How to Prepare for the Number 4 Oil Phase-Out

New York City’s phase-out of No. 4 heating oil is accelerating, and Jeff Cohn, Director of Energy Programs at Approved Oil, lays out the practical steps every No. 4 oil-fueled building must take to stay compliant, control costs, and avoid mid-winter emergencies. Drawing on a real-world conversion at 95 Park Terrace, he explains how to evaluate your tank room, prepare for DOB inspections, adjust older boilers for lighter fuels, and tap into the savings and cleaner performance of biofuel blends.You’ll learn clear, actionable steps to take for a  fuel transition before deadlines and prices tighten. Habitat’s Emily Myers conducts the interview.

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Transcript

Emily Myers: Welcome to Problem Solved, a conversation about challenges facing New York co-op and condo board directors. I'm Emily Myers with Habitat Magazine and I'm joined by Jeff Cohn, director of Energy Programs at Approved Oil. Jeff, great to have you with us. 

Jeffrey Cohn: Good morning. 

Emily Myers: So we are gonna talk about the transition from number four heating oil to cleaner alternatives.

Obviously number four heating oil is being phased out in New York City, and we'll discuss why it's so important to plan ahead to meet compliance deadlines and how boards can keep costs down. So let's kick off our conversation with a look at 95 Park Terrace, a six story pre-war co-op in Inwood. Jeff, what were some of the challenges for this building?

Jeffrey Cohn: The challenges are that the boiler is a little older than most. So we have to, be very careful when we do the fuel grade changes 'cause the boilers are used to operating in the burners on a thicker viscosity of oil. And when you make that transition to a lighter grade of oil, you have to make sure that the pumps are clean, that the tanks don't leak, that the boiler is gonna operate in the same way, shape and form as it did back on the number four oil.

Emily Myers: Okay. So you've hinted the technical steps involved in transitioning from number four to number two or a cleaner biofuel. What were the steps at this building and how was the boiler set up? Some are set in concrete, of course, so presumably that presents challenges.

Jeffrey Cohn: Anytime you're doing a fuel grade change, you really have to go and do a full investigation. Is the tank in a tank room? Is it encased in concrete? Is the tank visible? These are all items that are important to deal with, especially when you have to file the job. 'Cause you have to file it with New York State, with the city, and it has to pass ultimately a New York City examination with the Department of Buildings inspector.

So when we go down, we look at the condition of the tank. Number one, is it in a tank room? Is it on saddles? Is the tank vaulted? Are there weep holes in the tank? Is the tank in the boiler room or is it in the separate room? So there's a lot of things we have to look at in order to be able to, give the customer the right price and anticipate getting the job signed off.

Emily Myers: And at 95 Park Terrace, what was the situation there? 

Jeffrey Cohn: It was actually very easy because the tank wasn't a tank. The tank room is actually clean, which is half the battle is getting those tank rooms to be clean. Because when you do the fuel grade change from number four to number two oil, you have to lay in a coat of epoxy paint on the floor and on the walls up to 36 inches high inside of the tank.

That's to prevent, God forbid, the number two oil, which is a thin viscosity oil, leaks out of the tank at any point that it will stay contained within the tank room, and that's why the tank rooms need to be epoxy painted. We also check on the condition of the door. Are there lights in the tank room?

Is there an antisiphon valve, and a hand valve on the oil lines? The fill and vent lines, do they have malleable fittings, which they're supposed to have, or do they have the old style steam fittings? So these are the things that the building department's gonna look at. So we have to ultimately make sure that everything in the tank room is good.

As far as the burning goes, we have to do some other work in the burner, which is basically to remove the electronic pre heater, and to adjust the nozzle and the burner to make sure that it's burning well, and check the pump. There's a pump that pulls the oil from the tank to the burner, and sometimes when you put in the less viscosity oil, you go to number two oil, those pump seals may start to leak and have to be replaced.

So you have to examine that as well. 

Emily Myers: We perhaps should mention why buildings are making this switch from number four oil and perhaps what the regulatory deadlines are. 

Jeffrey Cohn: Technically, if your DEP permit comes due for renewal now up until 2027, you have to do the fuel grade change in order to qualify.

What we're doing is we're telling people, even though they may not expire until 2026 or even 2027, we're telling them to do it now, primarily for a couple of reasons. Right now, it's pretty easy to get the building department to sign it off, and it's still pretty easy to get number four oil.

The problem is there are fewer and fewer buildings left on number four oil. It's gonna be harder to source the product. It's also gonna become more expensive, which is exactly what happened when they phased out number six oil 10 years ago. It became very expensive to get the product at the end of the day because their producers were not producing any longer.

Emily Myers: Okay. And of course, this mandate is perhaps twinned with local law 97, which is pushing buildings to reduce fossil fuel use. I know number four oil and number two oil are still fossil fuels. But there is obviously a push for, modernization of these boilers.

Jeffrey Cohn: What's great now is that there were cleaner products out in the marketplace. For example, I think it was about 10 years ago that they brought down the sulfur content of all oils from 50 parts per million down to 15 parts per million. So it's equivalent to diesel fuel that you see, motor fuel that you see in the trucks.

