Propane Users: Plans for the Future?

[dpb800]

We purchased our acreage 3 years ago and suffered through the first winter with propane. Not cheap even then! We decided to go with geothermal and love it. It's much cheaper and has additional benefits.

We even purchased the unit which leaves our propane heater installed and functioning as a backup heater. We have a 1000 gal tank that is half full that we can use for a backup.

We live in prime wind country and are looking at putting up a wind turbine. This would take our only utility payment of about $100 a month to zero utility bills.

 

[dodge man]

I will probably stick with the propane. It gets to cold in our area for heat pumps. I have an fairly efficient fire place(at least as efficient as they can get) that will heat the house except when it starts getting below zero but I don't use if everyday, just on weekends at the most. The price did get to over $5 a gallon in my area. I just did a fill and got it at about $3 per gallon. Most winters I can get by all winter without a fill. Our furnace is very high efficiency and our house it pretty tight but it was so cold this winter. On an average year I would use less than 1000 gallons of propane, that's for hot water and our furnace.

 

[V1Rotate]

I don't live in the Midwest so you will have to excuse me if this seems like a dumb question.
What about oil heat? Most homes in the Northeast use oil, it is not as cheap as Natural Gas but is still cheaper than Propane or electricity.

 

[dodge man]

I think propane is cheaper to heat a house with than oil.

 

[dave1949]

Fuel Cost Comparison Calculator

Plug in your numbers a click on "calcuate"

Somebody posted this a while back.

 

[aczlan]

I think propane is cheaper to heat a house with than oil.

Thats what my heating guy says. On the straight price per BTU, Propane is 0.0915 MBTU/gallon and HHO is 0.13869 MBTU/Gallon.
Thus, if propane is $3/gallon and HHO is $4/gallon. It would cost you $34.51 per million BTUs of usable heat output (ie: not sent up the chimney) for propane vs $35.17 per million BTUs of usable heat output for HHO.
The formula is: ([MBTU per Gallon]/[Price per gallon])/[Heater Efficiency]=Price per MBTU of usable heat output
So for HHO with a 82% efficient furnace and $4/gallon to buy it would be: (0.13869/4)/82%=$35.17231798
For Propane with a 95% efficient furnace and $3/gallon to buy it would be: (0.0915/3)/95%=$34.51251079

Aaron Z

 

[TnAndy]

these arnt very efficient..and need heated condensate drains. 15,000 btu isnt much compared to the 125,000 btu furnace my house needs.

Why would they need a heated condensate drain ? What condenses on the evaporator coil in the winter when in heat mode ?

15,000BTU isn't very much compared to 125k......but then a 'mini-split' is for zone heating/cooling.....not the whole house. My 12,000BTU master bedroom unit handles a large master suite quite nicely, heat or cool.

 

[PastTense]

There are large regional variations in the price of propane. Thus in the Northeast heating oil is cheaper, while in the Midwest propane is cheaper. For example here in Iowa I contracted for propane for $1.39/gallon last summer--and this was about the price lots of others in Iowa were contracting at. Look at these charts for various regions (there is a dropdown list under area)--look at View History not current data as prices have gone crazy in the last couple months:
U.S. Weekly Heating Oil and Propane Prices (October - March)

 

[wedge40]

How large are the homes that you people are heating? I've got mere 1100 sqft. I have one of the 23000 btu kerosene heaters and can keep most of my house above 70. This has been the coldest winter since I bought the house. Ive gone through about 40 gals of kerosene and barely touched my propane.

 

[therealmjfox]

Fuel Cost Comparison Calculator

Plug in your numbers a click on "calcuate"

Somebody posted this a while back.

That is a decent calculator but it isn't complete (for example, doesn't include electric heat pump or geothermal).

