Friday 13 June 2014

Buying our winter oil and the water meter.

This is the best time of year, if you use an oil fired boiler for hot water and central heating, to order your fuel ready for winter. Always shop around!

We used to stay with the same company, which entitled us to our delivery, then up to 3 weeks to pay plus a small discount for doing so. In those days, we never thought of shopping around, now we do.

We have used this website here

Once we obtained the cheapest price on-line, we began phoning and got a price 2p per litre cheaper, not a lot, but better than nothing.Should be delivered early next week. We would normally wait until July/August and may have jumped in too soon but on the news this morning, they said oil and petrol prices will shortly start increasing, due to the situation in Iraq. Fingers crossed, we have done the right thing for this year at least. Anyway, this time last year, it was 58p per litre so is certainly cheaper at the moment.

Remember 2 years ago, we changed onto a 2 year trial of a water meter. We have decided to stay with it, as in this last year, our total water/sewage bill was just over £240. Non-metered water would have been £570, quite a difference. That also includes using the hose pipe occasionally when the weather was hot and the water butts empty.

Next we shall need to order logs and get them stacked. We have begun to pick and store pine cones and hope to do some more of that whilst the weather is dry. We have oodles of kindling so should be okay.

It is a bit of a pain having to think about winter during this hot weather but in this country, our late Autumn, Winter and early Spring can be as long as 6-7 months. We are further north than most people think!

Now the soft fruit is beginning to ripen, it will soon be jam making, pickles etc. Each season has its own flavours for us to store and I look forward to it every year.


14 comments:

  1. A water meter is good for me as well. It's surprising how it makes you more careful and not waste it. Like washing the kitchen floor with the water I have rinsed my hair in. Or washing the car with the bath water.

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  2. When the water butts ran dry last year, we emptied the bath water (using a pond pump) out the window into large buckets. All the flowers were watered with it.

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  3. I asked DH to divert the bath waste into a water butt in the garden and then we use that to wash the yard down everyday (four dogs) waste not want not.

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    1. Every little helps. My dehydrator is currently drying herbs (in the dark) so I have just dried some bread for breadcrumbs (scotch eggs tomorrow!) in the conservatory - currently reading 40C:)

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  4. I think it's good to be prepared , even if it means having to think about things months in advance. Our meter here was already installed when we moved in, but we pay considerably less here than we did for unmetered water at our previous house. That was in a lower council tax band than this one, so it would be even more here.

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    1. Someone I know wants to change to one but their other half is a very wasteful water kind of person so for them, it wouldn't be worth their while.

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  5. I haven't used the dehydrator for drying herbs, so I will be interested in how you get on. We too are chopping and storing wood. We don't have a meter, in fact we don't pay for water as it comes in our mooring fee, but when you have to fill water tanks you certainly have to think about how you use water xxx

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    1. Oregano came out fine but not the sage. Mind you, I don't have much luck with sage using other methods either.

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  6. I think it's a good idea to be prepared, you never know with our weather as the seasons are so unpredictable. x

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    1. I prepare every year, DB always smiles at me and I say, "One of these years, I'll be right!"

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  7. Nothing wrong in thinking well ahead and prepare for times when you can`t avoid having the heating on. Then it`s nice to know you can use it without worry. We also prepare for the winter. But, here we are reliant on electric and gas to run our heating, so we always top up the meters during the summer time with any savings that we possibly can and don`t have to worry much during the first few month of winter.

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  8. If you are on a meter, and you may not have a choice, but I thought your rate was slightly more expensive than non-metered fuel. Maybe that was years ago since it was that long since we were on one!

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  9. We prepare ahead for the winter too and I will be stocking up on my coal next week. We have also been collecting wood and the wood shed is over half full at this time so still a bit to do. We are lucky with our water as we pay it within our council tax so do not get a separate bill. We have a septic tank, it makes us more aware of what we are flushing and our hot water heats by an expensive immersion so we often go without hot water and boil a bit in the kettle if needed.

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    1. I was shocked at the price of coal when my friend B. was alive and used to have hers delivered. We too used to switch over to our immersion in winter but now find it cheaper to heat the hot water in the morning for 1/2 an hour and a bath for 20 minutes, using the oil. Not enough wood around here to collect except for kindling and pine cones, better than nothing anyway. Usually love our kindling collection walks.

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