But in addition to that, we've added biofuel to the compound. There's a state mandate of 5% biofuel that goes into every gallon of heating oil now. What we do is when we clean that tank for the customer, we're able to push them up to a B 20 biofuel blend that's 20% renewable fuel and 80% diesel. And what that does within New York State is it qualifies the customer to receive a rebate of up to 20 cents per gallon from New York State on their emissions because it's a cleaner product.

Emily Myers: Okay, so biofuels get a tax credit, but they're not yet recognized as a way to reduce carbon emission penalties. 

Jeffrey Cohn: We're working on it. That's an issue between the New York State Energy Coalition, the New York Oil Heating Association, and the state, which pretty much wears blinders. They see all fossil fuels as bad natural gas, heating oil.

But what they don't understand is that to electrify New York means that you're gonna be burning way more fossil fuel to create the electricity that you need. So it's a catch 22. It's just gonna go around and round in circles. My belief is that that oil is here to stay, gas is here to stay, and it's just a question of making it work within the confines of keeping it as clean as possible.

Emily Myers: Okay. So what was the cost then for the transition for 95 Park Terrace? 

Jeffrey Cohn: They ended up spending about $15,000. They had asked that the superintendent of the building do the epoxy painting of the tank room, which was fine by me. As long as it's done and I can qualify to get my sign off on the conversion, then that's fine.

So the super actually did it, did a very good job, and ultimately, we passed the inspection. He did that as part of his work scope. So instead of it being $17,000, it was, closer to 14,000. That's what it normally costs to do the work. 

Emily Myers: Okay. Of course, some buildings face perhaps financial and logistical barriers from moving from oil to gas which perhaps would be a more preferable transition for some buildings?

Jeffrey Cohn: If the gas is available. That's the problem is that it's getting harder and harder. A lot of the buildings that were gonna do conversions already did it. The problem is that I looked at a building on 84th Street and the gas was nowhere near the building. ConEd was requesting close to six or $700,000 to do a main reinforcement to bring them the gas that they wanted. Obviously a building like that is gonna have to remain on oil. I did a boiler replacement at 55 Park Avenue in Manhattan and same issue occurred. There was a cost involved. But what I hear from Con Edison is that eventually they will get to upgrade the main in that area and gas will be available.

So when we did the boiler, we made the burner dual fuel capable so that it can either burn oil or gas, when gas is available, at no cost down the road. 

Emily Myers: Great. And how do biofuels compare to perhaps standard number two or number four oil in terms of efficiency and maintenance? Is it bringing down the cost of maintenance on the boiler?

Jeffrey Cohn: In theory, it should by a lot, because what biofuel does is when you introduce it into the system, it acts as an emulsifier and it takes a lot of the impurities that are in the tank and pushes it out of the tank into the filter, and then it's up to the super to do their weekly maintenance on these buildings and change the filter cartridge and clean it out and then reassemble it.

That'll take out some of the impurities to prevent the burner from going into a safety or flame failure condition. 

Emily Myers: So what advice would you give them to co-op and condo boards that haven't planned their fuel transition yet? 

Jeffrey Cohn: I would tell 'em to plan on doing the work now, like right after the heating season and get it done because you really don't want a problem in the winter, should one exist, so you really want to deal with it when the weather's a little bit warmer, we're a little bit calmer in terms of service. I would suggest for them to plan now to get a price to do the conversion. Let us come out, let us evaluate what needs to get done, give them a price. That price will still be good in the summer, obviously, and and plan to do the work.

They'll have a full comprehensive scope. 

Emily Myers: And you mentioned that using the super to put the epoxy on the floor and walls was a opportunity to minimize cost. Are there any other ways that boards can economize? 

Jeffrey Cohn: No, but the most important thing, and the thing I see the most, 'cause I, I look at probably 50 to a hundred jobs a year, is that the tank rooms are used as a garbage disposal area. So you find anything from old strollers to garbage, to wood, to empty paint cans. The rooms have to be clean because that's one of the things the building department does look at is the condition of the room. There's really nothing other than just to make sure that the maintenance on their burners are done on an annual basis.

We just converted one to gas in downtown Brooklyn and the ring of the burner was completely clogged with heavy oil. We had to burn it out, clean it out and just get it to be so the gas can actually burn through the system. 

Emily Myers: Okay, so any other takeaways? Keep your boiler room clean certainly is one of the key takeaways there. 

Jeffrey Cohn: Yeah, maintenance is very important, and that's one of the things that here, what we do at Approved, when we meet with property managers, we meet with supers, we provide them with instructions: weekly maintenance that has to be done on the boilers, monthly maintenance that has to be done on the boilers. And we give supers basically a checklist every Friday.

You flush out the water column . You change the filter. You flush out the low water cutoffs. Once a month you drain out the mud side of the boiler too to get those impurities out. We make sure the boilers are going through doing water treatment. We make sure that the supers are looking to make sure there's no water leaks on the system.

Check the water meter that's on the boiler to make sure that you're not using more than 50 to a hundred gallons a week. 'cause that would just show you that there's somewhere in the building an underground water leak. These are all things that we try and teach supers so that they can really manage the building more than just taking out the garbage.

Emily Myers: Excellent. Lots of good practical advice there, Jeff. Thanks so much. 

Jeffrey Cohn: You're very welcome. 

Emily Myers: Jeff Cohn, director of Energy Programs at Approved Oil.