Who’s got oil central heating? Rough costs?

I know it’s a piece-of-string thing, but recently moved into place with oil central heating and trying to get an idea of likely ongoing cost.

It’s a two bed cottage, stone walls, heating via oil-burning Rayburn. Hot water in summer will come from solar, so boiler should be off from May-ish to September-ish

So, who burns oil to heat their place, and how much do you pay?

Bump to reveal…

It varies.

The cost goes up and down a lot more than gas or electricity.

It was cheap as chips last summer.

https://www.boilerjuice.com/heating-oil-prices/

We have oil fired combi boiler here, 4 bed detached with dubious insulation at the moment.
How much does it cost? Depends.
How much oil do we use? It works out around 1200 litres a year. That’s worse case, with the aforesaid poor insulation and no other heat source (and Mrs F likes the place to be warmer than the sun!).

Cost wise, it really does depend: on current market, when you fill the tank up, the weather (if there’s a cold snap demand goes up so does the price).
Not sure what the price is at the moment, we paid £380 for 1000 litres last December, but back in the height of summer last year it was £260/1000 litres and a couple of years ago it was £575/1000 litres.

It really is finger in the air stuff.. I’ve averaged about £500pa over the last 5 years for my 2 bed brink & flint cottage (single glazed, draughty) which includes water heating too. However, I tend to keep the place on the cooler side (~18 degrees).. my neighbour who is in her 90s probably uses 3-4 times what I do.

As mentioned above, the price can vary a lot.. from 28p to 70p at various times over the last 15 years (currently around 40p). If you have space in the tank, fill it when it’s cheap.

Yeah, I get that the price for oil fluctuates, I suppose my big unknown is how much oil we’ll use.

It’s a two bed cottage, stone walls, heating via oil-burning Rayburn.

Welcome to your own personal money pit.

Ignoring the complete cash sink that is the old stone wall aga heated house… Like for like, oil isn’t too bad as a fuel right now, probably not a million miles off mains gas.

I’d imagine you had best budget for the thick end of £1k, anything less would be a fun money bonus.

as above , depends how warm u like your house and how often you shower etc ?
We’ve not long moved to a yorkshire village where oil is used so very new to us so same as you very unsure , but if I’m honest its working out ok so far , we had 500 ltrs delivered early jan @ 34p per litre, and the oil monitor is still showing 3 bars , so a few more weeks before re-ordering is needed
House is a brick built 2006 4 bed semi, if that helps ?
pleasantly surprised by the running costs at the minute ,unlike the water bills up here !… crap water and silly expensive !

Oil Rayburn. Just set up a direct line to your bank account.

Horrnedously wasteful things a relic of a bygone era.

With a external sited modern oil condensing combi (grant vortex) in a 3 bed 1950s house we are getting through about 1000l a year now Jnr has arrived. I’d wager most of that on hot water for her evening bath. Next step once solar is in end of next month is to look at getting a tank and immersion fitted for summer use.

Pre Jnr it was about 500l a year for 2 of us.

I reckon with a Rayburn your looking at 1000l a year minimum even just with winter use.

@stumpy_m4

Thing is, your house will stay warm when you turn the heating off.

IHN probably has about seven and a half minutes grace until the interior temperature exactly matches the exterior again.

I will throw in that jumpers and thermal undercrackers are a lot cheaper than burning money.

We live in an exposed 4 bed detached with early double glazing and pretty poor cavity wall insulation and no underfloor insulation. The roof/loft is properly insulated and I’ve sealed off the vast majority of drafts. We don’t tend to have the house much above 18-19deg and normally use around 1500l a year for a family of four with two young children. We also have a woodburner, but it’s only been lit 3-4 times in the past year. The 1500l also provides hot water.

During the pandemic, we’ve probably used another 500l due to being home all the time and needing heating during the day to work without fingers turning blue.

Average price is about £250 for 500l and will go up and down. So if you budget around £80 a month you should be okay.

Additional things/costs to consider are that oil boilers are MUCH more expensive to buy and repair and despite being relatively easy to service, are somehow more expensive to service. You also have the tank, lines and filters to consider as well.

Hope that helps.

Had an oil fired Ray burn. You could see the tank monitor ticking down on cold days…

Here you go, p/kwh comparisons: https://nottenergy.com/resources/energy-cost-comparison/

Oil (kerosene on that chart) has only recently gone more expensive than gas (online rate on that chart) after several years of being consistently cheaper. Seriously, don’t panic in the short/medium term about the relative cost. There is a way to find historical data on that site, but I forget it.

What does your EPC say for heating? It’ll be wrong, but less wrong than our guesses (probably).

x times y is your answer.

2 bed stone thatch cottage here with an oil combi used for water and heat. House is kept at a constant warm temp during the day, cooler overnight, doesn’t click in much from about now to Sep.

Just pulled up my last few oil bills…Nov 2019 £380/Mar 2020 £350/Dec 2020 £330/Apr 2021 £320.

