New England B.S. Thread

Seeing as this is my first house and I haven't used oil yet, how long does a tank of oil normally last?

 

We got topped off two months ago... over $900. Drawback to having two tanks is when they fill, they rape the wallet.

 

Too many factors to say. Is your house well insulated? How many air change/hour? Efficiency of the burner? Any passive solar gain?

 

Yep, was not happy. Wonder if they would buy it back from me. I talked to a couple realtors I have known for years. They told me I should have told them first. One guy said he has a foreclosure mansion with a ~1k tank full - Told me I'm welcome to whatever I could get out of it. Another one, said he has 2-3 propertys with 250gal tanks he is sure are full also. Said that they would not sell til summer so I could again have at them.

We were eating lunch together. FYI

I was dumbfounded. Then they winked and told me they havent paid for oil years. :jawdrop:

I was having a mental moral battle over the whole situation. Then again, vacant property... Who am I kidding, it would bite me in the ass somehow.

 

Honestly depends on a lot of factors, insulation quality, how high you run the heat, etc..

We have radiant hot water heat/ tankless hot water heater combo furnace. In the winter I usually have the tank filled when it gets down to ~1/4 tank. Can usually get ~1.5 -2 months out of 3/4 tank. The past two years i've had the tank filled end of march/ early april and it lasts through nowish. This year I had the tank filled april 5th, and just had it re-filled today with 188 gallons.

 

haha ya, say a neighbor or some random sees you there taking fuel and calls the 5-0. That would not be worth it.

 

The house was built in 1975 with a new burner in 2002 (guess its relatively efficient?). Insulation is decent and the trees let the sun hit the house from 1-3 PM. Sorry I don't have any more detailed information - I just hate looking at how much it would cost to fill up, bought the place with just over half a tank (125 gallons or so) and really don't want to touch it this winter.

Electric water heater to boot. Seems for the $700 to fill it up, that buys me enough pellets to get through the dead cold of winter at one bag a day (really cranks the heat) for three months. If it costs around that much to fill my tank with oil, trying to see if I am really saving money or if my labor of hauling and stacking pellets is for show.

 

They actually weren't bad. Guy got there in 45 minutes and was great. The parts cost about $150, total cost was $300. He basically did a full tune up while he was at my house.

Seth beat me to it but it depends on a lot of things. I have forced hot water, radiant heat and the oil also heats my water so my boiler is running a lot. Fortunately, I'm fairly well insulated and my boiler has a relatively high efficiency rating.

 

Forced heat/hot, electric 80 gallon water heater. I only have a 225 gal tank though. It used to go once a month from full to bone dry. That was when we had no insulation in most of the house and windows that were about 10 years or more past their usefulness.

Seth, at least now you know what to do next time that part breaks.

 

I thought about the tankless hot water heater but not an option with the tub..

 

why not?

 

He takes tubbys in the tank

 

x2, I have tankless hot water and it does just fine. My only issue is if the heat is on, that keeps the firebox hot so the flame won't come on to make the domestic hot water hot enough so you can end up with a warm shower if you're unlucky enough to hit it at just the right time.

 

This. Mine does the same. It can be rectified with an auxiliary small electric hot water heater/ tank. But doesn't seem worth it to me.

 

2 person Jacuzzi in the bathroom..takes about 100 gallons.

 

Could still go tankless with a point of use hot water heater for that big beast of a tub. My parents have a long house with the heater all the way on one side and it's opposite the kitchen so they added one of those. Turn on the tap and instant hot water, it's a wonderful thing!

 

Were it not for the Jacuzzi I might, but I've been told that if I went tankless it may cause me issues in that regard.

 

Those point of use hot water heaters would make it so the jacuzzi wouldn't need to draw hot water from your boiler. You'd only have to run a cold water line to it and split it at the jacuzzi. The point of use heater would supply your hot water and the cold would just go straight through, nothing would pull from your tankless system.

 

^ This.
My parents water heater crapped the bed, and they went with two on demand heaters instead. One for the upstairs, one of the down (upstairs showers never got more than lukewarm, unless you had the heater turned up so much that you scalded yourself with the hot water in the kitchen and the downstairs shower).
Just make sure you run 3/4" or 1" water line to where you split it to 1/2", otherwise you'll have miserable pressure.

 

Our tankless (worked off the furnace) died. The burner would run and run and the hot water output turned to shit. We dropped a 100 gal tank next to the furnace and ran it as a third zone. What an amazing improvement. We can now run everything in the house and not run out of hot water.

Rinnai is awesome. We would have installed that as opposed to what I stated above if there wouldn't have been such a high cost to tie into the gas line at the street. All that cost savings of only heating what you actually use when you use it, awesome!