Boo Posted January 22, 2007 Share Posted January 22, 2007 Central Heating.........I hate it!!!!!!!!!!!! It makes me angry every time I turn it on! When we moved into our house we had the most hideous gas fire monstrosity. It was never lit and I would rather heat my house burning £5 notes........probably cheaper. If I could change to oil I would, but there is the problem of where to put the tank. There's a rule in my house.... If your lips aren't blue the heating does not go on, Put another jumper on!!! OMG I simply hate central heating!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
manxman8180 Posted January 22, 2007 Share Posted January 22, 2007 Slim - I'm on gas and paying out £80 per month by DD. This averages out about right over the year, at the moment I'm about £200 in credit with them, but the next few months will sort that out. So thats just under a grand for the year. My folks are on oil, and it costs about £300 for a fill of their tank, which happens about 3 times a year. That works out at just under a grand as well. I would say their house is a bit bigger so I would say there may be a saving of 1 - 200 a year absolute max. Also, my boiler isn't that new, so compared to one of the modern gas boilers, the saving would probably be less. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GD4ELI Posted January 22, 2007 Share Posted January 22, 2007 Oh god I've just bought a house. Well, I say a house, it's more a pile of bricks with a roof. It's 1930s and is still in pretty much original condition. So I need central heating. Believe it or not my current gaff doesn't have heating either, we just burn wood, so I've no clue on what kind to install. Oil or Gas seems to be the choice locally. I hear a lot of horror stories about gas prices, am I better off with oil for a new install? Anyone know? Anyone care? The first thing I would do with a 1930's house is get it properly insulated. I'm assuming it was well built (as most were then), so you've got a very basis for your work. Check out grants - they were available years ago for insulation, installation of central heating and general rewiring. A well insulated house will (obviously) require less heating, you may find that a decent wood burner suffices. My 2p anyway, I a fan of little heating, decent insulation and proper winter wear (Looney's of Ramsey). Oh - congrats on the purchase. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
molly Posted January 22, 2007 Share Posted January 22, 2007 http://www.gov.im/lib/docs/oft/comparative...edulejanua2.pdf Figures speak for themselves. let you do the maths Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roger Smelly Posted January 23, 2007 Share Posted January 23, 2007 Why not try a combined solar and oil system. The solar panels pre heat the water before it goes to the boilder, sort of like putting warm water in a kettle. This means it costs less to heat and from what i have read saves about 60% on your heatig bills. Trouble is over here they probably would not give you permission to put up the solar pannels Solar Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
the mo beats experience Posted January 23, 2007 Share Posted January 23, 2007 £3500 if you go direct with the oil company. Our conversion to oil cost us less than £1500! definately worth it, but shop around and you will save a fortune! Don't know about that, a hot water/heating combination boiler and double skinned oil tank alone will set you back more than that (for an average sized house). Savings relate to how much use a boiler gets, say if you work from home or are retired, the boiler would be on more therefore the savings would be higher than if it were to heat from cold twice a day. You can get an energy efficient condensing boiler also, the Gov give you a £250 grant towards this, it only covers half of the extra cost from a "normal" boiler, but its more economical, the savings over the years would be greater. Besides, i think gas and oil price hikes are related. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Thriller Posted January 23, 2007 Share Posted January 23, 2007 If you get oil then just watch it dont get pinched. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Farnsworth Posted January 23, 2007 Share Posted January 23, 2007 I'd approach the new oil fired condensing boilers with a degree of caution. They were going to become compulsory but the Govt had to hold it off because manufacturers have experienced a lot of problems. One major manufacturer had to completely redesign the boiler. The grant you get from the government to me, appears to be something of a false economy as the price of these boilers is almost double that of a combi and the 'increased efficiency' is only really apparent if you have the pipework designed to suit it. If I was starting from scratch like you Slim, I'd get a conventional oil boiler with a megaflow cylinder. Megaflow's have come down in price quite a bit nowadays and in my opinion this type of system is far superior to the combi. I'd only get a combi if I was severely lacking in space. Oh, and although you don't have to be OFTEC registered to install and work on an oil boiler, I'd make sure the company you pay to do the work is just to be on the safe side. I've come across so many people who's 'mate from down the pub' installed their boiler and they've lived to regret it! Hope this helps a bit (don't know anything about the gas side of things sorry) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RC-Drift.com Posted January 23, 2007 Share Posted January 23, 2007 Trouble is over here they probably would not give you permission to put up the solar pannels Solar They most certainly would, we just installed one yesterday ...there's a heck of a lot of these over here now Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ballaughbiker Posted January 23, 2007 Share Posted January 23, 2007 Slim, just face it, you'll be buying a fossil fuel of some description on the IOM. That means you will be paying more than nearly anywhere else in europe and the best advice is to make it go as far as possible. Get a condensing combi and insulate your house as much as possible and invest in some clever temperature control. If you're going to stay there for at least 10 years, consider a system that can integrate solar energy. OK, I've been a trifle harsh on whoever is making millions selling fuel to the manx public but I justify this by having bought 2400 litres of paraffin today at 35p/litre plus vat. In the darkest Peak District across, whose oil price I always compare for interest, it was 25p a litre this morning. The cost of moving the fuel from the refinery to the consumer is probably much less here but we pay 40% more! A cartel allowed by a weak government? Possibly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
