The AM Forum

Well has the time come to get rid of it. The burner was having some problems last night so went down and turned on the other tank because it sounded like it was missing. This fixed the problem. Heck I just changed the filters back in Nov.
Just bought some oil maybe it was sludge.
Then I started looking at things. I'm set up to burn .85 GPH of oil and with power to run the burner that comes out to about $3.25 an hour to operate. It makes about 60,000 BTU and about 20% heats the air outside. 60.000 BTU is about
20 KW/H times .12 or $2.40 an hour of ready KW (if I was buying electricity). 
Then New QTH has about 11KW of heating elements and it heats the house very well. Also the hot water heater runs 3400 watts I think. Electric is 100% efficient. This comes out to a total of  about 42,000BTU  14 KW/h only costs about $1.70

This place is a bit bigger and not as well insulated but Electric sure sounds like a better deal. yea I could spend 3 or 4 grand to buy a better furnace but I could install electric heat for about $500 and still save money. 48,000 BTU would be about $2.00 an hour.

 

Frank

Assume you get your power from CL&P like I do...

Unfortunately .12/kWh is just the generation service rate. Then there is the transmission charge, distribution charge, combined public benefit charge, CTA charge and FMCC delivery charge... all of which are a certain dollar amount times the number of kWh used. Since almost every item on the bill is tied to the number of kWh used one should really take the total bill divided by the number of kWh used to determine the actual cost. My bill, that arrived today, shows .18 per kWh to be the bottom line per kWh...delivered.








   

Good point Jay. XYL showed me all the extra charges but I didn't look at the bottom of the bill to see the total rack up. So my $2/hr goes to maybe $3. Still it is cheaper than oil.
not much motivation to stick with oil.

OM, I suggest you get an energy audit done: I've never heard of electricity being cheaper than oil, even when the electricity is sold at a discount for heating, as some utilities do.

FWIW.

73, Bill W1AC

Bill,
The price of oil is pushing $4 a gallon so there is reason to look at other energy sources. I started with how many BTUs does this opec monster make and how much does it cost to run. My monster is pushing 50 years old with a newer beckit burner. At some point I will have to replace it. I figure it coast over 3.25 an hour to run it producing 48 KBTU.
It takes about 16 KW to make that much heat and the efficiency is 100%. Smart water heaters monitor your usage and shut themselves off  when not used. Electric heat is very easy to regulate room by room.
I think we have crossed the threshold for oil. I can switch the house to electric for about $500 but a good opec monster will cost a few thousand.
Show me where I'm wrong. BTW the new QTH is electric and I don't need 16 KW to operate heat and hot water.   

    Dave-in-the Cave switched to Woodoline.
I bought this old house in '95 and installed a new natural gas furnace. My gas bill averaged $30/mo. As the years went on, the price of natural gas went up. In 2005
they hiked it up almost 100%! I went to the local farm store and bought a large boxwood wood stove and installed it. Wood here is cheap (sometimes free). I have never been so WARM. On the down side it's rather labour intensive and dirty. I am an old ham and don't mind. The best part is I told the gas company to take their meter
and...

The electric will jump up to match the oil, just slower, higher mass system...

I'm definitely going with wood out here.
It is insane to pay $1,000 to fill a 275gal oil tank.
Completely insane.

If I could get a small nuclear thermopile, I would.

My plan is to plumb in hot water circulated heat off a central wood burn, and use a big tank for thermal capacitance... screw this oil crap.

It's friggin out of control.
Way way way out of control.

These bastard politicians and their handlers all saw the writing on the wall back at the first "fuel crisis..." should have not done what they did. The chickens have come home to roost. Grrrr....

           _-_-bear

Looking at all the angles, is propane or natural gas available there, Frank?
Around here, piped natural gas is the cheapest heat bargain, especially if one has a 90+% efficient boiler. Propane is second cheapest, followed by electric. But our electric rates are only 9 to 10 cents / KWH. They went up some 17% last year, too.

We also burn a lot of wood here to supplement the propane and passive solar. Used hardwood shipping pallets are free, my mental therapy is to rip them up with the chain saw.

Since I have an all electric house this interests me.
My electric bill for January was $462 and I used 3008 KWH.
In September when I am neither heating or airconditioning my bill was $135 and I used 920 KHW.
My house is not small it has 4 bedroom (five if you count the ham shack), 2 full baths , 2 living rooms, dinning room etc.

