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Original poster

help for rhubarb please - dont be shy pleasey weasy lemon squeezy. information from people who have no mains gas - its not boring honest. help her shes doing her nut in ta

82 replies

Tortington · 19/07/2006 11:14

she can only get on internet infrequently and would like som help regarding moving house

she is considering moving to a house which has no mains gas

d you or do you know of anyone who lives up north and has no mains gas?

how cold are the winters in carlysle
are they just bracing or are they trez wet?

how much are the leccy bills likley to be with no mains gas - she knows it will be more expensive but how much?

is there a partic leccy company or leccy tarriff she should consider?

she has chance to rent house in nice villagey place with small school and good pub - how fab is that - only there is no mains gas and she doesnt want to freeze her tits off - her words- in winter

ta
ta
ta

OP posts:
CountessDracula · 19/07/2006 11:39

you can get a calor gas tank installed in the garden, my dad has it as he won't cook with elec.

I think gas is so expensive now that it makes little difference

iota · 19/07/2006 11:39

my bro and my friend both have oil central heating - some info here

electric Storage heaters are a PITA IME and expensive

trinityrhino · 19/07/2006 11:40

definitely agree iota, hubby would say stay away from electric storage heaters I think

womblingalong · 19/07/2006 11:40

About 9 years ago we lived in a rented house that had no mains gas. We used to get the calor gas canisters delivered as and when we ran out.

Our neighbours had a gas tank at the end of their garden in a fenced in paddock, that was filled up every so often. DH says that he remembers it being quite expensive, i.e £200 a time to replace the canisters. We can't remember how often we replaced them but reckon it was approx 3 times a year, which would equate to £600 a year. The house was an old cottage with an exposed aspect, so pretty cold.

HTH a bit.

chatee · 19/07/2006 11:40

Oil tanks in the gardens are quite common around here.......like someone has said ...a company just comes and fills them up either 2x yearly or monthly whatever suits your tank or needs...

iota · 19/07/2006 11:42

LPG info

Marina · 19/07/2006 11:42

Hi custy, Carlisle's proximity to the Solway Firth and the coast means IME that winters are much milder than say, further in by the Pennines such as Penrith and even the Southern lakes.
WET though.
My parents maintained that it was milder in Carlisle as a rule than it is in London for much of the winter. They are old and crazy though

Pierre · 19/07/2006 11:43

I had a house in France with no mains gas. Used gas cannister things in the kitchen for the cooker (hint: get two so if one runs out in the middle of cooking a roast you have a spare one...) and had oil tank for central heating. Pretty sure UK is same as France in that if you shop around for oil supplier you can get a good deal. You can also pay monthly by direct debit which saves you having to fork out huge sums to fill up tank (second handy hint). Third handy hint - check oil tank on the first of every month otherwise it will run out on the saturday of a bank holiday weekend and you will have to wait days to get it refilled. If that and the cooker gas run out at the same time - check out best deals in local motels......

trinityrhino · 19/07/2006 11:44

we live right on the solway and it is wetter than cold....you know what i mean

Pierre · 19/07/2006 11:45

Say hi to Rhubarb for me. How is she gettingon?

chatee · 19/07/2006 11:48

slight hijack....
trinityrhino- you can't be that far from me.....

i met rhubarb and family yesterday and it was lovely to meet them all, i only hope we locals didn't frighten them off

Marina · 19/07/2006 11:53

How are they chatee?

trinityrhino · 19/07/2006 11:58

annan

trinityrhino · 19/07/2006 11:58

I've webcammed with rhubarb and her dd, would love to know how they are doing

themoon66 · 19/07/2006 12:01

North Lincolnshire and no mains gas. People have either oil or calor gas heating. I have had calor for the last 20 years with no bother. It runs hotter than normal gas though, so you have to be sure to get the boiler fully serviced more regularly.

chatee · 19/07/2006 12:06

just t'other side of the solway then my dear....we get fab views over the solway towards dumfries+galloway as we drive dd to school....
it's really beautiful...

as for saying how rhubarb is...well i only met her for the first time yesterday(and she may be thinking and the last)and i thought considering everything she has done in the last few weeks she was doing great but would be a lot happier when they find somewhere to live...as then there is still so much for her to do....

my ds loved playing with her children(who are absolutely gorgeous)and was asking for her ds to come and play morro(meaning tomorrow)at bed time..my dd was gutted that she missed out!!

