About OilTankCharts
The chart taped to the boiler room wall is always a photocopy of a photocopy, and the one in the truck is worse. This site replaces them with charts you can read and print, and it tells you what they do not cover.
Who makes this
OilTankCharts is built by people who work in the heating oil trade and got tired of squinting at photocopied chart books. We dip tanks and read delivery tickets, and these are the questions real customers ask us in a normal week.
We publish under the site's name rather than anyone's personal byline. That is deliberate. Since you cannot judge the site by its author, we write the method down where you can check it: every chart says how it was computed and when, and every guide says where its numbers came from. When a question runs past what we can honestly answer, the page says so and tells you to call a licensed technician.
What you will find here
- Computed tank charts for the standard sizes, generated from tank geometry. See where the numbers come from.
- Free calculators for odd tank sizes, burn rate, and days of oil left. Everything runs in your browser.
- Plain guides to gauges, tank sizes, K-factor, and when to order.
How the charts are made
We generate the steel and fiberglass charts from nominal tank geometry at 231 cubic inches per gallon. The Roth charts are built from Roth's own published fill levels, with the inches between those levels filled in. Every chart is dated and versioned so you can tell which revision you printed. Charts are estimates. Real tanks vary by manufacturer and age, and your tank's data plate wins over anything on this site.
Where we can compute a chart we do, instead of copying one. A scanned chart book carries whatever errors it was printed with, and a photocopy adds its own. Geometry does not drift. We also print the known reading problems with the charts instead of leaving you to find them: a tank pitched a quarter inch per foot toward the outlet reads slightly differently end to end, a tilted tank reads high or low depending on which end the fill sits over, and a curved fill pipe can stop a stick before it reaches the bottom.
What this site will not do
We do not quote fuel prices, compare dealers, or take orders. Prices change daily and by region, so any number we posted would be stale. We also do not sell tanks, gauges, or oil. Where a page does link to a product, we label the link and say plainly that we do not test products hands-on. Several pages carry no product link at all, because the honest answer there is to call a licensed technician.
Corrections
If a chart disagrees with your tank's data plate, the data plate is right and we want to hear about it. The same goes for a guide that is wrong, a tank size we have missed, or a number that does not match what your gauge shows. Send a correction or a question to contact@oiltankcharts.com.
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