Would you rather have oil central heating or LPG central heating?

[goldenretriever]

Hi
I am considering buying a house in the sticks which curently has coal powered heating. I would want to change this to be heated by oil or Calor Gas (LPG). does anybody have any advice about this as this isn't an area I know a lot about? I.e. expense of fitting, fuel soct and generally and ease of use?
Many thanks to anyone reading.

[Pam29]

I have oil heating and it costs a fortune! I would get a few quotes from different companies and make sure that running costs/efficiency is included in the quotes.

[AlBags]

I would personally pick LPG.
It can also be used for cooker.

[sandyRoe]

I'd go with LPG. I don't know if it would be much cheaper than oil but at least thieves can't nick it.

[rov1100]

Maybe neither. A neighbour of ours has bought a wood burning stove. Living in the country there should be ample wood about. On top of this you could also buy a paper crusher (about £12) which compresses your newspapers to a solid block.

[sallybb]

A wood burning stove is great, we are burning ours, for the past three weeks the wood we have used has been branches that have fallen from neighbouring trees onto our land. It is also carbon neutral. You can also have a back boiler on it, but they do not heat the radiators as well. The down side is that because a lot of people are installing them, wood prices are increasing rapidly due to demand.

[cathfromsaron]

we have just replaced a split oil tank! £1300! plus oil is pricey!

i haven't had any experience of owning LPG!

[Bambiagain]

I've got a wood burning stove and it's great. Some friends have two, one upstairs and one downstairs, and their whole house is always warm. It's much cheaper than oil here (in Germany) where wood is plentiful, and I suspect even in England wood prices are lower than oil. The downside is you have to be there to feed it, so it can't be left on automatic if you're out.

[sallybb]

We have just had our oil tank replaced for the same reason, about the same cost, thankfully haven't had to use oil for heating yet, just relying on wood.
We compared the cost of running oil with the neighbours LPG, LPG was dearer. (This was prior to us installing Woodburner)
They now heat their house using ground source heat pump.

[craft1948]

I used to have a coal fire Baxi...............lovely and cosy and heated all the radiators no problem.

[naomi24]

I don't know anything about LPG, but I have oil fired central heating, and as others have said, it is expensive. I don't know how your coal powered heating works, but I also have open fires and I can burn either wood or coal on them. I'd never get rid of them. Lovely!! :o)

[jomifl]

Lpg is more expensive than oil and can only be supplied by the tank owner, also you have to pay rent on the tank, it is very convenient though. Oil, you can get from anywhere but it is not convenient. An oil fired AGA might be a do it all solution. Heat pumps, possibly reversible if air sourced might be cheapest and most controllable. I'm leaning towards air sourced reversible eat pumps for our new house as they heat in the winter and cool in the summer. althought they run on electricity, in heating mode youget 3X the heat for you money, ie. for 11 spent on electricity you get £3 worth of heat.

[The Builder]

Per unit of heat ......... I think I'm right in saying that LPG is still the most expensive. It's big problem is siting the tank. The rules are horrendous, even to the point of having to put it underground if you can't comply with such things as distance from a boundary etc.. I'm sure you'll be getting a quote for this though.
Positioning oil tanks is also fraught with rules now, but not quite so onerous.
One great advantage is that gas boilers can, if serviced regularly, last for twenty years or more. Oil boilers are quite a bit more expensive to buy, and don't usually last anything like as long as a gas one.

Al mentions gas for cooking. Absolutely right. No need for electric cookers. In rural areas around here, a combination of the two is very popular. You have an oil boiler, but also propane cylinders piped to a gas cooker. (That's the orange cylinders about four feet tall. You have two of them with an automatic changeover valve, so that, when one runs out, the other comes in. The local LPG/propane guy comes around occasionally (even if you're out) and checks and replaces any empty bottle so you never run out.

Get full installation quotes for both systems, and take your pick.

[ladybirder]

I used to live in the sticks and had LPG central heating and it was horrendously expensive to run. A cylinder of LPG used to cost over £30 and that was 6 years ago and in the winter it's easy to use 2-3 a week. I stopped using it and instead used the multi-fuel stove which was brilliant. If you have a multi fuel stove rather than just wood stove you can bank it up and leave it when you go out.

[The Builder]

LadyB ............ it sounds as if you were running your heating from the propane cylinders I was talking about above. Ok for a conventional gas cooker, but much more expensive than a sited, (huge) LPG storage tank.

[craft1948]

This was my coal fired heating.....................

http://www.parkray.co.uk/HTML/G_Range.html

[ladybirder]

Yes I was TB. No choice I'm afraid as there was no room to site the storage tank at the required distance from the cottage which would have made a cost difference I know. If I remember rightly I was about a meter short.

[The Builder]

I fitted one of those in my first house, Crafty............. lovely and cosy :o)))

[The Builder]

Ah yes, LadyB. Siting ............ that's the big problem with LPG storage.

[Graham-W]

Have you considered "Economy 7" electric heating. I know those old storage heaters are well out of fashion but E7 electric can be less than half the price of daytime electric. All you need is a new, intelegent, meter.