Page 1 of 1

LPG versus Oil Heating

Posted: Mon Feb 27, 2017 8:56 am
by Big Dog
Do any of you guys on here have any experience with LPG Boilers/heating/Hot water systems?

I'm currently living in a house that rely's on an oil boiler for hot water. I've got an oil tank in the garden and to be honest as there are only 2 of us it's not been too expensive to run. we are looking to move into a slightly smaller house as I would like to have a garage, something I haven't got now. The property we have looked at is just right, smaller than the one we are in now but it has a bigger than average garage and would suit me down to the ground. The only concern I have is that the hot water and heating systems run from an LPG boiler system. I have no experience of such systems and wondered how efficient they are and how much it would cost to run and service compared with our current oil boiler? The LPG boiler in the house we're looking at does not run off the large bottles of gas you can have delivered, the 40 homes on the development draw gas individually from an underground tank that is shared by all and refilled as and when required. Each home has a meter and you can pay for gas used via a monthly direct debit.

I don't know anything about these 'off grid' gas systems and boilers. Has anyone got one or had one. Any advice would be much appreciated.Many thanks.

Re: LPG versus Oil Heating

Posted: Mon Feb 27, 2017 12:26 pm
by Outandabout
Dont know if this will be of help but here goes.
Years ago (28)we lived in a house that had open fires and back boiler fed radiators. I converted the fire and heating system to run on LPG. Big bottles, using 2 a month during the winter with the thought that if natural gas came to the area you could get a conversion kit to run on natural gas. The system performed great, did everything I wanted of it at quite reasonable rates. There was somebody in the house all the time so the water and heating was used at all times. After a couple of years the price of the bottles got very expensive at 1 point i spent £120 on gas in a very cold month over christmas. This was the point i decided i could not afford it. I dont know what the price of LPG is now but it should be easy to find out.
Is there any chance of natural gas coming to the area. If so you could probably get a conversion kit for the boiler. If you know anybody in the area you are moving to you could always ask them what.
Regarding the servicing - you need a corgi registered engineer, the same guy serviced my LPG system as well my natural gas system. A service on my current natural gas system by the engineer that fitted it is only £50 a year.

LPG systems in my experiece do everything you want of them,
Hope you got some info out of this
Kevin

Re: LPG versus Oil Heating

Posted: Mon Feb 27, 2017 12:32 pm
by billywhizz
we live in a 2 bed bungalow, it has oil fired heating and hot water, when I first moved here I thought it would be expensive too run, but has not proved too be the case, I'm currently using about £250-300 a year on it. I did have a look at lpg with a view too changing it at first but when costing it lpg was the dearest fuel source per kilowatt than all the others. you can check this on the web there are various sites that do comparisons.atb billy.

Re: LPG versus Oil Heating

Posted: Mon Feb 27, 2017 3:41 pm
by mrb911no2
Our house is heated using LPG and it works very well. I use the central heating for an hour each morning typically between October to April and usually for another hour or so later in the day. Other than that I use the wood burner to help keep cost down. Typically I spend about £400per year on gas. However the price per litre varies massively between provider and I tend to shop around and then try to negotiate the price downwards with my current provider. if you are all using one large tank I can't see how you can negotiate with other providers - it may be that you are stuck with the same deal year in year out.

Regards


Mark