Here's a comprehensive spreadsheet for comparing heat costs:

http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/heatcalc.xls

 

[bjr]

Okay, I give up and will ask, WHY PROPANE? Why not Natural Gas for HOME HEATING? What, No pipelines to your home? As a Nation that built freeways, hydro electrical dam systems and a huge electrical grid and still can't afford to get NG lines ran to the homes for heating and YES out to the Farms for barn and shop heating and corn drying. Well I say we deserve what we get. Just shut up and suffer. Oh yeah, keep on voting for the people that want to export the Natural gas to keep the big oil companies happy. bjr

 

[therealmjfox]

Okay, I give up and will ask, WHY PROPANE? Why not Natural Gas for HOME HEATING? What, No pipelines to your home?

You answered your own question.

You might as well have asked why everyone doesn't also have city water and sewer, and cable TV and high speed internet.

Infrastructure is expensive and without enough population densities it doesn't make economic sense. Even that won't guarantee it. I used to have a house in a fairly wealthy and densely populated town, but it was on a dead end street with about 20 houses, and we didn't have gas lines either.

It's only in the last few years that propane prices have gotten high and only this year that it completely got out of hand. Until about the mid-2000s, propane was price-competitive with natural gas, so running natural gas lines everywhere would have looked even more foolish. Since propane is basically the same stuff, but liquified, it seemed reasonable to assume it would always be competitive.

When I was building my house in 1999, the main propane worry was, which supplier could you rely on to keep your tank full when it got really cold. Price wasn't really a big worry. Now it's 15 years later, and things have changed, some in ways that could be foreseen, and some in ways that couldn't.

 

[dpb800]

Here in Iowa most rural homes do not have natural gas. They are mostly all propane. I agree that it would be nice to have natural gas connections even to rural farm homes but that has never been the case here.

 

[LJH]

I live in a county roughly the size of Connecticut with a population of <> 6500. Our electricity and propane supplier is a local co-op doing the best it can with limited resources. Natural gas simply isn't an option. Wood we've got and that's why we heat with it and use propane for cooking and water heating only.

 

[Tollster]

I'm looking at a heat pump complemented with solar power to reduce electricity bills. I would rather pay on something to show for than line some utility share holders retirement account!

And capture a tax credit or two while I do so...

 

[Steve IA]

From the horror stories I've read here and heard on the news, I've been dreading calling my supplier, but my ($1.449) contract expires in a couple of weeks and I'm down to 10% in my 500 gal tank. Dealer said they were honoring the contract price and would be out deliver the balance of my contract. :cool2: :drink:

 

[kcflhrc]

Back down to $1.99 a gallon, $1.89 a gallon if paid in 7 days here in eastern Kansas. Just switched my water heater heater over to electric so all I have left on propane is my back up on my Heat Pump. Personally, I'm hoping for more widespread Global Warming.

 

[deerseeker001]

Heating Oil no1 was 400 dollars a gallon in my books that's is not cheap.

I don't live in the Midwest so you will have to excuse me if this seems like a dumb question.
What about oil heat? Most homes in the Northeast use oil, it is not as cheap as Natural Gas but is still cheaper than Propane or electricity.

 

[Oaktree]

There are large regional variations in the price of propane. Thus in the Northeast heating oil is cheaper, while in the Midwest propane is cheaper. For example here in Iowa I contracted for propane for $1.39/gallon last summer--and this was about the price lots of others in Iowa were contracting at. Look at these charts for various regions (there is a dropdown list under area)--look at View History not current data as prices have gone crazy in the last couple months:
U.S. Weekly Heating Oil and Propane Prices (October - March)

Interesting. I checked my state, and it showed propane to be fairly constant $3.75/gal over the last month or so. Not cheap, but also not all that different than what I paid last fill (last fall). I thought it would be much higher.

I use wood (primary) and oil (backup) for heat, propane is cooking & hot water only.

 

[sixdogs]

I live in grain farm country and the big demand time for propane is in the fall to finish drying the grain. My propane dealer tells me that the price fluctuates wildly from really cheap in the spring to really pricey in the fall because of this imbalance. My plan is to buy a second 500 gallon tank this spring and have them hook it into the first one so I can double my capacity. The second tank will cost around $1,200 installed and I'll prep the site.

I think this is a great idea with a pretty quick payback plus I'll own the tank and it could always be resold. Any thoughts on this? Good idea or bad idea?