We also recently had a heating oil delivery. I originally booked from our local supplier and they were charging 71p a litre!!!!! I phoned another place close to them and they were at 55p.
I phoned our usual company back and asked them to justify their price as I had searched online and everyone else was around the 55 p Mark.
We always top up when tank gets half empty and we never use a full tank in a year. But changing supplier saved us £120 on this bill
Given we can’t replace the gas boiler after 2030 (or whenever it is), I’ve been checking out the much touted air source heat pumps that we’re all supposedly going to install instead.
Apart from the £8-10K cost of the unit, it needs large bore central heating pipes & large radiators - ie we’d have to replace our entire CH.
We’re a solid stone building so we can’t install cavity insulation, I read that we’re supposed to install external insulation instead. That’s not happening. Our roof faces the wrong direction for solar panels (which are getting cheaper).
Looks like it’ll have to be an electric boiler & immersion water heater. Powered by wind turbines - when they’re actually rotating. Plus the wood burners when the wind isn’t blowing, or is blowing too hard so the turbines have to be turned off.
We're in a similar position. Our house was built 1830-40 ish and has solid stone walls. It was extended in 1896 and the walls were 'dry lined' with plaster & lath, but leaving a gap between that and the wall. I've already stripped out some plaster & lath and insulated the wall before re-covering it with plasterboard. The south facing lounge wall still needs done, but it would be very messy to do. The work so far has saved about 20% oil consumption.
Air source heat pumps wouldn't work and I haven't enough land for a ground source pump.
There was a government scheme a few years ago offering free insulation, but not to houses that would benefit most from it. Typical!
------------- Two drifters off to see the world.
I'm tired of reality, so I'm off to look for a good fantasy.
there is no firm date for banning the sale of gas boilers yet,there were rumours that 2025 the sale of new boilers would be banned but that date only applies to new builds.
The proposal is that from 2035 the sale of new boilers will be banned but even that is in doubt due to the amount of homes that will require modifying.
saxo1
Quote: Originally posted by saxo1 on 11/11/2021
there is no firm date for banning the sale of gas boilers yet,there were rumours that 2025 the sale of new boilers would be banned but that date only applies to new builds.
The proposal is that from 2035 the sale of new boilers will be banned but even that is in doubt due to the amount of homes that will require modifying.
saxo1
That is assuming the current government is still in power, and I really hope it won't be. These deadlines, like those for the phasing out of new petrol and diesel cars, are not set in stone. Any future government can set whatever deadlines it wants, or scrap them altogether. I always treat proposed laws that are due to take effect outside of the current parliamentary term with a large amount of scepticism.
Being a tenant of a housing association I can't help but wonder what is going to happen to us and millions like us. As we don't own the house we live in, we can't make any alterations to the heating system or anything else. We currently have gas central heating and its lovely. The house was built in 1992, and the builders at the time won an award for insulation properties but does it still meet today's standards? We have a huge depth of insulation in the loft, good double glazing, and cavity wall insulation from new, but we couldn't do anything about it if we hadn't. We are perfectly situated to have solar panels as the front of the house, where the largest expanse of roof is, faces due south. We haven't heard anything from our housing association, and haven't heard anything from the government about helping or persuading housing associations to install heat pumps or solar panels. We are among the lucky ones as we already live in a really nice house, but what is the future for tenants who live in very sub-standard properties?
We have a difficult bungalow as well. Its steel framed. Outside wall is single skin brick then 6 inch cavity then plasterboard. Steel frame sits in the cavity and that cavity must be well ventilated to stop the steel rusting.
British gas did install cavity insulation in some but now the contractors many of whom installed it for BG are removing it.
I think external insulation will need to seal off the cavity ventilation as external air venting the cavity will bypass the insulation so not possible. .
Internal insulation will reduce room sizes but is the only option I think
Quote: Originally posted by navver on 11/11/2021
We have a difficult bungalow as well. Its steel framed. Outside wall is single skin brick then 6 inch cavity then plasterboard. Steel frame sits in the cavity and that cavity must be well ventilated to stop the steel rusting.
British gas did install cavity insulation in some but now the contractors many of whom installed it for BG are removing it.
I think external insulation will need to seal off the cavity ventilation as external air venting the cavity will bypass the insulation so not possible. .
Internal insulation will reduce room sizes but is the only option I think
Don't think I've ever seen that kind of construction Navver. Reminds me a bit of the old Airey houses with just plasterboard on the inside of the outer walls, except that they were concrete not steel-framed. We have one next door. All our internal walls are plasterboard but the external ones are brick.
