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Comment by tyingq | Hacker News Reader

I remember a fair amount of older houses in New England had oil heating and the cost was crazy high.

There are still many that have heating oil. I live in NH and have heating oil. I also had heating oil while living in central PA.

Virginia here, I just converted my house from oil to gas a few months ago.

Fun fact: heating oil is just diesel fuel. I ran out of oil a while before the gas installation and didn’t want to pay for the minimum 150 gallon delivery the local companies required, so I made it through by visiting the local gas station with some gas cans a few times.

Heating oil is diesel fuel not legal for on highway vehicle use. It's fine to buy diesel fuel taxed for vehicles and burn it in your heater though, but you'll (eventually) get in a lot of trouble for doing it the other way.

Oddly, getting it from the gas station was slightly cheaper per gallon. I assume the cost of delivering to my house exceeded the tax for vehicle fuel.

This is common in North Carolina as well and it's bonkers. You keep a giant reservoir of gonna burn your house down.

Not just oil heat, but using the oil to heat a boiler to turn water into steam to travel up to radiators and then finally get some warmth in your living space. It seemed so inefficient. Oh and did I mention the house had zero insulation too. Fun times, glad I’m not living in Boston anymore.

Remember 1-800-JOE-4-OIL ?

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