So £80/month if you spread the cost flat over the period.

Boiler is external, seems pretty bombproof. Needed a capacitor in 4 years. Tanks do need replacing, worth replacing the oil line now and again.

We have a 4 bed 1970’s detached with double glazing, cavity insulation etc. We get through 1000 to 1100 litre p/a and it’s around 50p/L ATM. I wouldn’t stress about the cost of oil unless you’re using an incredible amount, which presumably, you’d be using a lot of gas as well?

The cost to convert to gas isn’t just fitting a new boiler. We didn’t have gas where we live initially, now we do and ‘they’ want ~£1k to connect the house up. Plus a new boiler (and frequent replacements by the sound of it) and decommission the oil system (tank removal etc). Our last oil boiler lasted well over 25 years and we only changed as spares availability became an issue. The current boiler has been massively reliable (they’re really simple) and can be serviced from outside keeping the oily/sooty/grubby man out of the property.

The fuel cost isn’t the only consideration and assuming you’re not using silly amounts, not necessarily the deciding factor.

Thanks all

Oil Rayburn. Just set up a direct line to your bank account.

Horrnedously wasteful things a relic of a bygone era.

I’ll be honest, I’m a bit annoyed that we have one. Previously there was a ‘normal’ oil burning boiler (in fact it’s still in the cupboard it was in), but the previous owners put the Rayburn in, presumably largely driven by the ‘country kitchen look’. They also put an electric oven and an induction hob, because Rayburns are obviously a bit of a PITA for day to day cooking, so we have this massive great inefficient lump of a thing in the kitchen, looking lovely, but not really making the best use of space or cost.

The house is double glazed, and semi detached, and to be honest once it’s warm it stays fairly warm. Plus there’s a wood burner for winter weekend afternoons.

Additional things/costs to consider are that oil boilers are MUCH more expensive to buy and repair and despite being relatively easy to service, are somehow more expensive to service.

We have not found that to be the case

First thing I did when we moved in was replace the existing nonsense with a grant for which parts are cheap. 10 years old now and the ch pump failed in March. Replacement was 40 quid and access was easy

Likewise expansion vessel was easy and the leaky prv was cheap and easy.

Have seen an expansion vessel cost nearly as much as a new boiler on some models of gas boiler due to location

Why are the vast majority of houses heated with fossil fuel (gas or oil)? Is it not about time we have access to decent electric heating which can be drawn from renewables. Why is this not a thing? Surely now most houses are well insulated electric heating must be viable?

Surely now most houses are well insulated electric heating must be viable?

Most houses aren’t well insulated.

We’re in a 2 bed, stone built converted steading in the Scottish highlands – it’s a rental, older conversion with relatively poor insulation, draughty door and window seals. This past year we’ve used about 1,200 litres for heating and hot water. We also had one of the snowiest winters in years, with snow on the ground for 3 months – it was snowing just a while ago! My neighbour’s doing a church conversion down the road, she uses 10,000 litres/year 😳

Used to live in a small 2/3bed detached. Roof insulation and double glazed, but that’s it. Part solid brick/ part timber frame. We used c1800l a year so anywhere between £520 and £1170 per year with the price fluctuations that I remember. That was heating and hot water only. Cooking was electric.

Most houses aren’t well insulated.

+1

We’re in an 1890s Victorian House, surrounded by 1000s of similar period homes, all solid brick walls, suspended floors, etc.

We moved into a 5 bed late 40’s bungalow in March. We managed to rinse through 750L of fuel in a month and a week.

Suffice to say, i’ve turned the thermostat down and now make sure doors aren’t left open ‘for the cats’.

Any new build where we are is electric/ground or air heat pump. They don’t seem to bother with solar for some reason. But 95% of the village I’d say is drafty and on oil/tanked gas. A mate seems to have gone completely the opposite way, has multiple tanks for when oil is cheap and bought another boiler as a spare.

I’m banking on 1400l a year

3 bed with aga.

Aga is our only cooker which is a pain

We got rid of our air source heat pump as it just wasn’t efficient in our detached stone built house. It was one of the first to be installed in the UK in a “domestic” setting as I understand and was done more as an experiment. Mitsubishi had all their sensors connected into it and used to monitor it remotely. Anyway, it packed in at 9 year old and was uneconomical to repair. Cost of replacement without a grant was eye watering so we have installed a brand new oil combi boiler. Felt like a backward step but unless your house is properly insulated and you have underfloor heating or well oversized rads, then they are not the best method to heat your house.

We had 1000l of oil delivered in Feb and have three bars left on the monitor – not sure what that means in terms of actual volume but guessing around a third. It has been seriously cold and snowy for months though so I’m relatively confident our consumption will decrease. The talk of a second tank for when oil is cheap is actually not a completely stupid idea given prices have fluctuated from c.20 odd pence a litre to north of 50p a litre in the last couple of years!

