Geez, mate, give it a rest! Since you readily admit you are not a heating engineer or electrician or anything else vaguely related (nor am I) you have no way of knowing HOW MUCH oil should be in it. ALL oil heaters are partly filled, perhaps for reasons I have theorised before. I also doubt you could buy less than a rather large drum of it, if you could find it. Tell me - any signs of a leak? Do you have an identical heater? If so, weigh both with good scales. That would indicate if oil was low. As I've said before, oil-filled heaters have a very gentle heat, so may not feel as 'warm' as others, still, with a little time they will fill a smaller room with a nice all-over heat. If you could compare identical heaters you might be able to say one was hotter than another.....I suspect it's fine apart from the thermostat, and, chances are, you're on the low setting. I don't think running it without a thermostat is safe, even if you do watch it..... Trust me, I've seen/bought/used a lot of heaters in my day, probably more than most posters here, since I lived in Australia and portable heaters are all 99% of the population use, since few people have central heat. Just chuck it. Get another sort, if you don't like the oil heat type. Personally I like them almost as much as baseboard heaters (and they're easier to cover up accidentally, although I don't know how much risk of fire they pose) - I bought an oil heater for both my daughter's rooms since they were the safest we could find, and they may well have been Delonghis. For us, they worked well but to this day, they still make a hot paint smell when they run. DON'T BOTHER ABOUT THE OIL - YOU CAN'T RESEAL IT, AND YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHETHER MORE OIL WILL HELP OR WILL EXPAND AND CAUSE LEAKAGE ETC.

I ordered my bathroom beadboard via Nantucket Beadboard (www.beadboard.com) and LOVE it...It wasn't the cheapest option I had but I wanted it to hold up to moisture. My neighbors bath paint started peeling and separating after just a couple of years. You can go with strip products or sheet products. I went with strip products. And if you do go with sheet product, make sure it is thick enough and has a way to butt against each other and overlap.....so you don't get the awful joints. Especially awful on a light painted finish. Here's the link and a photo of my bathroom. For the whole room, I think it was around $300-$400...but definitely worth the quality material! Kompy Here is a link that might be useful: Nantucket Beadboard

I'm with you Miz, except I use the Melitta cone, because it's just so easy and unbreakable, like when I knock it off the cup before I've had my coffee. For one cup, it is the easiest, low tech way to get a delicious cup of real coffee. I didn't watch the video, but I do wet the grounds and let them swell (for about 15 seconds or less) then pour the rest of the water over them. I have a cup of the best coffee possible in less than a minute (not counting the heating time in my electric water pot, which might be 2 minutes or so). Nothing to clean, the filter and organic coffee grounds go into the compost (I buy unbleached filters). If I am making a whole pot in a thermos carafe for guests, I do wash the grounds off the sides of the filter (a larger one I use for that) a time or two, after the initial wetting. Then I discard the grounds and fill the rest of the carafe with hot water and shake it up to make sure the plain hot water isn't sitting on top of the stronger coffee below. Everyone raves about the coffee served here. We are a very "good" coffee appreciative community. I don't know anyone with a Keurig or electric coffee maker. We all make it with a cone. I have no problem being called a coffee snob. Unless I can have good coffee, I'd rather not have any.

Olive oil is sensitive to contamination by ferrous and rust particles. Olive oil is shipped in huge drums and packaged at plants - not on site at the growers usually. It often becomes contaminated if the drums are not properly cleaned between shipments. The drums are often used to ship other things and residue remains if not cleaned properly. This is how many food products become contaminated. Or, the can could have been damaged from moisture causing it to rust. Or, those are not black flakes but dead insects that made their way into the can and died. Fruit flies can be attracted to olive oil and then get stuck in it.