only downside to the day was when my ds stood on a wasp/bumble bee in bare feet(ouch)but he was a big brave boy...

as i said to rhubarb- they ARE all welcome anytime...

trinityrhino · 19/07/2006 12:08

wow 2 mner's really close he he he coool

Bugsy2 · 19/07/2006 12:09

my parents have house with no gas mains. When I lived there we heated the house using a combinantion of night storage heaters, wood burning stoves & open fires.
Since I left my parents have had a heating system fitted running off an oil fired "wood burning stove". It works really well. They have an oil tank in the garden & my Dad seems to think it is fairly economical.

Chandra · 19/07/2006 12:17

I lived in a house with no main gas for a few years and beautiful pintoresque wooden windows that were a bit "drafty". there are some aloptions as storage heaters, bottled gas, some oil that is delivered to a tank in your back garden (cheaper option) or... solid fuel!

There are many things to consider before buying the house. Our house had a coal fireplace with a back boiler and the coal comapny will come to fill up the reseve with out us having to worry about it, problem with coal is that it takes ages to get the house warm, we only succeeded once -in spring- by staying in all day and keeping the fire at a good rate (it consumed 9 buckets of coal in a single day).

Oil based heating was the cheaper option but there is a regulation that establishes that the tank shoul not be placed less than X metres form the street/nighbours. We didn't have enouh space at the front garden or access from the front to the back garden so, that was out.

Storage heaters seemed a good option, but we decided we didn't like the look of them so no idea how expensive to run they are.

We chose bottled gas and in winter months keeping the house warm costed us about £30 per week.

So, the cost of the fuel is one thing but it all depends to much in how energy efficient the house is.

dieselten · 19/07/2006 12:25

I work for a renewable energy project in Yorkshire, a lot of the rural houses round here are off-mains gas and because they are old buildings are often hard to heat. Most of the calls we get are from people living in these places who are finding the price of oil, lpg etc to high to bear and want to switch to renewable sources. The only thing with switching to renewables is the initial capital outlay but after that plus a bit of payback time what you generate is yours. There are government grants available to help with the cost now so something to think about if you are living off the mains. I would perhaps think about an air source or ground source heat pump or wood burning stoves. It is possible to get automated wood fired boilers which can hook up to your central heating system but the cost on these is still a little high for the domestic market. Go to www.lcbp.org.uk for more info on some environmentally friendly alternatives to oil etc.

littlerach · 19/07/2006 12:38

No gas here, but we are down south.

We have oil fied ch.

was a pain last week when wwe had power cut for almost 24 hours though.

suedonim · 19/07/2006 14:28

We've lived for 25yrs in Scotland and only has gas CH for seven of those years. We're off mains gas now so have oil ch which is v efficient. I've no idea how it compares to gas, pricewise, though. The tanker comes round every 10weeks or so and we pay on a budget plan, building up credit over the summer. I like to cook with gas so we run a gas cooker with LPG in the orange bottles. We get through 2-3 a year.

Most of our neighbours have electric storage and/or convection heaters, along with an open fire, and seem happy with that while folks in older houses have solid fuel systems. Years ago we lived in a house in the far north of Scotland which we mainly heated with those oil filled radiators. On really cold days we put the oven on to supplement the heat!

nannyme · 19/07/2006 14:30

Yes!

Our farm in Cumbria had no mains anything. We had LPG and it is fcuking expensive!

You normally pay about 40p a litre and have to buy about 500litres a time which should last 3 months-ish!

It is v.cold and v. wet but not awful, awful, iyswim.

EmmyLou · 19/07/2006 15:06

My mum lives in pretty village (2 pubs, shop, school, Drs) near Dumfries (see other thread as she has lovey house to let and the one Rhubarb mentioned seems v expensive) and being on the gulf stream, the weather tends towards the mild. Can be v wet though, and would be wary of future flooding. My mum has oil fired central heating (as does adjoining house she lets) which seems to be pretty much the norm (contradict me someone???). They have been known to get lots of snow but local farmers are very handy with their tractors!

Original poster
Tortington · 19/07/2006 19:03

any more experiences - particularly information as to cost as rhubarb has to very much take this into consideration when offering to rent the house and the decision must be quite quick as shes living at parents in law and cant have a shag.

ta

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