Oil vs gas for central heating?

[Box Brownie]

We are used to gas but considering a relocation move and sometimes see properties listed that have an oil fired boiler.

One or two things I have heard or read is that gas and oil costs are very similar (depending on getting an oil fill at a good price?) Also, a newer more efficient oil boiler is approx £2000 i.e. similar to a new gas boiler.

So do any TPers have experience of oil and/or both?

TIA

 

[Tringa]

In NW Scotland we have an oil fired boiler. In terms of how it works it is no different to a gas powered one, once it turns on the heat is in the radiators quickly.

I think piped gas is cheaper but have no info in this.

A possible advantage of oil is you pay when you get the fuel so there is no bill to pay in the future, though some oil companies do a direct debit payment scheme.

If you go for oil many areas have a neighbourhood/collective buying scheme which can negotiate a lower cost if a group of people buy oil together.

Dave

 

[ecoleman]

I have oil and have paid as little as 25p/l during lockdown to £1/l last autumn. With a 2500l tank that needs filling to cover winter it can get pricey but on average I estimate around 40p-45p/l about the norm.

Try and avoid buying in the winter when demand is high. Prices will be higher and waits for delivery can be long. Prices usually drop a bit by the end of summer / start of autumn and is when we fill the tank ready for the winter.

We’ve gotten used to it now but it can take a bit of getting used to a regular smaller payment for mains gas to a large outlay to fill a tank. Companies like boiler juice do have the facility for you to pay a monthly amount t into your account and use that for purchases but I don’t think I’d trust a company holding onto a load of my cash.

Shop around for the best pricing from local distributors and also look at boiler juice and home fuels direct online. We’ve been using Home fuels direct for the last few fill ups as their prices have been pretty good.

 

[ancient_mariner]

We've had oil for about 25 years, using a converted Rayburn with a pressure jet burner and a 1200 litre tank that's filled twice per year. Like Elliot, we've seen prices fluctuate a lot, with a tank fill costing around £800-£900 this last year. We use a local family firm, and if we ever run out then they often do a next day delivery for us. Worth bearing in mind there's more mechanical parts in an oil fired system, so if you're not confident with repairs it's a good idea to organise regular servicing - I do all my own repairs apart from a couple of times when I sent the burner back to the maker for parts I couldn't source myself.

 

[Box Brownie]

Thanks guys for the insights & experiences, much appreciated

Edit
I suppose with the future of all fossil fuels, in regard to costs, being potentially nebulous it makes sense to consider either PV panels with battery system and/or air source heat pump.

Thinking out loud, I would think a PV system is now better choice because AFAIK prices are better(?) for ROI compared to heat pumps. Especially as they likely mean (feed in tariff?) your electric bill is zero or even negative. So a balance of energy costs.......one to a degree mitigating for the other???

 

[JohnC6]

Thanks guys for the insights & experiences, much appreciated

We went house-hunting in Devon many years ago and on several occasions they were off-mains so had oil tanks and even gas cylinders outside the house. This worried us regarding supply. As with yourself, we're on gas mains and the thought of having to rely on tanker deliveries of oil and in some cases lorries with gas cylinders did not appeal. I do recall that not long after our search there was a transport strike and we wondered how those people got on . From the posts above it looks like the oil delivery is infrequent so maybe not so much a problem but as pointed out in a couple of the posts the oil market is volatile and just needs a spat between the Middle East countries and..normally, the US. As with Putin and his gas supplies, it can and has been, weaponised. In other words it's at the mercy of geo-politics.

Here's a graph of oil prices from 1960 to 2023 https://www.statista.com/statistics/262858/change-in-opec-crude-oil-prices-since-1960/

I took a look at pros and cons.re boilers run on oil.

Oil Central Heating Cost 2024: How Much Is Oil Central Heating?

Home oil heating offers a great return on your investment. Oil home heating can also be very efficient. Read more about the costs of oil central heating here.

www.homeadviceguide.com

Benefits and Considerations of Domestic Oil Heating

Planning to switch to oil heating, or buy a home that uses oil? Read about the benefits and drawbacks according to SG Tanks, oil tank specialists.

www.sgtanks.co.uk

A big decisioin,Laurence. Needs some thought.

 

[onomatopoeia]

Thanks guys for the insights & experiences, much appreciated

Edit
I suppose with the future of all fossil fuels, in regard to costs, being potentially nebulous it makes sense to consider either PV panels with battery system and/or air source heat pump.

Thinking out loud, I would think a PV system is now better choice because AFAIK prices are better(?) for ROI compared to heat pumps. Especially as they likely mean (feed in tariff?) your electric bill is zero or even negative. So a balance of energy costs.......one to a degree mitigating for the other???

Your electric bill won't be negative with solar PV. What you get paid for exported units is much lower than what you pay for imported, and feed in tariff (paid per unit generated, whether exported or not) disappeared four years ago.

Heat pump + solar PV looks like a good solution. Things to bear in mind are that when you need the heat (and therefore the HP consumes the most electricity) the most you will be getting the smallest amount of electricity from the sun, and if air source the heat pump will be running at its lowest efficiency. I will probably go to a heat pump when my gas boiler finally packs up, but ground source so the efficiency is constant year round.

I used to have oil heating at my old house as it wasn't on the gas main and it was noticeably dearer than mains gas, plus there was the faff of having to ring around to get a fill on the tank - fine for the expert hagglers that love to think they're getting a deal and love wasting hours on the phone, but I can't be R-sed with that nonsense. Other thing to worry about is the tank, if it splits and you let oil into the water course you will be faced with (at minimum) a huge bill. When I moved, my top criteria was "must be on the gas main".

