Knowing the rate of consumption your home oil furnace exhibits on a monthly basis is a great way to help you budget your heating costs throughout the year. By spending a little time to create a plan for refilling and maintaining your fuel oil tank, you can save time and money on fuel deliveries. To help you keep your home’s fuel tank in its best working order, the experts from Best Oil Inc. in Waterbury, CT, have shared three easy steps you can take to determine your heating oil usage.  

3 Steps to Determine the Fuel Usage of Your Home Oil Furnace

1. Find Your Tank Capacity

It’s fairly simple to figure out how much oil your home burns with a bit of observation and simple math. The first step is to find the capacity and flow rate of your tank. You should have a date plate placed on your tank that provides the date it was created, tank capacity, and sometimes the gallons per hour (GPH) used by your system. If you don’t see a GPH reading, look on the burner nozzle and you should see an indicator.  

2. Observe

Here’s where a little bit of homework comes into play. Pick two times of the day to observe your oil usage—one at the warmest point in the day, and one at the coolest. Watch your home furnace usage and time how long the system is actually running throughout the course of an hour. Do this at the twice, then average the two times together and multiply by 24 to determine about how many hours per day your home oil furnace runs. For example, if your furnace ran for 20 minutes at the warmest hour of the day and 40 during the coolest hour, the average would be 30 minutes. Multiplied by 24, that equals a total of 12 hours per day of running time.

3. Do a Little More Math

Revisit your capacity and GPH results from step one, then multiply your average daily usage by the GPH and you will have a close estimate of the amount of fuel you use to heat your home daily. This will help you to determine how frequently you should have a fuel company visit your home and prevent any unnecessarily empty tanks.

If you are in need of home oil furnace filling or repair in the Waterbury area, look no further than the expert team from Best Oil Inc. Their family business has served the community since 1936 and provides the highest quality service with 24/7 emergency services available. Call them at (203) 574-4050, or visit their website to see all of the services they have to offer.