Oil for cooking and heating

[hansrey64]

My son i splanning to rent a old house in Newbury. Does anybody have any idea how much oil would be to purchase? The electric is on a meter, there is no gas, so the heating, cooking and hot water is run by oil.

My son thinks around 400- 500 a year but I thought it would be a lot more than that.

Any idea anybody??

[chickengrandma-2008]

It would depend on so many things hansrey, the size of the house, the insulation, how warm they like to be etc.  Also, the time of year that you buy it varies the cost, the amount you want, the firm you buy from and so on.  We buy oil, anything up to 5,000 litres at a time.  Hubby rings round asking how much it is per litre and bargaining to get the lowest price (this is the normal thing to do)  We try and buy in the summer as it's cheaper than the middle of January but we try to juggle that with waiting as long as possible to need as much as possible.  We bought 3,000 litres just last week @ 55.70p per litre.  I think oil is expensive, but so is gas and electricity!  So, all that's not a lot of use anyway is it!!

[hansrey64]

The house is old house, and they hope to rent it for 685 a month. No isulation has no loft! Its 3 bed place and they have young children all under 5, so it needs to be warm when the weather is cold. 

3000 litres at just over 55p per litre thats over £1600 pounds is that right? How long does that last you.

[chickengrandma-2008]

We only got the 3,000 litres because we already had 2,000 (we have a larger tank than normal ) but we didn't want to leave it any longer towards autumn as then the price will start to rise.  So, I should think that 5,000 litres will last us until about March or April.  We use it for the Aga, underfloor heating and hot water.  We have a very big modern bungalow with double glazing and enough insulation in the walls and roof to cover a small town!!

Can the landlord or, better still, the previous tenants, tell you roughly what it costs?

[hansrey64]

The landlord has no idea at all has he just rents it out he has never lived there, he brought it cheap, the estate agents have no idea and we cannot contact previous tenants as cannot get the detials from estate agents.

[merc1_clocks]

We're about £300 a quarter !

Mind you, I live in Scotland & at a high altitude, so probably not that representative in general

[shady_sheepie]

My son is on oil and 55.70 per litre is about the best price your get anywhere, come the end of September the price goes up, so best to get filled up before Autumn .
is there no other form of heating such as a wood burner or Aga??

[hansrey64]

Shady - all there is in the living room is a old fireplace.

[2017clearout]

My parents have oil for heating (they cook electric) and don't live too far from Newbury.  The house is old (14th century) and large (5 bedrooms), but does have insulation.  Because my father's unwell and retired, they have the heating on more often than in the past, but the house isn't what you'd call "old people hot" - just warm enough to sit and watch tv if you have a blanket on!  They need to fill th big tank about three or four times a year, and it costs between £1000 and £1500 a pop.  It's one of the reasons they are moving - it is very expensive when you have oil central heating, unfortunately, and inevitably, the oil men promise to deliver and then don't show up until five days later, or there's snow, or the oil runs out at the depot or... or... or....

Bottom line: it's not cheap!  They have a lot of open fires in the front room, to try to keep the costs down, and winter smells like paraffin heaters - but the rural areas round us don't have gas, so there's no other option, and it's cheaper than electric.  I really wouldn't recommend it though - not least because I don't have a credit card and never have a grand sitting about waiting for me to buy oil, so I would freeze to death!

[captainbovine]

I don't think it's necessarily cheaper than oil. We have all electric here and are on economy 14 which not a lot of houses are on, as most are on economy 10.

It's really cheap in the summer, and our storage heaters keep the bungalow warm. I don't think it would be so effective in a house, as I think it would get a bit cold.

Even though oil is expensive, so are the other types of heating, we used gas in our other house before we moved and gawd the bills were horrendous!!

[2017clearout]

That's probably true, actually, Cap - I think I forget how expensive power of any sort is these days: mine tend to be very low, because all winter, I'm out of the house between about 6.45 and 10.30pm, so I only put the heating on at the weekend, and I only need to do two loads of washing a week.  But my god-daughter came to live with me last year for six months, and the blooming bills trebled every month - I couldn't convince her to use the economy setting on the washer, and for some reason, she objected to sitting in the house with hat and gloves and woolies on...

It's really hard, though, for the ill, the young and the elderly: I know my dad starts to feel really poorly if he gets chilled, and it takes him ages to warm up again.  And when I lived in the north-west, it was in complete fuel poverty: I'm lucky here as it's mid terrace, has great double glazing - and I have an awesome collection of huge duvets and embarrassing headgear 🙂  Electric can be super-pricey though - it makes up the bulk of my bill, yet I have all low energy lightbulbs, never more than one light on at a time, a laptop, radio and fridge.  I use the cooker once a week to cook in bulk, and the microwave the rest of the time - and it still comes in five times higher than the gas that heats the water!  It would be nice, though, to have an open fire... though they are a faff, I  suppose.  So it would be nice to have an open fire - and someone else to lay it, clean it and cart the logs in (having chopped them first!)

[captainbovine]

then you've got the price of the coal....