Temporary heating costs - should I have to pay?

Stitsophrenic

Afternoon all,

I wonder if any of you could offer your help/advice/opinion.

On Monday last week (4/3/13), my heating stopped working properly. It came on for a bit, then went off again, regardless of the timer or the thermostat. Thankfully (in this case), my system is very old and only my heating is run by my old gas boiler and my hot water is electric emerssion tank thing.
After doing all the usual things to try and fix it and failing, I called the estate agent who manages the property to report the problem. She didn't answer, so I called again at exactly 9am on Tuesday morning, there was no answer again, so I left a message on her mobile explaining the problem and asking her to call me back.
She didn't call me, but text me a few hours later to say that the gas man would call. I thanked her for her help.
At 5pm the gas man still had not called and I had waited all day, so I text the agent again to ask when I should expect the gas man to call, she simply replied by sending me his number. I asked what She wanted me to do with the number, she replied "call him".
I spoke to the gas man who said he didn't have my address but was on his way home and would come and see me after.
He finally arrived at about 7pm and after about 15 minutes told me that the automatic mechanical valve was broken and needed to be replaced. He showed me how to switch the valve to manual so I could put the heating on and then left, leaving the heating on constant.
An hour later the heating went off again and all attempts to keep it on at all after that have failed.
I got a call on Friday from the gas man who said he'd come today (Wed 13th) to fix the valve and would be here at 12pm.
At 11:30 he text to say he'd be here after 3pm, at which point I asked him to be more specific and he said 4pm.
At 3:15pm he text again to say he was stuck somewhere and would have to come tomorrow morning!
I have no choice but to accept what he says, but it's another mornings work lost!

The thing is, over the past 9 days, I have had to heat my house using 3 fan heaters, which have been on for about 10 hours a day. I've just used an online calculator to work out how much it has cost to run these heaters and I've been floored by the £120 total.
I don't think that it's fair that we should have to foot the bill for this, but am I actually entitled to claim any of this cost back from my landlord?
I have my own children and am a childminder, which is why the heaters have had to be on so much and I've lost 2 mornings work, waiting for gas men who haven't turned up, I feel like I'm already out of pocket and given the recent days weather, have been extremely patient in waiting so long to have it fixed!

I want to ask for a contribution to the costs, but don't know where I stand on this?

Thank you!

Fire_Fox

Why did you need three fan heaters on nine hours a day, weren't you in one room? Can't you write some of the costs off against your business? Does the landlord know you are running a business from home?

Did you report any of this to your landlord directly? You didn't have to wait in for the engineer, if the property is fully managed by the agent you can give them consent to be present, or you can ask the landlord to. However this could delay repairs.

The landlord is responsible for providing an alternative form of heating, which they did, and for getting the repairs done within a reasonable time which again they did. They aren't miracle workers, things do go wrong. I might however be writing to the landlord to complain that the agent was not overly helpful or proactive given you have children, and perhaps that you were messed about by the engineer.

HappyMJ

They don't cost that much to run.....or your house must be very hot and lose a lot of heat. What would your normal gas bill be for a day...mulitply that by about 2 and that is the "additional" cost of using day rate electric heating. You can figure out the exact figure to multiply by taking your electric secondary rate and dividing by your gas secondary rate and deducting 1.

I use electric heating quite often and it certainly does not come to £4.50 a day per heater.

Are the heaters 3kW?

Stitsophrenic

Thank you for your reply.

To answer your questions.
Yes, of course my landlord knows I run a business from home. I have it written into my tenancy agreement, am qualified and properly insured.

I haven't used all 3 heaters constantly, but at times they have all needed to be on, as the house has been so cold!

We don't live in one room and at most times have had to heat more than one room at the same time, also my downstairs is quite open plan, with only one door to separate the bathroom from the rest of the downstairs, we also have hard floors (ceramic tiles) throughout and single glazing, so heat tends to get gobbled up.

Some of my heating costs are able to be claimed as expenses (5%) and I will of course take this into consideration.

I am not able to contact my landlord directly since he has had the property managed, I have to direct all communications to the agent.

The landlord has not provided any replacement heating, I have personally purchased and borrowed the fan heaters we are using.

