Anyone have experience of LPG central heating run off 47kg bottles?
Looking at a house move and the current owners have suggested last year they used 16 bottles at £88ea for a family of 4, so c.£1400 pa.
We’d be coming from mains gas (just the 2 of us) so I’m expecting a hike in running costs, but am I in for a big shock?
House has a fireplace but the owners took the woodburner out as they couldn’t be faffed with it (which sounds odd, I mean, why wouldn’t you have a secondary heat source?). Plus they have leased PV on the roof for additional leccy.
Anyway, thoughts and experiences on the LPG welcome.
Cheers

as you’d expect its all down to what you’re runnign off it. my folks have got a gas bottle or so, and rarely replace it. but then they only use it for the hob. there are many differnet brnads so if you cna get one of the more industrial supplies, it brings the cost down a LOT!

Wooden stove in the living room (central chimney),
Oil fired boiler for CH (used to be topped up annually, more like 18months + now as they use the stove much more)

Thye also have solar panels to help teh hot water but they got that on a good early grant deal years ago.

Perhaps budget in moving more heat sources away from teh bottles in your budget over the next 5 -10 years)

We’ve got it in the annexe where I am currently sitting. Three rooms, porch and a bathroom, two big rads in the big room, three little’uns in the little rooms and porch and a towel rail in the bathroom. Fairly new conversion so insulation etc is up to scratch.

We work in here and the heating’s on for just over three hours a day, 4/5 days a week. V. little hot water used (main bathroom is in house). We get through about a bottle a month, last couple were £59 a pop.

How much use that is to you, I don’t know, but 16 bottles a year for everything in a house seems fag-packet-maths reasonable, give you won’t be using it as much in summer.

Any option/space for a pellet boiler? Gas prices only seem to be going one way!

My LPG bill makes me cry. We have a bulk tank which is cheaper per litre than lots of diddy bottles. A very very rough figure but if you plan for between a doubling and trebling of your gas bill* moving from natural/town gas to lpg you’ll be in the ball park. And that’s before both start shooting up. I was paying 47p a litre in Summer 2020 – It’s now 72p. I remember I was paying 14.5p a litre in 2008/9

We are properly out in the sticks and now only use the lpg central heating for the bedroom and bathroom (and wfh office) – the wood burner does the heart of the home.

*obviously the health of the boiler and quality of the insulation of two different houses as well as any difference in the size and the geography (colder/ more exposed etc) will play a huge factor in this too. My double/treble figure would be for two identical neighbouring houses used in the same way.

Looking at a house move and the current owners have suggested last year they used 16 bottles at £88ea for a family of 4, so c.£1400 pa.

That sounds plausible for a reasonably insulated house.

Number of people in the house doesn’t translate well for heating purposes. More or less need to heat it the same regardless of number of people in the house.

Thanks folks. Appreciate there are lots of variables, but all useful info, cheers.

Budgeting for a bulk tank in the garden maybe an option. Not sure about space for a pellet boiler.

Budgeting for a bulk tank in the garden maybe an option

You ‘may’ be able to get companies who will do the transition ‘cheaper’ we are on oil and always getting flyers suggesting free gas tank and install if you switch to gas.

99% of people round here are oil rather than gas, there must be a reason for that !

Budgeting for a bulk tank in the garden maybe an option.

There are regs about tank placement – distance from your/other houses and distance from the road that might be a factor too. With everything that’s imminent with home heating in the next few years I think I’m going to sit tight for now before deciding what to do for the long term. It might be making do with what you inherit with a very to your next big investment being in ground/air source etc.

I was paying 47p a litre in Summer 2020 – It’s now 72p

@convert you are being shafted. I’ve just renewed my contract for the next 2 years at 42p for year 1 and up to +3p for year 2. Try lpgsave.co.uk

Don’t forget LPG is made from crude oil sohas a very different price profile to mains gas.

