Home buying can be a fun time full of important choices – where to live, what type of home to buy, and how big the home should be, to name a few. But one of the most important considerations when it comes to choosing your new forever home is one that many people overlook: how the home is heated.

A heating system will have a big impact on your quality of life: not only will it affect your family’s comfort in the winter, but it will also affect your monthly home budget –sometimes dramatically.

Here in the Mid-Atlantic, we are fortunate to have many options for heating our homes, including natural gas, propane, and electricity. But one option offers unique advantages that other heating options struggle to match: heating oil.

Why Heating Oil?

Why choose a home that uses heating oil over other alternatives? Here are eight important reasons:

• Efficiency – Many of today’s oil-fired furnaces and boilers boast efficiency percentage ratings well into the 90s; combine that efficiency with the high burning temperature of heating oil (see #2) and you’ll quickly understand why heating oil delivers more heating bang for your buck.
• Real heat! – Put your hand over the vents in a home heated by an electric heat pump and you’ll be surprised at how cool the air feels. Natural gas- and propane-fired heaters produce hotter air, but when it comes to pumping out the BTUs, nothing beats good old-fashioned oil heat. Heating oil burns 300 degrees hotter than natural gas, which means your home will heat faster and you’ll need to burn less fuel to stay comfortable.
• Safety – Unlike natural gas or propane, heating oil will never explode. In fact, heating oil does not even burn in a liquid state – it must be vaporized and heated to 140 degrees in order for combustion to occur. Heating oil is also free of cancer-causing agents, meaning it is safe to store within your home.
• Abundant supply – During the winter, high demand for fuel can strain supply for natural gas – but that will rarely happen with heating oil.
• Value – Adjusted for inflation, today’s heating oil prices are about the same as they were in the mid-1970s, making heating oil a bargain in the home energy game.
• Eco-friendliness – Clean-burning oil? You bet. Today’s ultra-low sulfur heating oil (ULSHO) burns 95 percent cleaner than heating oil did 50 years ago. Clean burning fuel also means longer lasting equipment (see below).
• Equipment longevity – With proper maintenance, today’s oil-fired heating furnaces and boilers can last 30 years or more – significantly longer (sometimes twice as long) as systems powered by natural gas or propane. Today’s double-walled heating oil storage tanks last longer than propane tanks, too.

The bottom line: Look for the heating oil gems when shopping for your dream home –and once you sign on the dotted line, choose Q-Dog for the best value and most reliable heating oil deliveries in our Maryland service area!