Winter fill calculator
Worked example
200 gallons at $6.14/gal on will-call: $1228.00. Auto-delivery adds $0.05/gal: $1238.00. Cap programme adds a $0.30/gal cap fee non-refundable: $1288.00 ceiling exposure. Cold winter (+15% HDD): 230 gallons at $6.14 = $1412.20.
Gallons from sqft, our model
- 1,500 sqft, average insulation, IECC climate zone 5 (NY/MA/southern New England): ~637 gallons/season.
- 2,000 sqft, average insulation, zone 5: ~849 gallons/season.
- 2,500 sqft, average insulation, zone 6 (ME/NH/VT): ~1168 gallons/season.
- 3,500 sqft, average insulation, zone 6: ~1635 gallons/season.
Nobody publishes a gallons-per-sqft table, so this one is ours and the arithmetic is the whole of it: floor area times 50,000 BTU per sqft per season in zone 5 (or 55,000 BTU in zone 6), divided by 117,725 BTU of delivered heat per gallon. Change the BTU-per-sqft figure for your own house and redo it, and use last winter's invoices instead if you have them. For a published national reference point, EIA's Winter Fuels Outlook puts the average US oil-heated household at about 400 gallons a winter, below these Northeast bands. Full model and the EIA comparison.