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?

Glad your neighbour had offered the pallets. Fingers crossed for the weather gets better for you.

@MigsandTiggs

(Boilerjuice have a weird thing at the moment where the express price is cheaper than the the standard price!! I got it at 93.15 which is miles lower than anywhere else

@TeenageHorrorBag
Boilerjuice price varies depending on where you live. I just checked and here it's £1.25 + vat per litre for delivery in 3 days, with £1.15 + vat being their cheapest rate. Where do you live is as that price is fantastic!

It’s 90.15p a litre here on boiler juice. Or 81p a litre on YourNRG.

@Weareallvirgins

What is heating oil?

It’s what we use to power our boiler as our village isn’t connected to the mains gas network.

I’d probably just cry.
But you’re probably hardier than I am so option A. Then you have spring/summer build up a huge stock of wood and save for oil.

Go with the scavenged wood option for now.

Look up outdoorsy/ off grid lifestyle sites for tips on heating rooms with no electricity or gas.

I've seen photos of upturned (clean) terracotta pots upturned and placed on bricks, with candles burning inside, among other ideas.

Not sure if this has been mentioned already but I wanted to say don’t use boiler juice! They are profiting from all of this and have inflated prices massively. Ring around your local companies. We bought some when the prices were crazy - boiler juice were quoting £1.70 a litre and we bought it £0.95 a litre and the company we bought off confirmed that boiler juice are being complete bastards.

@MigsandTiggs

(Boilerjuice have a weird thing at the moment where the express price is cheaper than the the standard price!! I got it at 93.15 which is miles lower than anywhere else

@TeenageHorrorBag
Boilerjuice price varies depending on where you live. I just checked and here it's £1.25 + vat per litre for delivery in 3 days, with £1.15 + vat being their cheapest rate. Where do you live is as that price is fantastic!

@MigsandTiggs I'm in Wiltshire. I didn't realise prices vary. I just looked on there now and the standard price has gone up further - but the express delivery price has dropped to 90.15 (plus VAT)!! I'd have saved £30 if I waited until today! There is no rhyme or reason......

I had to switch off our heating about a month ago as I don't have £700 for 500 litres of oil. It's bloody freezing inside the house.

Also on oil here so feel your pain!
I have got by on open fires before but you wake up cold and they need constant tending.
I would be tempted to get small loan, if your oil tank runs dry it can be a pita to restart boiler.
Last year we had a new combination boiler installed which sounded like a good idea at the time but now we have no emersion heater or hot water tank so if oil runs out not only do we have no heating we'd have no hot water either- which I cannot live without!
I hope prices drop soon , so annoyed those on oil and not on mains gas are forgotten by any energy price cap etc
Hopefully weather will warm up soon too.

I would call the council as they have a hardship fund for fuel. I used it last year when I was living in a poorly insulated house. The council gave me over £400, it went a long way at the time.
Well worth ringing them to find out if they are still running the scheme.

I asked before. How long does 500l of oil last for

Obv get it varies how much have heating on etc

Ask your bank if it could arrange a low cost overdraft for the extra money...say £250. You could then pay it back weekly or monthly.

I once used 500l of oil in 6.5 weeks in my old house!

Can you use PayPal to pay the oil company. They allow you to defer the payment for 4 months using their credit account (not a card) as long as you pay the minimum of £5 per month and the full amount is paid by the end of the 4 months.

Sorry you're having to make this choice :(
Sorry if it's already been mentioned, but are there other things you can do in the meantime to keep the house warmer? Like leaving the oven door open once you've finished cooking, getting a cheap tube of filler and filling any gaps in the windows that let heat escape, tucking curtains on the windowsills to keep heat in, using draught excluders (or make shift ones from socks, etc). Or can you keep yourselves from needing the heating as much? Like wearing extra layers of clothing in the house, taking the kids out during half term to the park, library, etc so you won't be at home feeling the cold as often, having a movie night on the sofa with duvets to keep cosy, putting extra blankets on the bed and using hot water bottles at night time?
Sorry if that's all obvious, but I hope I can help somehow.
I'm hoping that week of warm weather comes back and stays around!

You can buy the oil from a garage from the pump. It isn't the cheapest price per litre, but will enable you to buy a smaller amount than 500 litres. We have two large containers, but sometimes the garage will loan you containers if you leave a deposit.
If your oil has completely run out, you will need to prime your boiler when you get more oil.
Maybe ask on a local Facebook group where the nearest garage is that sells it - they don't all.

As a teenager, I heated my flat with wood scavenged by my then boyfriend. After 52 years of marriage, he's now scavenging wood for our son's woodburner. It's fallen wood, doesn't belong to anybody so you can take it. Don't get a loan, don't spend your savings. Sunday tomorrow so start scavenging. Good luck my dear.

@Blondeshavemorefun

It varies according to the size of the house, whether you are running a shower off it (shower can be all electric or run from the oil boiler)
And then obviously, dependant on how long you have the heating on, how many people are having showers etc.
I have a fairly large old house and we only have the heating on in the evening for 2 or 3 hours
and maybe a couple of hours in the day time at the weekend. Our shower / hot water works off the oil too. We live rurally and it's cold here from October well into May ( I've known it snow 3rd week in May)
We use 2000 litres a year.

Op,

If you cook in the oven, stick some bricks in the bottom too. Then, when cooking is done, place bricks around like hot water bottles.

PayPal credit is actually 4 months not 3 for payments over £99. You still need to pay basic £5pm minimum but that's doable and you have 4 months to repay the rest. I do it over Christmas and also when buying new mobile phones outright.

Do you have plant pots, not plastic? I saw videos on YouTube, they put tea lights under an upturned plant pot. Apparently it’s even more effective if you have a small plant pot too.

Tea lights on a heat proof surface, smaller plant pot, then a larger plant pot. It will radiate heat like the bricks suggested by JusticeSystem

Do you have local online site, Nextdoor or similar. You could put a post asking if anyone got wood they don’t want, ie pallets etc

Can you ask on local site if anyone has any old wood for burning? Keep the fire going and mainly use heated room. The heat from fire should take the chill off the whole house . Get the blankets and fleeces out. I feel for you

@MibsXX I suppose it differs per supplier as it wasn't anywhere close to double by me but tbh if you've only got so much cash you do lose out from economies of scale but needs must. In our case the pile wasn't delivered on time due to the big storm recently so we ran out and had to get some. I don't even know you could do that!

Oil not pile!