Communal heating is it a con?

Scot_39

Why didnt you know what the heating system was ?

And tgen check the costs ?

Expensive a common complaint, but no not necessarily a con unless you have reasons to believe they are grossly exaggerating about the capital / financing cost and maintenance / admjnistration costs for the system.

Your paying for the local boiler installation and maintenance, their billing systems and administration costs - often subcontracted to firms linked to boiler and HIUs suppliers as to do locally would be even more expensive and not just the fuel used in your bills.

Fixed costs which have to be split between a limitted number of occupants, rather say 100,000s of homes for a full scale power station. 

Or say for own gas - just as you might otherwise be spending say £2500 -4000 plus every 10 years for a gch boiler install.  Tgen £100 to service it - maybe £300-400 for a comprehensive cover call out plan for boiler and radiator faults.

So at top end a higher £650 - 800 in overheads / costs.

And then paying for the fuel on top.

Scot_39

Nebulous2 said:

moneysaver said:

Have a read at this https://www.glasgowtimes.co.uk/news/scottish-news/20076436.wyndford-community-protests-energy-price-increase-glasgow-power-plant/

The residents have been in dispute for years. Getting charged inflated prices for years, no price cap and locked into the supplier SSE.

Moneysaver

An article which seems very short on facts. What were they paying before, and what are they paying now? Is it metered, or is there a fixed cost? 

If its in Scotland they iirc brought in mandatory metering for hiu style wet distribution units on new installs / any boiler upgrades - and started to hint at retrofits to existing boilers - but not sure that came in - years before the rest of the UK.

My sisters LHA mid rise flat (about 10 stories - so not that high) wnet that way when oil replaced by woodchip -  the bills before upgrade were split by flat apt size - 2 for 1 bed, 4 for 3, regardless of use . Low users complained before about subsidizing others, high users complained after about paying for what they used.

WiserMiser

Welcome to the forum.

The bad news is that communal heat networks are like something out of the Wild West at the moment.  They can charge virtually what they like and there's not much you can do.  Sometimes you can't even minimise the costs by using less because they just split the costs without measuring kWh usage.

The good news is that they will soon be regulated by Ofgem.

https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/get-advice-heat-networks