any pros on here? after 45 yrs of burning wood its getting old real fast. have been using a owb for a long time. its not fun anymore
Kinda like trying to plant trees for the future for money.
Propane or oil maybe down in price now, but 5 years from now.... Oil is no where near the danger of propane, if you get a leak.
Like Cfarm said, either way your're at the mercy of the supplier. The last 2 years I've been able to fill my 1000 gal tank at summer fill pricing of about .75-85 per gallon. 3 years ago it was about 1.39, 5 years ago it was 2.50-3.
We sell about 20 furnaces a year, 1 or 2 a year will be oil fired. Oil here isn't cheap, LP is cleaner and will be less maintenance over the life of the furnace and boiler. Another benefit is you can get units on LP that are 96% efficient, high efficient oil is very expensive in comparison. The oil units we do sell are to customers who either don't want the expense of switching, or are hesitant to get rid of the extra warm heat, (higher discharge air temp). If your piping is done correctly, meaning leak tested and with the correct material, a leak should not happen. Gas piping should be done by or at least supervised by a professional.
dose it take more propane to equal the amount of heat from oil?
oil is 2.20 a gal it should be half that since gas is 1.25 to 1.50 a gal. several yrs ago someone i know hauled fuel said the petal trucks as he called them that deliver to your house were getting .50 a gal to deliver it to your house from there tanks or the rack
Quote from: snowstorm on April 03, 2020, 07:50:03 AM
dose it take more propane to equal the amount of heat from oil?
Yes, but it's cheaper. I replaced my oil fired boiler with a lp boiler this winter. Too soon see what the difference in cost will be but after 3 months of use I feel there will be some savings. I mainly did it because my chimney was getting in bad shape and I've always had a draft issue with a hard North wind.
Thought about converting your existing OWB to burn used oil? Propane can get fairly expensive. I have a propane fired standby generator. It is very nice for short duration outages. Fires right up and runs. My wife loves it.......We had an extended outage due to hurricane force winds a year or so ago and were down for 8 days. That generator at full load burns about 4 gallons of propane per hour. It hits the pocket book pretty hard. I'm thinking of adding a diesel genset to the mix to take over for the long duration outages. We had a PTO driven unit on the farm. Hooked it to the 1000 RPM PTO tractor and she sat there and ran just off idle for 27 days following an ice storm in 1979. Sipped fuel.
I have a bad taste in my mouth from my propane supplier as well. They are like dealing with the Mob......and just as crooked.
Wudman
Fuel oil supplies more heat per gallon than propane (138,000BTU versus 91,000BTU for propane). As was mentioned, propane burners can be very efficient. So you'd need to compare burner efficiency, cost per gallon, and then convert to $/BTU or BTU/$.
IIRC, oil is 138,000 btus per gallon and propane is 90,000. The first thing to do is figure out the cost per million btus, then apply the efficiency of the fuel. This sil give you a fair idea of cost per available btu.
After using wood for forty plus years my wife and I decided this was our last year burning wood. We too have the owb and it has served us well. We have always had a propane furnace backup and a propane generator. I have two 500 gal tanks, one for the house and one for my shop. I would always run the propane furnace for our long cold wet springs just to make sure they stayed operational. I own the tanks so I am free to buy from whatever supplier I choose. If you lease a tank you are locked in to one supplier. They offer a prepay contract which I will use. You can prepay say a $1000. and it guarantees the lowest price you will pay., If it goes up you pay no more than the prepay price, if it goes down you pay the lower price until you have exceeded the prepay amount. My only unknown is how much to prepay as I have no history of how much propane I will use for the year.
I am a gasfitter by trade and am partial to the domestically produced propane. If you do a rough heat loss of your home ( where are you ? ) here in upstate NY I would use a ballpark of 35BTU / sq foot. Add 60 gallons per year for cooking and 200 for hot water then figure your heat load. 1 gallon equals 92,516 btu.
Snowstorm
I too packed in with burning wood, when after 14yrs the boiler started leaking, this was the second boiler the first started leaking after 14 yrs. also. I took a serious look at the cost of replacing it and all the work required to feed it and the costs of purchasing 10 cords of 8 ft birch.
I replaced it with a high efficiency propane boiler last November.
The heating cost cash outlay was not much different except no more cutting splitting piling and feeding the stove. After 28 yrs. the novelty has warn off.
