Waste Oil Heaters: How Much Waste Oil Do They Burn?
One of the most common questions about waste oil heating is about how much waste oil is needed to run a unit and about whether waste oil heaters are really the most economical way to heat your shop or home.
Waste oil heating can be a great solution for those who have an easy supply of free waste oil available, but if you are going to have to pay for transportation costs or have to purchase the waste oil it may not be as economical as some other heating sources, such as wood.
A survey of a lot of waste oil heater owners about how much waste oil they really use shows that a waste oil heater can burn through quite a bit of oil on a daily basis. One customer who uses a 260 BTU unit at his shop stated that it goes through about 40 gallons a day. For him, the oil was free, and he stated that it was quite easy and free and that the main consideration was making sure that the filters were kept clean and that he kept an eye on all the gauges to make sure nothing was out of order.
Another user of a Lenair waste oil heater who had a 300K BTU unit in his shop stated that his waste oil heater burned on average 2-4 gallons an hour. In the end, he decided that natural gas was an easier heating source. For him, the costs involved in acquiring waste oil actually exceeded natural gas in his area.
Of course, how much waste oil you burn through is largely dependent on how cold it is your area and how much you need to use your heater. Another owner stated that he used a waste oil furnace to heat a shop of 80×250 ft, and although he agreed that a unit “can” use up to 20-30 gallons of oil a day if you are using it consistently, his company rarely needed to use it more than 20 minutes at a time to heat the work space. In the end, he estimates it saves his company nearly $8,000 a year in heating costs.
In our survey, we found that many business that had oil surplus benefited the most from having a waste oil heater in their work shop space. A lot of these businesses were car repair shops and similar, where oil from oil changes and engine repairs were stored in a tank throughout the year, and then burned during the colder months. We found far fewer people using these units for residential heating costs.
