First time oil user

Tailender_Investor

Hi Everyone,

So we are currently purchasing a house and it has an oil heating system.  It's in a little village with no gas mains, that's no different to the village we live in now but currently we have an air source heat pump.

So it will be our first time using oil.  The oil tank was replaced about 7 years ago so should be good for a few years.  The boiler is about 10 years old so again hopefully good for a few more years (fingers crossed).

Do current oil users have any tips on what/what not to do?  I'm presuming you shouldn't let the tank level get too low so is a good rule of thumb never let it go below 10% full? 20%? 30%? I'm presuming the tank has some sort of sight level to let you know how much oil is in the tank but are they any good?  Or do people say just use a dipstick for the level?  Or in this modern world is there a good electronic level indicator?

I'm also presuming it is like a gas or air source heating system in that it is recommended to have a yearly service?  Anything to watch out for in particular when having it serviced?

Any help and tips are appreciated.

dunstonh

Do current oil users have any tips on what/what not to do? 

Oil monitoring is all about knowledge and it will take you some time to learn about your system.

We have an apollo oil monitor on ours.  It uses sonar to give us a 1-10 scale.   First thing I did when we moved in is check the settings.  The previous owner had them set up wrong. They had measured the outside tank height but ours is a bunded tank (as are most modern tanks).  It is the internal height that matters.  So, we had to adjust the settings.  

I also had an old broom handle with a hook on it.    With my early fill ups, I dipped the handle and marked the point I ordered and had next day delivery on a fill up.   I didn't ask for next day but the independent oil supplier is only a few miles away and delivers to people in the next 1-2 days as default.  I just told them that it was our first time ordering and didnt know how much but said it looks about 1/4 full and it was a 1500litre tank.   They arrived and filled to top and I wrote on the broom and my excel spreadsheet the litres filled and the number of bars on the oil monitor.          

My next 3 fill ups I ordered at different bars on the monitor to get an idea of how much oil was needed with each bar.  I also marked the handle each time.

Our local independent is more expensive than other sources but with next day delivery, it as useful with the early fill ups to get an understanding quickly after the reading.

I'm presuming you shouldn't let the tank level get too low so is a good rule of thumb never let it go below 10% full? 20%? 30%?

You can get sludge and dirt in oil which will generally fall to the bottom.  Your outlet wont be at the very bottom.  So, approx. 5% will be inaccessible anyway.  But the lower you let it fall, the greater the risk dirt/sludge will exit.   You should have a capture filter/valve for the crud on the exit point of the tank which should be emptied annually under service.     The lowest I have done is 2 bars on the apollo but typically order on 3 or 4.

Or in this modern world is there a good electronic level indicator?

I bought the advanced apollo display and got it well calibrated.  You have to remember oil contracts and expands. So, its never perfect but I got the percentage monitor very accurate.  However, the device alarm kept going off (theft alert for sudden drop).  Even with the alarm turned off in the settings, it would still go off. Sometimes multiple times an hour.      That made it unusable. So, I reverted to the standard 10 bar display Apollo and that is less flash or accurate, it does the job simply.  Just a calculator style battery every 3-4 years.

I'm also presuming it is like a gas or air source heating system in that it is recommended to have a yearly service?
Anything to watch out for in particular when having it serviced?

It is important to have an annual service.  The boilers are similar to gas but with smaller differences.   Certain parts need replacing annually on the oil boiler. e.g. the nozzle.   These can soot up and are a cheap consumable item.  They gradually reduce in efficiency with every use.   The sludge filter mentioned above is another.   

You need to be on guard with low knowledge service engineers.  Our first boiler service engineer was recommended to us and did our first two years.   Then we had a fault on a cold weekend and he wouldn't come out.    So, we got another local independent who came out on a Sunday and spent half the day taking it apart.  He found the nozzles hadnt been replaced in years and the sludge filter was full and it was letting the crud get into the boiler.     Basically, the previous engineer appeared to have done all the things you do on a gas boiler service but nothing that you would do with an oil boiler service .  There is a lot of similarity in the two but each has its own things specific to the fuel type.  So, beware of gas boiler engineers saying that they do oil.    Watch them and see if the nozzle is replaced and the sludge filter by the tank is emptied.  Those are two oil specific points.


We were initially concerned about oil but it really isn't a problem as long as you keep an eye on it.  The apollo oil monitor makes that easy (the plug socket version with 10 bars and not the more modern looking trying-to-be-smart-meter failure version).    Just learn the amounts you need to order with each bar (suggest starting higher and working lower - e.g. first one at 5 remaining, second one at 4 remaining and next one at 3 remaining).  Then when the oil gets down to around half way, you can start watching oil prices online and decide when to fill up.

oh, and a final thing you realise is that you use virtually no oil from late April through to October.  We drop around 1 bar (10%) on our meter over that period.  Our tank is too small for the house size. So, we need three fill ups a year most years.    So, you need to budget.    We do three fill ups a year most years and they are usually November, January and March.     This is where a spreadsheet comes in handy as you can log your fill up dates and amounts and the bars/handle measures and keep a record.

