Heating oil – how much!

Oh, well, it sounds like they’re trying it on. There was a v strong smell when mine split.

Hope it’s got more life yet 🤞🏻

Not sure how many have seen this, but I had an email from Boiler Juice saying the £200 payment would be made in February, from your electricity supplier.

Yeh,I saw that, but the article I saw said you’ll automatically get it in one paragraph, and you’ll need to apply in the next 😂 I guess we’ll see come February, hopefully they meant February 2023 😂

After last weeks cold spell with have shed loads (tank loads) of oil. Went to look at the prices and they have shot back up again 🙁

How can an electricity company give us the £200. How do they know I am on oil and that I dont have my mains gas or LPG with another company?

I think it isn’t an oil payment, it’s because you only have a single source of mains energy, eg electricity. I’m not sure  how they know this.

Oh I hope so!

Yeh it’s actually an alternative fuel payment, so they assume everyone is on gas and electric, if you’re only getting electric via the grid you must have some alternative fuel for heating. Oil, bottled gas, wood, coal etc?

Having said that in our old place we were 100% electric (storage heaters), so maybe the electric heating is also classed as ‘alternative’ to gas??

I’ll just be glad when we get it as we too are hammering our oil tank just now.

They presumably know which addresses are not on mains gas, and as I’d assume 99% are connected to the electric grid they can just match them up? It is a government scheme after all so they’ll know where most people are via HMRC, benefits, electoral role. And if you’re homeless or houseless you’d not get it anyway?

Anyway it’s unclear from the press whether it is automatically sent in which case see above, or whether you have to apply in which case I assume they check the above?

They seem to be finding doing it very difficult anyway given the time since we were first promised it and the fact we’ll be getting the payment kind of after the house is frozen 🙄

So I’ve knocked up a bit of an app that hopefully gives me an idea of how much oil I’m burning.

A Raspberry Pi stuck inside the cover of my massive (old) boiler listens once a minute for it running via a £4 USB mini microphone.
When the sound level is above a certain level (i.e. the boiler is running) if fires off a webhook message to IFTTT which adds a row to a google spreadsheet – it fires another message when the sound drops below a certain level (i.e. the boiler has shut down).
This gives me the burn duration from which I get the oil used (a 1.35kg nozzle uses 5.11L of kero per hour).

On my phone I have an app that gets data from the spreadsheet, filters it and makes it look better – it also gives me a total volume used and the associated cost.

There will be some error as the pi might have run the script just before the boiler fires up, but it l could also miss the boiler shutting off by 1 minute also so it kinda evens out a bit!

After 10 days it’s working well.
It’s giving me a daily usage that is subtracted from a rough-ish starting volume and will email/bug me daily once the oil level falls below a certain level.

Looking at buying at house that currently has an oil boiler. What’s everyone’s plan regarding the ban coming up?
Any future huge expenditure in this is a big no no

What’s everyone’s plan regarding the ban coming up?

What ban? Anyway, there’s literally tens if not hundreds of thousands of properties with oil boilers, so it’s not like their use and the infrastructure/parts/oil to support them is just going to stop if and when new ones can’t be fitted.

Are they not completely banned after 2035?

Are they not completely banned after 2035?

Sounds like plans (no legislation as yet) for no gas / oil boilers in new builds from 2025 and no replacing existing broken ones from ‘mid-2030s’ (source).

New ones are (probably, it’s still not been decided exactly), but you can keep using the one you already have.

And I bet there’ll be a fudge/extension nearer the time, as the alternatives are not suitable for much of the housing stock in question

https://www.boilerguide.co.uk/articles/future-of-boilers

Thanks guys
We are a way off even buying but we like this house
Oil doesn’t concern me
Being forced to replace down the line does

Is it not new installs?

Is it not new installs?

Whats a new install though? In the last year we had to replace our oil tank and oil boiler.

I have no idea what other heat source we could use. Air source heat pump looks like the only solution, and that appears like it would be rubbish anyhow.

Is it not new installs?

Whats a new install though?

Ahem…

plans (no legislation as yet) for no gas / oil boilers in new builds from 2025 and no replacing existing broken ones from ‘mid-2030s’ (source)

Being forced to replace down the line does

In 10 years you’ll likely be looking to replace what every there unless it was fitted in the last couple of years…..

Especially if it’s Worcester Bosch.

Less so if it’s a grant or a Firebird (shit but cockroach like qualities …..)

The oilies tend to last a bit longer don’t they?

Our HRM is ~20 years old and the one before lasted ~25 years and would still be going strong but for spare parts availability.

Thought the legend was appropriate!

The oilies tend to last a bit longer don’t they?

Old ones yes.

Modern heat exchangers and the amount of electronics in certain boilers will see them killed off long before older oil boilers which had nothing in……

If it wasn’t for the fact they will phase oil boilers out by pricing/taxing us out of kerosene I’d buy a system boiler today -for the replacement that will be required in the future. My vortex is approaching 12 years old. Probably another 10 years of expected life span in it.

Air source heat pump technology had better catch up with the government’s plans quickly…..

