To think oil fired central heating is a bollocks

[FrostyTheCrunchyFrog]

and to want to KILL IT DEAD?

I've run out of oil. Again. In a total catch 22 - can't afford to fill the tank, so am putting in 200l a month, and at the moment, that is lasting 3-4 weeks. (costing £135 a pop). To fill the tank would be £603.

It's unbeliveably expensive - compared to gas, in London I was paying maybe £50-60 a month in gas through the winter, and was always in credit.

ARRRGH. I've just asked them for a direct debit, but the way that works is you pay each month until you have enough to fill the tank. So basically, for the next few months I'll have to pay double what I am now, then we'll be OK. Except I don't have that.

And I'm COLD. Stupid house.

I feel you pain, we have the worst oil boiler in the world and a detached, badly insulated house in what muct be the windiest spot in the country.

We're putting 50 euros a week in (we can fill drums at the oil depot ourselves) and it's using more than that so will have to double up this week. We have it on for 2.5 hours in the morning and 3 hours in the evening, have an open fire in the ving room which is costing us 40 euros a week and the hosue is still cold... for that money I expect to be sweating like a pig!

What a coincidence, we moved house on friday, into one with oil based central heating. Have shivered none stop for four days! Luckily my 5 month old doesn't particularly feel the cold (bar the blue feet incident due to sock refusal!).

Its a big 3 bed detached, so am dreading the costs having come from a 2 bed terrace with "normal" central heating.

Going to ring suppliers today and see what's what, as there is now way we could pay the £600 we've been told it costs to fill the tank. Its currently 3/8 ish full, no idea if it will need topping up before xmas, arghhh!

P.s. Long time lurker from pregnancy board :)

What a coincidence, we moved house on friday, into one with oil based central heating. Have shivered none stop for four days! Luckily my 5 month old doesn't particularly feel the cold (bar the blue feet incident due to sock refusal!).

Its a big 3 bed detached, so am dreading the costs having come from a 2 bed terrace with "normal" central heating.

Going to ring suppliers today and see what's what, as there is now way we could pay the £600 we've been told it costs to fill the tank. Its currently 3/8 ish full, no idea if it will need topping up before xmas, arghhh!

P.s. Long time lurker from pregnancy board :)

I feel your pain, always run out when the weather is at its worse. ridiculously expensive. fuel poverty anyone?

Pain felt here too.. It used to be the cheapest fuel around, found my 1st oil bill from 13yrs ago the other day- £98 for 1000lts, now just paid out £340 for 500!! I have all the windows covered with that plastic shrink wrap stuff, effectivly triple glazing, blankets inside curtains, door curtains etc. Also have a gas heater for emergencies! If you go on boilerjuice, take the price, then ring round companies yourself, asking for a quote, letting them all know the cheapest you have found, amazing how the numbers drop, Also, if you can, join an oil "collective", that way, next winter you can all buy together and get a cheaper "bulk" price, not much use now, but may help out next winter.- Amazed your company will do a 200ltr top up. everyone around here have a 500ltr minimum!

You have my sympathy. We have lived in a house with oil central heating for ten years. In that time the cost has rocketed. We have also run out of oil twice, despite being on a contract where the oil company is supposed to keep the tank topped up.

Most of the time we just put the heating on for a few hours in the evening. We use electric heaters in the bedrooms when we get up in the morning, then we are usually out at school / work / whatever for the day. I would recommend spending time in the library or coffee shops (one coffee is much cheaper than putting the heating on!), and wearing loads of clothes.

One year we ran out of oil over Christmas - we all slept in one room and stayed in the kitchen during the day. But it wasn't fun - I feel your pain.

NBU at all. You haven't even mentioned that the ppl is lower if you buy more, which I find frustrating as we feel obliged to only buy 1500l at a time (that's over £1000), but only need to do that once a year, hopefully now less often as we've not put the oil-fired Aga on this winter (but now need a radiator in the kitchen) - we're giving it away :-0. In theory though, we've been told, if you can get a couple of neighbours in with you, you can get the cheaper high volume rate that way.

It's always worth phoning round to compare prices and delivery times (you pay more for urgent delivery), and you can check on Boiler Juice for a start. We usually get a cheaper price direct with co. You can do the budget plans where you pay fixed amount and they keep it topped up for you, but my friends have run out on these plans too. I think these plans work out dearer too.

We also burn a wood burner with trees we grow specially for it (ash - fast growing, good burning) and other stuff that needs chopping in our garden. Would like another in our living room asap.

Has gone up from 33ppl in 2004 to what about 70ppl now (was higher last winter - neighbour ran out during the 18in snow and had to pay 88ppl!). The stuff of nightmares, just not budgetable.

You're paying even higher prices because you're buying small quantaties at once. Is there a local oil co-op nearby? We have a village oil co-op where everyone in the group orders at once, once a month, and you pay the price per litre charged for the total order, which is significantly cheaper. Ours is run by one of the churchwardens who has to order for the church and village hall every month.

We have similar issues and use a couple of 2kw fan heaters to save money. We just put one or two on in the rooms we are using to keep comfortable. Then an electric blanket at night to keep toasty. Hot water comes from an immersion.

I worked out the electric was much cheaper than using calor gas in our place. Plus no chance of running out (which happens all too often).