I am curious what people who have oil or gas heat paid  for heating in January.
i.e. If I had oil than I would add that to the $135 base cost for electricity and then I wonder if that would be above the $462?
Conversley if I subtracted $135 from $462 then I am only paying $327 for heat in January.
Caveat: In September there may be a small amount of heat involved in that $135 as I don't remember if at the end of the month I might have turned on the heat a few time at night.

Regards
Q, W1QWT
 

I don't like to think in terms of "Wrong" or "Right": let's talk about efficiency instead: it's something that you get to define for your house and your outlook.

• It may be more efficient for you to spend your time earning money to pay an energy auditor and heating engineer than it is to do this yourself.
• It might be more efficient to analyze the changes in lifestyle and habits that you're considering in order to make electric heat more efficient than oil for your situation:
  
  
  • Different heat levels room-to-room: will your spouse/kids/guests object?
  • Can you get used to using a cold bathroom in the morning?
  • Expense for installation and maintenance of "spot" water heaters.
  • Loss of your home's use during construction.
  
  
• The most efficient short-term process is the one that yields the most efficient long-term result:
  
  
  • If your furnace is 50 years old, it's not comparable to modern units. It's important to compare apples to apples.
  • Electricity costs are subject to OPEC too: what about solar or wind or geothermal? As long as you're tied to the grid, well, you're tied to the grid.
  
  

The point I'm trying to make is that you're talking about changing your (and your family's) habits more than about changing your heating plant. I just spent a weekend at a Bed & Breakfast that was built with no connection to the electric pole: the utility wanted $12k to put up the poles, and solar cost $12k, so the owner had an easy decision to make. However, seeing his family during day-to-day life with a teenager in the house was a great eye-opener, because they had gotten used to doing things I hadn't thought of:

• Need for constant energy awareness - not a great American habit, at least in my family's case.
• Different appliances and modes of use:
  
  
  • Turning off the (satellite) modem when not being used
  • Laptops instead of desktops, charged at work instead of home.
  • TV's that take a long time to turn on rather than a constant-current drain to keep them in standby.
  • Ultra-efficient washer and dryer
  • Wider temperature variations during the day.
  
  
• Most importantly, a willingness to adapt their behavior constantly: everything from planning laundry according to the forecast to putting on and taking off sweaters several times a day to insisting the child do his homework while it was still daylight.

My point is that it's the "spillover" effects that you need to think of, not just the immediate cost of electricity today or the expense of super-insulating your home, but you are the only person who can assess the worth of those lifestyle changes. In the immortal words of Jackson Browne: "I'm not trying to tell you that I've seen the plan - turn and walk away if you think I am".

FWIW. My 2¢.

73, Bill W1AC

Something I find annoying, particularly at retail businesses and schools, is the tendency to over-compensate with heating and cooling.  Round here, in the middle of summer when it's 95º outside, public buildings are typically cooled to about 65º, and you need a  sweater to stay comfortable.  But in winter, those same buildings are heated to a nauseating temperature of about 85º.

I can recall when I used to teach school, regularly cracking open the rear door in the classroom in the dead of winter to cool the room to a comfortable temperature.  Most rooms didn't even have individual thermostats, and in those that did, the thermostats were  locked inside a metal cage because they apparently thought the lowly teacher in charge of the classroom was too stupid to operate a thermostat.

I remember well when we were going through all this in 1974 - gas lines, energy awareness, house insulation, gas sippers vs guzzlers, wood heat, ceiling fans, etc.  Why is it happening all over again, as if nothing had occurred the first time?

We used to heat here with oil, but the $750 ventilated oil heater purchased in the early 80's, crapped out because the manufacturer had conveniently discontinued a $5 part that wasn't to be had anywhere, new or used, at any price.  Plus the only company that still did home delivery of heating oil became harder and harder to deal with because they no longer wanted to bother with small residential accounts.

We changed to propane.  At the time, the cost per gallon was about the same as oil, just under $1/gallon. I immediately noticed that a gallon of propane generates fewer BTU's than a gallon of kerosene.  Now propane is over $3/gallon and I understand oil is close to $4.  For the first time I ever recall, heating with electricity is about as economical as using oil or  gas.  But guess what, they have already announced that sometime within the next month or so, electric rates are suppose to rise double digits.

