I’m starting to get a bit sick of spending so much on household gas.
So when my mum came over from Valencia for christmas, She told me that she ran her heating on propane which costs her about 11 euros per quarter.
So i set about doing some sums, But i must be wrong surely.
1X47kg propane cylinder = 47 litres of propane = 47000m3 of propane.
I know 47000 m3 to 47 litres sounds like a big difference, but i also know that gas does reduce a heck of a lot when it gets cold.
You can get a 47kg propane cylinder for around £50.00. So would you save money. Or have i cocked up my numbers?
I had a caravan at Berwick that run off the large 47 kg Gas Bottles, a couple of years back when it was only £32 per bottle
Now the Caravan was only used at weekends and the gas would last on average around 3 months each bottle, and overall during a season which ran late March - Mid Nov we’d use around the 3 bottle mark.
We never rented ours out but, I know a few owners who did, and they were complaining that they were being charged for 7 or 8 bottles a year.
So for a caravan using the gas for hot water, cooking and heating it wasn’t that much cheaper.
BTW, I also used the 47 kg bottles for heating in the Warehouse I had, and they only cost £23.00 in Newcastle
limeyphil:
I’m starting to get a bit sick of spending so much on household gas.
So when my mum came over from Valencia for christmas, She told me that she ran her heating on propane which costs her about 11 euros per quarter.
So i set about doing some sums, But i must be wrong surely.
1X47kg propane cylinder = 47 litres of propane = 47000m3 of propane.
I know 47000 m3 to 47 litres sounds like a big difference, but i also know that gas does reduce a heck of a lot when it gets cold.
You can get a 47kg propane cylinder for around £50.00. So would you save money. Or have i cocked up my numbers?
info from calor gas
How many litres of gas are in 47kg cylinders?
91.8 litres.
How full is a Calor gas cylinder in a full condition, in percentage terms?
All cylinders are 80-87% full as space needs to be left for the expansion of liquid. The weight on the front of the cylinder is the total weight of gas in the bottle.
How many hours of heat are provided by a 15kg cylinder?
Running constantly at 3kW, a 15kg cylinder would last for around 68.5 hours
Think you’ll find that’s 90 odd litres of liquid in the 47kg canister mate, which’ll in turn create many many more litres of flammable vapour (which is what we burn).
Just finished my ADR refresher course, and one of the nuggets of info learned was that at ambient temperature 1ltr of petrol will create 150000 ltr of explosive mixture.
Living in the sticks we dont have mains gas. Propane is used for the oven and hob, a 47kg cylinder lasts about 3 months and was £27.95 last time it was changed, works out about 31p a day. During the summer months it lasts a bit longer, and during the winter lasts a bit less due to Sunday roasts and the mrs does a bit more cooking. The bonus of this being there is no standing charge for the gas. Central heating is oil powered and we use around 1000 litres/year (38.9p/litre last week), we have generator back up due to frequent power cuts in the winter. Also a wood burner, and plenty of logs to burn. The mrs is currently building a wind turbine to generate electricity so that will help whens it finished. All in all, our bills are not a lot. It’s all about being careful.
You might find the 1st cylinder is around £50 as there will be a deposit or service included in the price. I suspect the prices the other posters mention are for refills.
My girlfriend used to work for Flogas and they were nearly ALWAYS cheaper than Calor.
If your serious, get reps from both Co’s to come and see you ( they will ) and price 1 off against the other. Happens all the time with caravan site owners (their main biz in some parts)
You may even get them to fit the equipment for you if you sign up to a gas tank in the garden It’s also cheaper to buy in bulk off a tanker!
Not sure about the whole which gas is cheaper thing but I do know my maths. The conversions will make a big difference:
1 liter is 1000cubic centimeters not 1000 cubic meters.
A cubic meter holds 1,000,000 cubic cm.
Therefore 1 liter is 0.001 cubic meters
Therefore if there is 47litres in the cylinder this only converts to 0.047 cubic meters.
thedeckking:
Not sure about the whole which gas is cheaper thing but I do know my maths. The conversions will make a big difference:
1 liter is 1000cubic centimeters not 1000 cubic meters.
A cubic meter holds 1,000,000 cubic cm.
Therefore 1 liter is 0.001 cubic meters
Therefore if there is 47litres in the cylinder this only converts to 0.047 cubic meters.
