Has anyone done the above? I moved into a my first house 18 months ago and it has oil central heating with a 1000l tank. I plan on changing the boiler for various reasons and was seeing if I would be better of with lpg. After calling calor gas it seems I cannot have a bulk tank due to my garden being to small, you need a 3 metre area around the tank ( my neighbour has a bulk tank which is next to the garage?) The only option I have is to have 4 x 47kg bottles. Calor told me that the bottles are £50 each and in the winter months 2 bottles will last 3 weeks then it has an auto change over valve to the next two bottles. Does 3 weeks seem about right? I have A 2 bed with 8 radiators with the heating on for 4 hours every evening at the moment? Seems like it’s going to be expensive, £100 every 3 weeks and the hassle is calling regular to arange delivery.
So far I have only needed to order oil twice, 500 litre a time at around £300 a time, admitadly I have not had the heating on as much as I would like due to faults with the boiler, trying to nurse it till I could afford a replacement I would use more oil on a fully working boiler.
The guy from calor Was saying lpg was more efficient and would heat up faster so I use less? it seems unless I had a large bulk tank I would be better off with oil?

Oil is unsurprisingly the cheapest it’s been for years, and likely to get cheaper in the New Year.

I’d be very surprised if LPG was the most cost-efficient method of heating a house. And having to arrange deliveries every four weeks? Is the bottle price higher than the bulk price – I’d imagine it is.

You already have a perfectly good oil tank in situ. I would get as efficient an oil boiler as possible, and make sure the house was properly insulated.

My house has lpg (from a communal tank). Ime Calor is expensive (i pay £75 per month for a modernish 2 bed mid terrace, central heating/hot water/gas hob) and their customer service is not great. If i had a choice i’d seriously consider any option that wasn’t Calor!

I suspect you may be bonkers – no way would I change from oil to LPG.
Oil fluctuates in price and you can phone around and buy from whoever is cheapest – the price of gas is only going one way.
My sister had LPG (and my bro does now) and it costs more than oil to run plus the boiler servicing costs are higher.
Why do you want to change – it will tke you a long time to recoup the cost of even changing to a new more efficient oil boiler, let alone swapping to gas.
Oh and shifting big gas cylinders every few weeks would be an utter PITA (we have 2 x 47kg cylinders just for the hobs on our range and changing them every 5 years is bad enough!).

Calor gas is normally seen as more expensive, even thought the post efificiency cost /kWh here puts it on par with gas oil:

http://www.nottenergy.com/energy_cost_comparison/

Mr Calor gas is going to say pretty much anything to get you to switch over to Calor gas – it’s a very sticky commitment to change fuel types.

Get a modern condensing oil boiler, they are over 90% efficient, on par with gas boilers now.

Also some useful corelation LPG/Oil price stuff here, http://www.nottenergy.com/images/uploads/pdfs/2011_12_energy_price_trend_update_report_final.pdf but its from 2012 (I expect the relative ratios to remain consistent though)

As above, LPG servicing is expensive and finding plumbers who do it is problematic.

As above – just get a good oil boiler. I’m on oil and costed out LPG two year ago (tank, not bottles) and the running costs were much much higher than oil. LPG might be worth considering for cooking with, but don’t do it for heating.

As above – just get a good oil boiler.

I’d even question that unless you’ve got a big house and use a lot of oil.
OP for sake of argument let’s imagine you use 1000l/year at a cost of £0.50/l…. that’s £500/year. Let’s say that a new boiler is 20% more efficient than your old (doubtful it would be more) – you’re saving £100/year oil cost. At that rate it will take you more than 10 years to recoup the cost of the boiler.

Your main problem is that your oil tank is small so you can’t stock up when prices are low and buying 500l at a time is the most expensive way to get oil.

For some unholy reason our house, built as a house not a filling station has an 18,000 litre below ground tank….

