My current Potterton Statesman flowsure oil boiler has gone bang apparently needs a new solenoid and electrode and apparently a part is obsolete so rendering it buggered????
So do I go for a new Oil boiler circa £2000+ or change to LPG where the boilers are much cheaper but understand LPG is slightly dearer . Currently using about 2000 lts per year on oil
Any comments/suggestions welcome

i don't really know which is best. I got rid of the LPG a long time back, and had oil, which seems cheap enough to run.
The gas bloke (as in deliveries) was always here before, but that was with an old boiler.

What I really wanted to say though, is that you should have a search around for parts. According to a bit of a search online, the Potterton Statesman uses a Riello G5BF burner.

If that's right. (and you need to check the types and numbers for yourself, don't just go by my quick search!) Then these people have spares for that burner.
https://www.heatingspareparts.com/boile ... 92-spc-t51)
The solenoid coil for the pump, and the electrode group are listed.
They will probably be able to tell you which burner is fitted and if they have spares.

I'm going to be a bit vague because this is an issue that currently concerns us, but my wife is tasked with the research.

Somebody said to me, that LPG had come down a lot and was now comparable (we have an oil boiler that needs replacing) - when you sign up for an lpg contract, you can get the tank for free (our oil tank is dated).

But 'erindoors research (asking locally on facebook) seemed to indicate that, of the two, oil was still best. One of the respondents was married to a heating engineer, and we are in a very rural area. So we are seeking oil installation quotes - currently.

Whether one is cheaper or not surely depends on the boiler and the usage, Iam in France we are renting a new five bed detached house, we have a gas LPG tank, we have lived here since March, in early December we had to fill up the tank which hold 2400Lts, it took 2000lts to get it to its max of 85% that cost us 2000€, we think that LPG is expensive, however if you have a small house you may not agree, the only way is to compare fuel prices, compare how efficiente the different boilers are etc, here wood pellet boilers are getting a foothold, very common in Scandinavian countries, perhaps an idea Nos

I was looking at this for a friend who was moving to the country some years ago. As far as I could make out it was a bit of a lottery. The LPG gas suppliers have you over a barrel so to speak as the donated tank only accepts their connectors so you have to buy from them, at usually a higher price. With oil you are hostage to World oil price fluctuation and higher prices in winter when you need it. One answer would be to have two tanks so you can fill both up in the summer to see you through a year.

In the end he went for the wood pellet system which had feed issues at first, but settled down as it wore in. It looked a contraption but he had the space for it in an outbuilding. I have lost touch with him so I am not sure how it is going ten years on. I think it was a bit labour intensive filling hoppers with
pellets etc but worth looking at for operating costs. I think they have moved on a bit see https://www.windhager.co.uk/ and this also https://www.thegreenage.co.uk/tech/type ... ss-boiler/

DWD

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Painting with BIN

We had a Potterton oil fired central heating /boiler (rated 28KW) in our previous house and we used approx 3000 liters of oil /year (2800 sq ft house). The boiler was installed in 1994 and it was fairly reliable ,never had a major breakdown or expense in all the time that we lived in that house , however every annual service we were advised that spares were getting more difficult to obtain and it wasn't the most efficient boiler on the market.

Anyway we moved to a slightly larger house (3200 sq ft ) 2 years ago with a Vaillant gas fired boiler /central heating (rated at 30KW). In the 12 months ending Dec'17 we consumed just over 28K KWh of gas. Now I don't know what our annual KWh usage was with oil in our previous house , but i do know that we've cut our annual heating bill with gas by more that 50% and that is for a larger house. Also worth remembering is that the price of oil fluctuated widely over the years and we were never able to get the benefit of a dual fuel tariffs with any of the energy suppliers.

There are three basic sorts of wood pellet boilers, there are similar ones that burns logs, and ones that burn wood chips. With pellet boilers it depends on your space, a stand alone type will have a top hopper you will have to fill this a few times a day, depending on your usage, they hold about 15/20 kgs, the next type have a side hopper so double the width, so up to 800 kgs, so a fill up every week or two perhaps, then the big boys these have a totally separate hopper so a fair bit of space needed, you save a little bit as you are buying in bulk, but they can hold up to several tonnes, these tend to be "Screw" feed. Nos

You'd think with the developments in fracking and the coming introduction of such wells across the UK that the prospective price for LPG would be looking to fall??? Long term maybe but at least it's not so easy for pikeys to drain your LPG tank.... and a 'reserve' can be bought at the local garage (47kg tank).

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sent from my laptop using my fingers - because we REALLY need to know where it's come from.....

Here the tanks are mainly underground, I don't know how you would be able to, either put any more gas into the tank, or use a "normal" gas cylinder as a by-pass but I am aware of people refilling small gas cylinders from a larger ones the stupidity of the human race never ceases to amaze me. Nos

My Bro' had an oil tank fed boiler, he wondered why he had to fill up regularly until he discovered a leak, big environmental clean up due his property backed onto a stream and then farmland.
I guess you need to consider future environmental issues with wood burning and oil has to be similar to the purge on diesel cars!