Help me work this out for my insurance.

[digiwidgy]

Name change as this is for my insurance. I need to request repayment of lost heating oil due to an accident In my garden caused by a third party. Basically they destroyed my
oil tank causing a huge leak.

I always add 500 litres to it when it gets to around the 250 level. This is over the winter months.

This is what I have had delivered.

3 November 500 litres.

22 January 500 litres.

8 March accident happened and all oil lost.

3 April 500 litres into an emergency tank left by my insurers. Paid for by us.

Insurance also gave us 150 litres when the emergency tank was put in place, however this will be invoiced by the contamination people to our insurance once they've completed their works.

At the January refill I didn't expect to refill again until around now. Given this weather probably longer.

Cost of all 3 fills was £1034.

You'd need to be able to prove the amount in the tank and average daily usage, possibly based on previous periods of delivery, but weather is a big factor, so no readings then you are claiming for a loss you cannot prove. Do you have a monitor on the tank, that feeds back to a oil company? If not, it is difficult to claim for a loss you can't prove occurred.

The loss occurred as we have a massive contamination issue that needs dug out by specialists and my garden put together.

We don't use the same oil company all the time. I shop around so that will be difficult beyond providing several years worth of invoicing which could give a rough monthly usage I suppose.

I'm not sure exactly what it is that you need help with, can you be more specific?

If you're essentially saying you want to claim for oil lost since 8th March, I'm not sure I'd bother. It looks to me like you've been paying £0.69 per litre, but where I used to live, it was £0.48-50 all winter.

That's £240, which isn't worth indefinitely pushing up an insurance premium for the sake of one claim, imo.

I'd be more worried about the state of your oil tank. Assuming it's around 1200L and it's damaged (they should refuse to put oil in it, if so), that would cost upwards of £1300 to replace, and that should be claimed for.

I used to do at least monthly readings with a dipstick and keep them on a spreadsheet when I had oil. I got a calibration chart from the manufacturer so I knew exactly how many litres was inside down to the nearest cm.

On a particularly hot day you should allow around a 10% over-measurement for swelling.

What is it you need from this post, exactly?

I had a similar issue, water pipe contractors went through oil line, and then the sewage pipe and then we had to have. environmental contractors removing contamination and installing completely different water pipes as oil in soil will leech through conventional pipes, even when removed, for years!! Luckily my home insurance policy had a reinstatement /oil section, but it took me, identifying the area in the policy to get a temporary tank paid for by them, but we had to pay for the oil, as impossible to prove the exact amount of loss. We also then had to move the tank due to law being different for new installations, which was not covered by insurance either!! It is proving loss and insurance puts you into the position you were once in, but it is the proof that's the issue here. Can you claim against the third party's insurance?

Apologies if I have been vague. I am trying to be careful with what I say. There is a claim in against the person who was responsible and their insurance. I have been asked to evidence in £ what we have lost oil wise. I am thinking the April refill. The contamination experts are dealing with the clean up, new oil tank etc.

February is the coldest month of the year so bearing this in mind you have probably lost the 250litres you always keep in the tank and a most 100 litres as you were probably looking at a fill in mid-March. If you want to claim it will probably be at todays oil price with the longest lead time, I just had a look for my postcode I can get 1000 at 48.35p per litre.
I think you are probably costing yourself a lot by ordering quite small quantities, the better value comes if you order 1000 litres or more. I order 2000litres mid August as this is usually the lowest price of the year and then between Christmas and new year I order 1000 litres to last us to August as most people don’t think about oil then the price drops particular if you do the 2 weeks lead time.

You don't have to 'prove' your loss as such, just that on the 'balance of probability' the loss occurred, so previous years approximate usage would be perfectly fine.

That's fine if you have a big tank. We don't or didn't. Ours was 1000 litres.

Hmm, well looking back on my oil usage spreadsheet for April 23 and 24, it was averaging 6 litres a day - that's for a 2400 sq ft detached (pretty new) house in a windy part of the NW. However, 12/05/23 it was 5.57 and the following year, 29/05/24 it was 2.7. It's pretty variable because the weather doesn't exactly do what it ought to anymore.

From a maths perspective, it looks like you used 500 litres in the almost 3 months between the November and January fills.

8th March is roughly half of that timeframe. So you would probably have used 250 litres and lost 500 (as would have had 750 in there after the January fill.)

That got replaced on 3rd April. So claim that cost back, minus the 150 litres that are being directly invoiced.

We get a better deal if we order over 500 litres. We have a 1000 litre tank and usually wait until it's between 200 -250 and ask them to fill the tank up. 3 bed, 150 year old house, 2 adults, 2 teenagers. We fill up December, Feb, May, September.

I'd guess that between 22 Jan and 8 March you'd have used around 250-300 litres.

Well TBH I can't see how they expect you to evidence the amount you've lost, without the help of the clean up company. The clean up company ostensibly estimates how much oil has escaped into the ground. Here's the issue though, the clean up company will over egg the estimate, in order to claim more from the insurance company. It will be interesting to see if the clean up company estimates more than was in the tank in the first place. Keep schtum and see.