Home Building Questions - Propane - All electric - Fireplace

[m1garand762]

We are getting ready to build. I and using propane for the furnace stove water heater and dryer. I will be putting in a hearthstone soapstone wood burner for tue primary heat source. We are going to build with ICF so an etc will also need to be installed

 

[KennyG]

The consensus here (which I think is correct) is that a heat pump or geothermal heat pump is your best option. With electric hot water, you just need a bigger tank than you would have with gas, unless you go with the on demand option. It's a good time to look at induction ranges for the kitchen. It has the performance of gas and the safety of electric. You may have to buy some compatible pots and pans, but it's a great option.

 

[t1kilo]

We finished building our retirement house 4 years ago and went with propane for the fireplace, water heater, stove, and dryer. I have absolutely no regrets with any of them. Like others have already stated, there is no crystal ball to know what the costs of different types of energy will be in 5, 10, or 20 years. The best thing that you can do, regardless of your choice of utility, is make your house as energy efficient as possible and reduce your consumption needs.

If your budget allows for it, go with either ICF or SIP construction. We went with ICF, and by far, this is the most important thing that we did when building our new home. In addition to being really energy efficient, the walls can withstand 200+ MPH winds.

We went with a direct vent fireplace insert that uses propane. Direct vent uses outside air for combustion, has air circulating fans built in, and does a great job of heating the house.

I prefer a water heater with a tank, so we went with a condensing unit from Westinghouse. It is 97% efficient, and is vented with PVC instead of standard gas vent pipe. It's got a 50 gallon tank, and we have never run out of hot water, even when both showers are in use at the same time as the dishwasher or washing machine. I highly recommend this.

Good luck with the house.

 

[riptides]

We are total electric. I heat 4 buildings with 3 HVAC systems and 2 mini-splits. When the electric goes out I have a generator for water and some lights. For heat, only the main house has a free standing wood stove.

Been this way for over 20 years, and the price of electricity has been pretty stable for us.

Got rid of the kerosene heater when the farm house was remodeled. Never been a fan of gas or liquids as fuel sources.

 

[2manyrocks]

We didn't have natural gas here until recently. Initially, we went with propane to run our water heater and our furnace. We also had a heat pump, but the heat pump was inefficient below 30 degrees F. Household of 3. Never ran out of hot water. A propane water heater will be more cost effective than electric over the long run.

The trick with propane is to buy it during the off season or at least buy your supply for the year at a fixed price. If you wait until December and try to buy it when the price is the highest, you're going to get ripped off. You'll need to size your tank based on how much you need to store for use. We didn't use much propane at all until the winter months. Our highest use tended to be from December-February. With a 500 gallon tank, we were refilling twice a year.

Then natural gas came to the area and we don't have the hassle of getting propane refills anymore. Natural gas was also considerably cheaper than buying propane.

Since then, we've added a mini split to our living room/kitchen which has been awesome for comfort, quiet, and reducing our electric bill. Mini splits are awesome for open areas. Some are rated for -10 or so heating. Some aren't. You have to check on the specifics of the particular unit to determine if it is rated to heat during really cold temperatures.

The downside of mini splits is that there doesn't seem to be an easy way of using them in closed off areas like bathrooms and bedrooms where a ducted system may still make better sense for those areas. Also, you have to cut a hole in the exterior of your walls to run the linesets to mini splits and the linesets themselves are unattractive as are the covers that they make to hide them. You might be better at finding a way to incorporate a mini split system into your new build than I found retrofitting it to my existing house at least insofar as hiding the linesets.

I haven't had any experience with tankless electric or gas water heaters to be able to offer any opinion there. Generally, a gas fired water heater is going to have faster recovery times and be less costly to operate than an electric water heater. But the bulk of your energy bill will be for heating unless you can supplement with wood, etc.

In light of the rolling electric power blackouts over Christmas, I can readily see how having some kind of wood or pellet system that will still operate without electric power would be good to have.

 

[RSKY]

We recently had below 0*F temps. The Mitsubishi split unit would not heat our sunroom. It just circulated cold air. Had to shut it off and light the NG logs in a freestanding stove that we had installed for emergency heat years ago. After I lit the stove it was more than two hours before the thermostat would turn it off and the lowest it will go is 40 degrees. Point is not to depend on a heat pump if the temps routinely get close to zero F. Others at church who had heat pumps also had trouble with the low temps and the local Walmart and Lowes sold out of space heaters before temps climbed back up. Oldest daughter had replaced their heat pump with a NG central unit a few months ago and said it was the first winter in ten years they hadn't got cold at night.

In this area, and I emphasize that other areas may be different, I would strongly suggest NG or propane heat and water heater. The comparison in costs to heat are much better with gas.

RSKY

 

[GreenTime]

If you go with electric, look into off-peak rates for heating, cooling, and water heater. They do require you have propane backup in our area.

 

[Oaktree]

The advantages are cheap to operate. During normal operation it is heating our house with a little more electricity than a toaster uses, roughly 1800 watts. Our geo also provides some hot water for free. The colder it is or the hotter it is the more free hot water you get. Ours has two water heaters, one with the desuperheater from the geothermal (the “free” part) and a second with regular heating elements. Geothermal is something to look at a HVAC place can print out a comparison with an LP system. I think you will find geothermal is a no brainer on new construction.

A lot depends on where you live, and how deep the frost goes in the winter. Not sure how practical it would be in places like New England, Minnesota, the Dakotas, etc. where the frost line can go down many feet. Yes, it could be done but would you recover the costs at any point in your lifetime? Southern states probably would make sense. Not sure how winters in Ill. are.

Curiously, how warm is the air that comes out when you're using it for heat?

