No Mains Gas - Oil v LPG heating

[Dani101]

We will shortly be moving to a property with no mains gas. CH is provided by an ageing oil boiler with a not-to-current standard oil storage tank, so will need to replace both. Our dilemma is whether to get another oil boiler or install LPG. Neither we nor anyone we know has experience of using oil heating.

Does anyone here have experience of both and what do they prefer? Obviously, gas has the advantage for more controllable cooking and for a gas fire for cooler evenings when the CH isn't justified. Apart from that, is one cheaper than the other to run and are servicing and maintenance costs comparable?

Many thanks.

Afraid I don't have experience of both but I suspect they are broadly similar.

No mains gas in my village so people are either solid fuel, lpg or oil.

We've had solid fuel. Something to consider as you have warmth in power cuts, if you've got a stove with an oven then you can cook in a power cut too. Plus it is very efficient as while your fire is heating your water it is also heating your house. Cons are going out to get fuel in winter! Plus if fire out eg you go away for a weekend then it takes time for everything to warm through.

Now have lpg (we changed as moved house within the village, not because we wanted to change from solid fuel). Pros of course can't be denied, you can press a button and make heating happen. We don't use it for the cooker and I don't think many do. We have induction hob and electric oven. I think using for cooking and things like a gas fire really bumps up use and therefore cost. For us, comparing with my parents smart meter, I would say the lpg is definitely cheaper than mains gas.

We have a tank in the garden, definite downside. But it automatically tells our provider when it needs a top up and the truck comes. Have to remember the boiler uses electric so in a power cut there is no heating anyway.

Friends with oil have similar, oil does the heating and water and use electric to cook.

If you've space for a stove alongside lpg or oil then you've got best of both. Friends have a mini range style stove plus lpg and it is lovely. Heats nicely by itself and can bake all day long in it.

However, personally if I were starting from scratch and needed to remove the tank anyway then I'd be looking at more eco technology and thinking about heat pumps.

I don't have experience of LPG but I can tell you about oil prices. When we moved into a 200+ yo house in July 2021, oil was 45p a litre. Then Russia invaded Ukraine and come the beginning of March 2022, it was £1.30 a litre. There are 10.36kwh per litre of oil.

This year it was 85p a litre when we moved again in July (exceptionally high for a summer oil price) and is now down to 59p a litre.

The price is extremely volatile, and there are no government caps.

We got an extra £200 from the Government as an alternative oil payment in MAY (!!).

We're currently considering buying a house that's on oil but with three rooms (and a cooker) on gas; it only has a 650 litre oil tank, which terrifies me - firstly because the minimum order with almost all oil companies is 500 litres so we would be forced to be on some sort of top-up system (which costs 10% more) or constantly be monitoring oil and risk running out in cold spells. You can have a 'watchman' installed so you don't have to use a dipstick; in the rural location of our last house, the signals never worked, so it was all manual.

Even now, in our current home with a 1300 litre tank, we can't easily take advantage of waiting for the summer price to drop to its lowest to fill it for cheap over winter. We'd absolutely have to get a refill come January when prices are at their highest.

Really, if I had to take my pick of houses on oil, I would want a 2,500 litre tank so I'm not at the mercy of wildly fluctuating prices.

You should really get an oil heating engineer to talk you through because I don't really have a clue what I'm talking about, but I reckon the bigger the oil tank, the bigger the boiler needs to be (bigger oil tanks will mostly be installed for bigger homes, which definitely do need bigger boilers).

The only thing I know about LPG is our friends had a hell of a time finding any for some time last year, and it's gone from £60 to £93 a bottle.

Regulations may have changed since your current oil tank installation, e.g. needing a 30cm solid base the whole way around didn't exist in previous years:

https://www.oftec.org/consumers/off-gas-grid-guides/home-guide-to-domestic-liquid-fuel-storage-up-to-3500-litres

There's a mumsnet page 'rural living' that might be better placed to help you, by the way.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/rural_living

Have you considered installing an air source heat pump (or ground source, if the property is suitable - ours want because of the 'unique' layout)?
We installed one March 2022 (already had solar panels), and it's been great. The house feels warmer to me - I think because the air source heat pump is more efficient if you keep the house at a constant temp rather than letting it plummet down to say 12° and then turning the heating on. Even with the rise in electric prices, were actually surrendering slightly less on energy bills than we were before (which was a combo of oil and gas)

Yes, agreed. There are currently plans to start phasing out oil (and LPG I think) boilers fairly soon. Although it's possible that this will get pushed back, oil/lpg is likely to be relatively more expensive than electricity as time goes on. With both gas or LPG then you also need a tank which takes up space in the garden. If the house is fairly well-insulated or can become so easily, then I would definitely investigate ASHPs. And by investigate I don't mean read articles in the Daily Mail or Telegraph - actually speak to people who have them. Those I know with them are very happy.

Could you look into getting a heat pump? Either air or ground. We've had one installed - we're not rural but have had our gas supply disconnected and we're now solely electric. Ours is wonderful - house always warm (you don't get peaks and troughs), plenty of hot water and it's cheaper to run than having a conventional gas boiler was in our (poorly insulated) previous rental house.

Relative lived in a house with an oil powered boiler and seemed to be constantly at the whim of wildly fluctuating prices!

We got the £5k grant to pay for the heat pump.

We have 2,500l oil tank, solar - which when generating 0.2kw over our usage then heats the hot water, a Rayburn 600 series (heats hot water and central heating independently on timers, also for cooking, after cooking the hot Rayburn acts like a storage heater, and a Stovax log burner in the lounge - which has the capability of a back burner to heat water but is too far removed from our heating to be of any practical use.
Our total electricity is currently around £64 a month average> We cook all summer on electricity, so our use is pretty constant year round.
Our total oil averages out (obv we buy when cheap) about £5-600/year on past few years prices.
Logs are free (we have a chainsaw and log splitter)
4 bed average size house.

