My house is 8 degrees. 8 degrees

[Bonecold]

Heating oil ran out yesterday. I have £200 in the savings pot with boiler juice. For a minimum order I need 500 litres which is £468.

So I’ve left the heating off until either the price per litre drops, the weather gets better, or my savings pot reaches the amount needed to do an order (£65 DD a month).

In the meantime I have a fire place so I can heat one room (but no wood so have to outlay for that).

I can’t work out if I should:

a) remove the £200 from the savings account and spend it on wood/coal to get through to warmer weather. Pro - would be warm now, Con - even further away from filling the tank

b) heat one room with wood, live near a wood so could scavenge enough wood weekly to do this?

c) plug in electric radiator. Pro: heat, con: eats electricity

D) small loan for £300/400 and top up oil. Pro: heat, con: small loans have huge interest and would be another bill each month

I’m at work all day and kids at school usually so it’s not like we would be freezing all day and can boil water for cooking and have electric shower for washing. But it’s Easter holidays here so they’ll be home for the next two weeks now

What would you do?

Definitely use the open fire. Maybe invest in a chain saw grin

Although there's the saying about firewwood warming you twice....that only applies if you use your own energy to cut it (assuming OP is physically up to it)

We haven’t been Able to heat the house all winter. We have electric blankets but the house is freezing. That’s life for us. The children have to live with it. No fire unfortunately. Central heating but I can’t afford it.

@NdefH81

Ran out yesterday?

How come only making decision today?!

Why do folk behave like this? Honestly, have you any idea what the weather has been like in some areas this week? We had the garden furniture out on Sunday and Monday. Shorts and t shirts and a BBQ. It snowed on Wednesday and Thursday. Today has been really cold too. It’s been in the minuses in the morning and I had to defrost my car yesterday and today. Get it?

OP, might be worth a call to the oil company and see if they will do a lower order. 500 costs such a lot of money now. We are up at over £1 a litre now but thankfully I managed to fill my tank a month ago for 61p which was still very expensive.

@actiongirl1978

Hi OP, that sounds horrible I hope you can fill the oil tank soon.

Just be careful with having it empty, we have ours auto topped up as we were warned that when it empties out it causes issues once it needs to be filled again, I guess the pipes can get air in or something?

I'm sorry to bring what might be more bad news. Are there any other oil companies? We use Rawlings for oil, I don't know if they are nationwide?

Are you a member of The Oil Club UK Op ?

Heat one room with wood.
Get on your local community FB group and ask around if any one has any wood they want rid off. It most likely won't be seasoned but will be better than getting in to debt or sitting in the cold.

Are you in an oil buying group? They tend to be more flexible on quantities.

@LardyDee

Definitely use the open fire. Maybe invest in a chain saw

(Seriously, we're in central London, but even here there are enough fallen trees around that could be cut up and used to heat the house all year.)

Don't go anywhere near a chainsaw.

Have you any family members who would give you the difference between your savings and the amount needed for fill up?

Or could you ring the oil filling people and say you have 3 (?) kids who are cold and please could they come out and do a fill of only £200 when they are doing a nearby fill up?

If you decide to get wood ask for the slowest longest burning, not pine.
It may not be super warm that way but it keeps the chill off.
Also if you are on FB pop a post asking if anyone has old pallets of even old wooden furniture that you can collect, chop it up and burn it.

@PrtScn

Just be careful with scavenging wood. Around here there are a few signs up near wooded areas saying wood thieves will be prosecuted.

Surely that would apply to people chopping branches, not taking windfall sticks? Prosecution for someone wielding a saw but hardly likely with a few sticks, Surely?

It sounds awful op and nobody wants to be cold but ...

I grew up in the north east and the only heating we had was a coal fire. I can remember being in my Sunday night bath forcing myself to get out knowing how bloody cold it would be.

At uni I lived in a house where the only source of heat was a coal fire - and my room was in the attic.... I used to work in bed wearing a hat and scarf. Ice on the inside of the windows too in the winter. Damp and mould in the bathroom.

We currently live in a lovely big old house but, as the price of oil has rocketed (nearly £1200 for 1k litres recently) I wore my coat indoors yesterday. We watched tv from under blankets. We have dogs who snuggle up against us overnight which helps.