 

[Box Brownie]

We went house-hunting in Devon many years ago and on several occasions they were off-mains so had oil tanks and even gas cylinders outside the house. This worried us regarding supply. As with yourself, we're on gas mains and the thought of having to rely on tanker deliveries of oil and in some cases lorries with gas cylinders did not appeal. I do recall that not long after our search there was a transport strike and we wondered how those people got on . From the posts above it looks like the oil delivery is infrequent so maybe not so much a problem but as pointed out in a couple of the posts the oil market is volatile and just needs a spat between the Middle East countries and..normally, the US. As with Putin and his gas supplies, it can and has been, weaponised. In other words it's at the mercy of geo-politics.

Here's a graph of oil prices from 1960 to 2023 https://www.statista.com/statistics/262858/change-in-opec-crude-oil-prices-since-1960/

I took a look at pros and cons.re boilers run on oil.

Oil Central Heating Cost 2024: How Much Is Oil Central Heating?

Home oil heating offers a great return on your investment. Oil home heating can also be very efficient. Read more about the costs of oil central heating here.

www.homeadviceguide.com

Benefits and Considerations of Domestic Oil Heating

Planning to switch to oil heating, or buy a home that uses oil? Read about the benefits and drawbacks according to SG Tanks, oil tank specialists.

www.sgtanks.co.uk

A big decisioin,Laurence. Needs some thought.

Thanks for reply and those 'choices' links ........ both short & pithy...... thought provoking..

Your electric bill won't be negative with solar PV. What you get paid for exported units is much lower than what you pay for imported, and feed in tariff (paid per unit generated, whether exported or not) disappeared four years ago.

Heat pump + solar PV looks like a good solution. Things to bear in mind are that when you need the heat (and therefore the HP consumes the most electricity) the most you will be getting the smallest amount of electricity from the sun, and if air source the heat pump will be running at its lowest efficiency. I will probably go to a heat pump when my gas boiler finally packs up, but ground source so the efficiency is constant year round.

I used to have oil heating at my old house as it wasn't on the gas main and it was noticeably dearer than mains gas, plus there was the faff of having to ring around to get a fill on the tank - fine for the expert hagglers that love to think they're getting a deal and love wasting hours on the phone, but I can't be R-sed with that nonsense. Other thing to worry about is the tank, if it splits and you let oil into the water course you will be faced with (at minimum) a huge bill. When I moved, my top criteria was "must be on the gas main".

Thanks for the reply/insights.

Re: heat pumps ~ when I first heard of air source ones being 'pushed' I was surprised as ground source AFAIK are markedly more efficient.......but unless you have a big enough garden/piece of land there is no way to have one! So I wonder, because of the early inefficient air source ones, what sort of uptake there will be.......and as PV drops continue to drop, with potential efficiency improvements, they will increase more greatly???

As for potential oil tank/system leakage......I surmise that one can insure against the risk ?

Should we decide that an oil fired boiler is an acceptable compromise, there are the above mentioned factors to take into consideration. NB I would certainly insist on a system survey report to avoid post purchase discovery shocks! No different to have the wiring surveyed in regard to older properties!

FWIW all bar I think one light bulb is now LED, so our prime electricity usage is 'brown' goods (TV, computer and the likes) and the electric cooker which of course can be especially energy hungry on a Sunday.

 

[ancient_mariner]

As for potential oil tank/system leakage....

Modern tanks are bunded - they are one tank within another - and the risk of a leak is very small. We had a used steel one fitted originally, and that lasted more than 15 years before it began to weep. We were able to replace it with a used (FOC) modern plastic tank, for which I created a base after removing the old tank and breaking out the brick supports. That's been in 6 or 7 years now without trouble.

 

[AMcUK]

If mains gas is available then it will almost certainly be cheaper to run and easier to get your boiler serviced.
When we moved here there was an oil boiler and a metal tank. It broke down the day after we arrived and I wasted hours calling through the yellow pages (broadband not connected at that point) trying to find an engineer. This is semi-rural Norfolk, most wouldn't come at all as they'd never serviced it, many were on several weeks notice. Oil certification is expensive and they're less popular than gas so lots of boiler engineers don't have both types.
In the end the oil supplier agreed to send an engineer when I ordered a tank full.
He turned up and showed me the CO levels on the boiler were dangerous and fixed it all which was a lovely surprise after a very cold, stressful day.
A PITA

Cost of deliveries was very variable, best deals when you ordered a lot but that means running the tank low before you order and gambling on the wholesale price of oil at that point.
Or you can pay for regular top ups and pay for the certainty
A PITA

Then there's supply, we ran out just before we decommissioned the system during a short, late cold snap coinciding with a fuel blockade - no oil to by at any price for 2 weeks. So we lit the wood burner, turned on the immersion and fan heaters.
A PITA

There's also the lovely oil thieves who cut the lock off your tank, pump into a tank in the van and leave with £100's of you fuel.
A PITA

A couple of years back the small estate adjoining us started to see their plastic tanks fail. Fitted in the late 1990's they all went one by one, causing contamination of the gardens and high
replacement costs. Several failed in few weeks, I assume weather and age together. So they have a lifetime and you need to replace before they leak to avoid big bills.

I wouldn't buy another house with oil YMMV.

We swapped to ASHP years ago, a renovation meant we needed a green heating source and GSHP needed boreholes at high cost and no guarantee of how high.
The ASHP have been pretty good with minimal servicing costs and decent reliability but running costs are high and I had to pay for 3 phase connection to suit our large, old house.
Rural properties can have "unrated" electricity connections, meaning they're too old to have a 100A fuse and you'll need to get the connection upgraded before you can have PV, a car charger or heat pump - worth checking the fuse box when you're looking in the country.