Heating oil – how much!

Hilarious part of our issue is a massive gas main runs through the field behind our houses, but there’s no domestic supply to the village!

I have the main st fergus mossmoran pipeline in the field to the left of house and in front of that the forties oil pipeline. All my services are air borne over that. Full on no dig zone.

Same here, two oil pipelines going through one of the paddocks: one carries Av Gas down south and the other…. Not sure!

The Av Gas pipeline is monitored relentlessly which is a real pain 😉

(In fact they flew out section of the line just yesterday)

Just had the £200 direct to my bank from shell in the last hour

I changed my oil usage monitoring system last weekend.

I wanted to change from a sound based system where the pi listened for the burner to a visual system.

I connected a 2w G4 bulb to the terminals feeding 30v to the oil pump solenoid – it worked but it was stopping the burner firing up cleanly*

I the realised I had a relay that was switched by a 3-32v input, so I put that on the same terminals and connected the other (power) side of the relay to a gpio pin and ground on the pi.

The boiler firing closes the relay and the pi senses this and fires off a message to IFTTT which adds a row to the spreadsheet recording all the burns.

Same happens when the boiler stops.

Much nicer, simpler code that shouldn’t fall over and I now get actual burn times accurate to within 4 seconds.

The burner would fire but then stop immediately, then try again once or twice before finally firing properly.

<span style=”font-size: 0.8rem;”>I can only assume the extra 2w load was stopping the solenoid working properly.  Which surprised me.</span>

How low do folks let their tanks go? We’ve dropped to three bars left on the Watchman this morning, which I reckon will just about get us through and then I can hopefully top up in the spring/summer when prices are generally lower, but am I at too much of a risk of something expensively stupid happening if I let it drop to two or even one bar?

We just fill up once the tank drops to 1 on the Watchman and the light starts to flash but our usage is pretty consistent as we’ve an AGA.

And if you knew what the price would be in 6 months time you could make serious money 🙂

Cool, I’ll let it go for a bit then.

And if you knew what the price would be in 6 months time you could make serious money

Well, I did say generally lower. And it’s all been pretty consistent over the past few years, right? Right..?

Just got our £200 AFP to our prepayment smart meter from E.ON 😁 No other notifications, just appeared on the meter this afternoon.

IHN I let ours sit in 2 bars with the Watchman light flashing for a while before I got itchy feet and ordered.

Currently we’re on 4 so I might see if I can brave it to 1 bar this time 😂 They’ve been pretty quick delivering here previously.

I dipped my tank the other day to verify the volume that my home-brewed app was telling me.

App was saying 230L left, depth calculation was saying 250L so that gives me some confidence that I’ve got a handle on how much we’re using daily.

Looks like there’s no shortage of oil around and prices have come down a bit (boiler juice quoted 68.7p for delivery this week) so I’ll probably order later this week.

@clubby snap but it’s the line to Ireland..

65.5 today

Hopefully it’ll keep coming down

It’ll start going up soon as air travel starts to pick up.

I got my 200 quid alternative fual payment via Shell the other day.

Anyone in Surrey want to sell 30L or so or know where I can buy 30-50l at near delivery prices?

I’ve always used road diesel in the van diesel heater and treated the separate tank as a backup I could use in the van but froze my bollox off this weekend as I didn’t want to use it.

Has anyone else NOT received the government payment of £200 for people who have oil heating? (Meant to be received by the end of Feb). Nothing in my bank account, and nothing in my electric account.
I contacted Octopus Energy, who said it isn’t their problem and sent a link to a government website (where I can let them know that I didn’t receive the payment), but the link/website doesn’t work…

No payment here, or news there of.
With So Energy for electric. Keep meaning to email them.

Ooh, I tell lie. Just checked electric account and AFP has been credited there.

With octopus and nothing yet

Website says manual applications opens early march

I’ve always used road diesel in the van diesel heater and treated the separate tank as a backup I could use in the van but froze my bollox off this weekend as I didn’t want to use it.

