How to Read Your Home’s Oil Tank Gauge

If you use heating oil to keep your home here in our service area of Sullivan, eastern Ulster and northern Orange counties, you need to know how much heating oil is in your heating oil tank.

This knowledge is especially vital if you’re not a Resnick Energy automatic heating oil delivery customer. You need to regularly monitor your heating oil tank gauge so you can contact us and schedule a heating oil delivery before you run low and risk a run-out.

Let’s walk through how you check the gauge level on your heating oil storage tank.

1. Look at the top of your oil tank. There is a clear plastic tube or cube with markings on the outside and a red marker or float inside of it.
2. The markings are like what you see on the fuel gauge in your car: F, ¾, ½, ¼, etc.
3. Where is the red marker or float in relation to the markings? Whichever marking it is on or near is about how much heating oil is in your tank.
4. The most common size of heating oil tanks is 275 gallons. However, a 275-gallon oil tank doesn’t actually hold 275 gallons of heating oil. The actual capacity of a 275-gallon oil tank is close to 225 gallons. The rest of the space inside the tank is for air or debris that collects at the bottom of the tank. That means if your heating oil tank gauge reads ½, you don’t have 140 gallons in your tank. You have about 110 gallons.
5. If the float is at the bottom of the gauge or is not visible, your heating oil tank is almost empty or actually empty. Call Resnick Energy right away to schedule an emergency heating oil delivery. We offer 24/7 emergency heating oil delivery, 365 days a year. And that emergency delivery is available to anyone in our service area, whether or not you’re a Resnick Energy customer.
6. A helpful fact to know is that an average 2,500-square-foot home uses about five to eight gallons of heating oil per day when the outdoors temperature is 32˚ Fahrenheit or below. So if your 275-gallon heating oil tank is at ¼ full, you have enough heating for maybe a week. Maybe. If it gets colder outdoors, or if you have a larger home, your heating system will use fuel oil faster. Keep that in mind when you request a heating oil delivery. We recommend not letting your tank gauge get below 30 percent full before scheduling a heating oil delivery.
7. Do you know if your heating oil tank gauge is working properly? Check by carefully removing the outer case, then gently pressing the float down. If it goes back to its original spot, the gauge is working. If it doesn’t, contact us and we’ll check it out.

Make managing your heating oil delivery easy by enrolling in automatic delivery. We monitor your heating oil usage along with the weather to accurately know when you’ll need more heating oil, and schedule a delivery to you before you run low.

Not only do you get peace of mind with automatic delivery, we give you a discount of 5 cents per gallon!

Looking for reliable heating oil delivery? Become a Resnick Energy customer!