We have plenty of timber on the place so firewood would not be a problem, but it's a hell of a lot of work to brave the poison ivy, ticks and creeping old-buzzardism to cut wood, haul it to the house, then split and stack it.  Even the thought of it gives me a dreadful feeling.

Everything is rising in price - food, gas, heating fuel, electricity, medical care, university tuition.  Maybe it was a false alarm in 1974, but it is looking more like the real McCoy this time - not unlike the predicament I hear old timers describe enduring in the midst of the Great Depression.

Don,

I think you've answered your own question: what happened the first time is that people found out how cold a woodpile can be when there's snow on it, and how much the splinters hurt, and what a pain it is to start a cold stove on a cold morning.

Not to mention what it's like having to break the ice out of the toilet bowl ...

73, Bill, who used to live in New Hampshire in a house heated by Kerosene when we could afford it and wood when we couldn't.

My uncle Joe got me into solar back in the middle 60s so the first thing I did with this place was go passive solar. On a sunny day we are quite warm. Insulation R25 in the walls R60 over head. Not much to be gained there. Windows double pain Andersen. I'm there. Yup we turn the heat down but next year it will be lower. I burn around 700 to 800 gallons a year heating 1500 square foot ranch
and making hot water for 4 of us.
Yea, maybe I could save what 100 gallons if I replaced the monster. I've burned wood and coal. It costs too much around here unless you spend 1/2 the summer groping around for free wood. It would be easier to get a part time job and make a few extra bucks. 
So Q that comes out to around $3K for oil. $300 to heat the place in January with electric doesn't sound bad.
New QTH I'm glad a blew an extra building season doing R35 in the walls and R67 overheat. And Yes 6 nice big windows facing South.
BTW it is cool to be on the DOE mailing list for new suggestions for building....They are adding new ideas all the time.
Now let's start a political thread on Carter's effort to get us to wake up.
 

Just wait until the enviro nazi's catch up with you wood burners. Enjoy it while you can...

I used to burn 5 cord a year...then I opened my eyes and figured I could collect money at a gas station second shift and have more free time. Then I did two ton of coal a year. Coal is great except for the dust but I hear the price has taken off for that also. I hear wood pellets work great but a good system costs about $3500.
Bob, You have a newer place, how much oil do you use?
When i bought this place in '77 the monthly payment was $308 now it will cost that for just heat....and another $300 to support the town clowns.

All-electric house here with heat pump, 2550 square foot leaky split-level.

"January" bill : Jan. 7 - Feb 4; 28 days, average temperature 33 F,
83 KWH per day, 2314 KWH, $221.45.

I run 67 degrees in the day, I dress warm (long-johns, jeans, undershirt, long-sleeve shirt and sweater), 64 at night.  I was home all day every day during this bill period.

With the high price of diesel, (and oil in general), the guys over on steelsoldiers.com are both talking about, and doing, the burning of anything from used transmission fluid and engine oil to waste vegetable oil in their big military trucks. 4-8MPG truck is costly to operate. Except for WVO, which takes some processing, they filter the used stuff and throw it in the tank with the diesel fuel.. One guy did a cross country trip entirely on waste vegetable oil. Exhaust smells like french fries.

Has anyone ben doing this kind of thing with an oil furnace for home heating? Seems like it would be a natural for burning the waste oils.

I think it would be smart to start taking all the sugar out of products we eat and start turning it into fuel. Someone just flew a plane across the pond on biofuel.

If you're heating hot water with an oil-fired furnace, I assume you're using a "tankless" heater. Try disconnecting the "aquastat" so that low water temp does not turn on the boiler, and in it's place put a 10~15 minute timer that family members must push before using hot water.

I did, and it saved several hundred dollars a year, back around 1982.

If you don't have tankless, never mind.

73, Bill

I would be interested to know what other guys use for gallons per year of oil vs area heated. I try to keep it at 67 but sometimes on the weekend I bump it to 68 or 69. I like it cool when I sleep so 64 is a good number but don't always turn it down. I should invest in a set back so it is automatic. When I bought my place in '77 it had no insulation and the house was smaller about 1000 square feet. It had no insulation in the walls and 4 inches overhead.
The aluminum window frames were like heat sinks hanging off the house.
I burned 1000 to 1200 gallons per year back then and that was with cold drafts all the time. So reducing to 700 to 800 gallons whith the house 50% bigger made me feel good.

