Happy New Year Brownstoners! So 2011 finds me (finally!) the owner of a house in Brooklyn! Yay! As a first time homeowner, I expect my learning curve to be steep and look forward to posting many pleas for advice as we renovate and get the feel for our new place. My first question involves the oil tank. Can anyone give me an idea of how many gallons of oil you burn through a year to heat a 3,000+ square foot brownstone? I’m particularly concerned with the winter months. When we closed this December, the oil tank had 765 gallons in it. We plan on switching to an HVAC system this spring. Do we even need any more oil this winter? Thank you for your help/opinions!


What's Your Take? Leave a Comment

  1. you just have a really old inefficient boiler.. no one is trying to rip you off..stop emulating mayor bloomberg..and the hvac system you describe sounds like a really bad idea

  2. You do not want to run out of oil. You do not want to get to the bottom of the tank as well since the bottom sludge will clog the filter.
    On the other side you do not want to end up with Full tank of oil in the end of May – wasted oil and you will pay somebody to remove it.

    So keep an eye on how much it consumes for next month. If you get to the ~25% of the tank left – call oil company for delivery.
    In the end of January you will have a number of Galons you consume for January. You should expect the same amount for Februray and about the same for March/April/May combined.
    So do the math and aim to end up with ~15-20% of the tank at the beginning of May.

    When I bough 2600sf house with antique boiler, I recon it burned 400-500Gl in cold January.

  3. Yes, not clear what you have now (oil fired steam boiler – which does or doesn’t also provides hot water?) or what you plan for the spring (new heating and hot water system and central AC)?

    If your numbers are right… 765 start + 425 delivered 9 days later = 1190 – 1080 capacity = 110 gallons in 9 days
    So if the weather stayed the same and your thermostat stayed the same as those 9 days you could guestimate that your (huge) full tank might last until march. But it would be very unpleasant to run out.

    I think you need to get familiar with your boiler and your tank – do you have a gauge or a reliable way to tell how much is in the tank? While you’re still doing business with them, the oil company should be able to help you out with that.

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