Heating Oil Lessons: How To Calculate Your Home's Heating Oil Needs

For those who have always had electric heat or have rented with all heating costs included, the first winter having to cover your own heating oil can be challenging. It's hard to budget heating oil deliveries when you don't know how much you're using. That's why it's best to do some analysis after your first month to determine your heating system's average usage. Here are some of the things that you should be considering.

Ask Your Furnace Technician For Specifics

When you book your annual maintenance appointment for your furnace, take some time to talk with the technician about the specifics of the furnace. He or she can tell you about the fuel delivery nozzle on the furnace and the heating oil flow rate that your furnace receives. This tells you how many hours of run time you'll have from your furnace from each delivery. This can help you to estimate your first fuel delivery.

Calculate Your First Month's Fuel Consumption

Four weeks after your first delivery, when you have heating oil delivered again, you'll want to ask the fuel delivery technician for a final reading of the fuel that's in your tank. Subtract whatever you had delivered that day to determine what was left after your first delivery.

Once you do that, you can count the number of days from your first delivery to your second delivery, then divide the total fuel oil consumption by the number of days to figure out how much you used every day. This gives you a rough idea of how long your new delivery will last you.

However, this doesn't account for changes in the temperature which may cause your furnace to run more or less than it did in the previous month. To adjust for that, you'll need to do some more calculations.

Look At The Average Temperatures

Check the weather history for the prior month and see what the average temperature was for that month. Then, look at your weather forecast's typical average for the current month. If the temperatures are colder, on average, in the current month than the last one, you'll want to assume that you will be using more fuel oil during the current month than you did in the one previously, which means you'll either need to have more oil delivered this month, or plan your next delivery sooner than you did for this one.

Talk with your local heating oil delivery services company for more tips about your heating oil deliveries and consumption calculations.