Yes I think your only option would be to insulate on the inside, even though it will reduce the room sizes. I can't think of any other way.
i live in an ex council terraced house, that we bought approx 15 years ago. last year we had to replace the boiler, we chose gas due to the fact that we could not have a heat pump on either ground or air sourced fitted simply because we dont have the wall space to fit it!
the width of my house is approx 5 1/2 meters and out of that we have only 3/4 meter of wall space available due to a conservatory and then external guttering and then a patio door, the placing of the unit couldnt be raised due to the house facing west and getting battered by any winds and bad weather.
we did check all this out before replacing with a gas boiler and where told that there was no way it could be fitted on either the front or the back of our house.
we arent going to be the only ones in this situation of being potentially left without heating in the house unless you used electricity in the form of radiators or oil filled radiators, the cost of using them to heat a 3 bed home would be astronomical
I just did a quick calculation of the relative cost of oil and Electricity.
Assuming that the amount of energy to heat a house is independent of the source, you can just compare the cost of 1 kwh of energy. Taking the energy in 1 ltr of kerosene and allowing 90% boiler efficiency, you get 9.36 kwh. This currently costs about 60p while the equivalent in electricity would be approx £1.60. Off-peak might be cheaper.
------------- Two drifters off to see the world.
I'm tired of reality, so I'm off to look for a good fantasy.
Re electricity costs. The reason that we’re being pressured to get smart meters is nothing to do with helping us use less electricity. I read that it’s so the rate we’re charged can be varied minute by minute, as it is on the auction site where the generators sell the electricity they’ve made. So when everyone comes home from work & plugs in their EV, the price will go up. It’ll cost less to run the tumble drier at midnight than midday.
A return to off peak, as Capt L suggested.
We still don’t have a smart meter, largely because the mobile signal inside our stone house is intermittent to non existent.
Quote: Originally posted by Fiona W on 11/11/2021
Given we can’t replace the gas boiler after 2030 (or whenever it is), I’ve been checking out the much touted air source heat pumps that we’re all supposedly going to install instead.
Apart from the £8-10K cost of the unit, it needs large bore central heating pipes & large radiators - ie we’d have to replace our entire CH.
We’re a solid stone building so we can’t install cavity insulation, I read that we’re supposed to install external insulation instead. That’s not happening. Our roof faces the wrong direction for solar panels (which are getting cheaper).
Looks like it’ll have to be an electric boiler & immersion water heater. Powered by wind turbines - when they’re actually rotating. Plus the wood burners when the wind isn’t blowing, or is blowing too hard so the turbines have to be turned off.
There isnt a single element of a gas CH system that will naturally transfer to a heat pump system. And thats just the kit itself. All your pipes throughout the house will have to be replaced; which means walls opened up (unless you box), floors lifted or even chased out. Apart from the mess this causes, theres all the repair/redecorating on top. So double the price of whatever the Gov. reckons it will cost. I cant see this idea flying any time soon.
The ones I've been involved with, typically in schools, have an outdoor unit and an indoor unit connected by pipes.
Both have a fan, the outdoor unit can be wall or floor mounted and is pretty ugly.
The indoor unit can be wall mounted or flushed into a ceiling and are prettier looking a bit like like a convector heater.
The system can be reverse cycle meaning it can be used for heating or cooling which could be very useful in summer as we warm up.
One outdoor unit could connect to several indoor units.
They use electric but typically provide 3 times as much heat as electric used.
To provide hot water they would have to go through a heat exchanger to transfer the heat to the water. We've not used these preferring direct electric water heaters close to the point of use. Because they are close to the tap there is much less waste in long pipe runs so they are pretty economic especially as nowadays very little hot water is actually used.
We have a well in our back garden so assuming it can be dug out I believe we could in theory run ground pump heat exchange heating but the cost of the systems is way too much at the moment. Our 1930s bungalow leaks cold like a sieve but nothing has come along yet that is cost effective enough to justify replacing our gas boiler.
There are so many issues around replacing gas as a domestic fuel - for those who have a mains supply, anyway! Electric storage heaters and heat pumps require very well insulated homes to work efficiently, which would be a big, expensive challenge to a lot of our older housing stock. That's before you start to pay for the new kit, which would be beyond my means.
My 50s semi has wall and loft insulation to latest standards and double glazing (getting a bit old). However it also has air bricks, as it was built with an open fire in the living room and a solid fuel stove in the kitchen to heat the water. I rather like my air bricks - I don't like the idea of a house being sealed up too tight, it doesn't seem healthy.
------------- Always edited for sloppy typing - when I spot it!
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Topic: Heating oil
via mobile 11/11/2021 at 11:46am
