€1,000 was the lowest spend so far (10 years in the house), the average is €1,700. And yes it did mean that at times a portion of the house was colder than we would have liked. Last year, we had a nestor martin stove inserted into our open fire, which is situated in a large open plan space - basically our sitting room, kitchen and dining room, on split levels, with a high vaulted ceiling to the apex (it's at least a third of the overall floor space in the house). That stove heated this huge space very effectively, it was so warm by evening we'd have to open up the doors to the hallway. That saved our bacon last year on the many occasions we couldn't afford to drop €200/300 into the oil tank! And it's the only room in the house that has any heat right now. It's not good enough, we have to fix our heating issues and get our home warm again.
I've been doing a lot of calculations today, and here's what I've figured out:
[FONT=Verdana, Helvetica, Arial]Oil cost 0.85 cent (average) per litre (this price varies. It was 1 euro in April this year but has dropped since)
LPG gas cost 0.68 cent per litre (this is Calor’s price for customers converting from oil, it has not increased in 2.25 years, and is fixed at this price for the next 15 months)
There is up to 20% more heat in oil.
So to calculate the cost of the energy units you get per litre of fuel, you convert it to kilowatt hours.
Oil: 0.85 divided by 10.09 (kWh/litre). That’s 0.084. Multiply by 100 (to get the cent value) and it costs 8.4 cent per kWh.
Gas: 0.68 divided by 7.12 (this value is lower than oil because there’s less heat in gas). That’s .095, so it costs 9.5 cent per kWh
So if all things are equal – boilers running at equal efficiency etc - it would cost 1.1 cent more per kWh to use gas to heat the house.
However:
I'm told that gas condensing boilers are least 10% more efficient than the oil condenser boilers (which need a high temp for condensing to take palce) – so there’s an energy saving to be made there.
Also, carbon tax this March will put an addition 1.2 cent on a litre of oil, but only 0.4 cent on a litre of gas. This trend is bound to continue as oil will attract the higher tax as it's coinsidered 'dirtier' - correct me if I'm wrong on this
I'm told that, in the past, those who sold home heating oil and installed oil heating systems were correct in stating that you get more heat from oil, ergo it’s cheaper to use. But these days, the new technology in gas condensing boilers has hugely increase efficiency, and oil is getting more expensive as a ‘dirty’ fuel attracting carbon taxes. This apparently has more than levelled the playing field.[/FONT] Of course, this info is coming from a Calor gas man.
It would be great to hear the opinion of someone in the oil heating business.......