How Much Heating Oil Are You Using?

One of the major expenses of owning a home can be heating it. If you use heating oil to heat your home, it’s only natural to wonder things like, “How much heating oil will I use a day?” “How long will 10 gallons of heating oil last?” “How long should 100 gallons of heating oil last?” It’s essential to know how much heating oil your house uses.

So how much heating oil does a house use? It depends on a number of factors, most of all, space. The bigger the house, the more oil you need to heat the whole thing. Whatever your average heating oil usage per square foot is, you need to multiply that by the square footage of your home to know how much total heating oil your house uses.

Factors Affecting Heating Oil Usage

Factors affecting heating oil usage other than home size include the length of the cold season, how cold it gets and how well insulated your house is.

The efficiency of your burner is another factor. Newer, more efficient burners tend to burn less oil per hour, so if you find yourself using what you think is too much oil, you may want to think about replacing yours. A brand-new furnace will run much more efficiently than a much older one. Even as your furnace ages, you can keep it burning efficiently by giving it routine maintenance. Scheduling a professional to inspect your heating systems and give it any service it needs can lengthen its lifespan and help it use less oil.

The number of people living in your home and the number of other appliances that use your heating oil are factors too. If your heating oil fuels more than just your home’s heat, you’ll go through it a little faster.

For a modest-sized house, about 2,500 to 3,000 square feet, you probably want to burn 5 gallons a day or less. If your burner burns about a gallon an hour and runs for five hours a day, you’re right on track. If you’re in a very cold area and your burner needs to run longer, or if your furnace burns more than this much per hour, you’ll use up more fuel. Either way, 10 gallons of heating oil is not likely to last you very long.

Every home is different and uses different amounts of heating oil every day during the cold months. Besides your burner’s efficiency and the temperature outside, the size of your home is the most influential factor in its oil usage rate. The bigger the house, the more oil you’ll need to keep it at the temperature you want.

Further, the square footage and the number of floors in the home affect heating oil usage and could impact your heating bill. You could have two houses with the same square footage that use different amounts of oil. But how does that happen? It comes down to how many stories there are. A single-story ranch home and a two-story home may have the same square footage, but the house with more floors has less area exposed to the outside environment, which helps to keep the heat in.

You can estimate how long your heating oil will last from these factors. Another way to monitor your heating oil usage is to track whenever you raise or lower your thermostat when you have the heat on, how cold it is outside and how much oil was used.

Keeping Heating Costs Down

You want to make sure your home is sufficiently heated for the winter months, but you don’t want to spend a fortune on heating oil. If you’re in the central Pennsylvania area, Marstellar Oil and Concrete is a good solution. Not only do we have competitive prices for heating oil and deliver quickly with a simple online ordering system, but we also deliver in smaller minimum batches than other oil distributors. This means you’re not paying a lot for heating oil you are not going to use.

The average heating oil tank usually holds around 200 gallons. You want to make sure it’s full, but you don’t want to be left with an excess of heating oil at the end of winter. Marstellar Oil and Concrete can deliver your oil in batches as small as 50 gallons, so you don’t have to worry about buying too much oil.

To find out more about how we can help keep you warm and save you money on your heating bills, or to place an order, contact Marstellar Oil and Concrete online today.