Oil heating in rental property

dunstonh

I have one of those monitoring meters fitted on the tank which is good for a rough guide to the amount in the tank, however all neighbours and friends tell me that's unreliable and use a stick to check levels.

I have the apollo 10 bar meter and it's reliable to the level it needs to be. i.e. 1000 litres if it drops to 3 bars in my case.   I sometimes check with an old broom handle and have markers on the handle to indicate the various levels and amount to order and it pretty much matches. (i check less frequently now as the monitor is accurate enough)

I did try the apollo smart monitor(the one with the screen) and I got that to a very high level of accuracy if you looked at the percentage screen and totally ignored the usage estimate.  However, it was faulty as the alarm kept going off when the tank was over 80% full.  Even when the alarm was turned off in the settings.     You would reset it and it would go off again 20 minutes or 20 hours later or anything in between.  So, it went back and I stuck with the old 10 bar version.

To get the accuracy on the monitor meant using the broom handle and marking it at various stages to learn about how the bars matched up with the actual content.    

The people who often say they are unreliable are those that have not taken into account that bunded tanks are measured by the internal tank height, not the external height or they have a tank that is not consistent in shape.

I also keep a spreadsheet recording the oil use and purchase dates.   I don't really need to now as I know the use inside out but it was useful in the early years to remind me of how much over what periods.   Now it just allows me to compare year usage and the price of oil.

canaldumidi

Larches said:

.... However this is actually a landlord-managed let so I should be able to raise this directly with the landlord once we have his/her details.

Just to add as an aside, since your tenancy is landlord-managed, there are two bits of relevant leglislation:

1) Landlord and Tenant Act 1987 S48. You must be given an address you can use to serve notices on the LL. It must be in Eng/Wales, but can be anyone's address (eg LL's mum if he wants).. Without this you need not pay rent

2) Landlord & Tenant Act 1985 S1. If you write to whoever collects rent and ask, you must be given the LL's actual address (not just his mum!)

This assumes you are in Eng or Wales.

Larches

canaldumidi said:

Larches said:

.... However this is actually a landlord-managed let so I should be able to raise this directly with the landlord once we have his/her details.

Just to add as an aside, since your tenancy is landlord-managed, there are two bits of relevant leglislation:

1) Landlord and Tenant Act 1987 S48. You must be given an address you can use to serve notices on the LL. It must be in Eng/Wales, but can be anyone's address (eg LL's mum if he wants).. Without this you need not pay rent

2) Landlord & Tenant Act 1985 S1. If you write to whoever collects rent and ask, you must be given the LL's actual address (not just his mum!)

This assumes you are in Eng or Wales.

Thanks @canaldumidi, the EA seems quite helpful in general (oil policy aside!) and speaks favourably of the landlord so hopefully I shouldn't have any problems getting these details, but that's certainly useful to know just in case.