Heating. Propane vs Electric vs Wood Pellet

[5030]

Thats a bust. Propane here today is $1.40 / gallon delivered, tax included. 6 cents less for ag dryer gas.

 

[PEJ5]

Resistive electric heat is considered to be 100% efficient use of the electricity consumed,
one kilowatt hour of electricity should yield 3412 btu's of heat.
The mini-splits that I installed a couple of years ago should be approximately 287% efficient in that 1 kwh power should yield 9792 btu's of heat.

We built a 28x34 garage with a second floor "cottage". As much as possible I have been completing all the inside work on my own. The walls are R30 and I am blowing in the attic insulation on Wednesday at R60. I am scheduled to have a heat pump installed for the living space this week as well. This will make winter work progress upstairs enjoyable. I have not decided on the garage level heat. Insulation first.
The heat pump is 400+% efficient down to 5degF. Time will tell.

 

[5030]

Hard to beat the efficiency and cost of free corn...... I have 45,000 btu of output on 75 watts of electricity. Had to shut it down today, got too hot in here. Ambient was up to 40 outside.

I have enough free shelled corn in the barn and grain tanks to run a couple years with no additions. Stove was paid for about 10 years ago.

 

[oosik]

No question - around this area electric is, by far, the cheapest way to go. Pellets & propane are quite expensive. Very little maintenance on radiant electric heat. Pellet stoves are a never ending job of cleaning, stoking & temperature control. Radiant propane - - ??

 

[Smokeydog]

In East Tennessee my home air conditioning cost exceed my heating cost. It’s hard to beat free heat from the air with a mini split. I have over 100 acres of “free” hardwood, trucks, tractors, chainsaws, splitter, wife who likes to help and still can’t beat $1/day mini split for heat.

During the summer working outside often as wet from sweat as getting out of a pool. Hard to believe how easy it was growing up without AC at home or car.

One thing I do during the winter season is run a humidifier. 1-2/day gallon evaporative vornado. Feels warmer at a lower temp and saves heating cost. Helps us, the dogs and antique furniture feel better. Don’t have a central HVAC so the added fan helps circulate the inside air.

 

[5030]

If I was 30 years younger, I'd have 2 things. One, a metal roof on the house because a standing seam roof is forever and Two, a water furnace. Have a good friend, much younger than I am, that had a water furnace installed in his home. It heats and cools. One unit. I think (not sure) but his total energy bill is about 30 bucks a month, year around, heating and cooling the entire house and it gets cold here in the winter and fairly hot in the summer.

It's a closed loop system, filled with glycol.

if I didn't have access to free corn and cheap propane and I was a few years younger, that is the route I'd go. For me, free field corn means free heat. Hard to beat that.

 

[5030]

No question - around this area electric is, by far, the cheapest way to go. Pellets & propane are quite expensive. Very little maintenance on radiant electric heat. Pellet stoves are a never ending job of cleaning, stoking & temperature control. Radiant propane - - ??

Not exactly. Mine is on a remote thermostat and runs in conjunction with the central furnace. I agree, cleaning is a PITA but in my case, with free corn, justified. Once every 2 week job, 5 minutes with a shop vac and drywall bag installed. The unit I have is all computer controlled and it decides the proper burn rate for the fuel used. For us, it's very economical and the ashes (what little there is, go in the garden anyway. I can run all winter and maybe get 2 gallons of ash.

No 'stokimg involved, unless you mean filling the hopper once a day with corn. It lights itself (electric ignition). Pretty turnkey in my view.

 

[oosik]

Hmmm..... not20ld up in BC - paying 14 cents per KWH. I'm just south in Ea WA. Our private utility charges 6.5 cents per KWH. Makes electric heat economical. I started, 38 years ago, with firewood. Got tired of dragging dirt, bugs & bark into the house. After ten years we converted to pellets. Then pellets went from $85/ton, for the good ones, to $195/per ton. Used the pellet stove for ten years, then fired up the electric radiant heat. It's economical, quiet, clean and controlable.

 

[5030]

Hmmm..... not20ld up in BC - paying 14 cents per KWH. I'm just south in Ea WA. Our private utility charges 6.5 cents per KWH. Makes electric heat economical. I started, 38 years ago, with firewood. Got tired of dragging dirt, bugs & bark into the house. After ten years we converted to pellets. Then pellets went from $85/ton, for the good ones, to $195/per ton. Used the pellet stove for ten years, then fired up the electric radiant heat. It's economical, quiet, clean and controlable.

If you are paying 195 bucks a ton for pellets, I can see the advantage. I'm paying zip for corn and have a never ending supply down the road. it's even augered into my grain bin for me. All I have to do is fill my 2 5 gallon buckets with it every evening (have a bucket spout on the grain tank and the 75 watts I'm using is inconsequential cost wise for heat. Cane get my corn either bagged in 50's or in bulk, augered into my 750 bushel grain tank.

Different regions have different needs and different supplies. I know around here, when propane was high, everyone went to wood pellets because most pellet stoves aren't capable of running corn. when we got ours about 15 years ago I purposely bought a multi-fuel stove and I'm glad I did because when the free corn deal came up, I jumped on it. As of today, I have about 2 years worth of cleaned field corn tanked and in bags in the barn and it's all at less than 10%RM. The drier the kernel is, the hotter it burns. This stuff is so dry it burns with hardly any ash and no clinkers and I'm happy.

 

[Rustyiron]

I remember about 15 -20 years ago a friend got into corn stoves, well before wood pellets (at least where I was) they sort of put a light pleasant popcorn kind of smell in the air. Iirc it was questionable if you could just get your corn from the local grainery. I never got into it and it may have been a moisture issue, could have been that they just wanted to sell you the same thing, just in their bag at their price:laughing: