If your home has oil heating, these simple tips will help you to keep the cost of heating oil down.
In association with Quicktanks
Summer 2023 may not have been the hottest of summers, and it won’t be long before we’re back into the chillier months of autumn and winter. Keeping your home warm is essential both for comfort and good health, but the cost of heating your home seems to be constantly increasing.
This is particularly true if your home has oil heating, as it isn’t covered by energy caps or subsidies. Around 1.5 million UK homes are heated by oil, and buying heating oil can represent a significant cost for these households.
Luckily there are various ways to keep the cost of heating oil down, so let’s look at how you can reduce the cost of heating oil.
Maintain your tank regularly
One of the easiest and most effective ways to reduce oil heating costs is to maintain your oil tank regularly. This will help it to run more efficiently, which cuts down the oil you need to keep your home warm.
So be sure to schedule regular inspections of your oil tank, which can help to prevent leaks and extend your oil tank’s life.
Replace your oil tank
Depending on the age and condition of your current tank, spending money on a new efficient oil tank from a company such as Quicktanks may save you money in the long run.
Modern oil tanks work more efficiently and have better insulation than older tanks. This means you don’t need to buy as much oil, which will cut the cost of your heating bills.
Invest in home insulation
Improving your home insulation is a very effective way to reduce the heating oil you need to get through the winter. Insulating your home cuts down the amount of heat lost through doors, windows and your roof, and that in turn reduces the cost of keeping your home toasty.
Insulation could involve anything from adding a draught excluder to your front door to insulating your loft or replacing your windows with more efficient double glazing.
Install a programmable thermostat
A programmable thermostat lets you set times for your heating to switch on and off. This means you can switch the heating off or set the thermostat to lower temperatures when you’re out of the house or overnight, so you only use heating oil when you really need to.
Some thermostats can also be controlled through an app on your mobile, allowing you to adjust the temperature remotely. This is really handy if you find that you’ll be getting home later than expected.
Shop around for cheaper oil
Finding the best heating oil prices used to be a time-consuming process that involved phoning or emailing a number of suppliers for their best pricing.
Luckily, you can now use online comparison sites to compare oil prices from a range of suppliers. They work along the same lines as the comparison sites that you might have used before for electricity prices or car insurance policies, and can make it a lot easier to save money on heating oil.
Buy heating oil in bulk
If you have sufficient storage capacity, you can save money by buying heating oil in bulk when the price of oil is low. If you don’t have enough capacity to bulk buy oil by yourself, you could consider setting up a group buying scheme with some of your neighbours.
Many suppliers will offer discounts on larger orders, so it’s worth asking neighbours who use oil heating if they’d like to combine their orders with yours to take advantage of these savings.
Although we may still get some decent weather this summer, now is the time to think ahead and prepare for the winter. You can reduce your winter heating costs with simple steps like regular oil tank maintenance, investing in insulation and making sensible buying choices to keep the cost of heating oil down.