OT: LPG PRICES

My contract with Calor will end shortly. The are offering to renew at

68.5p per litre. Flogas are offering to supply at 35p per litre plus £60 pa standing charge. On the face of it this is a no-brainer, but as a deeply suspicious and pessimistic person, much given to prognostications of doom, I'm wondering if there's a gotcha. Does anyone have any experience of changing to Flogas; any snags or unexpected costs?

Bill

Reply to
Bill Wright
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No experience but as a company they?ve been around a good few years.

Tim

Reply to
Tim+

They seem to be fine. They are THE supplier of Calor Gas around here, I have two 19kg bottles to feed the cooker hob, and Flogas come to change the empty bottle when requested. My neighbour's house is heated by Calor (and wood fire), and I have never heard of any problems.

Calor Gas were a pain in the proverbial, but that was many years ago, before the heating system was changed to oil, and they might have improved.

Reply to
Davey

I was with Flogas for 18 years until I moved house last year. Apart from an initial hiccup when I first moved there, probably a misunderstanding at both ends, they were fine. I assume you have a bulk tank, owned by Calor. When chatting to the Flogas man not long after we moved in over there, he said that if you change from Calor, not only do they take the tank away, but they squirt expanding foam down the pipe connecting to the house to make it impossible for it to be re-used, and the whole length has to be replaced with associated disruption and upheaval. If you're just on individual bottles, that probably won't happen but I wouldn't like to guarantee it.

Flogas own any bulk tank they supply, and regularly (like every 15 years in my experience!) check it for flaws, corrosion etc. and if they find any imperfections, they replace the tank at their expense, transferring any gas in the old tank into the new one, with some losses that they should credit you with. There is a quarterly charge for tank rental of about £16, over and above the supply of gas. That equates approximately to your standing charge of £60 p.a. In recent years, our tank was fitted with a couple of radio sensors that were satellite-linked back to base somewhere, that told them when the tank was getting low, and they'd come and top it up without being asked.

The last bill I had for a top-up was in October 2017, for 945 litres @

67.19p/l, cost £634.95, VAT @5% £31.75, total £666.7 . Their figure of 35p/litre looks suspiciously like an 'introductory offer' to me, and will probably revert to something a lot higher in a few months. Read the small print!

But all together it seemed a very competent operation.

Reply to
Chris Hogg

Is there any reason you don't use the 47kg bottle size? The price of gas literally halves when going from 19 to 47kg and becomes comparable with fill charges for a large tank.

Reply to
Fredxx

I would suggest that is criminal damage. The pipe between the tank and the house is usually the householder's responsibility.

Reply to
Fredxx

Hmm...perhaps twenty years ago Calor owned the pipe all the way to the house and things have changed. Or perhaps it was just a ploy to discourage me from even considering Calor as an alternative. I suspect the latter.

Reply to
Chris Hogg

I hadn't realised that 47 kg propane cylinders were about the same price (per unit weight of gas) as a large LPG tank: I'd assumed that the latter was a much cheaper way of buying gas.

My parents' holiday cottage (where my wife and I have been living until we can move into a new house) has 2 banks each of 2x47 kg propane for its heating, probably because that was more economical than an oil tank (with the tank's large initial cost) for occasional use of a few weeks in the summer. Having lived there a year, it's definitely *not* a cheap way to heat a house :-(

The changeover valve between one bank or 2 cylinders and the other has been a source of great frustration to us. It switches over automatically, and we can only assume that the changeover pressure it set so as to use up as much gas as possible, to avoid returning part-filled cylinders. But the indicator of the need to replace the cylinders is a flag which changes between green (full) and red (empty) and which can be switched over between banks of cylinders to show the state of each bank. Several times we've completely run out of gas, with the indicator showing green. We've had a heating engineer out who as tested the valve and found it to be working perfectly. But this last time, the Calor delivery driver proved that the indicator was faulty: for one bank the indicator is ambiguous (it doesn't completely flip from green to red) and for the other bank it remains green even with the hoses to the cylinders disconnected and therefore at atmospheric pressure.

Now all I need is to get in touch with the heating engineer and get him to replace the valve as having a faulty indicator - but he's ignoring phone messages and the other people who advertise locally say they don't have a "ticket" for bottled propane/LPG gas installations, only for mains methane.

Reply to
NY

There have been many radio programs about LPG prices, especially for those folks with tanks under their lawns. many of these in Devon.

It seems that everyone pays a different price, so the solution is go and talk to your neighbours and find out who pays the least, then go and negotiate with Calor.

Reply to
Andrew

And renegotiate with Flogas :-)

If there are neighbours it may be worth asking about a group discount too.

Owain

Reply to
spuorgelgoog

Is that for cooking, heating or both?

Reply to
Michael Chare

No creditable answer possible without you yearly consumption.

Reply to
harry

I just want to check, a 45 kg bottle of gas here costs 100 pounds. I have bottles here, can I usually get the lorry that refills the big tanks to recharge the 45 kg cylinders?

Reply to
misterroy

There is something called a self fill where you take your empty bottle to a garage and use their LPG pump to fill your bottle as if it was a cars log tank.

A Google session should find it....

Pay the same price per litre as all other LPG drivers....

Reply to
stephenten

I looked at that last weekend, according to calor it is not legal.

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Reply to
misterroy

Trouble is when that happens it sometimes goes bang - no doubt leading to lots of questions!

Reply to
Michael Chare

The bottles and the valve are installed in a little lean-to, which is sized for the 19 kg unit. The cost of rebuilding the lean-to would not be worth it. And it would look odd, the current setup is just right, and the roof provides a very useful working garden shelf. But thanks for the suggestion.

Reply to
Davey

That sounds like the bad-old-days, now the gaining supplier will buy the bulk tank from the losing supplier (provided it's not on its last legs)

Reply to
Andy Burns

Heating and hot water.

Bill

Reply to
Bill Wright

The prices quoted are based on consumption. What other factor could consumption affect?

Bill

Reply to
Bill Wright

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