DEGREE DAY – AUTOMATIC FUEL OIL DELIVERY
With automatic deliveries you never need to worry about your oil tank again. Your tank will be kept filled based on a system called Degree Days. By using this Degree Day system in conjunction with a K Factor we can estimate the usage of your location and deliver fuel to you when you need it. In today’s busy world, it helps to have one less thing to worry about!
A degree day is simply a unit of measuring how cold (or hot) it has been over a 24 hour period. Whenever the average, (or mean) temperature is below 65°, you have a degree day. For example, if in a 24 hour period the high outside temperature was 70° and the low was 50°, then the average temperature for that day was 60° - halfway between 70° and 50°. This is 5 degrees less than the base temperature of 65°. Therefore we can say that there were 5 degree days for the period.
Along with the degree days, there is what is called a K-Factor. A K-Factor is simply a number for showing how fast a customer uses fuel. Once the K-Factor is established for a given customer, it is multiplied by the usable gallons of fuel in the customer's tank to find how many degree days can elapse between deliveries.
By keeping track of how many degree days have accumulated, oil companies have a system for knowing just when to deliver fuel oil to any individual customer.