farewell to oil on the horizon
13 DECEMBER 2010
Some coincidence. I’ve been running the dregs of the 275-gallon oil tank while plumbing together the new gas boiler. Pipes and fittings are strewn methodically about the basement, wires here and there, and time is NOT on my side when the outside temperature drops to 12 deg F, as it did for a couple days last week. The funny thing is, there’s really no good way to tell the level of #2 fuel oil in that tank once it gets below about 50 gallons. Basically I’ve been looking at an empty sightglass for a month now, with no real idea how much was left.
So, it turns out, Sunday morning that the house was warm, but when I went for a morning rinse, the water was only a medium warm temperature, rather than hot. This meant that the indirect-fired (hydronically heated by the boiler, through a heat exchange coil) hot water tank was not hot because the boiler was not firing. The boiler was not firing, because the tank was empty. Appropriately it turns out we had made it just a couple days past the end of Hannukah with what we had in the tank on May 28.
The gas company is coming tomorrow to throw the switch, but in the meantime, this is me on Sunday night putting a little diesel in the tank. Let’s call it eight gallons for the road...
Some coincidence. I’ve been running the dregs of the 275-gallon oil tank while plumbing together the new gas boiler. Pipes and fittings are strewn methodically about the basement, wires here and there, and time is NOT on my side when the outside temperature drops to 12 deg F, as it did for a couple days last week. The funny thing is, there’s really no good way to tell the level of #2 fuel oil in that tank once it gets below about 50 gallons. Basically I’ve been looking at an empty sightglass for a month now, with no real idea how much was left.
So, it turns out, Sunday morning that the house was warm, but when I went for a morning rinse, the water was only a medium warm temperature, rather than hot. This meant that the indirect-fired (hydronically heated by the boiler, through a heat exchange coil) hot water tank was not hot because the boiler was not firing. The boiler was not firing, because the tank was empty. Appropriately it turns out we had made it just a couple days past the end of Hannukah with what we had in the tank on May 28.
The gas company is coming tomorrow to throw the switch, but in the meantime, this is me on Sunday night putting a little diesel in the tank. Let’s call it eight gallons for the road...
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A close one! Brinksmanship, it is sometimes called. But I don't think I've ever seen that term applied in this kind of situation. The intersection of bitter cold and no fuel. It takes guts. I hope the new system is up and running.
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