Oil Heating

[clydesider]

Hello all
Like many others, the price spike in kerosene heating oil has blown my budget to smithereens.
I have an ancient oil fired warm air heating system in my house which also heats my water. We liked instant warm air heating until the costs went haywire.
Dont have mains gas where I live and we are now at our wits end trying to figure out an alternative economic heating system.
Any of you in the same boat and have you managed to come up with viable economic options, other than thermal underwear and 2 wooly jumpers?
Mike

 

[MickyP10]

I have oil heating and guess I'm in the same boat. Not sure there's an answer, really. Anything which involves changing boilers to other fuel resources is likely to be prohibitively expensive, so leaves the woolly jumpers and Damart underwear. Best suggestion is to make sure the insulation is as thorough as can be, although, to be negative the 'Sheds' seem to have moved on from the seaonal insulation stuff onto other wares. Not helping, am I?

 

[Tibbot]

Unless your home is built to Scandinavian standards of insulated materials, your only alternative is use more secondary heating such as a stove. Smokeless coal is currently 2p per kW less than oil. Wood can be as dear or cheap as you make it.

Ultimately our nation's populus are being bled dry by those few who control the supply of energy and food (2 things we struggle without) and you can blame short term greed of successive ***kers at no.10 for allowing it to happen.

 

[simond]

Depending on the layout of your property, an air/air heat pump may be cheaper to run.

Or you could install a condensing Lennox warm air unit on bulk LPG. It is over 94% efficient and LPG is (currently) cheaper than oil.

 

[Tibbot]

Not sure it is. C2 oil 57ppl @ 10kW/ltr CV. LPG (bulk) about same but 7kW/ltr.

 

[Burnerman]

Kerosene @ 74p per litre in November, 117p over Christmas, its now 58p
yesterday when I had a delivery.
Libyan crisis sure to scare the market apparently
John

 

[Tibbot]

Heating oil prices used to reflect the rate of crude. In recent months that's changed as the distributors have made their own supply/demand increases irrespective of general market trends. For the first time it seems energy suppliers are taking the p*ss even more for heating than they are for road fuel.

 

[clydesider]

Thanks folks. Intend to explore wood burning options, but I have to hope that some pressure is put on suppliers for their obvious profiteering during a dreadful winter. I live in hope!
Mike

 

[oilhead]

To replicate the ease and convenience of oil or gas, wood is not a viable alternative. By all means, a wood stove in the lounge is nice, but as an indulgence, not a serious alternative to gas or oil.
Oil and LPG will always be subject to the vagaries of the oil price per barrel, but mains gas suppliers never lag far behind. Reduce your usage and the mains supply unit price goes up to compensate.
Whatever the energy, we all suffer.

 

[RichieHoneybucket]

Have you considered a split unit heat pump? We've a couple of customers with them & they're as cheap as chips to run. We put them on a cheap electric tariff & they use them to suppliment their LPG heating systems. For gawd sake don't fit any other type of air source heat pump!!

Here's a link for the split unit;

http://www.cooleasy.co.uk/product_wall.htm

 

[John67]

I would spend the money on insulated dry lining or cavity insulation, as much loft insulation crammed in the loft as possible and upgrade your glass.
Energy prices are only going in one direction.

 

[Cooleasy]

Hi guys, just spotted that a link has come over to our website from here.

I hope i'm not breaking any rules by being on here, but i just thought i would come on and try and help out anyone with any questions regarding air conditioning / heat pumps.

(thats an old link by the way, take a look at http://www.cooleasy.co.uk/categories/Wall-Mounted/ for more of the wall mounted units that we offer)

Sorry again if i'm breaking any rules by coming on here

 

[ajrobb]

The above link was for air-conditioning. Perhaps the Heat Pump section might be better.

http://www.cooleasy.co.uk/categories/Heat-Pumps/Air-To-Air-Heat-Pumps/Chigo-Inverter/

Maybe someone can explain how inverter heat pumps work. I think they run the pump at lower speed in warm weather to reduce the temperature range of the working fluid. This would improve the Carnot cycle efficiency so you get the same heat for less input.

 

[Cooleasy]

An air conditioning unit and a heat pump are the same thing essentially, all of the units we have on the website are heat pumps and air conditioning units.

An inverter works pretty much how you said, a non inverter compressor will take a large surge of current every time the compressor starts to turn - every time the temperature is outside the desired range.

An Inverter can vary the speed of the compressor so that it does not need to draw such a large current load every time the temperature goes outside of the desired range.

I found this picture somewhere which best describes an inverter, i cannot remember where i saw it previously, just that it is in my pictures file.

It's a little bit exagerated but it puts the idea across well, that a non-inverter works on a stop-start system and an inverter works by altering the speed of the compressor to keep it within a comfortable range.

 

[RichieHoneybucket]

Ah I see, that's why your detail has cars in it, but where's the bikes from the Carnot Cycle???!!