  I could not be more pleased with my heating bill.For March I used 3957 KWH and my total billing was $ 237.82 . That divides out to 06 cents per Kwh.(This includes all hidden charges). I have geothermal heat at my house and have one 5,250 BTU plus one 14,335 BTU (220 volt) electric heaters in my ham shack which is a 30x40 foot building. I have two hot water tanks (one at each end of my ranch type house) two refrigerators, one food frezer, dishwasher, washing machine and drier plus two submersible H2O pumps. The house was insulated for geothermal and the only bug in the whole thing is the initial cost of the system, I’m not sure but I think the cost now would be between $ 18,000 and $20,000.That is a lot for a heating system but at the rising energy cost it is looking better and better. :) :) :)

Fuel comparison, BTU/$, based on prices in CT. Some sources disagree on the BTU/unit -  but not by much. Unit prices may vary with buy ahead programs, etc. Efficiency not taken into account. This is raw BTU/$. Thrown together quickly...advise if there are glaring errors...

http://www.w1vd.com/Fuel%20comparison.pdf (http://www.w1vd.com/Fuel%20comparison.pdf)   

I live in central PA, not as cold as NY or New England, but cold enough.   I have been using a heat pump with our original oil/hot air heat as a backup.   I originally got the heat pump for cooling being only a slightly more than central air.    I was surprised to find that our heating costs (more than 12 years ago) were much less.   Now on my second heat pump made for a northern climate and more efficient, it is even better.    We leave the thermostat up all the time in the 70 degree range, because if you turn it down, then turn it up, the oil heat turns on.    This is the second winter with the new system and I have used just over a 1/4 tank of oil over the past two winters.   Our house was insulated "for electric heat" when we built it in the 70's, and with some other improvements, it is energy efficient.   Our electric bill is always under $200, which includes everything else including hot water heating.  If the heat pump craps out after 10 years it will have cost me $300 dollars a year to own.   I have a 10 year labor and materials warranty.    I know several people with geothermal heat pumps.    That is the way to go if you can get over the initial cost.    Around here, they are as efficient as a regular heat pump as if the air temperature was 50 degrees year around, because that is what the ground temperature is here.   

I should mention that our heat pump does not shut down if the outside temperature gets below some set temperature as some units are.   If the indoor setting drops 1 degree below the thermostat setting, the oil heat kicks in.   This happens rarely, the heat pump still keeps the house warm even down into the single digit temperatures, although it runs continuously.    This may be not efficient, but it is still cheaper than running oil heat.

TNX Jay, My error was my output from the furnace burinng .85 GPH.
It was a guess after looking at the burner specs. I guess oil is still cheaper even running the opec monster. I need to go back and check all my numbers now that you posted your chart. fc

Well, this discussion has me almost ready to rip out the propane boiler and replace it with an electric one. In this area, propane is running about $2.25 a gallon, and my electric rate is .086/KWH.

This has been an unusually cold winter around here and we've been using nearly 200 gallons a month. That's about $450/month for 18,266,000 BTU of propane. My boiler is ~ 80% efficient, so $450/mo for 14,613,000 BTU/mo delivered into the heating system.

1 KWH of electricity = 3413 BTU, so the equivalent of my needed 14,613,000 BTU is 4281 KWH/mo.
At .086/kwh, that's $368/mo for electric vs. $450/mo. for propane. And propane isn't going to get any cheaper, especially if someone farts in the Middle East. Plus I can get a $450 rebate from the REA for the $1,395 electric boiler, costing me less than $1,000. The hydronic heating controls and etc. will all interchange, making installation a piece of cake.

I'm seriously looking into this for a summer project...

Isn't the major cost for a geothermal heat pump system the wells that have to be dug?  I have also heard of a type that simply uses horizontal pipes buried a couple of feet in the ground, but I fail to see how that could be tremendously more effective than an ordinary heat pump that uses the outside air as the heat reservoir.  Here, the frost line is only a foot or so beneath the surface.  Building codes specify that foundations are to be at least 18" below grade.

