Types of fuel

 

Gas (Gas Boilers and Condensing Boilers)
Gas is the most used fuel for heating the home, it comes in two forms:

Natural Gas - This is piped to your home via a supply company. If you require natural gas and it has not been connected to your home yet then it can cost a lot of money to get connected. You can install a gas central heating system yourself but will need a Corgi registered installer to make the connection to the gas supply. Natural gas is very convenient and there are a good variety of heating systems that can be powered by gas, such as Combi's, back boilers, wall heaters etc. Another benefit is that you will not run out of fuel for your heating.

LPG - This is an alternative to natural gas where it is to expensive or impractical to get natural gas. LPG is supplied to your home via large orange cylinders that stand about 4 feet tall, you usually require two of these cylinders to be fitted with a valve to switch between the two as there are no gauges on them to tell you how full they are. LPG works in exactly the same way as natural gas but you will need a boiler that can be made compatible via a conversion kit.

Oil Boilers
Oil fuels some of the most efficient boilers available, the choice of heating systems are fewer than with gas being restricted to just boilers. In most cases to run an oil boiler you will need a tank to be installed outside your house, these are usually large and very hard to disguise, you also have to conform to a variety of regulations in sighting it. Another thing with oil is that if you let it run out then you will need a heating engineer to re-prime the system before you can get it working again.

Solid Fuel Boilers
Solid fuel heating boilers are mostly limited to back boilers, or kitchen ranges. There are some solid fuel boilers which run the same way as other fuelled boilers and use automatically fed pellets from a hopper situated outside the house (we do not supply these). Most solid fuel heating systems are inefficient as they consist of open fires; they also can be messy and require cleaning out once a day at least.
Solid fuel comes in a variety of forms, coal, wood, etc.

Electric Boilers
Until recently effective Electric central heating was limited to storage heaters or blown air systems. These were both run of cheap rate electricity supplied in the small hours, and in some cases for a short top up period in the afternoon. Though storage heaters (the most popular) are reasonably efficient they have a problem of being on all the time, so if you have a hot day after a cold day in the winter, you will have heating even though you don't need it. They are also susceptible to drafts which can discharge them very quickly indeed.
A new form of electric powered heating has appeared recently in the form of electric heating boilers. These can directly replace other boilers in conventional heating systems; they are very compact, light and can be run off cheap rate electricity. Another benefit is that they are completely silent.

- Types of Central Heating Systems
- Domestiv heating: solid fuel systems (pdf)
- Central Heating Systems Specifications (pdf)