new to lpg system , whats it like to live with ?

ilikecookies

bosmart wrote: »

Exactly! Looking at the prices at NEP LPG is about 1/3 cheaper than oil per litre and the price per kWh is roughly the same as gas oil and some 6% higher then kerosene.

BTW: I thought kerosene is jet fuel and gas oil is what you use for heating?

Did a quick Google and kerosene is indeed the standard domestic variety of heating oil (28 second oil) and gas oil (red diesel) is most commonly used as fuel in agricultural machines but also is used in some older heating systems (but is NOT compatible with systems using kerosene so it would be like putting diesel in a petrol engine!).

If kerosene is just 6% cheaper per kw/h than LPG that's still £150 less on say 2500 litres. And from my own experience I can get kerosene a fair few pennies cheaper than the NEP price so I suspect the delta is actually higher but then maybe the NEP price for LPG is higher than the average too but still it's all relative basically.

When I did the sums it was worth switching from LPG over to oil but admittedly this was in part because I was replacing a very old boiler and my experience of LPG was perhaps unfairly tainted by Flogas. So for someone with a modern LPG boiler it's probably not worth switching per se but LPG does look to be more expensive on a like-for-like basis.

bosmart

Yet another question: I understand that you have to pay for the whole tank of oil when they deliver it. How does it work with LPG? Do you need to pay on delivery or are you being billed on a monthly basis?

mfmaybe

I think you can do either. We pay the bill each time we get a fill (eventually....) but we could pay by DD if we wanted.

(Edit - we don't pay on delivery, they send a bill afterwards for the quantity delivered).

Certainly agree LPG is cripplingly expensive, mainly because of the lack of competition and 2 year contract restrictions. We are looking to build a new house, which obviously will have about 9ft thick walls full of insulation , but our heating will definitely be oil, not LPG.

One other thing to bear in mind renting is that boilers and hobs cannot be serviced by just any gas safe registered engineer, they need to also be trained on LPG. Your Landlord's problem in theory, but the engineers are never so easily found, and if say you have home emergency cover through your bank account, you tend to find the standard contractors they use are not LPG qualified.

malc_b

bosmart wrote: »

Exactly! Looking at the prices at NEP LPG is about 1/3 cheaper than oil per litre and the price per kWh is roughly the same as gas oil and some 6% higher then kerosene.

BTW: I thought kerosene is jet fuel and gas oil is what you use for heating?

As said above it is kerosene for most oil heating. NEP's figures for oil are a bit questionable (maybe for LPG too, dunno). I've just got quotes for a group buy of oil today and they range from 63.9p to 68.5p to NEP's 67.6p is perhaps on the high side. Also, it is the current price and usually you fill up in the summer when it is cheaper with a top up in the winter if you need it. So annual price is say 60p/l, perhaps a bit less. NEP's efficiency of 90% is less than a modern condensing boiler and at 9.8kW/l they are using the nett figure not the gross of 10.35kW (which is used in efficiency calcs). Maybe for oil NEP's figures come out about right for the average of old and new boilers but certain for new oil boilers they are too high per kW.

BTW NEP use nett values for LPG kWh/l too. The efficiency figure of 90% for LPG seems a bit low as I have noted 91% for condensing and 82% for non condensing (for gross value 7.5 kWh/l since all boiler efficiencies use gross value). For oil the efficiencies are ~94/84% since oil gives a slightly efficiency to gas.

I should add I'm not 100% sure of the LPG 7.5kWh/l since I see I have noted LPG is propane which NEP says is not the case so either the figure or that note is wrong.

izzzzythedog

ilikecookies wrote: »

Happy to answer any other specific questions.

thank you

so i guess its going to hurt the wallet a little aye lol

i can at the back of my mind remember the name on the side of the tank and this i think is confirmed by google earth showing its colour , the tanks got the name

FLOGAS

on its side , ive looked and ive looked and cant find a single good word to be said about his company so i fully intend to swerve signing up with these guys

so another question , contractually i read its down as 2 years and companys love to offer a cheap initial price thats raised to severally expensive once they have trapped you

so how firm is this 2 years ? is the contract with the property rather than an individual ? is it easy to break and will there be penaltys if it happens

im ok with paying a couple of grand a year to heat the place but worried on the idea of contractual obligations , i think i may need to secure the best deal possible based not just on price but on making sure i dont get shafted when it comes to the time to leave