We can't even use the log burner because dh currently has a bad chest infection which was made much worse last weekend when we lit it.

In your shoes I would let your direct debit accrue so you can have a decent oil delivery ready for the autumn. And burn wood. Chin up. It will be May soon!

@LardyDee

Definitely use the open fire. Maybe invest in a chain saw

(Seriously, we're in central London, but even here there are enough fallen trees around that could be cut up and used to heat the house all year.)

@LardyDee You can't burn wet wood in domestic fires or stoves in most areas (especially London!) that are smokeless. It is a health hazard due to the particulates. A lot of posters seem unaware.

Some of us oldies lived with only heating in the living room and single glazing. Hot water bottles and blankets. it really isn't that difficult to get by.

The oil buying group I use do smaller quantities of heating oil 5x 20 litres individual cans for about £100, would that be an option for you? Might just be enough to get through a week.

It’s awful that you are faced with these decisions at all OP. I work from home and it was 12 degrees in my room today. My fingers actually ceased up with the cold when I was using the laptop, and my nose was red! When I couldn’t feel my toes, I just threw the bloody towel in and switched the heating on. Just hoping next week brings warmer weather so we can all get a bit of respite from the cold.

Save your cash for an oil delivery.

Purchase fire lighters and matches. Minimal cost.
Purchase a sack or two of coal or smokeless fuel. Mac £20
Collect armfuls of twigs to start your fire, they will be dry. Free
But some brickettes. Hardwood ones are better but they all burn well , add a few lumps of coal
and they will burn for longer.
Top up with off cuts of dry wood or unwanted furniture. Free
Avoid anything tested with stain or paint.

Burning wet/green/scavenged wood is definitely more polluting, its also really inefficient, most of the energy you would get as radiated heat from dry, seasoned wood goes into evaporating the moisture out of the wood, it burns cold and dirty. Collect it, but store it, season it to dry it out. A bit like drying washing on your radiators it robs you of the heat and makes the indoors damper and colder.

@Itsbackagain

Some of us oldies lived with only heating in the living room and single glazing. Hot water bottles and blankets. it really isn't that difficult to get by.

Funny how many people who grew up in those conditions have also said in this thread alone all the bad memories they have from it. That they really feel for the OP to be back in that place etc….

Sometimes, I’m wondering if being an ‘oldie’ means you’ve forgotten how hard it was tbh. Just like I seem to have forgotten the pain of Labour etc…

If your shower is above the bath keep the water in the house till it’s cold. Hot water bottles are lovely and kids can take them into a pop up tent with them to keep toasty (non insulate under the tent with cardboard or put it on a bed.

@BlackeyedSusan

Why is your house cold? Is there anything you can do to fix it.

I was wondering about that, with no heating on at all my house is never below 12.

I'm so sorry you're dealing with this. I hope you find warmth. My house too is utterly freezing. I'm in bed with a hot water bottle. Can't sit downstairs freezing any longer x

I would see if there is anyone that you could split the oil bill with, there must be others that can't afford the full 500 ltr, oil prices will come down in the summer months.

@Alwayscheerful

Save your cash for an oil delivery.

Purchase fire lighters and matches. Minimal cost.
Purchase a sack or two of coal or smokeless fuel. Mac £20
Collect armfuls of twigs to start your fire, they will be dry. Free
But some brickettes. Hardwood ones are better but they all burn well , add a few lumps of coal
and they will burn for longer.
Top up with off cuts of dry wood or unwanted furniture. Free
Avoid anything tested with stain or paint.

I use Hot Max logs sometimes, they're about £8 for a big bag and burn brilliantly, they're a composite stuff. I get them from a pet store but coal merchants have them as well.

@BattledoreAndShuttlecock

But burning scavenged undried wood is a real health hazard so try to avoid that as much as possible.

Also probably illegal. It belongs to the owner of the wood.

Could you get some cheap heater blankets. Look on local selling sites, I know it's not ideal but we find sitting on one really helps keeping warm. Our house is about 11 degrees. We also use hot water bottles. I'm also envious that you have a log/wood burner because we have an "open" chimney. Our dogs kept is warm last night, maybe you could have a family film with fire on and all the doors open to warm through. It's shameful we as having to live like this