If it's not one thing, it's another

Well, we fixed the heat and got a shiny new thermostat. We thought we were done. But the house had other plans. It seems our oil tank is on the fritz...

Last month when we got our regular oil delivery, we noticed they only filled about 5 gallons - much less than we needed. When we called, the heating company did not know what the problem was and assured us that they would fill it to the top next time. We thought maybe the truck was out of fuel or something.

Fast forward to last Friday. We had another scheduled delivery and this time, D happened to be home. The delivery guy rang the doorbell and said that we had a problem.

First, a review of how oil fill-ups work (I didn't know any of this until this weekend) - the giant fuel hose hooks into the black pipe and dispenses oil. The other pipe to the right lets out air from the tank as it's filling with fuel. It should whistle. When it stops whistling, there is no more air in tank and that means it is full. So this time around (and, presumably, the last time as well), when the delivery guy started filling up the fuel, there was silence. No whistle. That should mean that the tank is full, which it clearly isn't after two months of use.

This can mean a couple of things - the easiest and cheapest problem would be that the whistle is just broken. The hardest is that there is something wrong with the tank. Somewhere in the middle is the possibility that there is something wrong with the pipe connecting the two.

The pipe leaves the tank and immediately becomes embedded in concrete...ugh...

So this could mean busting up part of the wall in the basement, depending on what the repair folks can figure out about the problem. It will certainly mean getting into the crawl space to look around. Right now we are on about a quarter tank of fuel so the situation is not yet dire. They first said they would come on the 14th but we asked them to please squeeze us in sooner and they are coming on Tuesday. Hopefully whatever the problem is, they can fix it quickly.

While we were getting our heating pipes fixed, the repairman tried to sell us on the joys of gas. Our neighborhood already has it, so we would just need to connect to the pipe in the street. Still, it wouldn't be cheap, or easy. And while it would mean some added benefits like being able to buy a gas stove, I'm still not sure it is worth it.

At least for now, we are stuck with having to fix the tank, since any switch to gas would take a lot longer than we have fuel - I assume it's usually something to do once the heat is off for the year.

In related news, our Nest has now learned how incredibly slowly our house heats up. We usually drop the temperature during the day while we are gone, and have it set to be back up to a more comfortable temperature when we come home. When I got home a few hours early last week, I learned that bumping it up just 1 degree takes the house 45 minutes! Yikes!