Running out of heating oil is not a fun experience. You’ll often find yourself waking up to a cold house in the winter or finding that you’ve got no hot water in the summer. But don’t worry; while it is frustrating, it is easily fixable. In this article, I’m going to cover what to do when you run out of oil! In the below sections, I’ll be going over the following:
- Making sure that you’re out of heating oil
- Placing an Order for Heating Oil! This is important if you are in fact out of oil!
- Putting 5-10 gallons of diesel in to hold you over until your delivery
- Restarting your Burner
Making sure that you Definitely Out of Oil
Now, running out of heating oil isn’t the only reason for waking up to a cold house or lack of hot water. About two years ago, I woke up to a cold house and thought I was out of oil! So I checked my Smart Oil Gauge and it showed that I had 150 gallons left in my tank! So I contacted my local HVAC company and they inspected the tank and the furnace. Well, it actually tuned out to be a faulty starter on my furnace! My furnace’s starter was turning off the furnace at inopportune times! So we got it replaced and my system has been working great since!
But, that isn’t always the case. Sometimes you actually can run out of oil and this can be problematic. So it’s important to make sure that you’re actually out of oil. To do this, you’ll have to check your tank’s float gauge. These gauges only give a general idea of how much oil is in the tank and not an exact amount. Inside the clear cylinder for your float gauge, you’ll see a flat colored disc. That disc determines how much oil is in your tank. To determine if your tank has oil, you’ll simply just want to slowly push down on the disc. If the disc slowly comes back up, then good news! You have oil! But, if the disc just drops again, then you need to buy oil ASAP! If you have oil, you can skip ahead to step 4.
Scheduling an Oil Delivery
After determining that you have no oil in the tank, you MUST contact a heating oil company to place an order for oil. It is very important to get your tank filled as soon as possible to avoid damaging your system. You can use websites like FuelSnap to look at local dealers in your area! All you need to do is type in your zip code and see what dealers are available at what specific times and prices! Plus, we don’t charge emergency fees! Placing an order when you’re means that you’ll have a dealer available at the price shown on the app!
After placing an order through FuelSnap, you’ll get an email confirmation. This email confirmation will give you the dealers phone number and even the delivery by date! If you want to get a specific date and time, it’s always best to contact the dealer and they’ll even tell you what stop you are on the driver’s route!
Getting Diesel for your Tank
After you’ve placed your order for heating oil using FuelSnap or your local dealer, it’s important to ensure that you have heating oil in your system. You’ll need to go to your local gas station to get at least 5-10 gallons of diesel to get something to hold you over until you’re able to get a delivery. Diesel and Heating Oil are similar enough that you can use diesel in an emergency without long-term problems for you system. However, you cannot use diesel in a system that’s designed for heating oil. Diesel needs its own system to be used as a long-term heating solution.
You’ll want to start off by purchasing a yellow jug from the gas station and fill it with diesel. This is how you’ll be able to differentiate between gasoline, diesel and kerosene. Gasoline typically uses a red jug while kerosene uses blue.
Restarting Your Burner
Finally, it’s important to restart your burner because you might not be out of oil. If you wake up to a cold house, but you have oil in the tank then the issue will likley lie in your heating oil system. The problem could be related to an issue with the burner or possibly a clog in the feed lines. Both of those could cause problems for your system
If you stopped off at the gas station and got some diesel, it’s important to restart your system after putting the diesel in your tank. This is because your burner was deprived of oil for so long, restarting it will be beneficial to the system. Simply find your burner’s starter and press on the start button in the middle of it. Usually it looks translucent with a red light in the middle. After roughly fifteen seconds, you should hear your system come back on. If it doesn’t stay on, then there might be an issue with your system.
If it turns back off, you might need to bleed your feed lines. However, do not attempt this if you are not sure how to do this. It would be best to contact your local HVAC company and have them do it for you. After the lines have been bled, you can press the reset button again. But don’t do this more than two or three times. If all efforts fail, then you must contact an HVAC technician to inspect your tank and furnace.
Conclusion
If you run out of oil, it is not the end of the world. However, it is definitely a massive headache. Best case-scenario, you’ll simply just have to run to the gas station and get some diesel while you wait for a delivery. Using our FuelSnap website will help you in a pinch when you need heating oil ASAP!
However, sometimes there is a small chance as well that the issue could be related to the burner. There are an unfortunate few who have trouble with the burner which causes them to run out of oil. This could be due to a clog in the feedlines, an issue with the furnace something completley different.
You can prevent fear of running out by purchasing a Smart Oil Gauge! They are reliable and accurate, giving you a reading of how much oil is in the tank, what your usage is and much more! You can even set push notifications for the device to inform you when it’s time to replace the batteries and most importantly, when you need to order oil! There is even FuelSnap integration in the app! This will help you stay on top of your heating oil system before you run out!
Happy Heating,
Hunter