púca Posted January 23, 2007 Share Posted January 23, 2007 It's a tough call. I've been considering all sorts of solutions for ages and it's hard to work it all out. I'd love a wood pellet burner, but there's no-one to supply wood pellets over here yet. We've installed a wood burner a couple of months ago. It's excellent (Stovax 7KW). Installed by Blacks (and they were 100%). About £1300 quid. Heats our living area which means the gas doesn't have to be on all the time - which is just as well as our boiler eats the stuff. Which brings me on to my next point... Lots of people say that oil is cheaper then Gas, but at circa £5,000 for the system I'm after V's £2500 for the Gas equivelent...you have to wonder. I've looked at solar too, but manxgas (I know not the cheapest) quoted £3-3.5K for new boiler and panel - just for heating the water - you'd need be using a lot of water to make that pay. I think I'm going to have to stick with gas for now. Get a better boiler and a megaflow system to increase the hot water pressure around the house. That'll have to do until the greener options I'm after arrive on the Isle of Man and are more affordable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gladys Posted January 24, 2007 Share Posted January 24, 2007 Watched this with interest as I asked a similar question a wee while ago. The upshot was stick to the existing gas combi system until it was time for replacement. But, off at a slight tangent, what about new-build houses? Are the wooden ones the answer? There is a firm that advertises on MR that can design and build an energy efficient wooden house. Can these really be as energy efficient as we are lead to believe? If so, my next move will be to one, in the middle of nowhere, probably near a beach, with huge structural windows so the outside becomes part of the interior decor and my garden is the countryside. Yup, I want one them now! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
germann Posted January 24, 2007 Share Posted January 24, 2007 I think Amadeus will agree with me on this one: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roger Smelly Posted January 24, 2007 Share Posted January 24, 2007 Well the local timber frame houses are the way to go. Timber is by far the better option when it comes to keeping the heat in. I read somewhere they can save upto 60% more heat than a brick house. Also in siberia an places like that where it gets below -30oC they tend to just use timber. I think a wood burner and oil central heating would be the best option. You can get a wagon full of wood from Daff for about £50 and then chop it up, i know someone who does it and he said he spends about £450 a year on oil. Bio Oil will also come into its own in the future like bio diesel, in the next 10 years or so we will see allsorts of answers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempus Fugit Posted January 24, 2007 Share Posted January 24, 2007 If I can put some experience from an existing gas user rather than starting from scratch .... We had a combi boiler which had been in for 15 years and was getting a bit tired, we investigated the options open to replace it either with a condensing combi gas or go for oil. To replace the gas was about £1200, the quotes we got for oil were about £3500-4000 along with having to find floor space for the boiler and for a tank in the garden (which wasn't exactly going to be hidden anywhere ) Before this all came up, out of interest in how the weather conditions affected the gas used, and also to see how it was affected by being either on timer or constant, I had been keeping a spreadsheet with various met readings and a daily gas meter reading taken each morning to see what had been used overnight. The boiler was generally on a timer (7.45-9am and 5.30-23.45pm). Some typical figures I can extract from this was that for a thermostat setting of 16ºc, which resulted in a hall temperature about 18ºc, for outside air temperatures of 10-12ºc it used about £1.50 per day, and temps of 4-5ºc it used £2.30-2.50 per day, these readings were from nov-dec 2004. Reading the consumer affairs figures and knowing our yearly consumption, and comparing the difference betwen oil and gas, the spreadsheet calculated that it would be well over 10 years to recover the £2000 difference between replacing the gas boiler and changing to oil by which time it would be up for replacement again. We opted to go for the gas condensing boiler with a 5 year guarantee, which was interest free over 5 years, you don't really notice it at £20 per month. I havn't yet done a series of daily readings on the new boiler yet but maybe with this cold spell it would be appropriate. I think something which you need to consider is whether you need the traditional tank of hot water sitting there all day whether you are in or out, and which you lose if you are on a timer and out all day, but which is limited in quantity ("who's used all the hot water ?"), or whether you want unlimited hot water on demand. I think that the home improvement grants would apply to a property which has no CH system, ( conditions apply: as long as it also involves loft insulation etc. ) Hope this helps answer some questions TF Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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