Energy Companies

[featured_spectre]

No need to let him know, why delay!

[mac_shinobi]

For the sake of a number of months ( depending on a few other factors ) may as well just keep it the same for the time being and will consider this when the property is our own, currently we allocate aprox £60 for each per month

[featured_spectre]

@mac_shinobi. Ebico have no contracts to tie you into, so you could join at this property and move the account to the new one. The idea of WAITING to save money is stupid when you CAN start to save today.

[Martin]

I know my old Bermuda's hardly efficient - permanent pilot, minimal complexity, noncondensing..it's a venerable old beastie. However, it's been lovingly serviced, given a clean bill of health and in the words of the engineer "will run until doomsday." There's nothing to really break on the thing, no condensate to freeze, no bells or whistles. It can stay - it'd take me a LONG time to make my money back on a new boiler.

 

Exactly!

 

My boiler is 30 years old (and my Dad's is 40 years old) and still running perfectly. No fans to break, circuit boards to replace or thirty pounds a month maintenance contracts to pay for.

 

And whilst these new-fangled condensing/combo boilers might use slightly less gas up front, by the time you factor in the cost of their essential maintenance, servicing and parts replacement (both financially and "Carbon Footprintingly") they aren't such a bright idea!

 

mb

[Sirbendy]

Yep. In the rentals, we've had Storage heaters (1st flat, ouch), a Potterton (OK, I know they're also Baxi) Promax 24HE system boiler - nice, but expensive to run and died in the midwinter with a frozen condensate pipe, leading to overflow cutout and being frozen for 3 days. (3 bed house)

 

Then in the second flat we had a Potterton ..now, what was it? Combi, old...30HE..Performa I think. Rated for a 4 bed cottage, in a 2 bed flat. Noncondensing. Not bad, just old and worn..it used to need encouraging and rebooting repeatedly to flick back to heating from hot water mode (or a good thump), and sometimes the hot water would be steaming hot. Used to ignite with a thump and occasional flare from the exhaust.

 

The cottage had a Baxi Solo - woefully underrated for the property. Solid, but weedy. Noncondenser system boiler again.

 

When I walked round this house with the Estate agent, we were hunting for the boiler...couldn't see one. Looked at the fire..ah, yes. Same as my nans (60ish). That's a back boiler. Got in an engineer who did the most detailed teardown and clean I've ever seen, said "This hasn't been serviced in at least 10 years", replaced the thermocouple, said "It'll run forever, just make sure you have a CO detector in here as it's open flue", and left £50 better off.

 

I have the boiler stat set to low in the unit itself, the hot tank set to 60 in the electric element, 45 on the tankstat for the gas. Kids bath in 5-6 inches of water, no point in adding cold to that. Run it up to full temp on the electric element every couple of weeks to kill off bacteria, job done.

[cpjitservices]

I have spent 4 hours + this week just trying to get through to EDF, I'm moving home. I also am not aloud to switch from the pre-payment meters in my new home as Ive failed a credit check with British Gas.

 

Wasn't a happy bunny yesterday.

[StevieM]

I also am not aloud to switch from the pre-payment meters in my new home as Ive failed a credit check with British Gas.

 

As I've advised others on this thread, give Ebico a call. They are the UK's only Not-For Profit energy company and offer the same price for pre-payment as Direct Debit. I decided to stick with the pre-payment meters so now I know exactly how much I am spending on gas and electricity. I just buy top-ups every month whether I need them or not. Built up over £100 of credit on my gas meter, which will see me well through the winter.

[StevieM]

At last, a good news story about energy companies - Pensioner gets £2500 refund from their energy supplier

[featured_spectre]

I got that from ebico too

[mac_shinobi]

I got that from ebico too

 

You got £2,500 refund?

[featured_spectre]

no...the email

[rich_tech]

I am on a card meter here and I resolutely wont go back to being DD like I tried once, had a massive argument with the eon and personally I think people would be better off watching themselves with any of the big 6, their operating a form of legalised theft I believe nowadays, especially if you dont keep track of the bills and want to work out the maths behind it.

 

My wife and I never had massive usage, when originally on a card meter, we were averaging £20-£25 a month on both gas and electric, even in winter it only went up to about £30-£35 and then mostly on gas, thanks to my use of bright energy saving lightbulbs pretty much everywhere(100W equivalent ones so we dont go blind) and very scant use of the dryer.

 

I took out their option to go DD for the electric as it was easier supposedly and they started trying to rip us off from the get go, wanted a DD of around £35 a month, which jumped to them wanting about £85 a month in winter (September onwards), gas was similar, they wanted £40 a month and then £90 in winter, which we had a massive argument with them about as we were not that high on a card meter for both utilities prior to switching, they reckoned then in February, from our meter readings that we had used and owed them back then about £400 when it came to the February, we waited for their year to finish then went to Swalec on a card meter and havent looked back since.

 

Even with our son now and having to keep the house heated were not putting more than £50 a month on the gas, electric is stable as well at around £25 a month in usage (the only thing that uses mass amounts of electric with us is the 500W PSU in my machine, meaning I use the iPad for anything outside of an hours gaming a day)