Fuel Oil Heating...cost per month

[SeanSchade]

My house is officially on the market, and I have a tentative moving date of January 2nd! We're making a trip up there the week of December 10th to find a place to buy.

How much will a 1800-2500 sq.ft. house cost per month to heat with fuel oil? I know that's a wide size range, and a lot of factors like windows and insulation will apply, but what do you guys pay on average per month up there?

Thanks,
Sean

[SeanSchade]

Wow, lots of views, but no answers?

A friend of mine, who's not in NH, estimated that fuel oil could cost up to $700 per month. Is this realistic? I was thinking $200-$350 per month at the most.

[Nat F]

It's going to vary so widely due to insulation and window/draft issues that you've got to narrow it down a lot more.  I can give two examples, my current house is ~1700sq ft, 33 years old with original windows but well insulated otherwise, with forced hot water baseboards and oil fired domestic hot water.  The first few years we used set back thermostats and used 650-700 gallons of heating oil a year.  Now with two small children we keep it warm 24/7 and have used 850-900 gallons of heating oil each year the past two years.  Heating oil is approx $2.25/gallon last time I checked, and the vast majority of it is used during the winter.

About 10 years ago I had a small (~500 sq ft) apartment (1 of 4, 2 per floor) in a 100+ year old house with poor insulation and very drafty windows with gas heat and an ancient boiler.  During the winter my gas bill peaked at over $500 a month and came to about $3500 for the year I was there even though I only kept the heat as low as possible.   Needless to say I left that apartment as soon as my lease expired, but it should be an example of the wide range of heating expenses depending on the condition of the house as much or more than the square footage.

added - As a note - most companies offer plans to "level" your heating bill between the summer and winter, but I've never used that option.  A typical oil tank is 250 gallons, and depending on the weather you may get a delivery of 175-200 gallons every 45-60 days during the winter, so you could expect near $500 bills almost monthly.  The last five deliveries (a years worth) were in October, April, March, January & December.

-Nat

[SeanSchade]

Thanks Nat. I guess I need to plan for the worst. I'll definitely ask to see the utility bills of all of the houses we're considering buying. 

[Dreepa]

Yeah that is what we did.
I asked for 3 months in the summer and winter.
I ended up spending less in electric and in heating costs. (milder winter?  or maybe we just didn't turn the heat on as much)

[mvpel]

We cut our heating fuel bills by more than half - the house came with a measly R-19 in the attic, and drafty single-pane windows, which we remedied promptly.  We used less propane the entire second winter than we did from March to the end of the heating season our first months in the house.