ᐅ House purchased. Termination of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) contract.

Hello dear forum members. We recently bought a house with all the associated contracts. Among them is a gas supply contract with the company Primagas. This includes a rental tank. The representative offered us a new contract with the following conditions:

approx. 15 euros/month meter rental
2.48 euros per cubic meter of liquefied gas (equivalent to 3.93 liters)

Since I found this quite expensive (monthly installments around 150–160 euros), I did some research. An independent supplier would deliver gas at a price of about 42 cents per liter, which corresponds to a price below 1.68 euros per cubic meter.

Now to my problem – unfortunately, I do not yet have the original contract from the previous owners (I hope to get it. It should be from 2008 and could therefore contain a clause that is invalid. This would mean that the collection of the gas tank could not be charged by the company – but this is uncertain).

The plan might be: try to get out of the contract – either by returning the old tank and meter and acquiring our own tank, or by trying to buy the 10-year-old rental tank (however, I have read several times that companies usually do not agree to this).

Are there people here who also use liquefied gas for heating or who have been in a similar situation? I would be grateful for tips and advice, as this needs to be settled fairly quickly.

Best regards

Actually, it’s not the house that has the contract, but the owner of the house. That was the previous owner. You don’t have a contract with Primagas. You should be able to choose another option easily—but which one? Natural gas is probably not available, so that leaves liquefied petroleum gas (LPG). The tank belongs to Primagas. They probably won’t let you keep it, right? Because they don’t make money from the tanks themselves, but from the right to refill them. So they have no interest in letting you go free. Every other gas supplier is the same. Buying your own gas tank? From when does that become cost-effective? What other alternatives are there? A heat pump requires underfloor heating, and geothermal heating is expensive to install initially. Oil? You would need a new heating system. Everything seems complicated... K.

Why don’t you want a leased tank?
With an owned tank, you have to pay for all required inspections yourself, remember to schedule them, and provide proof; otherwise, you won’t receive any gas deliveries. The internal inspection of the gas tank every 10 years is particularly costly.
A low initial price alone does not make owning your own tank financially worthwhile.

The house is now exactly 10 years old (built in 2008). We have underfloor heating, but I think a heat pump might not be suitable because, although the insulation values are good for the building year, they are not very good. According to my research, there doesn’t seem to be a natural gas connection available, so our first alternative would probably be a purchased tank.

Why don’t I want a rental tank? I don’t really mind in general, but first, I’ve often read that a purchased tank is always cheaper, and second, with a rental tank you are always tied to one supplier who tends to be much more expensive than other providers. The employee said during our conversation that the 2.48 Euro/cbm (2.48 Euro/cbm) price is cheap – but that’s almost 50% more than the price from the first provider I found on Google who supplies our area (around 167 Euro/cbm (167 Euro/cbm)). On top of that, there is also a basic monthly fee of about 15 Euro (15 Euro). Overall, that adds up to 150-160 Euro (150-160 Euro) per month.

I estimate that with a purchased tank, the monthly costs would be (significantly?) under 100 Euro (100 Euro). Why am I asking now? Because as soon as I sign the new contract with Primagas, I definitely won’t be able to cancel it for free anymore, as they have updated the contract clauses to comply with legal requirements. (However, I’m not sure about the exact situation with the current contract, as I do not yet have it.)

Is the maintenance and so on so expensive that a monthly extra charge of 50-60+ Euro (50-60+ Euro) for the rental tank is really worth it? That would be a 600-720 Euro (600-720 Euro) saving per year. Maintenance and related costs shouldn’t be more than 200-300 Euro (200-300 Euro) (or am I missing something?), plus the one-time purchase cost. Is the effort really that much greater that such an amount is justified?

Unfortunately, I am completely new to this topic and am trying to get as clear a picture as possible.

Nordlys schrieb:
Actually, it’s not the house that has the contract, but the owner of the house.

To be honest, I didn’t know in advance that it was a rental tank; that only became clear afterwards. However, the previous owners offered us a fair price, so we would have bought the house anyway. Under no circumstances will we accept any payment from the former owners for this, so now it’s purely about how to best handle the situation.

After a brief search, I found the following prices:

and additionally

So, the important questions are: above ground or underground? House size?