Heat: Fuel Oil vs Propane vs Electric

[crazyal]

Can't offer any input on a heat pump but my last house had propane and when I built this one I didn't make that mistake. A decade ago we got hit with a major ice storm, lasted about a week. It took weeks before power was fully restored. I was on automatic fill ups on the propane tank and the storm delayed them by almost two weeks. Of course we ran out. I had to use BBQ tanks to get by and even then it was a struggle finding places that could fill the tanks. ORD was plentiful. I've heard rumors about natural gas being offered in bottle form, like propane. If that does become an option then a propane furnace/ boiler would have the advantage of being able to be converted.

My new house is built with SIP (structural insulated panels). I heat the house with wood and oil. The oil also heats the hot water year round. I go though about 2 cords of wood a year keeping my 2000 sqt house at 75 to 80 all winter long and about 150 gallons of oil a year. The point is that building an energy efficient house is the best way to save.

 

[crazyal]

Take it to the Front Porch. This is just a political harangue.

Unfortunately it is relevant to this topic. When I built my house I had the same choices. You can't look at today's prices and assume that they will stay at the same ratio. You really need to try and predict the future cost and availability of each. Propane comes from natural gas and oil wells so it's price is tied to the price of both. What I didn't know then was that fracking for NG would take off so much in the last couple of years dropping not just the price of NG but propane to some extent as well. If power being delivered to your house site is from older coal fired plants then one must figure in the chances of the plants getting shut down and how much you can expect the cost of electricity to increase. What should be moved to the front porch is whether the stricter emission standards the EPA is talking about are needed on these plants.

 

[Travelover]

Unfortunately it is relevant to this topic. .......

Speculating on the future price of different fuels is one thing, speculating that it a particular named politician's fault is just creating political tension. The whole idea of moving the politics to the Front Porch is to make the other threads more friendly.

 

[Grateful11]

You can't look at today's prices and assume that they will stay at the same ratio. You really need to try and predict the future cost and availability of each.

I've been on this ol' Earth for quite a while and it's never been possible to predict what commodity futures will do. It seems to me that fuel oil and gasoline especially don't follow the law of supply and demand. BTW: I didn't come to this thread to read about politics either.

 

[jejeosborne]

Speculating on the future price of different fuels is one thing, speculating that it a particular named politician's fault is just creating political tension. The whole idea of moving the politics to the Front Porch is to make the other threads more friendly.

Here is the plan. It is not someone's political opinion, it is factual.

http://youtu.be/HlTxGHn4sH4

Having said this, I think HP is the way to go for the OP.

 

[dmccarty]

The OP needs to check out the price of power. We pay 10 cents per KWH and that has been the price since 2005. We use the heat pump for supplemental heat since most of our heating is done with a wood stove. I noticed the other day that a nearby house had replaced its oil tank with a heat pump.

Regardless of heat source, a well built and insulated house is very important. Right now we are short of wood so we are being very careful when we burn. We have noticed that we can turn on the heat pump in the morning and heat the house to 73-75 and turn it off for the rest of the day. We might have to turn the heat pump on early in the evening to heat the house back up but that will be it. This is not as good as using the wood stove but it is working and we are comfortable. We can do this because the house is insulated well and has good, tight windows.

Oil, natural gas, and propane are all commodities and who knows what will happen with their prices. The price of electricity is not as variable because of price regulation of utilities. Obama is certainly shutting down coal plants and usage. That is a fact. It was a campaign issue in 2008 and the only coal fired power plant in my county is shutting down as a result. Having said that, with so much natural gas being found, power production is going to switch to gas which should help moderate the cost increase of coal power production due to EPA regulations and/or coal plant shutdowns.

Using oil to heat would seem very risky to me money wise. While we are finding more oil in the US, oil is a much in demand commodity that the price is always going to be a concern. When I was designing our house I thought long and hard about putting in radiant floor heating that used solar collectors. In the end, I decided that for us, it did not make money sense. If we were in a colder climate then it would be a different decision.

The last issue of the Journal of Light Construction had an article on solar panel installations. One of the interesting things in the article was the installed price per watt was $4.30ish. A few years ago that price was $10 an installed watt.

Later,
Dan

 

[sdkubota]

I have an air source heat pump and it works fine even when the temps are 20 below zero. If you grab the Freon line off the compressor it will burn your hand. After saying that is does almost run continually when the temps are that low. Like I previously stated my electric rates vary around 5 to 7 cents per kw depending on what time of year and my electric bill average $170/month for a 1200 SF, well insulated, home. I get reduced rates cause my home is all electric. Just purchased a 15kw pto driven generator for $1200 for a backup.

 

[V1Rotate]

I have an air source heat pump and it works fine even when the temps are 20 below zero. If you grab the Freon line off the compressor it will burn your hand. After saying that is does almost run continually when the temps are that low. Like I previously stated my electric rates vary around 5 to 7 cents per kw depending on what time of year and my electric bill average $170/month for a 1200 SF, well insulated, home. I get reduced rates cause my home is all electric. Just purchased a 15kw pto driven generator for $1200 for a backup.

Just curious, you say that your average electric bill is 170 a month. Is that for a 12 month average or is that the average for the winter months?

 

[sdkubota]

Just curious, you say that your average electric bill is 170 a month. Is that for a 12 month average or is that the average for the winter months?

12 month average. I can hit $400+/month in the winter depending how cold and how windy.

 

[Oaktree]

Here in NH we have oil - no NG, but I looked at Propane in 2009 and it was $2500 more than oil due to tank cost and lower BTU

Something else to keep in mind with propane is that in most cases, you're stuck with one supplier, you can't shop around for the best price. Only the company that owns the tank can fill it, some companies will fill privately owned tanks, some won't.