Is natural gas cheaper to use than crude oil for home heating?
Your furnace doesn’t burn crude oil. It burns either #2 fuel oil or kerosene. If the tank is outside you probably use kerosene because #2 will gel at cold temperatures. If natural gas is available it is usually the least expensive way to heat. To reduce the cost of heating with oil, have the burner serviced once a year. Oil burners are at their most efficient when cleaned and serviced, then they start losing efficiency immediately. Once a gas burner is set up for maximum efficiency it doesn’t lose that efficiency. To figure out the costs of heating with different fuels use this simple formula: BTUs per gallon divided by price per gallon times efficiency of the heating system. This gives you the number of BTUs that you get from each dollar.