Are you growing weed in the van ?

I had a diesel heater in my garage heating twice the space of even the biggest van all day every day. 10l/week

Wouldn’t do it again mind. Horrible noisy things.

Are you growing weed in the van ?

LOL….

I had a diesel heater in my garage heating twice the space of even the biggest van all day every day. 10l/week

Wouldn’t do it again mind. Horrible noisy things.

TBH never really worried before but the 30L separate tank is getting low so its reasonably significant difference.

Even Telegraph journos are experiencing the horror of country living now.

Cost of oil is creeping back up a little here in NE Scotland; best quote that I could get today was 72p/L for 900L to be delivered next week. Several initial prices were in the range 78-80p/L, so still worth haggling as there must be a decent margin built into those quotes.

Some companies are just taking the pee with their pricing – BoilerJuice still proving to be competitive here (i.e. cheapest) – just ordered 500L @ 68p Ex VAT for delivery on Thursday.

Can anyone quoting prices indicate inc or ex VAT please.

Boilerjuice has been holding at 66.39 ex VAT for about a week here (NW England). We’re on three bars at the moment, if it looks like it’s starting to creep up I’ll sling an order in, but for the moment it’s stable

The boiler juice price is obviously quite granular then because I’m in the NW (Chester) and the prices haven’t been lower than 68p (ex vat).

In the north east of the UK. Boiler juice is pretty much always the most expensive method of filling the tank.

Has anyone else NOT received the government payment of £200 for people who have oil heating? (Meant to be received by the end of Feb). Nothing in my bank account, and nothing in my electric account.
I contacted Octopus Energy, who said it isn’t their problem and sent a link to a government website (where I can let them know that I didn’t receive the payment), but the link/website doesn’t work…

Yep i’ve not had it. Was with bulb, just moved across. Have mailed Octopus saying where is my 200 quid. No response as yet (mailed on Friday).

Octopus replied to me today saying I’ll need to apply manually if not had it already. FYI the gov portal they said would open today, it hasn’t yet.

sharkbait
Free Member
The boiler juice price is obviously quite granular then because I’m in the NW (Chester) and the prices haven’t been lower than 68p (ex vat).

Yeah, we’re near Stockport, not far from an oil depot, so maybe that brings the price down for us a bit

I can see the flare at Stanlow!!!

That said my last delivery was from NWF and the driver said that they sometimes shipped oil in from their depot in the Midlands.

You can apply online now for the fuel payment: https://online.apply-for-alternative-fuel-support.service.gov.uk/s/#where-do-you-live

You need an oil receipt that dates since September. Annoyingly my invoice doesn’t actually say it was for oil it just gives the amount I owed, hopefully they’ll just nod it through.

So what’s this then…… in addition to the £200 we’ve already had or is it for those that didn’t get it automatically?

in addition to the £200 we’ve already had or is it for those that didn’t get it automatically?

The latter

Thought that was too good to be true!!

65.93ppl +V through our local cooperative last week, in N Yorks

Well, the Watchman had dropped to two bars and was flashing for a refill this morning, so I caved and stuck a Boilerjuice order in

Headline rate for 900l was 67.89ppl, but once you factor in VAT and the service charge it was 72.5ppl. Still worked out a bit cheaper than Homefuels Direct. This is in Disley, coming out of the depot in Bramhall.

Well I should have had a delivery on Thursday but, of course, everything turned white and it didn’t turn up (understandable as it was coming from N Wales) – Boilerjuice web site now saying that it doesn’t have a delivery date yet which could be better seeing as my app is saying this:

I’m currently using about 7L/day so I’ve got a bit of leeway yet.

* heads off to dip the tank to see how accurate the app is compared to the calculated volume in a partially filled horizontal cylinder!*

Hey. I’ve just had a Watchman installed on my tank after the old school sight depth indicator started leaking…

What powers the sensor at the tank end? I assume there is a battery, how long does it last?