The British countryside offers far more than rolling hills, red phone boxes, country cottages and quaint pubs. If you know where to look, you will find a sight as common in rural locations as pillar boxes and thathed roofs - domestic oil storage tanks.
Tucked away in the corner of gardens, behind well manicured hedge rows lies the humble oil storage tank – the life blood of rural central heating systems across our green and pleasant land.
Traditionally oil storage tanks were made of steel. Nowadays oil storage tanks are mainly plastic, green in colour to blend in with their rural surroundings.
Oil Storage Tanks contain the fuel that feeds the thousands of oil boilers up and down dale. Oil central heating is more popular than you might think – 1.5 million homes use oil for heating and cooking in the UK. For those homes without access to mains gas, oil heating is an obvious choice. Oil heating is cheaper than LPG and cleaner than solid fuel.
Oil Tank Regulations
Stringent regulations regarding the installation and location of oil storage tanks have recently been introduced. Covered in the goverment’s building regulations include;
- Most new oil tanks should now be bunded and all oil tanks over 2,500 litres must be bunded.
- The correct positioning of tanks with emphasis on potential fire.
- The use of bunded oil tanks in locations where enviromental damage may occur in the event of oil spillage.
- A properly designed and constructed base to support the oil tank
- The correct installation of pipework between the tank appliance (boiler or cooker)
- Fire-shut-off-valve properly located and installed
Oil storage tanks come in all shapes and sizes – See the full range here
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Central Heating is not the recent invention that most of us think, the heating of a home from one central point dates back to ancient times when first the Greeks and then the Romans devised early central heating systems to heat public baths and their private villas. The hypocaust system was an early underfloor heating system and the forerunner to modern central heating systems.
It was a further 2000 years later before the central heating system became widespread throughout the UK. Other than the occasional Victorian entrepreneur who filled his home with the latest gadgets such as a warm air heating system, it wasn’t until the late sixties that central heating became affordable and so began to revolutionise the British home.
Up until that point homes were heated mainly by solid fuel – an open fire in the fireplace with a back boiler to heat the water - the traditional scene of the family huddling around the fire. Solid fuel appliances are making a comeback and are enjoying a renaissance but the wall mounted gas boiler, usually in the kitchen is certainly king.
Back in 1966, boiler manufacturer Baxi saw the potential of offering a product designed to offer the homeowner all the conveniences of a modern gas boiler but with hints of the charm of an open fire. The Baxi Bermuda back boiler unit (bbu) had a gas boiler located within the chimney breast and a modern fire bolted to the front .
Due to changes in legislation and the fact that the Baxi Bermuda was not a high efficiency condensing boiler, the Bermuda was phased out, much to the disappointment of the Bermuda’s loyal customers. Speaking from experience, the absence of a condensing back boiler left a huge gap in the heating boiler market. There are thousands of homeowners looking to replace their old Baxi Bermuda - the only option open to them was to replace their BBU with a wall-mounted boiler, until now..
The recently launched Baxi Bermuda BBU HE is a modern day direct replacement for the old Bermuda models. Working in conjunction with the Valor Dimension electric fire the new Baxi Bermuda BBU HE is not a revolutionary product, rather the re-engineering of an old appliance. However, an old favourite has returned and this certainly offers a solution to thousands of homeowners requiring a replacement boiler. It would seem that established ideas are often the best.
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