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Is it a dual-fuel furnace, and how is the fuel supply controlled? If you have a solenoid valve controlling the fuel supply, and when the valve is open fuel is fed at a constant rate, then monitoring the valve position (or the voltage applied to it) will give you the on/off information you need. I would guess that is simpler than a vibration sensor.

But are you looking for something better? I don't know about any particular problems (from a regulatory point of view) that you might have, but generally:

If you have a mains gas supply, and if you have access to your gas meter, you might find that if you have an older meter, you can use a Hall effect device or a simple reed switch to detect a passing magnet which the meter might have (many European ones do), or there might be a reflective patch that you can watch with a retro-reflective sensor. In that case, you count pulses that correspond to a volume and apply a scaling factor to convert to kWh. If you have a more modern meter, you might it can communicate using IR or visible light, but knowing the protocol might be problematical. Here you might get the present register reading each time you interrogate.

For oil, I think you can either detect the tank level or measure the flow. To measure the flow, you'll almost certainly need to install your own meter. The advantage there is you can choose one that gives you what you want in terms of output - either pulse per unit volume or total flow would be ideal. If you measure tank level, again you can choose what you have, but you'll need to convert the output, which will almost certainly be the volume remaining, either into cumulative quantity used or into a flow rate, and then convert those again into kWh or kW.

Counting pulses with the emonTx is an established technique. Decoding a proprietary message protocol might not even be possible if it's not published or if it's encrypted.

Unfortunately, meters of any sort tend not to be cheap.

Thanks Robert. I am asking specifically about remote monitoring for oil or gas tank in my house. One example is I have a vacation house that I'd like to keep an eye on with monitoring. Most solutions work locally to a house. They don't solve the issue of needing to externally send information outside of the house. Any thoughts on this?

If you have Internet access, you can post your data to emoncms.org and look at it anywhere (where you also have Internet access, of course!).

I dare say somebody somewhere has done something where, given a telephone line, you can dial in and interrogate the system. But I have no details.

Hello Justin,

Here's a link to a site that might give you some ideas on how you could go about

monitoring your heating system fuel consumption:

http://fuelminder.biz/

Their Rube Goldberg special looks interesting...
http://fuelminder.biz/Rube%20Golberg/Rube%20Golberg%20page.html
 

I realize it's not an open source solution, but for what it costs, it might actually be comparable, or even less costly than a DIY solution.

Thank you, ideally we are not looking to go into the tank, and flow meters seems prohibitively expensive at this point in time and also the installation would not be easy (although I cannot say I am an expert). Is there anything else you can recommend that we can monitor the quantity of fuel directly without having to go inside the tank or communicate over a cellular network, as is the case with a lot of the oil monitoring set ups currently (these seem to be tailored to distributors and automated deliveries anyway). Does the UK have remote ready dials? We are also interested in propane gas monitoring, and remote ready dials seem pretty easy to monitor with a network hall effect sensor. Although finding an open one has proven difficult.

Thank you very much for your attention to this. Any further guidance or direction would be extremely helpful. 

Justin

The Beckett Rocket is probably as close to "not going into the tank" as you'll get. From what the picture shows, and the text describes, it looks as if the only thing that gets installed is an adapter to enable the Rocket to be screwed into a 2 inch NPT threaded opening. The Rocket sits atop the adapter looking down into the tank through the opening, and determines the liquid level ultrasonically. The only requirement is ~6 inches of clearance above the tank.