Propane - $4 a unit!!!

I just paid $17 per #20 pound tank but fill three and the fourth is free. You get a card.

We just had our propane tank filled, cost $1.80 a gallon, but my Mom, out in AZ, just had her's filled and it cost her $728.58 to have 303 gallons put in. We also use wood heat during the winter to save $.

I'm going to call in the morning and get clarification on what this "unit" is. We have a large-ish tank, it's about 5 feet tall, permanent installation. It was half empty and it took about 50 "units" to fill it, so I'm guessing it's 100 gallons, but I'm not sure.

I know, shame on me for not knowing all this. Like I said, we only use the propane for cooking and the dryer, so it only gets filled twice a year, so I never paid a whole lot of attention... especially when it only costs $60 or $70 to fill. I'm paying attention now. lol. We need to make a decision about what kind of supplemental heat.

Two weeks ago I paid $ 223.15 for 100 gallons in western Arkansas.
We use it for the cook stove and the hot water heater.
We heat the house with wood; and central electric only if the fire goes out.

I think that some companies also track how much you buy/use in the course of the year and price you like homeowner, business, and just over wholesale for large consumers.
We buy oil just over company cost as a perk from DH business but the company does not serve our camp area anymore. Even with the discount its cheaper to burn wood.

I have sit and answered the phone more for the last year about wood furnaces than ever before, heating oil prices and propane are cutting into customers pockets big time and they are looking for a different avenue.

check my website for a low cost outside forced air furnace. Cheap, simple and works!
Scott

__________________
Lower your heating costs!
www.outsidewoodheater.com

Call your gas company and ask them to explain to you what a "unit" really is, pounds, gallons, or what, then you have a base line to work with. Also ask the if the price varies according to the amount purchased and get those figures too.

__________________
I'm from the government and I'm here to help you.

I guess I'm stingier than a lot of people, because back in '98 when propane went to $2.00 gal. here, I went to wood heat. At $2 gal. I couldn't afford to heat the house, plain and simple.

Last I paid was $3.59 a gallon

Update:
I called the propane company. The propane is $3.05 a gallon. The rest was for tank rental of $4.50 a month. They don't sell the above-group tanks, only the bigger underground ones. Do you pay a rental fee on your tanks?

Had my tank filled at $1.89/gal. last month.

__________________
Brain, an apparatus with which we think we think.

no rental fee

$3+ is alot for propane, $1.42 here in iowa, rental tanks are not the best as your locked to the owner for fuel . here the used tanks are approx $1 per gal capacity and the freedom to buy from the lowest cost supplier

Up here in north central PA we are currently paying...$2.71 a gallon and we have the 2 #100 cyclinders. I didn't think too much about the cost until I read this thread. After calling the propane company and finding out that we used $813.00 last year in propane gas alone to heat the hot water and cook with...WOW !!!..I thought that was a lot of $$.. About $67 a month. I don't know..what do you all think. Just the 2 of us at home..most of the time. I would like to do something with the hot water tank. But it isn't really possible to think about shutting it on and off..crawling on the dirt cellar floor lighting a pilot light a couple time a day..isn't my idea of fun..and safe either. So...I just don't know. I realize that things cost money..no free rides for anyone..but sometimes I surely do feel like.."the working poor". I am very thankful for the jobs and paychecks we have and do have alot more than most. But...at this age thought I would have a few $$$'s tucked away ?? Maybe I'll just count my blessings..and pay my gas bill.

A couple of years ago we went into this fireplace shop to look at putting in one of those really big, fancy propane fireplaces. We were pretty impressed with the BTUs they put out and even the cost wasn't totally unreasonable. But when we asked what it would cost to operate, the guy LIED to us and said he didn't really know, he hadn't bought propane in a long time. I looked around and at least 60% of his displays, which were all burning for show in the middle of the summer, were propane. Hadn't bought propane in a while MY ASS! lol We quickly found out the reason for his evasiveness was that propane had just shot up over $2.50 per and it made it way more costly to run than heating oil units, which put out more BTUs per hour. Needless to say we did not go back.

Propane is one of the few things that you pay more for if you use less. The propane companies claim its due to insurance and a list of other items but I say its all BS. My new house has a 1000 gal. tank and I pay 1.83 a gallon to fill it. I am using about 1800 gallons a year, UGH>>>> Need to get my outdoor wood boiler in and that will go down. At any rate my other house I only have a 80 gal tank as we only use it for hot water, clothes drying any cooking. Seeing as we are spending more time at the new house getting it finished we use very little and I have been getting charged up to 4 bucks a gallon when getting it filled.

It just burns me that they claim insurance and stuff when the same truck stops at my house and fills me for 4 bucks and then goes down the street and fills someone else at 2 bucks, just because they use more.

That's like pulling into a gas station and being charged more for gas becuase you don't drive many miles or going to the grocery store and paying more because you are not buying enough groceries.

Bob

That's highway robbery. The wholesale price in large tradeable quantitys, (like 5000 to 10000 barrels) is less than 95 cents per gallon. Transportation to a terminal near that jobber would not be more than 5 or 6 cents per gallon. All in, that jobber shouldn't be paying much more than a buck a gallon for his supply. Unless there's some anomaly in your area geographically......
We also don't charge our customers tank rental. We provide it if they buy all there fuel from us as does every other jobber around here.

I wish we could sell ours for that kind of price. I'd get a heck of a bonus!

I called around a few more places, and our supplier is the highest... big surprise.

The going rate seems to be around $2.50 a gallon. Some charge tank rental fees, anywhere from $4.50 to $9.95 a month. Some places don't charge a tank rental, but require that you buy a full tank of fuel per year. So yeah, we're getting screwed. Unfortunately, it doesn't make sense to make any changes for awhile, since we've got a full tank of propane to use up.

I'm going to try to find a tank to buy. The only one who sells above-ground tanks quoted me $575 for a 105 gallon tank. ouch.

Boy, am I glad we don't heat with propane. That would be a budget-breaker. I see why the heaters are so cheap. We're going to look at a small electric through-the-wall heat pump for supplemental heat. This makes me love our woodstove even more.

Last time we topped off our propane tank we paid around 1.60 a gallon - that was in August. We own our own 1,000 gallon tank. $ 3.00 a gallon is OUTRAGEOUS! Someone is price gouging - you need to shopp price with other propane companies.

We recently installed a Taylor (outdoor) Water Stove that supplies our needs for central heat and hot water. We're just using propane for cooking and maybe a little to run our generator during a power outage.

Wood for the water stove comes from dead trees that need to be cleared anyway and slab wood that we buy from a local sawmill for around $ 10.00 per ton. The slab wood if fairly well seasoned - mostly less than 4 inches thick and has been sitting around for a couple of months - mostly oak, hickory and walnut.

-bob

__________________
"Men argue; nature acts."
~ Voltaire (1694-1778)

Watch out for S*nergy gas, I had it twice..stupid me ....once bit twice shy!
this last time they had gas for $1.78 every local dealer was $1.38~ I called and asked them if they wolud match that price... NO...was the answer.
Well they picked up the tank and I have a new company now, and they brought me a NEW tank and the gas was $1.33 a gallon. I do have a contract I rent it for $60.00 a year. I still saved on the first fill-up/500 gal. tank.

__________________
Republicans believe every day is the Fourth of July, but the democrats believe every day is April 15.
Ronald Reagan
We are never defeated unless we give up on God.
Ronald Reagan