The oil and gas alternative

In the UK, over 4 million homes are off the gas grid and use a variety of other fuels to heat their homes. This includes bulk and bottled gas and like oil can be costly with prices continuing to rise in the long term as uncertainty of supply remains.

The average cost of heating a three bedroom house is around 50% higher with oil and 100% higher with LPG than with mains gas.

A typical 3 bed home uses 23,000 kilowatt hours per year (source Nottingham Energy Partnership) and based on these figures a home using oil will spend £1,392 on average per year to heat and one using LPG will cost £1,648. If these figures seem high then compare with a home heating solely on electricity and the figure rises steeply to £3,680!

So what is the oil and gas alternative? The first thing we would always recommend is to ensure that your home is well insulated. Uninsulated roofs and walls leak heat as do old single glazed window frames so improving these should always be your first step. A Domestic Energy Assessor can be employed to complete an Energy Performance Certificate which will give you a number of recommendations and rough costs of installing these measures.

These measures will often include an upgrade to your existing boiler to a more efficient one but will also suggest using a modern biomass boiler which uses wood logs, pellets or chips.

Biomass boilers can be hand or hopper fed and are subsidised under the Governments Renewable Heat Incentive. A typical home will get most or all of the cost of the boiler back over 7 years. When taking into account the savings over oil and bulk gas a further saving on fuel bills will also be evident. A typical home using a wood pellet boiler costs round £1,175 per year which is less than those on oil and gas and almost 2 thirds the cost of heating on electricity.