LPG is costing us a fortune - any ideas?

moo2moo

We use Flogas at 40p/litre. our last price rise was 2.35p per litre. We have solar panels for hot water spring through autumn, a multifuel stove which runs 24 hours per day at £28 per week in coal for 4 months of the year. The heating runs for 1 hour per evening to warm the upstairs of the house before the kids go to bed. The hob part of the cooker is LPG . We have hot water for 1 hour in the morning and 1 hour at night and our LPG bill is still £90 per month (3 bed house).

The only way I could see that the LPG bill for a 3 bed house to be £30-£40 a month is to back it up with some other heat source perhaps they had oil filled electric radiators? storage heaters or a very chilly house?

dzug

Is that the actual cost - metered if you have a communal tank or delivered? Or Calor's 'estimate'?
Calor do have a habit of wanting to increase payments way above usage. Every September they want to increase my monthly payment by about 50%. Every September I tell them my account balance is approximately zero, as it was the previous year (ie the payments are about right....) and they back down, muttering about the system.

Currently I'm paying £70 a month for a (large) three bedroomed bungalow. I do monitor the meter reading every month or so and can spot if my consumption is increasing and quietly slip in an extra payment.

ironnick

I've just moved to a 3 bed house in rural E. Sussex. The house had a tank buried in the rear garden. I had it filled up just before Xmas (it was empty), and Calorgas charged me .33p per lt. (About £600 to fill the tank). They tried to charge me .38p, but I haggled them down. They wanted me to sign up to a two yr contract, but I've signed nothing. Calorgas own the tank in the garden. The driver explained to me it was to be deregulated in about June / July whereby companies would buy the tank in the garden (or where ever) from each other and then supply the tank / customer. When I spoke to Calor, I already had quotes from other companies as to what they'd be prepared to supply me at and had spoken to the neighbours to find out what they were paying. There are brokers who can find you better deals (LPG solutions is one, but they are helpless where there is a contract in place.) Hole that helps,
Nick

Tweetinat

Sorry for the delayed reply - got caught up with Christmas and Birthdays and Illness

mr_tickle wrote: »

When did you last check those prices? Flogas charge over 40p/litre - with 2 price rises in the last few months.

Tweetinat - how many times have you had your tank filled in the year you've been in the property? I know it sounds obvious, but if you moved in and the tank was empty, you used the tankful, then you just had it refilled again, it may skew the charges.

The tank was refilled when we moved into the property, so there's no skewyness down to that unfortunately.

As to your original questions:
- Should we keep heating on for most of the day (I'll have to turn off at night otherwise I'll roast alive).
No - I'd be amazed if it's actually cheaper to keep the house heating on all the time. The exception is if you have it on for longer, but at a lower temperature.

We did a trial and found that our consumption did indeed increase when we did this, so it's back to on/off twice daily now.

- Should we get someone in to look at the boiler as it must surely be inefficient
Possibly. I'm not heating expert, but I'd imagine that if it were inefficient there would be a large amount of unburnt hydrocarbons in the exhaust. I'm not sure whether that's something they'd check routinely, but you could ask one.

The boiler is now making strange noises so we're going to get someone in anyway cos it sounds like things may go kaput soon

- Would chaging the boiler system to one with an electronic thermostat (which would allow us to precisely set temperatures at specific times of the day without turning off completely) save us money?
Well yes it would to an extent if you decided it didn't need to be as warm in the mornings, say. You could set the mornings to be 20 degrees and the evenings 22 degrees. However, for it to be causing a problem now, you'd probably be able to feel that the house was too warm! Chances are you would only need to change the thermostat itself, not the whole heating system, and I believe what you're talking about is referred to as a timerstat.

Ah, yep - that's exactly what I meant! a Timerstat. Thanks

Tweetinat

mr_tickle wrote: »

1/5 hours? Do you mean between 1 and 5 hours? 1 hour on weekdays, 5 hours on weekends? If so, then 10 hours a day seems quite a bit (to me). We currently have ours on for 1 hour in the morning and 3 hours in the evening.

Sorry - I meant 1 and a half hours. H2B gets up an hour earlier than me, hence the extended time in the morning.

Have the other rooms got thermostatic radiator valves? None of them get too hot? (Thermostatic rad valves can stick open).

Yes, they've all got valves on with a gauge showing between 1 and 5 bars. I regularly check them to make sure that they're set appropriately.

So you haven't got a combi boiler? You have a hot water tank? If so, then this is normal.

Thanks for clearing that up - didn't realise.

Tweetinat

moo2moo wrote: »

We use Flogas at 40p/litre. our last price rise was 2.35p per litre. We have solar panels for hot water spring through autumn, a multifuel stove which runs 24 hours per day at £28 per week in coal for 4 months of the year. The heating runs for 1 hour per evening to warm the upstairs of the house before the kids go to bed. The hob part of the cooker is LPG . We have hot water for 1 hour in the morning and 1 hour at night and our LPG bill is still £90 per month (3 bed house).

