Oil Central Heating

[panelbeater]

heating oil will run in diesels but it needs some extra lub added.it smells different as well.when i sign for mine it states that i will not use it for road use.

 

[Lazy-Ferret]

my friends oil tank has a glass/plastic tube on it with a ball which floats.
I always worry that the clumsy fool will catch the tube and rip it out.
He hasnt yet so i guess theres still plenty of time!:doh

At my old house, I had oil, and because the housed were rented, the next doors oil tank was in my garden next to mine. We always got them filled at the same time, as we only had to pay one delivery charge, and as the houses and heating systems were identical, we used pretty much the same amounts of fuel.

The gauge was a clear pipe inside a slotted aluminium tube that ran from the bottom of the tank, up to the filler cap, but there were no markings on it. The first time we filled it, we marked the fill point with a cable tie, but after that it was guess work to work out how much was left/needed. I tended to just tell the driver to fill it up, and we paid for that amount, as it was impossible to guess it accurately, even when you thought you only needed 1000l, it would often be 1200l, or 1300l, as the top half seemed to be bigger than the bottom half, if you get my point.

I went out one time after they had been filled, and the tanker driver had ripped the tube off it's mounting at the top, luckily it fell against the fence, so I just made up a better mounting, and protected it a bit better. Luckily, I made a complaint to the delivery company, about how their driver should have checked the gauge when he replaced the filler cap, and it was lucky it never fell sideways onto the floor. They sent a bit of a grovelly letter back not really apologising, but basically saying that they had some form of "Duty of care" to make sure the tank was safe and leak free to the best of their ability both before and after filling. They did also say they would talk to the driver. Since there was no harm done, I let it go..

The next time we filled up, I was away on holiday. When I got back 2 weeks later, my garden was gone...

Basically the driver had done the same to next doors tank, only the pipe had nothing to fall against, and fell right over, draining the entire 2000l tank into my garden. The environment agency came round with tipper trucks, and took away all the soil from my garden, and handed the landlord a £60K bill....

He did eventually get it back from the insurance/delivery company, after an 18month battle, as luckily I counted as an independent witness, and as I had complained about he driver breaking my tank the time before and had the letter from them, it was eventually found in our favour.

Strange thing was, our oil prices soared after that, and we had to find a new company that would deliver to us...:doh

 

[rustic]

If you have a sight glass, or tube, having say 10 points would be good.
Ask the driver to fill it and stop after say every 100 litres, mark the gauge, or have a white strip behind it, so it looks like a thermometer lol

You can guess the points in between. If you have a rectangular tank, the sight glass would be linear, but if round, like a road tanker, would be mathematically, based on sine rules. but domed ends would make it more difficult to calculate.
If oval.... not that easy to calculate, so best done as it is filled.
To be very accurate, you could mount the tank on load cells, zero it when empty, calibrate it in Litres rather than kgs.
If the tank is of linear horizontal cross section, you could use just one load cell at one end, and mount the other side on two pivot points. When I worked in the Weighing Industry, this is how we weighed milk in Stainless steel vessels.
The fuel line wound have to be flexible, and horizontal to help prevent creating errors lol.
However... as you are really weighing the diesel, the real number of litres would depend on temperature, as the warmer it gets, it expands so you would need to consider that lol.

 

[solarman216]

all modern tanks with a sight tube have a push button valve at the bottom, the sight tube holds the last display, push it today and it will drop to the current level or rise if you have had a delivery, solves the problem of damaged tubes, Rick

 

[Kevrob9]

so I did dip the tank and it is over a quarter full. so the gauge is useless.
The plumber comes round Monday to turn the system on so I can finally let my family have the heating on.
Question now is 3 bed house in the south of france, oil used just for heating as hot water is separate. How long would I expect 500 litres to last?

 

[Mobieus_uk]

Im going to make and assumption that 3 bedroom house would be around a 30kw boiler
30kw boiler burns around 3ltrs per hour of oil
so very roughly you have about 150hrs running time or 6 days worth if your boiler was firing constantly and was 90% efficient
if we say its on for approximately 5 hours across the course of a day then then it should last 30days, this is a very rough ballpark figure as depending on how efficient your boiler is, it could be as high as 90% or as low as 40%
best bet is look at last years bills and hope the weather is the same

 

[Kevrob9]

Im going to make and assumption that 3 bedroom house would be around a 30kw boiler
30kw boiler burns around 3ltrs per hour of oil
so very roughly you have about 150hrs running time or 6 days worth if your boiler was firing constantly and was 90% efficient
if we say its on for approximately 5 hours across the course of a day then then it should last 30days, this is a very rough ballpark figure as depending on how efficient your boiler is, it could be as high as 90% or as low as 40%
best bet is look at last years bills and hope the weather is the same

30 days?? it cost me 330 Euros

it is a brand new system how can I find out what KW the boiler is??

 

[rustic]

30 days?? it cost me 330 Euros

it is a brand new system how can I find out what KW the boiler is??

The boiler specification will show litres per hour at full whack, so check it out on the internet, or ask the installer.

Consumption depends so much on everything else, outside temperature, what inside temperature you want, number of radiators, how well insulated the house is, roof insulation, cavity wall, double glazed, under floor.
Whether you want the heating on 24/7

I doubt the boiler will ever run continuously, it will have a duty cycle, eg on for 10 minutes, off for 40, not on at night etc...
Then the boiler on average will only be using 5-10% of it's capacity over any 24 hour period. ... All guesstimates of course as we have no specific information.
Rustic

 

[jonela]

All good advise but unfortunately most people on here won't understand the quirks of French central heating systems. I bet the garage where your boiler is looks like the inside of a submarine,with 1 1/2" and 1" pipes going all over and a boiler the size of a small car .:doh It will have an external burner and most French oil tanks are in the cellar or garage.Unless it is new or has been serviced regularly if will use quite a lot more fuel than a modern boiler espetialy if the house is not well insulated. This is why when oil went to 1000€ for 1000lt back in 2008 I switched to electric central heating YES! but you have to remember it is nearly all nuke here and that makes it cheep, roughly half what it is in the UK.

 

[Kevrob9]

All good advise but unfortunately most people on here won't understand the quirks of French central heating systems. I bet the garage where your boiler is looks like the inside of a submarine,with 1 1/2" and 1" pipes going all over and a boiler the size of a small car .:doh It will have an external burner and most French oil tanks are in the cellar or garage.Unless it is new or has been serviced regularly if will use quite a lot more fuel than a modern boiler espetialy if the house is not well insulated. This is why when oil went to 1000€ for 1000lt back in 2008 I switched to electric central heating YES! but you have to remember it is nearly all nuke here and that makes it cheep, roughly half what it is in the UK.

yes the garage looks a little like you described but the boiler is small and brand new, the oil tank looks pretty old.

new double glazing has been installed
not sure about the insulation
landlords tells me there are 2 roofs, as when we lost some tiles in a storm he said dont panic there is another roof under that one!!!

 

[Kevrob9]

here is a coupleof pics

 

[Kevrob9]

pic 2