 

[dodge man]

I’m not sure how critical depth is for the cost. Ours were directional bored in, maybe 8 feet deep, they could be deeper for very little more cost. If you open cut the lines in the cost would be higher. The frost line here is considered 5 feet deep. The lines can go vertical also, ours are horizontal but we had the room to do it. The lines actually go back and forth, partly under my shop, each run is roughly 300 feet long. They also directional bored into a small hole they cut into my basement floor to get them inside the house, it was pretty painless.

How warm is the air out of the registers. Not as warm as a gas fired furnace but not that much different. Ours has three stages. Stage one is normal and uses about 1800 to 1900 watts. Stage two kick things up a little, namely the blower and uses about 2200 watts. Stage 3 is the electric backup, not sure on the watts but I think all the houses within 2 miles have their lights dim, it’s on two 240 volt breakers. So far the electric grid heaters never really are needed. The bad is you really shouldn’t change the temp in the house much. We like to sleep in a cold house so I turn it down at night and just turn it up 1 degree at a time in the morning so the afterburners don’t turn on and run up the bill.

 

[dodge man]

For those that don’t know geothermal is basically a heat pump that uses water from underground to either cool or heat the Freon depending if it’s summer or winter.

 

[3Ts]

I've had a number of utility types: NG, all electric, fuel oil, a converted coal furnace, and currently propane. To some extent your options are limited by what is available in your area. I lived with heat pumps for almost 30 years and they are nice except in the winter time. It seems like they are always blowing cold air until the emergency heat strips come on. It was recommended that we use a heat pump when we built our retirement home and we said no! We have electric air conditioning and a propane forced air furnace (90+% efficiency with a PVC exhaust vent). It is far more comfortable than the other heaters we've had. We have a Propane furnace, cook top, and a propane (only) fireplace that is sealed with outside combustion air. All other appliances are electric.

Previously, in our all electric house, we've been without electricity for 9 days at a time, so we have a whole house generator with an automatic transfer switch. It runs off propane and we have a buried tank that will run it for a week at full power if we have to. So far, just an hour here and there, so our propane tank gets refilled every other year.

We built the house with spray foam in 2x6 walls so it's pretty well sealed and insulated. One thing I would do differently because of the energy concerns lately is to have a wood burning stove as a backup to the propane. I have about 40 acres of woodlot of mixed pine and hardwood.

 

[2manyrocks]

One issue with heat pumps has tended to be when the supply air is below body temperature of 98 degrees so that it feels cool even though the supply air coming out of the heat pump might be 80 degrees. Gas furnaces supply air at temperatures above body temperature so they feel warm.

The ambient temperature in which a particular mini split will operate varies from unit to unit. Some are rated to -13 degrees. Others might only go to 5 or worse. So you need to pay attention to this when selecting a mini split unit if you intend to use it for heating.

 

[Locoweed]

26 years ago I went as far from all electric as I could get. I mainly heat with a wood stove, but I have a propane furnace as a backup, cook stove, water heater & dryer. When I get too old to deal with firewood I will use the furnace. Air conditioning is handled with a swamp cooler, but I have a central unit for the few days it is humid. I have not regretted my decisions.

 

[kenmac]

If you're thinking of going HP. don't go with a conventional HP. go with an inverter unit that can heat down to-20 + deg, without any backup heat.

These units only run at what ever heat /cooling is needed in the home.
It doesn't run all on, or all off like conventional units.
They are variable speed motors and compressors.
Mine usually runs at about 15-18 HZ, until xtra heat, or cooling is needed.

As for a W.H. You may want to look into a tankless propane.

 

[LittleBittyBigJohn]

A few people have mentioned an induction cook stove. I may get an induction hot plate to try out at our current place to see how we like it compared to a traditional glass top unit.

 

[ddbackhoe]

i havent noticed anyone mentioning the Consumer Product Safety Commission wants to ban gas because of
“science”

Ban new gas stoves, a federal safety commissioner proposes; CPSC says no such official plan yet

The Consumer Product Safety Commission official cited concerns about potentially harmful emissions from the appliances.

www.nbcnews.com

 

[LittleBittyBigJohn]

I'm also going to call and check on Geothermal vs Heat pump VS AC with propane furnace with a local HVAC company that has experience with all of them. My initial research looks like Geothermal may be out of the running because of up front cost.

 

[3Ts]

If you have a tightly sealed house with very low infiltration rate and you have a gas water heater inside that envelope, that may be a problem. When you turn on an exhaust fan in the bathroom or the kitchen, where does the makeup air come from? That gas water heater exhaust pipe is basically a hole to the outside and can have air sucked back down the exhaust pipe.

 

[RustyA]

Northern Wisconsin here. 18 seer air source heat pump/ac with two stage propane forced air furnace. Heat pump metered separate so off-peak rate for most of our spring/fall/summer heating and cooling. Heat pump programmed to cutoff below 30 degrees, can be programmed lower if propane gets stupid again. High efficiency wood hearth stove in case of power outages or silly propane prices and we can run furnace fan to circulate wood heat throughout house. Made these changes 8 years ago and it's all working like it's supposed to.

 

[Shenandoah MF1760]

As was already mentioned an on-demand hot water heater may be the way to go. These can be propane or electric, centrally located or placed at the delivery point.

Depending on the area solar water heaters can be an option, if for nothing else than preheat.

How fast you get hot water depends on how far the discharge is from the source. The ancient Ruud natural gas on-demand system I had in Cincinnati took a minute to get from the basement to the 2nd floor, but once it got there it could scald you until the utility ran out of natural gas. An electric unit placed near the discharge would probably take about as much time to heat up depending on the wattage.

And, as was also stated earlier natural gas has been demonized and could potentially be outlawed making it difficult to buy/repair devices requiring it in the future.