When oil prices started up last winter, I started to panic. In three months’ time, we burned more than $1,600 in fuel oil.  At the end of January 2011, Mr. Oil Fill-Man appeared in my back yard (a scant 27 days after his last visit), to fill the tank – again.

“We’re taking 160+ gallons of fuel oil each time you come by,” I told him. “Is that normal for this area?”

“Yes M’am,” he replied. “In this neighborhood, every house I visit is taking between 150-200 gallons of heating oil.”

Talking with two of my neighbors, I’d found that they’d converted from old oil boilers (about the same age as mine), to high-efficiency tankless gas-fired boilers. Both neighbors told me that their heating bills had dropped from $500 – $600 a month to about $125 – $150 a month. Both were delighted with the new system and the new savings.

We’ve not yet seen the first winter with this fancy new system, but in the meantime, we had trouble finding someone to haul away the remaining 65 gallons of heating oil in the tank.

And then I discovered Allan. He arrived in a Dodge Ram truck and had all his tools and equipment ready to go. He used rags and small drop cloths and five-gallon buckets, and as promised, he pumped out the whole of it and didn’t spill a drop. Using a 75-foot hose, he was able to transfer the oil directly to a 275-gallon tank on his truck.

Allan is a mechanical engineer and watching him work was a pleasure. He was careful and meticulous and incredibly professional.

As we say in the internet world, I “highly recommend” Allan!  To contact him, write solar_guru@yahoo.com.

Allan poses in front of his "oil truck."

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To read about Aunt Addie’s mysterious murder, click here.

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