We have an unused water well.  It was taken out of service decades ago when utility water became available, mainly because it would frequently run dry in late summer, but that would never be a problem here during heating season because the ground nearly always stays saturated from about Thanksgiving until mid-spring.  The well is an old fashioned hand-dug one, and only about 30' deep, but it's about 3' in diameter, so the volume of water should make a good thermal reservoir, and I don't know if it would be enough to support a geothermal system.

Frank,
Here's my break down for my 2300sq. ft. colonial.

10/07    126gal
11/07    no delivery
12/07    176gal
1/08      164gal
2/08      146gal
3/08      no delivery

Compared to previous years my oil usage is less.  For those same months,  the oil consumed would  have averaged around the 200 gallon mark. One year averaged around the 215gallon mark. This year was easier on the heating bill.  I'm expecting a delivery sometime in April.  That should carry me until the end of June.  The next delivery after that should be in September and the whole cycle will repeat itself.  Of course that depends on degree-days for the next year.

Having glass on the south side of the house helps considerably. At times it will get into the mid 70's downstairs on a nice sunny day in the dead of winter.  With the thermostat set at 68 that zone never calls for heat during the day.

I have 3 zones on programmable thermostats that go up and down depending on the living schedule.

Well Bob,
Sounds about right you have more area but maybe a smaller footprint. I have 130 square feet of glass on the South side. Maybe I should consider more than one zone. Solar room isn't used much at night so heat only keeps moisture off the glass. Front of the house is Kitchen and livingroom while the back is the bedrooms.
I guess we will all need to turn it down or pay big bucks. Man I'm glad the new place is only 1340 square feet. Kind of wished I stayed at 1000.

Don-

My niece's geothermal system uses two deep wells.   According to a few web sites, the ground temperature doesn't change more than 5 degrees at a depth of 4 feet.   I would suppose that you could have a long narrow ditch about 10 feet deep to snake the refrigerant pipes through and that would work too.    I think having water in the well would transfer the heat more efficiently.

I just came across an interesting concept- Adding a second electric boiler in series with an existing gas or oil boiler...You sign up with the electric company for peak-non peak metering (time of use metering).

My REA's on-peak rate is 6-9 AM and 4-9 PM. Off peak rates apply all other daily times, weekends and holidays. On-peak rate is .14/KWH and off-peak rate is .048/KWH. (Regular rate is .086/KWH). The idea is that you use the electric boiler at off-peak times to take advantage of the cheaper rate, and you use the fossil fuel boiler at peak times, if you have to.

In my case, that cuts the potential electric bill for heating in half.

Since my boiler heats a radiant concrete slab with a huge amount of thermal inertia (30-odd tons of concrete), I wouldn't even need the fossil fuel boiler. 16 hours a day plus weekends and holidays is non-peak billing at half the rate.

I'm really starting to like this...

I have 30 yards of rock and concrete for passive storage. I can keep the heat off for 12 hours on a sunny day in January. Works very well with snow on the ground. Light reflects off the snow.

That's a great idea, and I've seen it used well ...

BUT

... be sure that you check the components carefully: boilers have both a maximum outflow temperature limit and a maximum inflow temperature limit, and I've seen them ruined by being attached to pre-heated water when that wasn't what they were designed for.

HTH.

73, Bill W1AC

House here was built in 1972 as an all electric 1300 sq ft raised ranch. In 2000 a major renovation and addition added about 750 sq ft. During that renovation the electric baseboards were yanked out and a Buderus oil boiler installed (oil was still cheap at the time). Two zones - #1 for the main part of the house and #2 for the three bedrooms. Thermostats in each bedroom control their own valve essentially splitting the #2 zone into three separate sub zones. Required more copper but was worth it. Also burn wood as partial heat. In a typical heating season fuel consumption runs about 350 gallons of oil and about 2-1/2 - 3 cord of wood.

I heard China is building a bunch of nukes (power plants) this year...   

Thanks for the heads-up, Bill.

Can't find a minimum or maximum incoming water temperature spec for my existing Crown propane boiler...I'll need to look into that more. I really like the idea of being able to switch on the fly between propane or electric.

