LPG opinions needed

On or around Wed, 07 Jan 2004 21:40:19 +0000, Mother enlightened us thusly:

oh there are. Mind, some of Cornwall's OK, provided it's out of emmett season.

On or around Wed, 07 Jan 2004 19:52:03 +0000, Mr.Nice. enlightened us thusly:

yer main problem is persuading a supplier that you'll be buying enough gas that they're prepared to install a tank for you... Of course, you can buy your own bulk tank (which frees you from dependence on one supplier) but that's a more costly setup than renting. Currently, however, mine costs 126 quid a year to rent (including the (hand)pump, but they're not keen on renting pumps now, apparently).

On or around Wed, 07 Jan 2004 21:44:27 +0000, Mother enlightened us thusly:

you need a tank with a bottom take-off as well.

the official word is that a) it's norty, b) you can't do it and c) they wouldn't fill the tank anyway, cos've a).

a) refers to the rules about gas tanks, rather than duty - as I pointed out, it's a similar price to bottled gas anyway. b) is I think a load of bollocks.

but c) is the worst one - you need a setup that the supplier is prepared to put gas into...

Yup, I'll go along with that.

Yes, but I think I offered to take some pics of the conversion for him and, erm... didn't.

Martyn

Need to make room for 7 more wheels on the road. However, if I sell Ziggy and store my trailer somewhere - the problem will be solved :-)

Martyn

Shouldn't be any difference...

I think the competence of his ISP is similar to mine ;-)

Martyn

^^^ ^^^^^^^

Yes... ;-)

There is a supplier who will offer a fix for this, provided you buy the tank from them and, I'll also guess, buy all the fuel from them too (thus avoiding the problem of some suppliers telling you they won't do it). Still not something HM C&E would like though.

Martyn

UK2 RAQ servers running Sun Cobalt. We have one for mail and one for web, each running their own DNS. There's probably no sense in splitting them in that manner, but it works. We may well add a Windows server in the near future too.

Can't fault what they offer really - costs us about 2 grand annually for 2 boxes and (mediocre) support. Availability is good and even I can use the basic admin interface. The young pups do all sorts of clever things with Webmin and (yikes) command line, but then again that's what they are paid for.

And one of the 'young pups' is ten years older than me...

Twas Thu, 08 Jan 2004 07:32:26 +0000 when Austin Shackles put finger to keyboard producing:

I'll second that..

-- Regards. Mark.(AKA, Mr.Nice.) ___________________________________________________________ "To know the character of a man, give him anonymity" - Mr.Nice.

It's easy to get the LPG company to install a tank with a liquid take-off. Tell them you are a hot air balloonist and need to refill your tanks.

Malcolm

Twas Wed, 07 Jan 2004 21:26:15 +0000 when Mother put finger to keyboard producing:

I've got it now..

-- Regards. Mark.(AKA, Mr.Nice.) ___________________________________________________________ "To know the character of a man, give him anonymity" - Mr.Nice.

What can I say? I bailed out of there at the point last year where there was the lynchmob heading for them with lit torches.

Paying £480 per year now for similar service and much, much larger data transfer limits. The only issue is supplying my own box, which wasn't a problem and I could have stuck a Raq in if I'd been bothered.

P.

Who's that with? I like the idea of spreading my eggs across multiple baskets... That way when it goes wrong only half my customers come and shout at me instead of all of them as is currently the case.

It keeps improving, but it still seems to work better when the OCR software controls the scanner settings, rather than tries to scan an imagefile.

Yeah, I've thought about this on more than one occasion - especially seeing what some land tends to go for at auction. I do rather suspect that Andy and I were both interested in the same bit of land recently, but I couldn't get my arse into gear to go bid...

I'd still be rather wary of leaving a vehicle there though (remembering long thread about burnt out Rangie).

Martyn

I retract the comment!

Martyn

I thought you might...

Perhaps you'd like to bid for my business? :-)

Austin Shackles wrote

Can't you? From the hints in the Chancellor's remarks, I can see lpg duty rising close to that of unleaded over the next three years (see the quote in an earlier post). This makes the payback argument redundant. Once the price of lpg goes above (say) 60p/litre, it will actually cost MORE to run on lpg than petrol because of the worse fuel consumption. You might pay the conversion cost back in a year, but so what? You are then lumbered with a gas conversion that you never use because the cost per mile of unleaded is cheaper.

It's going to be a very fine thing, depending on how Gordon adjusts the duty levels, as to whether lpg is economically worthwhile (although less so than to date) or actually drains the wallet even more. Given Labour's proven record for inventing and increasing taxes wherever and whenever possible, I think I can guess where the balance will lie.

As for me, the argument was always economics versus the hassle of chopping a perfectly good car about. If the economics prove slender, non-existent or even negative, then I'll leave it just as it is, thanks very much.

I'd hate to think someone of limited means was going to spend all his/her cash on a gas conversion while the duty was low, only to be shafted royally by the Chancellor over the next three years and be left with a load of redundant plumbing.

Folks, the maths is simple: once the price price differential between lpg and unleaded is less than the increase in fuel consumption on gas (20% seems to be a ballpark figure), then you can't afford to run on lpg, *even if you have paid off the cost of conversion*.

I wonder what Friends of the Earth are thinking?

Rich

RR 4.6 HSE Tiggrr 3.5 V8 trialler

I try to keep a big wide line around 'play' and 'business' Besides, we've got too many stroppy customers as it is ;-)

Martyn