Heating with Oil for Dummies

Oil-fired forced-air heating system

When we looked this morning, the thermometer at Antisocial Network HQ had dipped below freezing again and the furnace was running full bore. We use natural gas here, but several of us have lived at one time or another in homes heated with oil furnaces. That's why, when one of our research team spotted Brenda Priddy holding forth in a HomeSteady.com post about "Oil Used to Heat Homes,"¹ we took a closer look in hopes of learning something. Unfortunately, though, our two-time DotD winner dropped the ball... just as we expected.

According to Priddy,

"Many homes in the United States and other countries use oil to fuel their heating systems. These systems are used most in the northeastern part of the United States where it is consistently cold from October to March. However, many people do not know about these heating systems, what kind of fuel can be used or how much it costs. Knowing about all heating methods available can help you choose the right source.

Brenda got some of that right: lots of people use oil for heating, and – in the US – most of them are in the northeast. They use oil not because it's consistently cold, though, because natural gas can also be used where it's cold. They use oil because many of their heating systems were installed when oil was $3.00 a barrel and there was no ready supply of natural gas. But that's not what worried us about Priddy's introduction. No, what worried us was the line about "[choosing] the right source."

What could that mean, we wondered? So we read on to find that, according to Priddy,

"The three main types of oil used to heat homes include: kerosene, propane and crude oil."

Wait a minute, you idiot! What Brits call "kerosene" isn't really kerosene: real kerosene is jet fuel. What is actually used is called "heating oil" and it's the same thing as diesel fuel. Saying that crude oil is used to heat homes is just plain stupid, and propane? It's not "oil" at all: it's a gas.
Moving right along, Priddy displays an astonishing ignorance about heating systems with such twaddle as,

"There are many things to consider before installing a heating oil system. Although it may seem like a good idea to use a self-sustained system that does not rely on the city or electricity, there are drawbacks as well to this type of system."

Besides the questionable veracity of this statement, we're left wondering what a "self-sustained system" might be, or why one might "rely on the city" (presumably, a public utility...). And Brenda? it's highly unlikely that any modern oil furnaces – if they're even sold these days – operate without electricity.

Nope, the wealth of dumbassery sprinkled throughout Priddy's post is strong evidence that, once again, having an AA degree in English doesn't make you qualified to rewrite someone else's copy, especially if you don't understand it. On the other hand, all that does qualify you for the coveted Dumbass of the Day award.

¹ The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was   ehow.com/about_5575140_oil-used-heat-homes.html

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