Aga is our only cooker which is a pain

We use an economy 7 electric aga which is relatively efficient. I used to struggle with it as the only way to cook but now wouldn’t go back!
Long live the one pot meal!

Yeah, I get that the price for oil fluctuates, I suppose my big unknown is how much oil we’ll use.

Depends if you fill your diesel car up every week from the tank too….. (be sure to chuck some 2 stroke oil in there as lubricant too).

Additional things/costs to consider are that oil boilers are MUCH more expensive to buy and repair and despite being relatively easy to service, are somehow more expensive to service.

I think this depends on whether it’s an old or modern boiler. Ours is a massive great hulking thing that’s now at least 30 years old. It’s basically a burner on the front feeding fire into an empty box containing a few baffles.
Trusted heating engineers have all said, although it’s not wildly efficient, not to change it until the water jacket on the back goes as new boilers are simply not built to last.

Had an issue a couple of weeks ago with the boiler shutting off after about 15 minutes – as it was running initially I knew the fuel pump worked, the blower fan was clearly working which only left the solenoid on the fuel pump which are know to pack in when they get warm.
Cost to fix was a £17 part off Amazon (I also bought a spare fuel nozzle for about £9).
That’s the only thing that has gone wrong in about 10 years.

Don’t bother with servicing as all the do is put a new nozzle on and vaccuum out the box!

trail_rat
Free Member
Oil Rayburn. Just set up a direct line to your bank account.

Same for an Aga? In the process of buying an older place, oil fired heating via a modern-ish boiler. Think it’s combi but may have hot water cylinder but there’s an aga in the kitchen (as well as a hob and oven). Assuming the Aga ploughs through £20 notes at a similar rate??

No spare cash for a full kitchen refurb but as someone mentioned above – bloody great lump of a thing that I’d rather replace with a range cooker and get rid of the extra hob / oven.

3 bed semi in NW Scotland, I pay £60 a month to Scottish Fuels which seems to keep me about right. Just replaced a leaky 30yr old boiler with a new Worcester one so hoping consumption drops a bit.

rayburn/aga/stanley all the same*.

Tehre are conversions and things you can do but unless your sitting in the kitchen all day as a home office actually using the heat – its basically spewing out pound notes.

*We have had a few down each leg of the family over the years. the last one to go being a stanley – basically as soon as the owners retired it was turned off and an electric hob plonked on top + an oil combi fitted outside – Couldnt even give that way – mainly as the house was built round it so the new owner of the house must have had fun !

4 bed detached with good new double glazing but poor insulation – we like it cooler so it doesn’t even run heating at all from May till often November.

When you’re on hot water only you’ll barely notice it move, but the heating does chew through it a bit. We have a DD of about £70 a month and generally stay in credit over a year. We almpst all just shower though, maybe 2-3 baths a month? Comparable with mains gas from what can tell, but as others have said it can vary from trivial to frightening…

Costs about £100 a year to service, but its a 25 year old boiler – our man says as long as its just consumables being used up in normal wear and tear to stick with it.

5 bed steading in NE Scotland, we’ve averaged 6-7L/day in the 3 years we’ve been here. You can look at boilerjuice to see what the price fluctuations are like. Building is probably so-so in terms of efficiency, big granite walls but lined rockwool insulation, double glazing throughout. We had a Rayburn when we moved in (no other oven or hob) and promptly replaced it with a regular oil fired condensing boiler and a Honeywell Evohome controller (so we can heat by room). We barely seem to touch the oil in the summer months (keeping an eye on the tank watchman) so I’m not so sure how big a component HW is.

5 bed steading in NE Scotland, we’ve averaged 6-7L/day

did not realise your gaff was 5 bed.

Mat is a hop skip and a jump from here but probably twice as big @ 5 bed so it stands to reason that he uses twice as much oil as us 😀

FWIW our boiler (warmflow condensing combi) is around 15 years old and seems to be reasonably efficient. We’ve been here 5 years and I’ve done all the servicing and repairs myself, not been particularly expensive and easy to diagnose/fix.

As mentioned above, aga/rayburn etc are pretty inefficient unfortunately, all the energy is turned to heat in the wrong room. Regardless of that though, you’ll still be using nearly 1000 litres of oil without to much effort even if you changed to a boiler.
If you have the opportunity a second tank (or at least a new 2000 litre one) will give you the best saving, being able to hold off ordering oil until the price is more favourable.

That’s my plan anyway, enough capacity to hold a ‘spare’ 1000 litres so I can order in the summer. That along should pay for a new tank and eventually a new boiler over time.

4 bed semi detached thatch built in 1999. Original boiler. Average 1300-1500 litres of oil a year.

our man says as long as its just consumables being used up in normal wear and tear to stick with it.

Our boiler guys says exactly the same.

Don’t bother with servicing as all the do is put a new nozzle on and vaccuum out the box!

That’s the previous owner said here, he said he watched the fella do what he was doing, then in future just ordered the part online for about (I think) £12