You put that a lot clearer than me, Grendel, but that's what I was trying to say too. Your village sounds much naicer than ours!

I don't think there's a co-op. The charity shop does vouchers you can buy, might investigate that. Actually considering getting a credit card to fill the git up and get out of this stupid cycle.

It's OK atm (lots of clothes and doing actual housework to keep warm, unprecedented!), tumble drying and ironing! Steamy

The company I use is the only one that does 200l, everywhere else has a 500l minimum. They're more or less the same price as the others too, couple of quid cheaper generally.

Definitely going to do the tin foil radiator thing - nice project for the kids this afternoon!

Grendels... not over here I'm not. The price is set no matter the quantity.The oil depot is so good that when prices rise they don't rise there's until they have sold all the oil they bought for less.

I posted on this subject a few months ago, about a house I was thinking of renting that had OFCH. Kind of glad some bugger grabbed it from under my nose now! The house we did get has Economy 7- and only economy 7 (storage heaters). They're not too bad TBH- costing me about £2 per night at the moment, it might go up a bit more if it gets colder....

I think that by far the best form of heating in rural areas is a big woodburning/solid fuel stove- or several! Have you got an open chimney in good nick? Will the LL let you put one in? (Our chimney has collapsed internally apparently, and would cost ££££ to put right, according to the LL

Check that link I put up, OP - even if there is not currently a buying syndicate for your area, you can register interest in case there is one being set up. We bought through ours for the first time a few weeks ago - 5p/l below the lowest stand-alone price I could get - not a bad deal!

I don't have any complaints about mine. We fill the tank once a year, costs us about 1000 eur. That's it, no more hassle. Heating is on all the time and house is lovely and warm. Sounds like the insulation is the problem.

Depends on the house, Hazel - yes, insulation is a massive problem for us - but it's a listed building, so not much we can do about a lot of it apart from keeping curtains shut, shutting internal doors, etc. If the OP has moved from a terraced house (just a guess) in London to detached rural house, then the difference is huge.

We have oil heating. Cheaper than gas for us. Two important caveats. 1) Must insulate the house well - makes huge difference as our house is pretty big. Massive loft insulation, cavity wall insulation, under floor insulation, double glazing etc.

The other thing is not to have an automatic contract with one supplier. We order twice a year and each time we ring round six at least local suppliers and bargain hard. You can reduce your bill substantially by driving a hard bargain!

We have oil too, I'm trying not to use it at all in case in runs out. Can't afford to get any more until after Xmas. We do have a log burner and electric heaters we can use though. There is no way we could afford to heat the house if we didn't have these. I'm more worried that if it runs out we won't have any hot water!

Lack of the Insulation is the problem. I think you'd be suffering even with Gas in that house, OP (and look at how gas prices have soared, too).

We have a large detached house in a windy place, and we only use about 500-600l/year. It used to be closer to 1000l/year. I'm a SAHM, I do live on tea rather than turn heating on during the day, & we only heat rooms we're using (eg., not bedrooms in day). But getting good Insulation (& better windows) has saved us the most money.

Double check whether there's an oil-buying club in your area.

£20 a drum is £1 a litre.
If you can buy 2000 litres it's 65pence (after ringing round and reminding them we've used the same company for years).

Like electricity meters, those have least are made to pay the most. It makes me really .

OFCH here, and just had delivery of 700 litres, costing almost £700. (Probably pay that about 4 times a year at least ) When heating is on it's quite warm in the house, currently in the process of installing new insulation where we can - but have you seen the cost of THAT stuff?! Hopefully will help in the longer-term though.

Also have a massive 12.5 kw log/coal stove, I'm like a stoker on the Flying Scotsman shovelling fuel into it's gaping maw...but when it's been on a few hours the heat spreads to other parts of house too and there's nothing nicer than a real fire on a cold Scottish night

Have picked up some great ideas on this thread about reducing our bills etc, thanks OP.

ITS obviously...cold fingers despite two blankets and a dressing gown!

It pisses me off too, Startail, which is why I like to support the oil co-op.

I have to say, I hope we get the benefits that lljkk sees when we insulate our house properly next spring. We are just glugging through the stuff.

On the plus side, we have made some changes already that have made our bill more manageable - we have a sophisticated house heat control system that means we have each room at a precise temperature at any time of day or night, and we've put in a couple of wood stoves which can just about heat one room each if run continuously from morning to night. Less technologically advanced, we also have blanket-like curtains in some rooms (actually, might just buy blankets for other rooms, since they're probably cheaper), and we're going to go for new heat-insulating blinds in the rooms that have blinds.

I like my oil. But then I think I'd like any heating fuel if we could keep the same system. It comes on like a furnace, heats the house within 20 minutes, and then retains the heat for hours after being switched off. We've run out of oil a couple of times over the last year, our tank is a 1500l one so too expensive to fill to the brim and I'm always worried about it being full because its more money lost if those twats that are about drain the tank.

I check the oil level every day at the moment, don't want to run out, and have put a marker on it at a rough point where I know I've only got a few days of oil left.

YANBU though.

We found it a disaster as well but I guess any heating system is prone to failure. Our gas one broke down one winter and we were left freezing our arses off until someone got theirs out here.