We've had houses with various non-mains-gas heating systems. Stove was cozy, but it took hours to warm up properly and our insurance wouldn't let us have it on when we weren't it. As we both went out to work, the house was often very cold. That may have just been us, our insurance and that house, but it might be worth checking out if you are out during the day.

I'd certainly look into air/ground source heat pumps, and/or solar.

From the comments I guess the advantage of lpg (in a big tank not buying bottles) over oil is that you lock in to a price for a contract period so you don't have the fluctuations and can plan. Though of course if prices fall you could be paying more.

Really do think about heat pumps. 7 years ago when we were renovating this house it didn't seem as though the technology was quite there so we stuck with the lpg but if we were doing it again now I suspect we would go heat pump. Especially if we could combine it with solar.

We have no mains gas OP. We opted for an air source heat pump to heat our water and radiators and underfloor. It's fantastic. We also have a wood burner and find most of the time we don't even need the heating on as the woodburner does an excellent job. We do have quite good insulation, but nothing mega.
Also look into a Everhot if you want a range cooker in your kitchen. They run on electric but act like an Aga in that they heat your home as well as being an oven and hob. I couldn't have one due to space but instead have an induction hob, so no gas needed there either.
If you choose a green electric supplier then going electric is far, far better for our environment. Oil is definitely not the way of the future!

@Dani101
We have 3 air source heat pumps. The two big ones for the house were installed in 2010. The technology was fine. Getting a knowledgeable installer was the bigger issue! 13 years on we are still happy with them. We do have a log burner (our own logs) in the tv room. We have a mix of radiators and underfloor. I would never go back to smelly old oil. LPG has its issues too. I think it all depends on what you think about the environment and if you are prepared, and can afford, to insulate and do the job properly. However wasting heat is never good but get everything priced and see what you can do.

We live in a rural old cottage with no mains gas and rather than install oil tank or lpg gas we tried Far Infrared Panel heaters which are really efficient and economical and have found them really good. We also have a woodburner and find we barely need any heating on when that is lit. https://www.herschel-infrared.co.uk/

Many thanks to everyone for their insights, they've given me and partner something to go on now. We had been suspicious of an air source heat pump given friends' experience (they don't deliver enough heat in very cold weather) but it looks to be the way so long as there's a secondary heating source to supplement it. Thanks again.

We had oil in a fairly modern house, the prices do fluctuate but compared to gas, it's worked out as only £100 per month to heat the house and hot water for a year based on the £1 per litre price. We've just refilled for this year at 65p a litre, so actually it's relatively inexpensive compared to some of the bills people are citing with their mains gas. I think some of this is down to being in a fairly small (95m2) house that's quite energy efficient.

ASHP / GSHP and solar would be far far better than LPG. LPG is very expensive and bad for the environment. ASHP work differently in that they maintain heat all the time at a lower level so you need a well insulated house to maximise their efficiency but still better than LPG. Supplement with a log burner when super cold.

We are on oil, and even at relatively high prices it has been cheaper than mains gas this winter (much much cheaper than lpg).

Unless you live in a super insulated eco box oil is the way to go.

If the tank you have is big enough (ours is about 2000l) I wouldn’t necessarily change it just because it’s not new. Likewise older oil boilers have very little to go wrong and trundle on forever. You may use a bit less oil with a modern one but the servicing costs and life expectancy may not work out cost effective overall.

We replaced our failing oil boiler with an ASHP 3 years ago. We have just installed solar panels plus batteries. AS is fine if your house is reasonably well insulated. As pp has said the house is at fairly constant temperature, we run at 15 at night and 19 during the day. The other thing to remember is the size of the radiators. We had some replaced, in rooms that had always seemed cooler and they are much warmer now.
As a pp mentioned, oil prices vary and you are in effect buying on the market which varies daily, and can respond to changes in political situations overnight.

@Dani101
We always had slightly larger radiators than we needed. Double fin type ones. We didn’t replace any. In fact we actually removed one. You are looking at a constant heat. We have 70% underfloor heating on the ground floor. Mostly rads on top floor. We only notice it’s cold when it really freezes. Keeping a log fire suits us.

Yes to getting solar panels snd battery.

We have a thermal store, water heating solar panels and a pellet boiler - set up due to no mains gas. It's worked brilliantly for us.

@MyDarlingWhatIfYouFly What are the pellets made from? How are they delivered? Presumably you need storage? We have a very narrow track leading to our house and we cannot get anything bigger than a large van down to the house. When we had oil, the tanker had to go into a neighbour’s garden. Obviously that was not sustainable! Your system sounds good though.

I think if you have mains gas it always makes sense to go for that (at current prices, in the future the government may hike gas costs to try to force people into electric).

But if you are not on mains gas then I think heat pumps are worth looking at.

Remember the 2 key issues, you need good insulation and large radiators.

We have oil, you do have to become an expert at looking at the prices!! We recently put in new more modern radiators and that has made a huge difference which we did not expect.

I'm on oil but I think my best advice is to look at all your insulation, get it top notch, walls, loft, doors, windows. This could save you oodles.

We have oil and while the price fluctuates it's competitive overall. Apart from thetank you wouldn't know any difference from gas.
We also have a multi fuel stove with back boiler which can heat the water and an electric immersion heater.
I'm dubious about an air source pump as you need new radiators and my very big old house is difficult to heat.
Currently in process of getting solar plus batteries and looking at infra red panels for supplemtary heat (I hate the stove with a pssion).