We have oil. Two years ago we replaced the 17 year old boiler with a highly efficient A rated condenser boiler. It has paid for itself already. We are using half the oil we did before. We also replaced the 100 year old draughty single glazed sash windows with double glazed version of same. Huge improvement. And we ramped up the attic insulation. Check the age of the boiler and the other insulation situations in the house.
Our house is 4 bedrooms and is approx 1800 sq feet. Since November we have paid €1,100 for oil. And it was on for a reasonable amount of time during the winter months.
I have heard horror stories regarding the cost of gas
Gas is considerably cheaper than oil (gas oil or kerosene). The cost of delivered energy per kWh for oil is ~10c, for gas, it's ~7c, so oil is 40% more expensive for the same quantity of delivered heat energy.
Any horror stories in terms of oil or gas are going to be down to local conditions such as poor installation, poor insulation, or an inefficient boiler.
That is a very helpful comparison, thank you Leo. So even if all things were equal changing from gas to oil will increase my heating costs by about 40%. Add in an older, bigger house & an older boiler & I can add substantially to that 40% increase. Food for thought!
I may never complain about my gas bill again ;-)
Exactly, to heat the same building, with all conditions remaining equal, will be more expensive.
There are lots of ways of cutting down costs within a building, improving insulation, improving air-tightness/ eliminating draughts, selective heating of occupied rooms, etc.. The range of solutions here go from very cheap to prohibitively expensive, so you need to assess each and every option and make a call based on return-on-investment.
For the BER to have any real value it would need to tell you average energy consumption for a particular house for a year - based on average family size & heating a house to 20 degrees over x months of the year. There would still be a margin of error but it would give insight into actual costs. Washing machines are sold with yearly energy & water consumption levels to allow for comparisons, after all! Doing similar for houses would make a BER Cert meaningful.
This brought my annual spend to just under €1000.
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