Hope this helps
I completely agree with your maths and understand where you’re coming from, however, the point some people are missing here is that many gases are compressed/refrigerated to turn them into a liquid for ease of storage/transport. So a 47kg cylinder will probably contain somewhere in the region of 35kg (a guess) of actual liquid. When you open the tap and let the liquid out it instantly turns to a gas/air mixture which would then create say, 100000lts of combustable gas/air mixture. Figures all guesswork by the way 'cos I have neither the brains nor ability to do the math.
OK then.
I’ve done a little research and there is 91.8 litres of gas in a 47kg cylinder. This equates to 0.0918 cubic meters of gas in the cylinder. Just to put the original numbers into context; 47,000 cubic metres is enough to fill nearly 20 olympic size swimming pools, it’s just not going to work
The cheapest way to heat your house is with mains gas (just ask anyone who lives out in the sticks and has to use bottles or oil). If you want to save money try switching supplier (there’s loads or comparison websites out there) or be a bit more efficient in how you use it. Try turning the termostat downa bit and putting on a jumper
thedeckking:
The cheapest way to heat your house is with mains gas (just ask anyone who lives out in the sticks and has to use bottles or oil).
I live in the sticks and mains gas is not an option, it’s about 1/2 mile to the nearest gas main. The last quote I had (6 years ago) was £15,000 and that was just the cost of getting the gas to the property, that didnt include getting another contractor to install the pipework in the house. Using bottled gas costs about £120 a year, I doubt that would even cover the service charge for mains gas. I’ve looked at all the technical stuff thats been posted, but what matters most is, how much, and how long will a cylinder of gas last.
I think what needs to be established is how many m3 are you using now Phil?
What is the cost per m3?
Then establish how many m3 there are in the 47kg bottle (may have been done above, i might have missed it).
Establish the cost of a refill & so the cost per m3 can be calculated.
There you have your comparison.
Have you tried seeing if you can get your mains gas bill down by using a supplier comparison website such as www.uswitch.com ?
As Tiger, i don’t have gas here in Greenhalgh, but if you change to bottled gas i think you will have to change your jets?
Tiger: how you get away with only using 1000 lts kero a year? Both out at work all day?
Now i’m on my own (3 bed bungalow) I JUST scrape by on 2000, 2200 would be more comfortable. I’m usually abroad about 6 weeks Feb/march time, otherwise I am at home quite a lot, but don’t usually have it on all day, just the odd hour here & there until 5pm. Is also used for a couple of hours a day in summer for water heating.
When my old folks were here, we used 4400 lts a year!
Boiler is about 15 yrs old.
How many litres of gas are in 47kg cylinders?
91.8 litres.
How full is a Calor gas cylinder in a full condition, in percentage terms?
All cylinders are 80-87% full as space needs to be left for the expansion of liquid. The weight on the front of the cylinder is the total weight of gas in the bottle.
How many hours of heat are provided by a 15kg cylinder?
Running constantly at 3kW, a 15kg cylinder would last for around 68.5 hours
.
That last line is the key. If you do the maths, 15kg = 205.5kWh of gas, so 47kg = 644kWh.
So now just go and find a gas bill and compare the cost of one 47kg gas cylinder with 644kWh of gas down the pipe.
I think a normalish price is 3p/kWh for mains gas so that works out at just short of 20quid for the equivalent amount you get in a 47kg cylinder.
So in summary, getting it in cylinders is going to cost you a lot more money. It’s also inconvenient, and you can bet your bottom dollar you’ll run out when it’s -5C outside and then you’re knackered. I wouldn’t bother.
So in summary, getting it in cylinders is going to cost you a lot more money. It’s also inconvenient, and you can bet your bottom dollar you’ll run out when it’s -5C outside and then you’re knackered. I wouldn’t bother.
Agreed it almost certainly will be much more expensive.
No need to run out though, you have 2 bottles with an auto change over valve.
How is mains gas consumption measured then? By the kw/h or by the m3?
We/he can’t do any more calcs until we know current usage.
Driveroneuk:
No need to run out though, you have 2 bottles with an auto change over valve.
That’s fine in theory until you run out and remember that you hadn’t got round to changing the other one yet either and you’ve now got two empty bottles and no central heating.
Driveroneuk:
How is mains gas consumption measured then? By the kw/h or by the m3?
It’s measure in cubic metres by the gas meter but then that is converted to kWh and you are billed in kWh.
Driveroneuk:
We/he can’t do any more calcs until we know current usage.
No, but if you know that per kWh bottled gas is roughly twice as much as mains gas and considerably less convenient then it’s unlikely to be worth changing over. The only advantage of bottled is that you can stockpile the bottles of gas and then even if the Russians throw a proper hissy fit then you can be sure you’ll have a supply.
