Any Gas fitters on here?

We have a gas cook top and gas water heating in our house and the heating system is a ducted system with the unit being in the garage.
We are getting stung with availability charges of $390 pa for the gas on top of $602for electricity. We have friends who have used bottled gas instead of mains supplied gas and their gas bill is a lot lower than ours. My question is,,,,,is it feasible for us to change from mains supply to bottle supply.! Given what we are running on gas. I look forward to your comments.

Advice #1: Talk to a local gas fitter. they will know local costs and any benefits to be gained or not. Worth paying 30 min of their time just to get that sorted.

Your cook top and water heater will need rejetting. A gas bottle install is required and gas plumbing from the bottles to the appliances or to the feed to them. All do-able, you just need to pay someone to install and test the bottle plumbing, arrange the bottled gas account/supply, and find and fit the correct jets for LPG and adjust.

Gas bottles have a hire charge, for me it's about $90 per 45kg bottle, so a normal 2 bottle installation will cost you nearly $200 pa just for bottle rental, then there's gas usage on top of that. Gas is also about $100/bottle (prices vary among different suppliers). I use one 45kg bottle pa on a cooktop only (which is used a lot - feeds a big family). With hot water as well you would use 2-3 times that. Concievably you could be up for $200 rental plus $300 gas = $500pa. That may or may not make it worthwhile.

Your electricity costs wouldn't go down if you're already on gas and just converting from piped natural gas to bottled LPG. so maybe no real saving! Depends on actual gas costs plus there will be the gas fitter/installation to pay for.

Not many years ago it was quite a bit cheaper to use bottled gas even where piped natural gas is available. Now however the gas companys are onto it, and arrange bottle rental charges to make sure they are not losing any income.

Thanks for that Mark

I would be looking into why I am spending so much on energy. $600 on power is very high for a normal house. We use under $200 with all electric and it rises to $250-$270 in the winter. In my last house I looked into it and the 2 gas fitters I talked to said that mains gas is cheaper than bottles if you are using it for heating as well as cooking as you get more energy out of the mains gas as well as it being cheaper, but it may depend on where you live.

t_naki the $600 was not our power account it was what is called the availability charge for 12months It is what you pay for the privilege of getting power not the power that you use. Ours is $1.65 per day plus the power that we use. Gas is $1.07 per day on top of that. i am looking for a way of not paying both of these costs if i can.

I was working in a housewhere theyusedordinaryLPGbottles(likeBBQ ).had 4 coupled together &2 sparefull . Just filled them at localservo.on wayhome.Said F%^$#@paying bottle rental& "availability "charge .

So you must with the Lines Company!

Most other places in the country pay that fee in with their power account along with the rest of their bill. I was with Nova and they do not charge 2 supply charges and are very good to deal with, but if you are in the Lines Company area you will never be rid of that $600 charge.

Stay with natural gas. Due to the propane / butane mix that is supplied as LPG in NZ. You often get problems with bottles icing up and not being able to supply enough gas during cold weather. Also some appliances (mostly European central heating boilers) break down on NZ LPG. Some companies will only import the Natural gas versions as a result. LPG also costs more on a "per unit" basis than NG. But since the fixed fees are lower there is a usage band where LPG via the 45KG bottles is cheapest. Below that the 9kg bottles are cheaper (highest gas cost and no fixed fees). Above that and NG is cheaper (highest fixed cost but lowest gas cost) You need to work out which usage band you are in.

Do you know how many bottles per month or per year your friends use! I can calculate that into a kWh amount. So you could calculate what your gas bill would be if you had LPG instead and what your friends gas bill would be if they has NG. Could you also tell me what your kWh charge for gas is and how many kwh of gas you use each year! And your friends cost per bottle and their yearly bottle rental fees if possible.

And could you confirm if you are in the area served by "The Lines Company"!