Ensuring that your home has access to enough heating oil can be a major concern for many homeowners during the cold months. Fortunately, there are fuel companies that provide their customers with fuel delivery services to ensure that they never run out of oil. Yet, if you have only recently purchased a home with a heating oil based system, you may need the following two questions about ordering heating oil answered:

What Does It Mean To Prepay For Heating Oil?

One of the great benefits of going through a fuel company is the ability to prepay in advance for your heating oil. In addition to ensuring that you never miss a delivery, this can also help you reduce the cost of keeping your system fueled. 

When you prepay for fuel, you are locking it in at the current market price. As a result, you will be protected from future price increases. While not every fuel company offers this service, most do, but you will need to check with each one individually to determine their rules governing minimum purchases and how far into the future the fuel can be reserved.

How Do You Know How Much Fuel Your Tank Needs?

Many new homeowners may have no idea how much fuel is needed to fill their storage tanks. While this information is available in the owner's manual, these documents are rarely transferred during real estate transactions. Fortunately, you do not have to guess when it comes to ordering your fuel.

Fuel companies are able to come to your home and calculate the amount of fuel that is needed to fill the tank. This is done by measuring the dimensions of the tank and using basic math to determine the volume of the storage tank. While you may think that this would be a simple task that you can do on your own, there are many different factors that you must consider. For example, most of these tanks have a spigot that is a few inches above the bottom of the tank, which can drastically complicate these calculations. As a result, you should leave this task to professionals whenever possible or else you may end up drastically under or over ordering fuel. 

Ordering heating oil for your home's furnace will become a routine task if you have recently purchased a home with this type of heating system. As a result, it is important for you to understand the benefits of prepaying for your fuel and how to determine the storage capacity of your tank to ensure that you get the most from your system.