Thanks for the responses.
So… approximately 1000 gallons per year. Average price per gallon, delivered? I’m guessing between 3 and 4 bucks a gallon?
I owned the house from 2001 to 2018 (and really regret selling it). So prices of heating oil varied with the oil markets. As I recall it was as low as $1.75 and as high as $4/gal during that time.
And if you think back, it wasn’t an inexorable march up kind of thing. There were spikes and gluts during that time.
It’s a little rough because you can get a big hit all at once, but averaged out it was $2-4,000/yr, or $167-$330/mo
Again, a modern 2x6 house with good insulation, in an area where at least a few times per year we’d see temps around 0F (and occasionally -15F)
Edit: This was alluded to, but not addressed upthread. My oil guy once explained to me that they have software that “learns” your house. Initially you call and get deliveries, but after a few times the sw calculates that for every X degrees below 70, you use Y gallons per day. If you’re on automatic delivery, the sw just tells the operator you’re due.
That’s a surprising amount of oil. We use about 1000 gallons of propane a year in MT in a 2300 foot house with a 3000 foot garage/workshop/exercise space. We keep the house at 68 and the garage at 50. South facing, so although it’s 0F outside as we speak the house is 77F, so that helps…
Yup, mine is 275 (in theory, I think they actually fill it to about 250) gallons and that’s how the fill setup works. I think it might cut off automatically like a gas pump but I’m not sure.
I think you can get significantly bigger ones if you’re someplace that’s hard to get at in bad weather; but I don’t know whether I read about some people having larger ones or whether that just seems logical to me.
If there’s been a lot of snow, you’re supposed to clear out around your fill pipe and clear a path to it from wherever they can get the truck to; as well as of course clearing your driveway unless maybe your house is right by the street. The truck’s got quite a long hose, as not everybody’s fill pipe is right by their driveway; but while the driver expects to have to pull the hose around, they don’t expect to have to clamber through snowdrifts to do so.
Depends a lot on the house, and not only on the square footage: depends also on how tight the house is, how much insulation it has, and how warm the people in it have to be to be comfortable. I have about 1800 square feet of 1800’s farmhouse; it has a whole lot more insulation than it did when I moved here (and it had more when I moved here than it did when it was built), but it still has very leaky windows. I get about 3 refills a year but the tank’s never super close to empty when they refill it; so generally less than 500 gallons a year – but I also burn quite a bit of firewood. I set the oilburner to 62ºF and in cold weather turn it up to 68ºF when I come downstairs in the morning (I now have a thermostat that could turn it up at a set time, but I don’t always get up at the same time or know just when I’m going to get up so I don’t use that function.) Then I feed the wood stove and once between the two of them the house gets up to 68º I turn the furnace back to 62 and unless I go somewhere so I’m not feeding the stove for quite a while it won’t go back on till the small hours of the morning, unless it’s unusually cold out. The oilburner actually runs more in warmer weather, because if it’s warmer than about 45º the wood stove overheats the house if I keep it going; but if the weather’s in the 50’s or low 60’s I do want some heat, so then I’ll run the furnace and not the stove.
The far corners of the house may be pretty chilly. Near the woodstove it’s quite warm. I move around from time to time, adjusting my personal temperature by distance from the stove. I like it that way.
– sorry about the wall of text. Feel free to ignore.
Not at all; it’s a fascinating glimpse into a whole 'nuther world.
Yeah, I always clear a path and lay down some salt when I know they’re coming. As I noted in the OP, one of the delivery guys at our oil place fell on a driveway and broke his arm, so it’s certainly dangerous.
I couldn’t open the top of my tank, by the way, even using WD-40 on the fill cap. I ended up pouring the diesel in at the fill pipe from a 5-gallon container, crouched over in 10-degree weather. Definitely a tough thing to be doing all day.
Aha! we “bled” the lines. I just remembered.
Bleeding the line after running out of oil is very important. Sludge from the bottom of the tank has already entered the line to the burner and if not cleaned it will clog the nozzle. Recommendations vary but you need to drain more oil after adding some because sludge gets stirred up. And you may want to change your filter if it hasn’t been done recently.
Yes I’m aware. Though we haven’t lived there in well over 35 years. Last I drove by, it had a propane pig out back. I assume bleeding and sludge are no longer issues. 
One of my rental houses uses LP.
I own the tank so I can pick any supplier but have stuck with the same supplier since I took over the LP aspect of the house. I have a great driver and since I am a loyal customer he checks my tank as part of his route so I don’t need to worry about the fuel level. And in the event of a price spike on LP he will try to avoid filling the tank until the price comes down. He will also let the tank run down or do a partial fill toward the end of winter so we can take advantage of the “summer fill” when prices are lower. The company itself allows us to contract a certain number of gallons in the late summer/fall that we prepay at that price. For the few cents we would save by jumping around to different suppliers it just isn’t worth it for the piece if mind along with the good service we are currently receiving.
We do have an addendum in the lease about the average number of gallons used and if they think they can keep the house like a sauna because heat is included in the rent they will be assessed a surcharge. We did have the tenants pay for LP when we first started renting it out but found most people can’t grasp the idea that (for example) unlike in-town living where you have 12 monthly bills of $50-150 for NG, with LP you may have 3-4 payments over the course of the year ranging from $200 to $600. Then, despite reminders to check the tank level (like when you pay rent) they let the tank run out and need an emergency fill which is quite costly. Just easier for us to handle it. Plus we would have to buy what was in the tank and sell it to the new tenants.