There’s a lot of information and opinions about how to heat your home these days. Cost, efficiency, and the environment should all influence any choice you make. When it comes to the environment, oil heat has gotten a poor reputation, but what most people don’t know is that heating oil, like people, can change. The heating oil we deliver to homes across central long island today burns so cleanly, and produces such negligible emissions that the Federal Clean Air Act doesn’t even regulate it anymore.
Over the last few decades, technological advances in the way heating oil is refined have resulted in ultra-low sulfur heating oil that burns 95% cleaner than it did in the 1970s. In fact, ultra-low sulfur heating oil has been mandated in New York since 2012. But this clean-burning fuel that’s better for the environment offers plenty of benefits for customers, too. The quality of the oil in your tank has a big impact on how efficiently your system runs, how long your equipment lasts—and how much fuel you need to burn to keep your home comfortable. When you need to burn less fuel to stay warm and comfortable, it’s great for your wallet, too.
Oil heat has always been more cost-efficient than natural gas in terms of Btu content. And today’s cleaner oil burns even more efficiently—helping to keep heating costs down even more. You need to burn about 40% more natural gas to receive the heating equivalent of oil heat. Ultra-low sulfur heating oil also opens the door to super-efficient heating systems, which can increase the advantages of heating oil over natural gas even more. The Energy Research Council/Brookhaven National Laboratory found fuel savings as high as 48.3% when outdated equipment is replaced with a new, high-efficiency boiler.
Cleaner fuel also protects your investment in your oil heating equipment and helps it last longer. Less sulfur means less build-up in your equipment and your storage tank. That translates to fewer breakdowns and lower maintenance costs for you.
With good maintenance, the average heating oil-fueled boiler or furnace should last around 30 years. That’s nearly double the lifespan of a typical gas furnace. Heating oil-fueled water heaters also boast faster recovery rates. That means a unit powered by oil will heat your tank of water up to twice as fast as a water heater powered by natural gas, and more than three times as fast as an electric-powered water heater.
With oil heat, your fuel is delivered on schedule right to your home or business. Other power sources are not as reliable. As our grid is strained by more and more demand, electricity is becoming less reliable—summer power issues caused by peak demand will soon be seen in winter, too, in addition to outages caused by severe weather and downed wires. Natural gas customers don’t enjoy much better security, either. Any time of year, pipeline deterioration, cold weather, or accidents result in natural gas service disruptions. When underground natural gas pipelines are damaged, hundreds and even thousands of customers may lose their supply until repairs are finished. You could be hours, or even days, without the gas you need to heat your home.
Learn more about the benefits of heating your Nassau or Suffolk County home or business with ultra-low sulfur heating oil from Southville. Contact us today.