the above bill, making a total of £773.65. That still seems a lot cheaper than what you are paying for oil.

@scottishnames that sounds much cheaper tbh.

Did you have the bio lpg tank put in? What was the cost of you don't mind me asking?

97p a litre tonight!

Wagsandclaws No, the tank was there when we purchased the house. It's a standard LPG tank - BioLPG doesn't need a different one. Other suppliers might differ, but when Calor offered us a BioLPG contract, they reserved the right to vary the proportion of bio gas and ordinary LPG in each delivery, depending on what they had available at the time. So presumably the two can be mixed and stored together; SFAIK, they are chemically the same, they just come from different sources. And, as my DH pointed out, they both emit the same amount of greenhouse gas when burned....

Each gas company will have a website where you can ask for a quote for the cost of supplying a tank, as well as giving a current price for LPG per litre. As other posters have said, the price is variable - by season, by quantity ordered and by state of the gas wholesale market (though the LPG market is different from the mains gas market). Maybe the distance from the gas terminal is also relevant; I'm not sure.

And it might be that the reported figure of a 17% rise is an underestimate; this article from the 'i' newspapaper suggests that it's
been nearer 20% (end Feb 2022). But that's without bulk/seasonal discounts. inews.co.uk/news/energy-crisis-rural-households-wait-months-heating-gas-price-rise-1469366 ( The article is also a bit alarmist; here, in remote Scotland, Calor is quoting 3 weeks for delivery, which is much the same as ours was last year. Not bad, considering distances/weather etc.)

One important thing you might want to investigate is that from 2025, mains gas boilers will no longer be permitted in NEW-built homes, though again SFAIK they can continue to be used - and maybe even fitted - in older buildings. I do not know whether that also applies to LPG boilers.

Oil has generally been more expensive than gas - no price caps.
Solar water heating really does seem a no brainer - even in winter it warms the water a bit, so less energy is needed to get it all the way.

@bloodywhitecat that's crazy! The trouble is we would be fine popping it on for about 4 hrs a day but it has to stay on because of my elderly Mum. I don't know where this will end tbh.

@scottishnames thanks for the info - it's very useful.

We bought 500l about three weeks ago and it was 69.9 , but when it snows I have known it to hit £1.10 and firms only supplying existing customers. We pay £70 a month into a budget account , and then the company lets us go up to 4 months in credit if we need to , but usually we don’t . We just buy usually in March and late august , the august delivery being 1000 + litres and March being a top up

It's actually known for being quite the opposite.

We're on oil and 500 litres usually costs £250-300, we buy around three times a year. 4 bed. Newish boiler. Much more expensive atm though.
We brimmed the tank in March 2020 but that has long gone.

@Ariela

We've a 2500 litres oil tank, and buy approx every 15-18 months. This means I can shop around for prices and buy when it is cheap, I usually get 2000 litres to get a good price. For hot water, our solar once churning out more than 2Kw, then heats the hot water to higher temp than the Rayburn will, meaning that in the summer rarely heats the hot water (it's on a time anyway). I also cook electric in the summer (solar), not on the Rayburn. I think I last paid half what it is now , buying in the height of summer heat when oil sales are typically very low vs winter (kicking myself we couldn't squeeze in much at the start of the pandemic when it was super low). Prices vary, but if you've a local buying group (basically WhatsApp when people need oil in our village) so 4 or 5 or more can buy together to get a cheaper rate or use boilerjuice or similar.

You may be in trouble with shopping around. Someone I know shops around between two suppliers. Was told today that company A is not taking any new customers. The person I know said that they have always had oil from them. Company A said they have not had oil from them in the last 12 months, so they wont be selling oil to them. Person will ring the other company on monday.

I'll cross that bridge when it comes to it, we only need oil every 18 months as it is, and the earliest I'll have room for a deliverable amount will be the summer, demand will be lower so am not worried. DH works in a related industry so has contacts if needs be, but there is a village buying group we're in anyway.