If your home sits beyond the reach of the mains gas grid — as roughly one and a half million UK properties do — the question of how to heat it is never quite settled. Oil, LPG and electricity each have loyal defenders, and each brings a different balance of running costs, storage demands and carbon emissions. The right answer depends far less on fashion than on your property, your budget and the way you actually live in it.

Insulate and Draught-Proof Before You Choose

It is tempting to start with the boiler, but the cheapest heat is the heat you never need to make. Whatever fuel you eventually choose, every pound spent on the building fabric lowers the running cost of that choice for decades.

• Top up loft insulation to at least 270mm — many rural homes still have a thin 100mm layer from the 1980s.
• Address cavity walls if you have them, and consider internal or external solid wall insulation if you do not.
• Draught-proof window frames, loft hatches, letterboxes and the gap under the back door.
• Lag exposed pipes and any older hot water cylinder; a well-fitted jacket pays for itself within a winter.
• Fix suspended timber floors with mineral wool between the joists and seal skirting gaps.

A typical poorly insulated stone cottage can lose 40% of its heat through walls and roof. Improving that first can turn an expensive heating option into a merely average one.

Heating Oil: The Rural Workhorse

Kerosene remains the default for off-grid Britain, and for good reason: it delivers heat at roughly 10 kWh per litre, giving an effective cost of about 5.5p to 7p per kilowatt hour when kerosene sits between 55p and 70p per litre — usually the cheapest per-unit option available.

The trade-offs are real. You will need a bunded tank, typically holding 1,000 to 2,500 litres, sited with proper clearance and on a firm base. That is a substantial piece of garden furniture, and the tank must be inspected annually for water ingress, corrosion and stability. Deliveries depend on access: narrow lanes, steep drives and low branches can all defeat a tanker.

Oil is also volatile in price. Buying in summer, topping up before winter demand builds, and joining a local buying group can shave several pence per litre off your bill. Use an OFTEC-registered technician for the annual service, and fit a tank gauge so you never run dry in February.

LPG: Flexible, but It Takes Up Space

Liquefied petroleum gas behaves much like mains gas, with familiar boilers, hobs and instant hot water. Propane holds around 7.1 kWh per litre, so bulk LPG at 55p to 75p per litre works out at roughly 8p to 11p per kWh.

You have two routes. A bulk tank, usually 1,200 to 2,000 litres, is the convenient option: it needs a larger footprint than an oil tank and typically a tank rental or standing charge on top of the gas itself. Alternatively, 47kg cylinders suit smaller properties or those with impossible access, but you will be swapping them regularly and paying a premium per kilowatt hour for the privilege.

Note that propane, not butane, is the correct choice for outdoor storage in a British winter. Any gas work must be carried out by a Gas Safe registered engineer, and cylinder stores need ventilation and secure restraint against wind.

Electric Heating and Heat Pumps

Direct electric heating — panel heaters, immersion boilers, electric radiators — is 100% efficient at the point of use, but at around 24p to 28p per kWh on a standard tariff it is by far the most expensive way to heat a home. It only makes sense where the property is small, very well insulated, or used intermittently.

There are smarter electric routes:

• Storage heaters on an off-peak tariff can run at roughly half the daytime rate, though they are sluggish to control.
• Air source heat pumps deliver two-and-a-half to three-and-a-half units of heat per unit of electricity, bringing the effective cost down to around 7p to 10p per kWh — genuinely competitive with oil.
• Solar panels and a battery can cut the cost of electrically heated hot water dramatically, especially alongside a smart tariff.

Heat pumps reward good insulation and larger radiators or underfloor heating, so budget for emitters as well as the unit itself.

Weighing Running Costs, Storage and Carbon

On running costs alone, oil usually edges ahead for a typical four-bedroom rural home, with a well-installed heat pump close behind and LPG sitting above both. Direct electric heating trails well behind unless paired with off-peak rates or self-generated power.

Storage shapes the practical picture just as much. Oil needs a bunded tank and tanker access. Bulk LPG needs a larger sited vessel and a contract. Electricity needs no tank at all — just a hot water cylinder and, ideally, somewhere for a battery.

On carbon, heating oil produces roughly 0.25kg of CO2 per kWh, LPG around 0.21kg, and grid electricity about 0.15kg and falling as renewables come online. That makes a heat pump the clear low-carbon leader, with an effective intensity of roughly 0.05kg per kWh of delivered heat.

Think in decades, not seasons. Get an independent heat loss survey before committing, ask neighbours what they actually pay locally, and use installers registered with the relevant competent person scheme. Choose well, insulate thoroughly, and your off-grid home can be as warm and economical as any connected one.