The only way I could see that the LPG bill for a 3 bed house to be £30-£40 a month is to back it up with some other heat source perhaps they had oil filled electric radiators? storage heaters or a very chilly house?

Ahhh - interesting to find out that someone else experiences the same high charge that we do... we're not alone!

Tweetinat

dzug wrote: »

Is that the actual cost - metered if you have a communal tank or delivered? Or Calor's 'estimate'?
Calor do have a habit of wanting to increase payments way above usage. Every September they want to increase my monthly payment by about 50%. Every September I tell them my account balance is approximately zero, as it was the previous year (ie the payments are about right....) and they back down, muttering about the system.

Currently I'm paying £70 a month for a (large) three bedroomed bungalow. I do monitor the meter reading every month or so and can spot if my consumption is increasing and quietly slip in an extra payment.

That 'actual' as it were. We've monitored our usage over the last year and that's the average value of gas we've used over this time. We just has a letter from Calor - they want to increase our payments to £210 per month as we have such a high backlog (we've been paying £50/month).

Tweetinat

ironnick wrote: »

I've just moved to a 3 bed house in rural E. Sussex. The house had a tank buried in the rear garden. I had it filled up just before Xmas (it was empty), and Calorgas charged me .33p per lt. (About £600 to fill the tank). They tried to charge me .38p, but I haggled them down. They wanted me to sign up to a two yr contract, but I've signed nothing. Calorgas own the tank in the garden. The driver explained to me it was to be deregulated in about June / July whereby companies would buy the tank in the garden (or where ever) from each other and then supply the tank / customer. When I spoke to Calor, I already had quotes from other companies as to what they'd be prepared to supply me at and had spoken to the neighbours to find out what they were paying. There are brokers who can find you better deals (LPG solutions is one, but they are helpless where there is a contract in place.) Hole that helps,
Nick

Thanks Nick. I wrote to the CC who advised me the same about deregulation, but warned me that I couldn't expect to move straight away as it would take time for the gas companies to come to an agreement about the costs they would pay each other when taking over the tank. We just wrote to Calor again asking them to explain why we're using more than double the volume of our neighbours but are paying more than 12p/l more than them. They just shrugged it off and said they'd agreed to an extended contract (which we know isn't true). We're seriously stuck between a rock and a hard place here, and about to be £160/m worse off... I like the sound of LPG colutions - will give them a try seeing as we're not in a contract - thanks!

ironnick

Tweetinat wrote: »

Thanks Nick. I wrote to the CC who advised me the same about deregulation, but warned me that I couldn't expect to move straight away as it would take time for the gas companies to come to an agreement about the costs they would pay each other when taking over the tank. We just wrote to Calor again asking them to explain why we're using more than double the volume of our neighbours but are paying more than 12p/l more than them. They just shrugged it off and said they'd agreed to an extended contract (which we know isn't true). We're seriously stuck between a rock and a hard place here, and about to be £160/m worse off... I like the sound of LPG colutions - will give them a try seeing as we're not in a contract - thanks!

Yes, the time lag is a fair point. The driver did say it was likely to be June / July before there was likely to be any sort of an outcome. I've just had the bill in from CG where they tried to charge me 38p lt. I sent it back, together with the email of the original offer at .33p. They've promised to send me the correct bill. My advice would be to be nice & chatty to the girls who answer the 'phone to you. It was them that gave the original price to me. No harm in being nice - It can pay dividends!!

merit_mark_2

Am currently a Calor customer using as little of this outrageously priced fuel as possible. Their charge for gas is about 36p/litre but they offered to reduce this to 32p/litre for one year if I was prepared to sign a two year contract. OK - but this contract has a 'poison' clause in it referring to a tank 'uplift charge' of £230 if I decide to leave Calor.

I have been with Calor since 1990 and have no recollection of signing anything to this effect in the past (all I understood was that I had to give them 3 months notice of termination) - so presumably this is not enforceable if I just carry on as I am now. Does anyone have experience of a similar situation and able to offer advice?

I have had quotes from other suppliers - but of course Calor will (still) need to remove its tank first (and will try to charge me).

I fully intend to switch to electric heating / cooking as and when equipment becomes due for replacement - but - there is still this damned uplift charge! Even if I leave the tank to rust I will still have continue to pay a tank rental of about £60pa :eek: Basically they have me by the proverbials!

So my advice is avoid LPG like the plague - you still have the costs of plumbers and fitters to maintain your equipment and to add further insult to injury the fuel is about 40% more expensive than mains gas.:mad: