Options for managing tenants heating oil tank

[Nathan Sherwood]

We have a multi family rental unit which uses oil for home/water heating.

Our tenants are responsible for purchasing their own heating oil.

We are trying to figure out a way to determine when/if our tenant is running out of fuel.

Our maintenance person has communicated that one unit has repeatedly run out of fuel, creating an increase service cost on their boiler.

I know there are WiFi options to meter usage. Unfortunately we do not pay for (or manage) WiFi for this property so that is not an option.

We don’t need to need to see a “live measurement” of the tank. We are simple looking for a documented method to determine if a furnace issue was the result of our tenant running out of fuel (thus sucking sludge into the system.

Any suggestions????

Nathan

[Frank Chin]

@Nathan Sherwood

We have rentals with oil tanks and tenants responsible for payment. We ran into problems with tenants having financial problems and ran out of oil, and the expense of fixing the system as a result. The tank had to be inspected and cleaned as oil dries in an empty tank and clog the pipes and furnace.

We had the tank auto refilled, the oil company sends me the bill, and I in turn bill the tenant. A little more work, doable, and safer in the long run. The tenant agrees to it and it's written into the lease.