Think sharkbait has a good idea in doubling the size of your tank. Bigger deliveries can be made at a better price without the outlay of a different system and a years oil for us is 2,000 litres. Assuming that you have the space to do this…

Then feed your woodburner fetish and install one with the cash instead….

A modern boiler, smart thermostat and joining your local oil bulk buying group would be a better idea than changing to LPG.

18,000 litre below ground tank.

Rick – that’s fantastic and I’m jealous! The problem round us with big tanks above ground is that they’re theft targets. Our next door neighbour lost 2000l or so one night after the ungodly punched a hole in the tank, so new tank needed too.
tony

The only option I have is to have 4 x 47kg bottles. Calor told me that the bottles are £50 each and in the winter months 2 bottles will last 3 weeks then it has an auto change over valve to the next two bottles. Does 3 weeks seem about right? I have A 2 bed with 8 radiators with the heating on for 4 hours every evening at the moment? Seems like it’s going to be expensive, £100 every 3 weeks and the hassle is calling regular to arange delivery.

Do. Not. Do. This.

We have bottled LPG as our central heating and hot water fuel. It was installed by the previous owners. Before I had a log burner, the first winter we were here we went through a pair of bottles (at £125 per pair delivered) every week for four months. Yes, that’s right, we spent £2000 on fuel during the coldest four months of the winter.

It would have been cheaper to burn unicorns….

Our next door neighbour lost 2000l or so one night after the ungodly punched a hole in the tank

Most of the houses round my way have the tanks in the back of the garage due to this. Not sure if this meets current regs as the houses were built in the 70’s. 3000 litre tank in mine allows for buying in bulk and saves a lot of hassle.

+1 as well to a new oil boiler. I had a new Worcester Bosch oil boiler installed a couple of months ago to replace the old 25 year old one. It’s a lot smaller but larger capacity and is a lot more efficient. Coming from previous houses where we had mains gas it was a shock getting quotes for an oil boiler compared to a gas boiler.

Grizedale, I suppose if we had the cash to fill it up, then it would see us right for the next 9 years….

Or we could live in it should there ever be a war…. or develop it as a guest flat for Submariners….

It would have been cheaper to burn unicorns….

Priceless.. and I hope you burnt the special “Ringfence” packaging that they get delivered in as well..

You’re nuts! 😉

We used to have bulk LPG and switched back to oil for heating and bottles for cooking. I’ve updated the calcs I did at the time with current prices (see below).

Calor are being disengenuous – their price for a 47kg cylinder is currently £79.99 (refill only). Ok, you can get it a little cheaper from a local dealer – maybe down to just over £50 if you live in a *very* competitive area and use Flogas, not Calor!

What matters is the number of kilowatt hours that get into your heating system:

Oil @ 39p/l+vat & 83% efficient boiler (i.e. non condensing, conventional boiler) costs 5.7p / kWh. Changing this to a 90% efficient boiler (i.e. condensing) only saves 0.4p / kWh, but gains more expensive maintenance.

Bottled LPG at Calor’s price with a 90% efficient boiler (i.e. condensing) costs 15.6p / kWh

Shopping around to get LPG for £50 per 47kg reduces this to 9.7p / kWh

It’s difficult to find prices for bulk LPG, but using the range of prices here and a 90% efficient boiler gives between 6.5 and 13.6 p / kWh, but there will almost certainly be an regular payment for tank rental / maintenance on top of this. In our area of North Wales, bulk LPG was much more expensive than 47kg cylinders, even without taking into account the extra costs associated with bulk tank installation and rental/maintenance.

Mains gas (which we can’t get) would be about 4.4p / kWh.

Using 1000 litres of oil in an old boiler nets you about 8,500 kWh of heating.

There’s no problem using bottled LPG for cooking. Even 19kg ones last for months and months (and you can fit them in your car if you need to fetch a refill rather than waiting for one to be delivered).

Oil much cheaper than lpg. You won’t own the tank either for lpg. You must be mad thinking of changing to Lpg.

