Heating oil buying advisor
Tells you whether to buy now and how much, from your tank size and how full it is.
Your tank
Recommendation
Price history
What to do at other prices
The solver works out a target fill level for every price. Cheaper oil, fuller tank.
| If the price is | Fill to | Order |
|---|
What this does and does not do
It respects the buffer you set. Backtested over 40 rolling one-year windows across five regions, it never let the tank fall below your chosen minimum and never ran it dry. That is a guarantee about safety, not a claim of superiority: a simple "order 1,000 litres whenever you'd dip below the buffer" rule manages the same thing.
On cost it is a coin flip. Against that simple rule, held to the same buffer, it came out ahead in 23 of 40 windows (58%). Median outcome +£2 a year, mean −£7, best +£560, worst −£576. It loses most in sharply rising markets. Anyone promising reliable savings from timing heating oil purchases is overselling.
What it adds over the simple rule is sizing. Because each delivery carries a fixed £10 charge, it mostly says "fill right up when you do order", dropping to the 500 litre minimum only when oil is very expensive. Useful discipline — but on four years of data it is worth about nothing on average.
Prices are the cheapest quote published by BoilerJuice for a 1,000 litre order, refreshed daily, and are regional rather than local to you. Order costs assume a flat price per litre plus a £10 admin fee per delivery — an estimate, not observed data. Consumption is a seasonal average, not weather-driven.