Do you not find it varies with the weather, though? Our highest use was
8262, and lowest 5514, with an average of 6696 over 15 years.This is a big granite built house at 700', foot of the Cairngorms. In many ways it is wonderful, full of what estate agents are fond of calling original fixtures and fittings, but that includes Victorian single glazed sash windows etc. Walls are solid, 30+ inches thick, and cold.
I have been paying 250/month for several years now, and that seems to be on target for this year. There are two major variables, the weather and the price of oil, which was 16ppl when we first moved here, has been as high as 75ppl, but currently around 50ppl.
It isn't economically viable. Remember there may be a 15-30 minute optimum journey between customers since oil customers are by their very nature rural and isolated down narrow roads. That is why you can get a much better price (or used to be able to) with an "oil club". One journey to the village and something like 30000L dispensed saves the oil company a lot of travel time compared to 30x1000L or even worse 60x500L.
If your tank is too full to take the specified load the automatic cutoff should stop it before it overflows. But TBH I can't see that the 500L minimum order is ever a burden - most rural oil tanks are >1000L.
I saw one place where it had failed when house hunting. Oil tank in the cellar with the boiler running and 1" layer of kerosene on the floor. Very scary indeed even though the flash point isn't all that high.
Sadly not anymore capable even of that, and when I looked at the tank I couldn't find a sight tube or any way of checking the level. there is a thing indoors in a power socket but it only shows 4 bars on its grey lcd display so not much idea how that relates to litres.
Logic I s'pose would say that down to one bar there must be room for a half tank order.
TW
The tank should have a plate saying how much it holds. Fashion a crude dipstick, and calculate the approx. contents now. That will be a starting point for future reference. In general, the remote displays show ten or so bars. My tank still has a good supply even when it goes from two to one bar, but I wouldn't like to go down to zero, if it does in fact do that.
It is probably as 1/4's of a tank. They use a sonic level detector.
I suggest you get a proper Watchman wireless level sensor installed it gives approximate readings in tenths and a Red LED that flashes when you are down to the last 20% of capacity (there is some safety margin too).
I prefer the previous model with a numeric display.
They do a more expensive version which sounds an alarm if someone is stealing your oil too.
What's the tank capacity?
There are other brands, too. Mine is an Apollo, and it has lasted longer than the Watchman did.
Of course, thanks. Instead of fretting about it I could just put a decent meter in. Ta. TW
Now I know you are somewhere in the far frozen North but that seems excessive. Here in SW, two bed semi, I use maybe 1500 lt per year (CE in winter, HW only in summer), fill the 1,000 lt tank in summer, to up with
500 lt in DecJan/Feb when there is (a) room in the tank and (b) Boilerjuice email to say they have a good price today.
My Watchman shows 1-10 bars. I dont reley on it, I check the tank every week by putting a dipstick in the tank (black plastic folding surveyors
2m rule) and keeping a spreadsheet of the level.
I have noted in the past with a full household including 3 teenagers and the oil running HW, CH and Aga that we used as much as 10l/day. That would be mid winter in a 4 bed cottage type building, and much, much less in summer. Still a fraction of your 7000l/yr
That's why they won't. Not can't... our oil club isn't really any cheaper than 'phoning around.
We wanted to get a small amount as the oil tank is currently sitting on some slabs while the new man-cave is built (it gets its own room (1)) and didn't fancy the weight on a temporary support. It's OK though. If the weather had been better we wouldn't have needed any.
Current regs require you to have a bunded tank if it is going to be anywhere near water, or inside a building. I bet that was expensive!
Andy
Certainly, summer is about 1cm in the sight glass/week, winter 4 or 5 cm/week but a cold an' windy week will cause a spike to 8 cm or so.
I've not analysed the data that closely, just plot a few graphs, tank level and weekly useage.
Ah, 700' in the Cairngorms is proably similar to 1400' exposed on the North Pennines. Our walls are 12 to 15" thick random stone faces but rubble filled, so even the walls can be drafty! But at least once you've got those walls warm and can match the heat loss the massive thermal mass keeps the place cool in summer and warm in winter. We made the mistake of switching the heating off when we went away for a few days not long after moving in. Won't do that again, it took about
3 days to get the place back to comfortable.
That's a bit OTT. Once I was convinced it worked and the readings fell at a more or less predictable rate summer and winter I was content only to order more oil when the red LED is flashing. The odd time it has been a bit marginal when it decided to flash the week before Xmas.
Will come to us all.
As some one else said 4 bars is probably quarters, suggest that Google is your friend and feed any maker, model number etc into it or search images and see if you can find a picture on the same monitoring unit.
Same for the tank or measure it and do the maths, 1 l is 1000 cm^3.
Hum, that would be the one I unscrewed from the tank and carried indoors without the alarm going off...
Or the one that would randomly sound the alarm for no reason.
Not impressed... the level indicator was reasonable but I read the sight tube once a week and bung the reading into a spreadsheet that produces a projection (based on the last 4 or maybe 5 weeks useage) of when we are likely to get to the "re-order level".
Ther are no family rin locxal suppliers anymore. There are about 2 or three large oil comnies who bought up all teh inedpende3nts years ago although they still keep the 'brands'
Boilerjuice just subs out to them with about 1.5p a litre lift on top.
I used to get a quote ftom boilerjuice, them get the company to knock
1.5p off it..
I think a watchman shows about 10 bars in total is this it?
If so 4 bars is a bit less than half full.
Essentially when it's two bars its starts flashing then the tank is generally a couple hundred litres left in the tank.
At least. IME 90% order.
I think the watchman's battery tube died, after around 12 years and it was cheaper to replace the whole unity. The new one battery has died after about 6 years, but it only cost £3 at Boots to get a new battery.
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