I don't think the agent actually has a set of keys, so either myself or my OH would have to be here to let the engineer in.

I guess we'll just have to foot the bill then, I was just hopeful that we might be able to claim some of the additional costs back.

Stitsophrenic

HappyMJ wrote: »

They don't cost that much to run.....or your house must be very hot and lose a lot of heat. What would your normal gas bill be for a day...mulitply that by about 2 and that is the "additional" cost of using day rate electric heating. You can figure out the exact figure to multiply by taking your electric secondary rate and dividing by your gas secondary rate and deducting 1.

I use electric heating quite often and it certainly does not come to £4.50 a day per heater.

Are the heaters 3kW?

I haven't really used fan heaters before and it was only today that someone warned me that my bill would be sky high as a result.

Unfortunately my house isn't hot and it does lose a lot of heat!

I used an online calculator to work out the costs, entering my tariff details, but I will recalculate using your method - I hope it works out at a cost that's less shocking!

2 of the heaters are 3kw and 1 is 2.5kw.

Thank you for your reply!

Fire_Fox

Stitsophrenic wrote: »

Thank you for your reply.

To answer your questions.
Yes, of course my landlord knows I run a business from home. I have it written into my tenancy agreement, am qualified and properly insured.

I haven't used all 3 heaters constantly, but at times they have all needed to be on, as the house has been so cold!

We don't live in one room and at most times have had to heat more than one room at the same time, also my downstairs is quite open plan, with only one door to separate the bathroom from the rest of the downstairs, we also have hard floors (ceramic tiles) throughout and single glazing, so heat tends to get gobbled up.

Some of my heating costs are able to be claimed as expenses (5%) and I will of course take this into consideration.

I am not able to contact my landlord directly since he has had the property managed, I have to direct all communications to the agent.

The landlord has not provided any replacement heating, I have personally purchased and borrowed the fan heaters we are using.

I don't think the agent actually has a set of keys, so either myself or my OH would have to be here to let the engineer in.

I guess we'll just have to foot the bill then, I was just hopeful that we might be able to claim some of the additional costs back.

You are contracted to the landlord not the letting agent and you absolutely are permitted to contact them directly, use the address at which to serve notices on your tenancy agreement. If you don't have one write to the letting agent to request the address, referencing the legislation. This really is a super useful thing to have in case of problems during the tenancy or dispute afterwards, it causes no end of problems when tenants don't have this. http://www.landlordzone.co.uk/landlord's_address.htm

The landlord should hold keys, the agent could get a set off them. The landlord should also have provided the replacement heating, if you have done so you've even less grounds to claim the costs back, sorry.

Stitsophrenic

I will certainly take your advice and request his address, for the future.
Unfortunately, I don't think a complaint to him regarding the agent will be worth while, since they are friends.

Oh pooh, I wish I had known all of this before hand! I think I'll have to chalk this one up as a learning experience!

Thank you for your help.

Fire_Fox

Stitsophrenic wrote: »

I will certainly take your advice and request his address, for the future.
Unfortunately, I don't think a complaint to him regarding the agent will be worth while, since they are friends.

Oh pooh, I wish I had known all of this before hand! I think I'll have to chalk this one up as a learning experience!

Thank you for your help.

Hmm, in that case I'd take everything the letting agent every says with a pinch of salt, they are even more likely to protect their client and tell porky pies (agents are notorious for it). The nice thing for tenants is there is actually a decent amount of protection for them in the legislation and absolutely reams of legislation for landlords to follow. There are several helpful professional landlords who post regularly on the 'Renting' board, G_M and theartfullodger for example.

It's well worth getting your head around the advanced search function, there isn't much on MSE that someone has not asked at one time or another, there being so many threads. If you can't find what you need always post and ask at an early stage as possible, we often get tenants who are way down the line and haven't handled things in the best way due to not knowing their rights. Shelter is another incredible source of information, there is tons on there for tenants.

Hope it all works out for you.

macman

Running all those heaters (total 8.5kW) on full for an hour will cost you £1.02 per hour., assuming standard rate electricity at about 12p per kWh. I doubt you had them on full for 10 hours a day each, modern ones have a thermostat.