@convert you are being shafted. I’ve just renewed my contract for the next 2 years at 42p for year 1 and up to +3p for year 2. Try lpgsave.co.uk
Don’t forget LPG is made from crude oil sohas a very different price profile to mains gas.

Cool – thanks. I’ll take a look. This is Flo Gas I’m with.

I’m on oil. Funnily enough just heard an advert on the radio from calor, imploring oil users to move to their lpg because it is less environmentally damaging. That probably needs fact checking but at least lpg (may) be less worse.

Edit: looked up their claim: 16% lower carbon emissions than oil, or up to 38% for their (presumably ££) bioLPG.

Budgeting for a bulk tank in the garden maybe an option.

You have to allow for the additional ‘rental’ cost / standing charge for a bulk tank.

From the lpgsave site:

“For many, a Home Bulk Tank LPG solution will only become viable v’s 47kg Propane cylinders when your usage is expected to be above 2>2500 litres pa”

You are also locked in to the supplier of the tank (they will only fill their own), so you can’t shop around, and if/when you run out, you are at the mercy of their emergency delivery service (You can’t nip to the depot and get a full cylinder yourself).

Bulk LPG, for us, was a very expensive means of heating, so we swapped back to oil >10 years ago).

FWIW a 47kg bottle contains 92 litres of liquified gas, so 16 bottles is ~1470 litres / year.

Calor is the most expensive!

Cool – thanks. I’ll take a look. This is Flo Gas I’m with.

So am I @convert but live about 5 miles from Stanlow so that probably makes a difference but based on petrol prices around here I doubt it.

lpgsave came up with 42p + 3p increase in year 2 with flogas then flogas called me up the next day asking me to renew and offered me 44p for 2 years. I went with lpgsave and all the contracts were handled via docusign so really easy.

You are also locked in to the supplier of the tank (they will only fill their own), so you can’t shop around, and if/when you run out, you are at the mercy of their emergency delivery service (You can’t nip to the depot and get a full cylinder yourself).

Not strictly true, you contract with a supplier for usually 2 years and are free to switch to another supplier when the contract runs out. Our tank is buried under the front lawn and some suppliers don’t take on below ground tanks so choice for us is limited. We are also on a top-up system and have a telemetry gadget fitted to the tank which ‘phones home’ so they fill up as and when the usage changes.

So am I @convert but live about 5 miles from Stanlow so that probably makes a difference but based on petrol prices around here I doubt it.

lpgsave came up with 42p + 3p increase in year 2 with flogas then flogas called me up the next day asking me to renew and offered me 44p for 2 years. I went with lpgsave and all the contracts were handled via docusign so really easy.

Cheers- interesting that the location can make so much difference – I am a long way from everywhere which I guess could be the trigger for a shafting. I’ve only lived here for 18 months (family home going back – I should have tried to keep the old contract when I took over the house) so am still in the 2yr contract period. There is a get out if they put the price up by more than 12p in a 12month rolling year but I’ve missed the window to use that.

we had bulk lpg in a rental. Land lord had calor fit the tank and boiler …tennent pays for it it seems

Won’t be doing that again. Mental money.

A neighbour runs his heating on 47kg twin propane tanks…

Calor deliver weekly during the first 3 months of the year almost without fail……can’t miss the truck beacon reversing down the street.

We have oil

Gas unavailable funnily enough because we live directly between the 2 main st Fergus terminal gas lines going down south….

You are also locked in to the supplier of the tank (they will only fill their own), so you can’t shop around, and if/when you run out, you are at the mercy of their emergency delivery service (You can’t nip to the depot and get a full cylinder yourself).

You can still change suppliers, but yes, there’s a contract period. Not really different to mains gas suppliers.

I’ve never found running out a problem; call when the fill level drops to 20-30% and that’s plenty for whenever the next delivery slot might be. Never had to ask for an emergency delivery.

Here you go:
https://nottenergy.com/resources/energy-cost-comparison/?amp

Coming from mains gas to bottles, your energy cost will more than double.