Fuel Oil in -4 temps

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Hello, While I was away in october my inlaw who was house sitting ordered me a delivery of what was supposed to be kero and was oil! I found this out the hard way.... no heat this morning! It was -4 deg out. I have a half tank of oil left. What can I do?!

Andrew
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Andrew I'm no expert but let me offer up a few suggestions. First and foremost ya need to get that furnace running before the water pipes freeze solid..if they haven't already. Is yours a 1 line system or a 2 line system? How many lines going to/coming from the furnace? In either case a short term bypass is to pick up a 5gal kerosene can and disconnect the lines from the tank..insert them into the 5gal. can full'a kerosene. You'll probably have to bleed the air out of the system and hit the reset button in order for it to draw kerosene from the 5gal. can. Mind you..this is only a temporary fix.

Next up..locally the fuel oil companys try to sell us on a 50/50 mix of kerosene and heating fuel. Since your tank is already half empty I wonder if topping the tank up with K-1 kerosene might help. Don't know for sure. Most likely the filter is going to be jelled up as well and will need cleared and replaced. The other option is to drain the tank..hopefully it has a bottom valve that will allow you to do so. If not then you may have to call the fuel oil supplier and have them come out and pump the tank out and refill it properly.

Finally get some of them big mailbox stick-on letters and post them right on the tank. K-1 Kerosene only! This couldn't happen at a worse time..eh? Audie..the oldfart...
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used to run #2 in cold weather. The tank had a bottom supply line and a top return. I used to keep a heat tape on the filter and line exposed outside to prevent the gel problem. I also had a system that I installed the oil filter assembly inside next to the furnace.

Fill up your tank with #1. Hopefully it will defrost the oil that is in there now. There is a BTU and cost difference between #1 and #2 oil. I always liked to use #2 for better economy.

When I ran the service company we always had a oil fired torpedo heater so we could fire it up and put a lot of heat on the frozen/geled tank and lines.

hvac1000
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Andrew, those are about the only 2 practical options, the other 2 are, dump the rest of the tank and refill w/Kero or wait for warmer weather. I think I would try topping off w/ Kero. myself. Greg
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