Gas Tanks

[Nicky France]

Whilst driving through France you often see houses with big, white gas tanks outside.  Does anyone have any idea how much these cost (initially and to refill)?  Any information about gas-usage in general in France would be gratefully received.

Nicky.

[epinay]

As far as I remember there are two cost elements:

The contract for the rental of the tank from Butagaz or equivalent, which includes regular servicing of the tank, and safety certificate required by law every 3 years and

The cost of filling the tank - around two years ago this was approx 490 Euros to fill our tank - can't remember how many litres, but the usual big white tank. 

How long that would last would depend on your usage, and whether it was heating your water as well as radiators. 

A full tank lasted us exactly a year - holiday use, roughly 8 weeks total throughout the year including during the winter when we had it on full, heating the water and radiators.

I do remember thinking it would be expensive if we were there full time, especially as I like my baths deep and hot!

Hope this helps

Epinay

 

[Ianhaycox]

We've got a large underground Butagaz tank that we fill approx every 18 months. Last time we had 1,811 litres delivered for 787 euro but we had a small discount for commercial use.

epinay is correct in saying that the tank is rented. When we moved in the tank was already installed and the contract/rental for the tank was transferred to us. Butagaz wouldn't fill up without a contract. The rental cost I think was about 600 euro (one off payment ?) Butagaz have been to inspect the tank and I don't think we got charged extra.

As for usage/consumption it's very difficult to gauge. The gaz tank only does our hot water (all year) + three gites (6 months). Is it good or bad, I couldn't say, but you need to be pragmatic with an existing installation.

For a new installation it is possible to get comparative figures on the capital costs and on-going expenses for various heating/hot water combinations. I've seen them in Maison & Travaux magazine.

[Millymollymandy]

We bought a house with propane gas central heating. Unfortunately.

It is horrendously expensive. Last filled up in Dec it cost (with Antargaz) around 1,100 euros for just over 1,000 litres.

It needs filling up again. And we filled it up in October when we bought the house (it was about 100 euros cheaper then).

We've turned it off today as we can no longer afford to heat the house this way. The house wasn't hot anyway, we were heating to about 18-20 degrees. Electric fires would be cheaper.

We're about ready to tell Antargaz to get stuffed and forgo our 600 euros deposit and put a fioul tank in!!

[Moulin]

I am no expert and don’t have gas CH but this sounds horrendous, are you sure you don’t have a leak?

[Punch]

Tank (stored)gas is the second most expensive form of energy in France after electricity.

Paul

[Millymollymandy]

And mine's more expensive than anything!

Moulin, the delivery man did check for a leak, but didn't find one. But our reason for turning it off is to check the consumption whilst it's off (to double check), because we have been going through about 10% a week whether it's been set for 23C or 17C, which doesn't make any sense.

There has to be something wrong with it, surely? Brrr currently about 13C in my office!!!

[Wicce]

Are you sure the problem isn't with your boiler??

Mary

[Nicky France]

Thanks for the info.  We are moving down to the house in Brittany (56) in March/April so (hopefully) the weather will already be tropical and we won't need to think about heating for a while.

Here's hoping!!