Can someone explain what a system boiler is…. I’m confused [again] 😬

System boiler includes the pump and expansion vessel in the boiler casing.
The idea being to simplfiy on site plumbing and wiring.

More commonly used to describe….not a combi……

Fitting a tank and solar thermal in spring…… Could ditch the 26kw combi (sized to hot water requirement at the time) ….and go to a 15kw……but …..the current one keeps on trucking.

Sharkbait – if you’ve burning 5.11 litres an hour, thats a big boiler! 55KW ish?

My 23kW Grant burns smidge over 2 litre/hour. I’ve thought about various methods to record burner run time, such as a very small mains > 12V DC power supply, then 12V hour counters are readily available (ebay). Not got round to it yet, as I measure off my tank sight tube with tape measure, and have a spreadsheet formula to reasonably account for the tank shape (horizonatal mix of cylindrical and rectangular sections).
Oil flow meters are avaiable, but very expensive.

Can someone explain what a system boiler is…. I’m confused [again] 😬

A system boiler versus a combi boiler.

A system boiler has two pipes – hot water flow and return. It makes the water hot. That’s about it. It is plumbed and wired as part of a system with some simple valves, usually with a domestic hot water storage tank that can also be electrically heated (“the immersion”) and some radiators to provide central heating (CH). It may or may not include a pump and expansion vessel. More likely not for older boilers. Older systems usually have a vented indirectly heated DHW cylinder. Newer installs may have an unvented, mains pressure DHW storage cylinder.

A combi boiler provides domestic hot water (DHW) on demand, rather than by a heated tank. It therefore has additional connection for cold water in (usually mains pressure) and DHW out, in addition to the CH water loop. It usually includes the CH pump and often an expansion vessel in the boiler casing. They are more complicated units. They are often much higher power output than system boilers (30 vs 10kw as an example) in order to provide DHW on demand versus slowly heating a tank full.

Aaah, ours is a system boiler then. It fits in a hole in the wall. The man comes and opens a door outside and fiddles with it on the patio… All the grubby bits (including the man) stay outside – we don’t even need to be in other than to pay him…

if you’ve burning 5.11 litres an hour, thats a big boiler! 55KW ish?

It’s a massive old 35Kw thing – just keeps on going!
The 5.11L/hour comes from the 1.35 (US gallon/hour) nozzle that’s fitted.

Re system boilers, thanks, get that now 👍

That’s an inefficient old lump you have. A 36kW oil condensing boiler would be 3.01 litres/hour.
(From Grant vortex pro manual).

Im hoping our boiler lasts long enough for us to make an informed decision on HVO when we replace, it looks interesting.

I keep an eye on my oil level by poking a broomhandle down the hole

I have fantasies about building converting a old boiler to a babington burner so it can run off anything from WVO though to whatever crap I can find come the appocolypc.

Might be a good project one day when I have some time…

I have fantasies about building converting a old boiler to a babington burner so it can run off anything from WVO though to whatever crap I can find come the appocolypc.

Might be a good project one day when I have some time…

I have one of these cheap chinese diesel parking heaters warming my office, some people heat their homes with them and burn all sorts.

Mine runs on 50:50 kerosene heating oil from the house tank at 80p/l and half used engine oil (I do my own oil changes and am lazy at going to the tip so have loads).

Its lazy at starting on this stuff as its a bit thick so best to start (and stop) on pure kero and then swap once running.

Some people route the exhaust through a radiator to recover all the heat from there too…

Mine runs on 50:50 kerosene heating oil from the house tank at 80p/l and half used engine oil (I do my own oil changes and am lazy at going to the tip so have loads).

Burning used engine oil strikes me as a bit antisocial.

Burning used engine oil strikes me as a bit antisocial.

Well burning waste oil is allowed but only if you pay a massive license fee, which is basically the government not liking missed revenue as lots of workshops (that obviously would have used lots of heating oil gas whatever) were getting heat for free / cheap, which of course can not be allowed..

Well burning waste oil is allowed but only if you pay a massive license fee, which is basically the government not liking missed revenue as lots of workshops (that obviously would have used lots of heating oil gas whatever) were getting heat for free / cheap, which of course can not be allowed..

It’s also full of allsorts of metal based additives like zinc and lithium, as well as high levels of Sulphur.

The reason it’s licensed is so they can have a degree of control over who’s burning it and what emissions controls they have in place.

I know about the heavy metals, but I think there would still be a license added even if there were non.

That’s an inefficient old lump you have. A 36kW oil condensing boiler would be 3.01 litres/hour.

Our 1974 AGA averages 8 litres/day, with little variation for season – it’s on 24/7 and supplies half the heating, all the hot water & cooking.

How much oil a day are you folk burning 3-5 litres/hour actually using?

If my data is right I’ve been using about 9.5L/day over the last 2 weeks.

That’s with my 3 daughters home so pretty much max usage.
As they go back to Uni then I’ll shut down a few if the rooms.
It will be interesting to o see if there’s much change.

I used 740l in just over 300 days.

Or around 2.5l average per day.

Heating and hot water.