Our old oil boiler is on its last legs. New oil boilers are very expensive and we would have to move the storage tank an unreasonable distance.As we have no mains gas the next option was lpg.
However a plumber friend has said the lpg boiler,due to regulations, cannot go in the same place as the oil boiler.We have limited space in the kitchen with virtually no outside wall area available for the flue. So,electric combi's. It's only a small terrace that's well insulated and normally,not this year,are in Spain over winter.Any thoughts ?
You’d have to be prepared to stomach the running costs, typ 3 to 4x higher cost per kWh vs Oil or gas. But this might be bearable for your usage pattern. Upside is it’s relatively clean, regardless of where your electricity is generated, but zero carbon if you pay (even more) for a renewable tariff. I’d be tempted to make the most of variable tariffs like octopus agile which could be very cheap if used intelligently.
No personal experience of using one here. But I’d expect maintenance to be low and reliability high.
I have an electric system boiler and immersion for hot water (unvented) with wood burner plumbed into central heating as well.
We were on night storage but was all a bit rubbish. Hot water from immersion is not to bad and try and use the wood burner every evening to do most of our heating in the evening and the heat bank starts the am heat. Only just installed so don't know electric running cost yet.
The electric boiler works well. Not sure about having is as a combi though As they will never be the same KW as oil or gas and so so in the winter may slow hot water flow to shower.
Wondering if you could schedule an IoT solution to get the combi to fill an insulated hot water tank at the time when octopus agile tarif is below a certain threshold?
edit>https:Octopus IFTTT
I don't know specifics about LPG but our mains gas combi boiler is not on an outside wall, the flue goes up through the middle of the house (through the old airing cupboard) and exits the roof. Could that be an option?
My step-dad's non gas mains house is heated electrically. It's expensive.
external boiler an option ? If i was doing it again id buy a heat only external boiler (they are not so expensive as my vortex eco combi) and a hot water tank so i can plumb in various heat sources - Solar thermal would be up there.
Unless your fitting a new tank whys its position being changed ?
At the moment the oil boiler is underneath a window and according to what I have been told neither an oil or gas boiler is allowed to be positioned there. The oil tank is positioned close to the back door and again if a new oil boiler is fitted it has to be moved.
A neighbour has lpg and said the costs have been fairly reasonable.
Does anyone know about using solar PV to bring the running costs of an electric boiler down? We need a new boiler in a house we're renovating. It will have decent insulation and be about 50% under floor heating. We currently have oil, no gas, but there is gas in the street. I'd like to have a system that runs on renewables but wife and architect not keen on air source and ground source too tricky. Can a combo of solar PV and night rates reduce annual running costs to around that of gas?
The economy of gas makes going green really hard.
is not gas fired heating banned in all new builds and conversions from 2023, going to be a huge demand on power stations,so bestto have a think about alternatives if you want heating and no power cuts
again if a new oil boiler is fitted it has to be moved.
While it's not a bad idea. There's nothing forcing you to.
