Help needed with heating oil.

builder2469

Hi all, in dispute with my landlord over the price of heating oil. There is 9 inches left in the bottom of my 1200 litre tank. According to my calculations, i valued what was left at between £175 and £200. Landlord says its only worth £80 to £90. Can anyone help. Moving very soon and would like to resolve matter before i go. Oh and i can't take it with me as new house is all electric. Thanks everyone.

Camelina

Oil tanks come in various shapes and sizes (even ones holding 1200 litres) if it was me I would get out a tape measure and measure from the bottom of the tank to the uppermost fill level. Lets say your tank was 38" from top to bottom, from that half a tank at 19" would be 600 litres, 1/4 tank at 9 1/2 inches would be 300 litres etc etc. it may be a slightly long winded way of doing it but it would give you a good idea of volume, then all you need to do is check out current prices per litre.
Alternatively, if you have a watchman device that is even simpler. I have a 1250 litre tank and my watchman has 10 bars on it, so each bar represents 125 litres, currently on 4 bars so I have approx 500 litres in the tank.

Cardew

You need to measure the cubic centimetres of oil.

As an example, take a tank that is square/rectangular and measures, say 100cm x 60 cm; and you have a depth of nine inches(9" = 23cm).

There are 1,000 cubic centimetres in a litre.

So in the example above 100 x 60 x 23 all divided by 1,000 = 138 litres.

Ectophile

The problem comes if the tank isn't rectangular. If the base is rounded, then each inch is equivalent to less and less oil as you get towards the bottom of the tank.