Well, just freaked out. XYL just had the place at 65 and I had enough bumped it to 68 heated the place then moved it back down. (I'm impressed she usually likes it warm)
I used to burn about 350 gallons making hot water when I burned coal. Sounds like a good idea using multiple zones. 3 would be easy here and I would only need to add one return line.
We really need to get back to using nuke power. Heck the Navy can do it.
Best way to guarantee safety is make the owner live down wind.
My biggest problem is air quality in both places. It takes about 4 hours to get a headache if I lock all the windows. I need to build an air exchanger to make the place any tighter.

I wonder if we can burn Twinkies directly.

I don't know how you're fixed for space but if I had the room I'd be tempted to try geothermal.   Awhile back I Googled around and found a site that helps do-it-yourselfers do geothermal.    Dig a trench. Put some coils of PVC in it.   Hook up the geothermal heat pump.   The cost of heating and cooling is the lowest out there, even lower than air exchange heat pumps in any but the mildest of climes.   The issue is the daunting installation costs which are greatly ameliorated if you're handy with a back hoe.  That and having the room.   

Here's one outfit that wants to sell you a kit:

http://www.geothermaldiy.com/

Looks like a fun project to me.

Jon

I had 100 feet of PVC well pipe when I did the basement floor so said WTF and put it around the footing inside the basement. maybe I need to run a  speriment and see if I can extract anything from it. Time to homebrew a machine. Here I have a stream in the back yard but water is only 4 feet below the surface at the other place. Must be nothing but a pump and some sort of an orface

I love my pellet stove. I  bought 2 tons for $488 delivered and that's my heating bill for the Winter in Western Pa. We have a nice warm house around 72 F and we boil a little water on the stove on a very low flame for the humidity. The drawback is the Ham shack and the Flintstone studio are only in the low 60's on the days it's only in the teens outside. Leaving the flourescent lights on and closing the  doors keeps these areas around 68 F.
Fred

Since I moved into the trailer I am in now shareing the space with Marce I have always heated with oil heat. I have super insulated the structure . The walls have 3" of foam insulation plus 6" of fiberglas in the outer shell. All windowns have been replaced with thermopane units with additional screen and storm windows. There is a pitched roof with 22" of fiberglas over the trailer roof not to mention the value of additional insulation in the ceiling. As a result I use about a full 275 gallon barrel of oil. As it was I had the tank filled last Summer before the prices went nuts. I have run a number of high current electrical circuits in this place . It does not take much to heat this place. With the cost of electric power for heat becomming more on a parity with oil makes it very attracive.Iam debating wether or not to fill the tank this year. In past years I have used the big W, Woodoline. I have a woodoline stove and metalbestos fluepipe that is going to be installed this year. There is plenty of forest around here to use for fuel.I also have some ideas on building some solar hot air collectors that should also help supplement the heat. We generally maintain an indoor temperature of 62-64 degrees. It is comfortable for both of us. It is also healthier too. A heat pump system seems very attractive.I would go the geothermal route and install a burried heat sink system. Much work. I have a two line closed loop waterline from  my well . I once had a jet pump system which required two waterlines. When I lost the pump in the fire of '92 I picked up a submirseable pump and installed it . I tied both waterlines together at the pump. I  used a typical hot water heating system circulating pump to circulate the water through a heat exchanger. I placed a 20"  box  fan behind the transfer coils. I had an effective air conditioning system. The system has been offline due to a leak. I will reinstate it.One thing most people seem to forget is that a big hollowstate transmitter can make much heat. As it is just having the SX62  reciever on for a number of hour s does raise the room temperature by a few degrees. My little linear amplifier with a pair of 3-400 zs makes the operating room very warm when making a number of old buzzard transmissions. I am going to have an airducting system to circulate the room air from the operating room to the rest of the place. We all must have big transmitters to run in the cooler WX to combine operating pleasure with heating your abode. Yep, the Blockbuster linear amplifier will become my new furnace.De Tim WA1HnyLR

So if you nicad in RX mode hopefully you won't freeze and become another Ice Man dug up in 5000 years.
 The new place I put over head lights in each room. A 60 watt bulb throws off a lot of heat. I have Two layers of R30 overhead and 1 inch of foam. Walls R25 unfaced plus inch of foam and an air gap. R67 and R35 so it doesn't get much better than that. 
Yea, The 4X3 needs to get back on for winter operation. Class e is just too cold