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?

Might be worth asking around if there are any funds for a family in your position (your MP, CAB, your electricity provider etc.).

Also, is there something you could swap for a neighbour's dried firewood? If you're rural there'll be people who have a surplus of dried firewood even at this stage. When I lived in the middle of nowhere (North Yorkshire) people would have happily shared.

Definately B.
the weather will warm up next week.

I would spend the weekend collecting as much wood as possible, and putting it in bags/ stacking by the fire to dry.

Invest £15 for an electric blanket use on sofa then bed.

I wonder what's worse for you? Inhaling from a real fire in the living room or your house being so cold

gingerfigs tbh I don’t know. They burn “clean” so you wouldn’t get build-up in the flu - but they do burn ridiculously hot - but then if the glass were to shatter just because you were burning mango rather than pine, the manufacturers would be in a whole heap of shit! 😂

Tbh I’d do it anyway. But then that’s the way I roll and danger is my middle name.

Don't by coal from a garage. It costs a fortune. Go to a proper coal merchants.

Agree with those who suggested getting a couple of 25l containers of heating oil. Mine ran out recently and I got some heating oil from a small independent petrol station which tided me over. Do you know how to bleed the boiler if you’ve got an airlock? Price has come down a bit- went up to £700 for 500 litres a few weeks back .

Can you tip your oil tank slightly to get more run out of it? That might last you another week.

Also, where I live in Ireland, local petrol stations sell heating oil in small drums that you can buy. Maybe ring around and check if any do that where you live?

Boiler Juice suppliers are ridiculously expensive, or they were when I lived in UK in 2013. Definitely ring around a few suppliers. I was impressed with my local supplier here in Cork who will happily sell you €50 of oil.

@EdgeOfSeventeenAndThreeQuarter you're a rebel!! I guessed that from your username 🤣🤣

@Patented

Hm, it doesn't sound too cold to me, but I appreciate that's not helpful. Jumpers and hats?

Oh don’t be such a wanker!

A vote for b and c. We have the oil filled radiators which kick out a fair amount of heat but don’t seem too thirsty with electricity

@Febrier

I wonder what's worse for you? Inhaling from a real fire in the living room or your house being so cold

Definitely the being cold! People have lived with real fires basically forever and so long as you have proper chimney and ventilation (and quite frankly it sounds like the whole house is ventilation) it's not going to do anyone any harm esp in the short term.

We are out of oil too, quoted £694 for 500l, when it cost us £350 previously - which is what we've got saved up.
Everyone is talking about gas and electricity rises but people don't realise how bad the oil situation is and how those of us on oil haven't got a choice - it's 500l+ or nothing and we don't have the choice to go to gas. Our quote for air source is £16k...
Given how late in the year it is we are going for waiting and saving. Admittedly we hadn't planned on this cold snap so we are having coal fires. If you can scavenge wood I'd do a mix of scavenged material and some coal (as it burns longer). Take £100 out of your savings to buy bags of coal/eco fuel. Take the kids of scavenging. Wear dressing gowns around the house and have hot showers... Last weekend we were gardening in shorts and t-shirts so I don't think it will be too long before everything warms up! You have my sympathy - from someone in a very similar situation (although our house is at about 12) and no children.

This is @Patented

When our heating broke a few years ago we had a whole winter without heat as they couldn't figure out what was wrong (eventually had a forensic plumber with a stethoscope who found the issue). I bought two oil-filled radiators which we could move from room to room and they heated up really quickly. They also had a timer function so that the DC could wake up and get dressed in reasonable comfort. They are generally cheaper if you can do without the timer function. Here is one for £40, or ask around there might be one you can borrow for a few weeks.

We have gas fired heating, I'm getting slightly worried that there might not be any gas next winter.

Forgot to add - get one of these for the wood burner; makes a huge difference:

Heat Powered 4 Blade Stove Fan | Silent Operation | Fireplace Wood & Log Burner | Increased Efficiency | Safe & Eco Friendly | M&W www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07K8R42WF/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_G6B7D0VWW897YKDQF64V?psc=1&_encoding=UTF8&tag=mumsnetforu03-21

And lots of thermals and layers. This is hopefully just a chilly phase before summer and not worth getting into debt for.