Qyburn

Tailender_Investor said:

I'm presuming you shouldn't let the tank level get too low so is a good rule of thumb never let it go below 10% full? 20%? 30%?

It depends how dirty your tank is to be honest.  At one house with a relatively new plastic tank I would say we quite often went below 10%, although it would still have been a couple of cm above the outlet pipe.  On the other hand our last house, which we rented out, had an old steel tank.  The tenants ran out of oil and it really made quite a mess with gunged up filters and some contamination of the boiler itself.

By the way although as Dunstonh says most oil tanks don't draw quite from the bottom, there's a school of thought that boat tanks should in fact do this. It's better for any crap to be drawn out as you go, and caught by the filter and water separator, rather than have it build up and risk getting 10 years of crap suddenly in the system. Of course a house oil tank is less likely to be stirred up.

lohr500

Think the main points have been nicely covered by the previous replies.

As donstonh has mentioned, you do need to budget for buying the oil as unlike gas/electricity you usually won't be paying a fixed or variable direct debit each month. It will obviously depend on how much you get through and the size of the tank.

There are some suppliers who do offer a monthly budget scheme for oil, but I would advise against using this method. The reason being that you are then tied into that supplier and I usually find that prices can vary quite a bit from different suppliers each time we fill up. I have a list of 4 or 5 local suppliers and I always do a price check on all of them, as well as using  Boilerjuice and FuelTool to search for best pricing. A larger quantity of oil can often result in lower pricing, so we tend to let our 2500 litre tank drop to around 1000 litres and then order a 1500 litre top up. The 1000 litres is then plenty in reserve if there are any delays in deliveries.

Pricing has been all over the place in the past year or so due to global events, but in the past it often made sense to top up in late spring/early summer as prices tended to fall. Now I'm not so sure this is the case.

I always use an additive in the oil. I'm not convinced it makes a great deal of difference, but when I used to service our 30 year old + oil boiler myself, I was always surprised how clean the area around the combustion nozzle jet was. I stick with NBS Phoenix which I buy off Amazon. A £15 bottle treats 1250 litres of oil, so it isn't massively expensive. The additive also claims to help with sludge build up. When we needed to get our old plastic tank replaced 3 years ago, I was pleased to see how little sludge there was in the bottom of the tank.Perhaps this was just because we had received good quality deliveries, or perhaps the additive did make a difference. It may be a waste of money, but it hasn't done any harm, so I continue with it now we have a new tank and a new boiler.

If you get chance to view the property again, do have a good look around the tank to make sure there are no signs of impact damage or signs of leakage around the tank. You don't mention if it is a steel tank or plastic and if it has a single or double skin. Double skinned tanks are called bunded tanks. The idea with a bunded tank is that if the inner tank fails, then the outer tank will still contain the oil. 

One of the best things I bought a few years ago was an inline fuel consumption meter which has an analogue display showing the number of litres that have flowed through the pipe from the tank to the boiler. This in conjunction with a dip stick enabled me to satisfy myself that the meter was accurate and I can now keep a monthly check on how much oil we are using with reasonable accuracy. But a simple dipstick made from a broom handle is probably all you need to keep tabs on the oil level. Just be mindful though that if the tank isn't rectangular, or a vertical cylinder, the level will not drop at a constant rate as the oil is consumed. A horizontal cylindrical shaped tank will drop quicker when the oil is near the top or bottom of the tank, and slowest when the oil is at the halfway point. If you know the make and model of the tank, some tank suppliers will provide you with a calibration chart to show the volume of oil ata given height from the base. Really handy for calibrating the dipstick!  

Apodemus

Just to add to the wisdom above, if you don't know how clean your tank is, it is probably good practice to switch the boiler off when the tanker arrives and give it a couple of hours to settle before switching it back on.  That's easy to say but more difficult in practice, as your oil supplier might only give you a vague time for delivery - along the lines of "in the week of the 9th January".

I'd also advise that you should learn how to bleed the oil pump, so that if you ever run out of oil completely, you can get it back up and running without needing to call out an engineer. 

Ebe_Scrooge

In addition to the good advice already given ....

In terms of monitoring the level, I use a good old garden cane.  We used to have a Watchman electronic monitor, but when it stopped working I switched to a garden cane - far more reliable, and just as accurate.

After a year or so, you'll get a feel for how much oil you use, so can budget accordingly.  Just keep a spreadsheet of when and how much you order.

When you order, the minimum quantity is usually 500 litres, but you'll get a cheaper price-per-litre if you order 900 or more.  The price will vary daily, but usually it's cheaper in the summer and more expensive in winter (basic supply and demand).  Depending on the size of your tank and your usage, if you're able to time it to avoid buying in the winter then that's great.  In practice, this will probably be unlikely.

