Oil fired boiler v heat pump

[OwlHoot]

Oil fired heating has to be expensive - do you have any figures for dwelling cost per year you could share?

Not yet from personal experience, but I'm told my place will cost about £700 per quarter which doesn't seem too bad.

Of course it depends on the hot water and heating settings (i.e. "on all the time" v "configured hours")

Out of interest, Gittins Gal (or anyone), do you know if any brand of oil burner that has a reputation, cost aside, as better quality than the rest, in the way that Vaillant are the generally regarded as the best gas boilers with Worcester a close second (although opinions may differ on the exact order) ?

[Coalman]

With heat pumps, both air and ground, if you house is poorly insulated they will not get the efficiency they claim.
Have you looked at biomass boilers? More expensive but the fuel is a lot cheaper, about 4 pence per kilowatt.

[ZARDOZ]

Not yet from personal experience, but I'm told my place will cost about £700 per quarter which doesn't seem too bad.

Of course it depends on the hot water and heating settings (i.e. "on all the time" v "configured hours")

As late of 2009 oil was fairly reasonable. Now it's almost double the price. £600 is around 1000 litres. In the winter that would last us maybe 2.5 months with very moderate use (couple of hours in the morning. about 4 hrs in the evening).

From my experience oil costs at least 60% more than Gas for the same output.

Looked into ground heating, but they require digging up to be maintained. Might look into air source heat pumps and wood pellet burners at some point.

[rich_e]

Air source heat pumps are best suited to new build houses with very high levels of insulation and airtightness, and work best with underfloor heating. The average moderately insulated, draughty home will be very expensive to heat with a heat pump, even compared to oil.

Heat pumps work better with underfloor heating as this only requires a flow temperature of around 40-45degC, your oil central heating will have been designed for a flow temperature of 80degC. You would probably have to replace all your radiators with larger surface area types if you replace your boiler with a heat pump.

Most people don't realise that domestic heat pumps have 6kW direct electric heaters built in (think immersion heaters) which kick in when the heat pump cannot meet the demand (which is in the middle of winter just when you need it!). It is this boost heating that increases the running costs.

[aoxomoxoa]

While checking the price of new oil fired boilers, in case my current elderly looking one konks out for good, I came across this page:

Ecovision Systems - Buy A Heat Pump Instead of An Oil Boiler

Does anyone here use one of these heat pumps? Are they as good as the blurb on that page claims?

I find it hard to believe they can extract on their own enough heat from the air to heat a hot bath, or anything come to that in the dead of winter. Seems to contradict the basic laws of thermodynamics.

Have you tried bleeding the radiators before spending a shed load?