Many factors can affect the consumption of heating oil in your heating system. Extreme winter temperatures can cause excessive use of oil, increasing your fuel costs. So, taking any measure to improve your heating system’s efficiency can help save money while reducing the environmental impact.

So what can you do to improve your oil-powered heating system? The following tips should help you in this regard.

Maintain Your Heating System

Make sure your oil heating system gets serviced at least once a year. As part of the service, the technicians should check the system for any existing or developing issues that can affect its operation, efficiency, and safety. Regular maintenance and inspection help ensure optimal performance and proactively avoid issues.

Thermostat Adjustment

It is recommended to adjust the thermostat. This can help maintain comfortable temperatures. For example, you can turn the thermostat slightly down at night and then back up in the morning can reduce the heating need. This helps preserve heating oil.

Install a Programmable Thermostat

Installing a programmable thermostat can further help save energy through automatic temperature adjustments around your schedule. Investing in a smart thermostat helps save both money and time. In fact, these modern thermostats can pay for themselves within a short span of time. These thermostats can also allow you to control your home temperature using your smartphone.

Keep the Vents Clear

Make sure the area around the vents and radiators is kept clear. This allows conditioned air to move freely around the space.

Regularly Bleed the Regulators

Any air that gets trapped inside the radiators can affect heat distribution. This can cause the oil heating system to work harder to achieve and maintain the desired temperatures. You should bleed the radiators at least once a year.

Change the Air Filters

Next, you should ensure the air filter is regularly checked, cleaned, and changed.  When the filter gets clogged, your oil furnace will have to work harder to keep your home warm. When your heating system has to work harder, it translates into faster and more aggressive wear and tear and increased heating bills.

Clean the Oil Heating System

There are both long-term and short-term benefits of regularly cleaning your heating system. Regular cleaning helps remove or prevent dust buildup. This further prevents pipes and tubes from getting clogged, resulting in improved system performance and reduced heating costs.

You can also take steps to avoid dust buildup inside the system. Every time you clean your home, you can clean your heating system’s housing. At the same time, it is important that the system’s interiors should be cleaned only by licensed professionals. You can get the system interiors cleaned as part of regular maintenance service.

Schedule an Energy Audit

An energy audit can help you determine the reasons why your heating system uses so much oil. Professional energy audits can help identify more and effective ways to reduce oil consumption while boosting heating efficiency. The inspections can also help identify areas where you may be losing heat or where energy wastage is occurring.

Besides these steps, you can further weatherproof the doors and windows to improve your oil heating system’s performance. It will further help make your home more energy efficient. You should weather strip and caulk around the windows. The space between the door and the threshold should be sealed. This will help in retaining warm air inside and eliminate drafts. If you have an older home or your home does not have storm windows, you should wrap the windows with plastic film insulation.