If your changing the whole system put in a air source heat pump. Trust me its the best option if your going from oil.

i shall be sticking with oil. as i needed a new boiler it was just an option to see if it was going to be any better, as it turns out its going to be much much worse. due to a small garden my oil tank does take alot of room so it would be great to get rid of that in replacement for bottles but due to how fast you could get through and the inconvenience of calling so regular to get replacement bottles, i didnt know it would get through them so fast, when the colour guy said in the winter you would need a pair of bottles every 3 weeks, not really a strong selling point…
some one else did mention about colour customer services being poor, i couldn’t agree more from the brief conversations i have had with them, i first called monday to enquire about it, got told i need to speak to another department, put through to them and get the same thing, nothing to do with them, call so and so. so come today i finally got what i set out for, a price!

another issue i have is this, when i first looked at the house i didnt really know what to look for, checked everything out, check heating and hot water works, checked boiler looks ok with no apparent leaks etc and was presented with a oftec certificate to show its been fitted correctly and signed off. brought the house and had a guy service it, he took 3 hours and mentioned he did not like the install, was poor and was hard to get to (its under my stairs and about half the boiler it in show of the door opening, the other is behind the wall with around a foot gap between)
around 12 months later i get another plumber to service it who is an oftec inspector. he basically condemned it saying the installation was all wrong and pointed out a long list 0f faults to me which became obvious when pointed out to me. apparently it is in his power to contact oftec who could have it shut down but as he did an efficiency test and it operates ok and im not in any danger it went no further. i dont think this plumber is trying to rip me off, he did not pressure me into buying anything, just said he is not servicing it and putting his name on it.
it quite an old boiler, plumber mentioned its not a great make and parts can take a while to get hold of and are expensive. it has now developed a rather bad water leak after being run for an hour, had all covers off and all pipe work is dry so can only assume is leaking from deeper inside. i cant see the logic of spending money fixing it and moving it into a better location when i could have a new more economical boiler from a better manufacture.

so im stuck with a boiler which is incorrectly fitted but an oftec certificate saying it is? surely the person who signed it off didn’t do his job properly, do you think i would get anywhere if i contacted oftec?

Does 3 weeks seem about right?

No – they are lying – you can easily rip through 6 bottles in a month in winter. We often ran out and ours was only a 2up 2down end of terrace house.

switched from a bodged ill fitted air source system to LPG bottles 3 months ago, paying £128.80 for 2x 47kg bottles delivered, first 4x bottles and the changeover value were free, 3 weeks is about bang on consumption for the last 2 bottles (first time its “really” been on, cold snap, toddlers and 3 months old nippers)

actually ran out last night, so had a cold night in, calor said next delivery in my area was 1 week, but could get some out next working day if i bought 4x, had to go get a 19kg to tide us over,

bit of a farce, but certainly works better than the air source system that was installed, especially for the age of our house

its possible it complied with regs when it was installed in 19 oatcake.

as for changing to calor gas – you would need to be off your absolute rocker.

wait till you get quotes for oil boilers – they are spendy.

my grant was 1800 at trade :S

A friend had a new oil fired boiler installed last year like this one. They had it fitted outside which got around all the access problems. They had a new flue run up the outside of the house. Luckily, they do live in a giant 30s mansion so didn’t miss the space on the patio.

My brother in law was on oil in a tiny 18th century cottage. He had an oil tank custom built to fit in the tiny gap between his house and next door. He had an induction hob for cooking.

He and his neighbours negotiated a bulk delivery split between houses to get the price down and always tried to fill up in the summer.

Pondy: Re the oil tank – IF you wanted to you could dig a a big hole in the garden, brick line it and drop a bigger tank in with a removabe cover over it. It would have to be a bunded tank now but you could regain a bit of space.
Personally I’d stick with the one you’ve got seeing as you don’t get through that much oil.