How Many Gallons of Oil?
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…
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!
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
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.
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.
Denton,
I mean that we plan to put in central air and heat running on gas as part of our upcoming renovation, then we will no longer need oil.
I am confused about what you are doing…. ‘switching to HVAC’, what does that mean?
Bklnite,
Thank you for your response. I have been in touch with the seller’s oil company. They told me we have a 1,080 gallon tank. The house has been chopped up into 5 (tiny!) units so maybe that is why the tank is so large. Part of the reason I posted this question is the following: I called the oil company the day we closed to let them know we were the new owners and to see what the deal was in terms of service, etc. We never got a chance to have a clear conversation about how we were going to be changing the use of the building to a one family and switching to HVAC in the spring, only one tenant at the moment, etc., because I had to hop off phone due to toddler meltdown. We planned to touch base again. I received the contract/paperwork from the oil company in the mail a few days later, but due to the holidays I have not yet completed and returned it. Earlier this week, I get a call from the oil company asking for my email so they can send me an invoice and saying they need my contract back. Apparently, 9 days after our closing (remember, we had 765 gallons that we paid for at closing based on a measurement taken by this same oil company) they made a delivery of 425 gallons. They say they were “topping off the tank” before the snow storm just in case. Now I have a $1,400 oil bill from a company I never signed a contract with and I’m feeling like I’m being taken for a bit of a ride.
Contact the same co used by seller & become a customer asap. They deliver oil continuously and automatically throughout the year, so you have constant heat and hot water. Running out would be dire.
You sure you had 765 gallons? A typical tank size is around 275 gallons so you’d need 3 of them to hold that much.
No easy answers to how much oil you’ll burn based on square footage alone … depends on the boiler & the controls & the weather & how warm you keep the building & how well insulated it is. 765gal x $3/gal = $2295. If you can heat the building through the winter on that little I’d be surprised. If you’re using the same fuel co as the seller, they should be able to tell you how much or how often they delivered last year / heating season. You can cross your fingers, hope for a mild winter, keep the thermostat low and wear sweaters, but if I were you I’d get a delivery if you’re down to less than a couple hundred gallons before late March.