I sympathise as I’ve lived in several houses with no central heating and only a multifuel/woodburner/open fires and no double glazing draughty old houses. I kind of enjoy experiencing the seasons tbh (but am perhaps a bit weird 😂) Good luck!

@Bonecold I'm sure I heard an expert on radio (2 or 4 can't remember) talk about something called a kero box and that it might be a good solution for people looking to top up a smaller amount at the moment instead of fill up a fuel tank. I don't have oil heating so I have zero knowledge of their actual usefulness and availability, it just came up as I was listening to them talking about fuel prices

No I live in a very old house which the landlord refuses to insulate and which I pay £1200 a month for

You might consider reporting it to the council's environmental health team as a health hazard so the landlord will have to sort it. Our tenants did this when one of them had an undiagnosed chronic health condition which might have been caused by something in the house. I think the hospital advised them to do this on the grounds that the house would be inspected at no cost to themselves and if any problems were identified, we would be forced to take action.

We were quite annoyed with the council, because they found nothing serious but were overzealous about a number of minor things. It was fair enough that they made us install mains-powered fire alarms, given that the tenants were in the habit of removing the batteries and leaving them out, so that was a sensible measure. But they also made us add a tiny amount of extra insulation to a house which was already very snug, just to bring it up to what was considered ideal. We had recently put 190mm of insulation in the loft and they told us to increase it to 200mm!

Every council will have a different approach, but if your house is very badly insulated then your landlord might be forced to put it right. You are also safe from revenge eviction for a while thereafter. Do bear in mind that they might go for a no-fault eviction eventually, however. We didn't do that to our tenants, but the environmental health report didn't help our relationship with them - especially when they reported us to environmental health a second time two years later for failing to fix something when they had ignored my repeated emails in which I tried to schedule the work! At least the council then ordered the tenants to allow us in to make the repair which we wanted to do...

Anyway, that is a possibility to consider.

Post your question as you've asked on your MP's social media pages? And all the other government twat who have allowed this to happen.
I'm so sorry, OP. This country really doesn't care about people who are barely scraping by with interest rates and prices going up daily.

Could you ask for (dry) wood in a local fb group? We have one of those ethanol burners/fire place, it actually heats up the entire room.

In all honesty, I would make plans to move before next winter. Our house never drops below about 16 degrees without any heating on, it's not on at the moment, it was 17 inside despite being 2 degrees outside. Modern (ish this is 2008) houses are so much more insulated and with are terraced too. Detached cottage is a luxury I couldn't afford due to the heating

8 degrees is really cold.
We turned the heating off when the weather was warm and I am not planning to turn it back on until the Autumn, but it's not 8 degrees in our house, probably more like 15.
I would focus on fires as hopefully it will be warm again soon!

I would certainly be out looking for wood, 8 is so bloody low

Whoever said 8 degrees is nothing unusual, jumpers and hats needs to be metaphorically
“ Will Smithed”
It’s bloody freezing.
Mum used to let her house get as cold as 13 degs c and was horrid.
Hats and coats indoors?
Fingerless gloves?
It’s fucking miserable.

She too collects wood from a nearby common

Right I have some wood!

To answer some questions. I’ll be working all Easter and youngest will be in holiday club each day (£26 a pop). Older two will be home but cannot reliably look after the younger so that needs to be paid for. They’ll both go out so again, it’s just really the nights and mornings which are an issue heat wise.

I’m salaried and work full time so overtime wouldn’t make a difference (and isn’t available)

I don’t want to waste diesel driving around garages and I know our two local ones don’t sell kerosine. Tank already propped up on two bricks one end, did that last week!

It’s snowing here so wood outside is really bloody wet but have found some in the dry which is burning now

Fingers crossed it gets warm again soon. I have brought down the electric blankets off the beds and they are now on the sofa. I have a hat on and tea. Can still see my breath but I feel warmer