Oil heating help!

[Lucyshrops]

Hi everyone I need some good old fashioned advice about oil heating and how to be economical with it. I moved into a relatively new 4bed barn conversion a month ago and have already managed to get through 500L of oil! They’ve just come again today to top it up as we were empty.

What I wanted to know was what times do you put your heating on and for how long? And also what do you do with the hot water? We’ve just been leaving it constantly on but I’m guessing that’s where all the oil has gone to?
Apologies for sounding daft or asking in the wrong place but I’m now too scared to put it on at all lol. We do have a log burner in our front room too.
Thank you for any help/ideas or tricks we’ve never had oil heating before so have no idea how long it’s supposed to last etc.

 

[Derrick Hughes]

what burner do you have and how is you house insulation. should be up to scratch if its a new build

 

[Lucyshrops]

Eeek um not sure what burner it is. But the insulation is good and I know there’s no leaks etc

 

[marcot]

Holy Sh!t !!! £2000 worth of oil in 1 month??? That's horrendous in a new build .....I'd be investing in some thermal undies quick sharp ....

 

[Happy hillbily]

Any oil been stolen ? 5000 litres in a month does seem exessive. My mums two bedroom stone bungalow with a 4 year old combiboiler uses £25 a week of oil for heating and water.

 

[Steevo]

Suggested hours:

Heating-couple of hours in the morning, then 5pm until 30/60mims before bed.

Set thermostat to 20deg or so.

Hot water-hour in morning and hour in evening.

 

[Lucyshrops]

Sorry everyone it’s meant to be 500!! Just over £200. We’ve been carfeful with the heating (maybe not as much as we should) it’s mainly the water we weren’t sure about. Thank you for the suggestions so far (including the thermal pants)!

 

[Ivor Cornfield]

Crikey. We use no more than half that amount for a large farmhouse, and a smallish barn conversion, using a rayburn 480, and a 460 in around 3 months. Both properties drawing from the same tank, and both on constant this time of year.
If you have no leak, it must be getting robbed. Did you over see the filling of the tank?

 

[Ivor Cornfield]

500 sounds more like it this time of year, but still sounds plenty.
We found leaving it on constantly dosent use much more than using timers. Just use thermo radiator valves according to room use. Insulation is pretty good though.
The barn conversion has underfloor, so that just stays on all year round , and looks after itself with roomstats on 8 zones.
Underfloor is ideally the thing to have imo.

 

[Lucyshrops]

Thanks Ivor, that’s really helpful. I’ve read on a few forums previously that 500L lasted 2/3 months so we really weren’t expecting to have to top it up again so soon. We do have cables in the kitchen that would suggest underfloor heating has been installed but not finished off (it’s a rental property so will do some digging and see if we can get it sorted)

 

[Hesston4860s]

Run mine all the time set at 18, find it uses fractionally less than when we used to run it a couple hours in a morning then 3 till bedtime.

 

[Doing it for the kids]

Just used £730 equivalent of oil in January in an old draughty farm house, so its not unbelievable but does sound high for your 4 bed house.

Check for theft. If you can accurately measure the tank, do it x3 a day and do some sums

 

[phillipe]

Check for leaks ,because thats silly

 

[Lincsman]

Do we assume the boiler is fairly new? experience tells me a 15 year old boiler will nearly use twice as much as a new one, has it been serviced to run at its optimum?

 

[chaffcutter]

Years ago we had oil heating in a big farmhouse with no insulation to speak of and rattle windows so it burnt oil like fury. A friend suggested to me to keep the heat on 24/7 but at a steady temp and switch off rads if it was too warm. This cut oil use by about 50% much to my surprise but we were always warm and toasty.

 

[multi power]

I'd say we have used 600 litres since early November, and I think we are using too much
3 bedroom house about 10 years old
Log burner going all the time

 

[Goatherderess]

Far too much used here, thankfully (well brrrrrrr in the kitchen though) the oil guzzling aga is off because the flue needs replacing. We top up every 6 weeks with 500 litres when the aga and heating is on from oct-march. A bit less with no aga (but heating on more.)

 

[Andrew1983]

We have used 1500 litres since November, 70s built 5 bedroom house all rooms heated, father in law has used same in his old stone farmhouse which he’s only heating 3 rooms, kitchen, living room and one bedroom. I thought he was using a lot more than me but just looked in our tank tonight and it’s near dry! His house is sheltered whereas ours is exposed to cold wind, it seems to loose heat very quickly. I run log burner too.

 

[Lucyshrops]

I’d say the building is around 10yrs old maybe not even that so the tank should be fairly new. It’s a rental property so we don’t have any detailed info on when it was last serviced etc. Will get in touch with the landlords and see if someone could possibly give it a once over. Thank you

 

[YorkshireAndrew]

I’d say the building is around 10yrs old maybe not even that so the tank should be fairly new. It’s a rental property so we don’t have any detailed info on when it was last serviced etc. Will get in touch with the landlords and see if someone could possibly give it a once over. Thank you

There’s usually a sticker somewhere on the boiler to say when the last service was , could be on the inside of the front cover .