Recently, some farmers asked me what advantage it is to use gas to heat hot water for cleaning the milking machine or the bulk tank after milking. It is fair to say that most dairy farmers are using electricity on night-rate or oil-fired heaters to heat water for cleaning. Some farmers have installed gas to heat water and I stumbled on a new gas installation on the farm of Noel O’Toole in Galway recently.

Noel is farming near Killimor with his wife, Bernadette, and family in a spring-milking operation.

When I asked Noel what advantage heating water with gas brought to the business, he said: “It simply is the fact that there is hot water instantly when you want and need it. I can have 20 litres or 100 litres of hot water at the push of a button. I find this a great advantage (instant hot water) compared with older systems I have used where you would heat water and once that was used you had to do with cold water. Whether the gas will pay and stay working in the long term, I will have to wait and see.”

Noel hires the gas storage cylinder from the company (in this case, Calor) for a nominal annual fee of €20. Noel has his tank placed just outside the dairy door. The company brought a concrete slab to place the tank on and it is piped to two control boxes on the outside wall of the dairy. Noel’s local plumber adjusted the piping in his dairy in a couple of hours to allow the hot water be piped to where Noel wanted it. As part of his installation deal, Noel received 2,500 litres of gas.

John Upton explained at the Carbery farm walks recently that the price of electricity has been increasing for the last 10 years, according to Eurostat figures. The cost, excluding VAT, has gone from 6c/kilowatt hour to closer to 14c/kWh in the last 10 years. Irish research has shown that the average farm is using the day rate for heating water 40% of the time, which is at least 15c/kWh, depending on your electricity provider.

The best advice is that all electrical water heating should use night-rate electricity because heating 100 litres of water to 80oC costs €1 on the night rate but closer to €2 on the day rate. John also explained that if heating 100 litres of water with an oil-fired burner, it would cost about 95c/100 litres (similar to night-rate electricity), and this would work out similar in cost if gas were used. In summary, gas is competitive on price to electricity, especially if a lot of hot water is heated on the day rate, which is happening on a lot of farms.