Cheers
Al
i have a taylor t1000 thats just over 20 yrs old. it has stood up very well. but it eats a lot 20 cd more on a real winter. it is doing a lot. the house is a cedar log cabin 30 x50 the garage is 40 x 60. it heats bolth. i put radiant in the house and it works pretty good but it needs 170 degree water in cold weather. i did put 2 heatpumps in last winter. mostly for heat in the fall and spring and to cool. also have a hot air oil furnace. dont really like it. the garage has radiant in 20 x 40 the part i added 4 yrs ago the rest i built 25 yrs ago. also has 2 modines. i want to keep the warm floors
Quote from: gasman1075 on April 03, 2020, 03:00:37 PM
I am a gasfitter by trade and am partial to the domestically produced propane. If you do a rough heat loss of your home ( where are you ? ) here in upstate NY I would use a ballpark of 35BTU / sq foot. Add 60 gallons per year for cooking and 200 for hot water then figure your heat load. 1 gallon equals 92,516 btu.
central maine this winter was unusually warm most are not
You guys need to keep this silly talk about wood not being worth it down. Us wood sellers won't sell any wood if word gets out ;) :D
One thing I'm starting to see is guys switching out for a gasification wood boiler. Cuts their wood use in half and they can afford to buy some or all of it.
Snowstorm
I grew up in the 60's and 70's in the fuel business and we sold #1,#2 and #3 heating oil and we also sold propane. By the time my mom sold the business in 1990 and retired fuel oil in home heating in that area was almost none exist propane had taken over. The area I live in there is hardly any fuel oil furnaces. Propane is king around here. I just last summer changed out a furnace for a buddy of mine sister that was still fuel oil. Her tank was out side and trying to get straight #1 fuel in this area is hard every thing is blended and when it got real cold she would have flowing problems with blended fuel. I put in a 96% propane furnace and a new AC unit for her. Even the wholesalers around here don't carry oil furnaces or parts so propane has become the choice around here. Me I have propane furnaces that I check every year to make sure that are in working order just in case I done with wood and the Garn. It came close last year when I had a leak because of a weld that cracked but we repaired it and got back up and going.
i looked today my taylor owb was built in 95. i have had it 20 yrs. so far only 2 leaks. 1 small one under the door and one in the back that was a plain to fix
winters here i see more oil trucks on the road than propane. maybe it hasnt caught on as much here
The only oil here is really old furnaces. Propane/NG is all you see installed. My FIL is an HVAC man, and he does a lot of fuel oil service because few others know how to work on the dinosaurs. Very similar to a good Detroit mechanic.
Here in New Brunswick, it is mostly heating oil furnaces. On my road here the only propane was my dad's potato shed. It's the biggest shed around these parts. All houses here use heating oil or electric as backup or main heat. Electric is cheaper than oil or propane in these parts. In my new house I figured electric costs no more than the wood. I don't need a fire all day, when the sun is out. Them windows and sun will heat the place to 85 degrees. Windows go up here. :D
Dad had a propane fireplace in the house in town as back up, but rarely used it, was electric furnace mainly and heat pump. Heat pump was great for air conditioning in summer, but in cold you definitely need that electric furnace, this ain't Virginia. :D Total electric bill in winter was never more than $400/month. If you only had hot water heater and appliances your looking at about $100 anyway, so $300 is a heck of a lot cheaper than $800+ of fuel. :D :D Our experience with electric heat pump is maybe 14 years if your lucky, they only warranty 10. And that is $10,000 plus. Electric furnace maybe $3500, probably last 40 years, no circuit boards to fail.
10 k for a heat pump? i had 2 put in last winter 1 much bigger than the other 6k
Quote from: snowstorm on April 05, 2020, 06:54:35 AM
10 k for a heat pump? i had 2 put in last winter 1 much bigger than the other 6k
Don't forget the exchange rate.
Quote from: snowstorm on April 05, 2020, 06:54:35 AM
10 k for a heat pump? i had 2 put in last winter 1 much bigger than the other 6k
That heat pump heated 3000 sq feet including basement. These are big stand alone units either on a concrete base or steel bracket, and include the electric furnace to. Actually, exchange rates on these don't make a lot of difference. I've seen $6000 ones when I lived in town. The home owner thought they had a deal until it needed fixed in a few months and the reputable guys wouldn't come near it. Sorta reminded me of the times drifters would come through the communities looking to paint your garage roof with a $30 can of aluminum paint for 30 minutes work and want $500 for the job, most of the time the home owner supplied the ladder. Money in hand after the job and long gone. Paint peeled off by next spring. My uncle got stung by them and I had a good laugh. :D
Around here, a wall mount one is CDN$6 grand. These are installed prices we're talking about. None of them guys does nothing for less than $40/hr
I had wood furnace and electric side unit, 40 foot flu, ducts, air exchange system installed for $13G included labour and tax. We pay more consumer tax up here, 15% compared to your 6%. That will do me out and no circuit boards to fail.
mine are fujitsu and that price was installed.
Snowstorm, do you get an electric furnace and all the duct for that included with the heat pump? Let's compare apples to apples. ;) I'm not talking about mini-splits or them smaller wall mounted units. Ones I seen on Central Maine's site is small units on the wall. I'm talking air-to-air heat pump with electric furnace and ducts included.
In our area a big knock I see against oil, is insurance companies making you change to those newer double walled fuel tanks. They are pretty $$$$$.
Insurance companies don't like oil spills.