Always shop around.  Find 6 or 8 local suppliers, and give them each a call when you're looking to buy.  The price difference between one supplier and another can be quite substantial, and the cheapest supplier one time will very often not be the cheapest next time.  Most of them will haggle and match or beat other quotes you've been given.

Most suppliers offer a direct debit scheme.  Don't go for this, as you're then tied into one supplier.  Instead, put money aside each month into a savings account, and use this when you need to place an order.  If you can earn a bit of interest on it as well, that's a bonus

How much to save every month?  You'll get a decent idea of this after your first few fill-ups, and obviously will depend a lot on the size of the property and your usage patterns.  We put aside £100 each month and that seems to pretty much do us, give or take.  But the price does vary enormously - we paid 26 ppl at the start of the pandemic, and 85 ppl a couple of months ago.  That's a big difference when you're buying 1000 litres.

But to get a starting point, ask the previous occupants how much they used.  Your usage patterns may very well be different to theirs (are you in all day and need the heating on all day, or just a couple of hours each morning and evening?), but at least it'll give you a rough idea to start off with.  You can look on Boilerjuice to get a rough idea of the current price, and start working out a budget from there.  Although, in the 15 years we've been using oil, I've never once found BoilerJuice to be the cheapest, local suppliers have always been cheaper - sometimes by a very substantial margin.

Anyhow, hope all this is of some help.

mark_cycling00

All good points

Another is learning the delivery times, reliability of different suppliers and which size of tanker can get down the lane to the tank. Most tankers seem to have a massive hose pipe - 250m is what I was told, but the tanker needs to get to within that distance and also get out again. Your neighbours will know. Also in England there's usually a 500litre minimum delivery.

Myself and others I talk to wish we had a bigger tank so we could fill it once in summer and it last through winter. 

There might be a volunteer-run oil buying club in the village too. This can be useful and the person who runs it will be a wealth of local knowledge and worth chatting to

Reed_Richards

Very few domestic oil boilers can modulate their output.  So unlike a gas boiler or an ASHP they are either full on or off.  There should be a manual setting on the boiler for the heating water temperature and to give your boiler the best chance of condensing and running with optimum economy that temperature should be set as low as you can cope with to keep your house warm enough.  That's going to differ according to how cold it is outside so you might even want to adjust the setting from time to time (or season to season).

If you end up with a modern heating controller, make sure it is set to Oil Boiler.  This setting may be a bit obscure and hard to find but it's worth reading through the instructions to find out where it is and make sure it is set correctly.  The setting will limit the number of cycles your boiler is allowed to make per hour to ensure it does not short-cycle.  

drsquirrel

Reed_Richards said:

Very few domestic oil boilers can modulate their output.  So unlike a gas boiler or an ASHP they are either full on or off.  There should be a manual setting on the boiler for the heating water temperature and to give your boiler the best chance of condensing and running with optimum economy that temperature should be set as low as you can cope with to keep your house warm enough.  That's going to differ according to how cold it is outside so you might even want to adjust the setting from time to time (or season to season).

If you end up with a modern heating controller, make sure it is set to Oil Boiler.  This setting may be a bit obscure and hard to find but it's worth reading through the instructions to find out where it is and make sure it is set correctly.  The setting will limit the number of cycles your boiler is allowed to make per hour to ensure it does not short-cycle.  

One thing you can do with the oil boilers though is change the jet (at your next service) to lower or raise the kw output. Not all boilers give you the choice, and the range varies.

We only use the oil boiler for certain rooms so our max kW draw is lower thus use smaller jets on the boiler.

Apodemus

drsquirrel said:

Reed_Richards said:

Very few domestic oil boilers can modulate their output.  So unlike a gas boiler or an ASHP they are either full on or off.  There should be a manual setting on the boiler for the heating water temperature and to give your boiler the best chance of condensing and running with optimum economy that temperature should be set as low as you can cope with to keep your house warm enough.  That's going to differ according to how cold it is outside so you might even want to adjust the setting from time to time (or season to season).

If you end up with a modern heating controller, make sure it is set to Oil Boiler.  This setting may be a bit obscure and hard to find but it's worth reading through the instructions to find out where it is and make sure it is set correctly.  The setting will limit the number of cycles your boiler is allowed to make per hour to ensure it does not short-cycle.  

One thing you can do with the oil boilers though is change the jet (at your next service) to lower or raise the kw output. Not all boilers give you the choice, and the range varies.

We only use the oil boiler for certain rooms so our max kW draw is lower thus use smaller jets on the boiler.

If you are changing the nozzle, do you not also need to change the baffle plates to correctly adjust for the heat output? 

lohr500

On our old boiler if you changed the nozzle, you also had to adjust the air inlet aperture to ensure the burner was getting the correct fuel/air mix ratio and hence the correct burn temperature and CO2 output levels.
You could also keep the existing nozzle size and adjust the fuel pump pressure to change the output, but again corresponding adjustments were needed to the air inlet.