At what propane price does it become cheaper to heat water with electric

[bigblockyeti]

I ran into the same issue with wood heat and insurance.  My porch had only screen windows which I was going to replace with double hung, low-E windows and insulate the walls & ceiling for another dwelling area that could be heated with a pot belly stove.  This wasn't going to be heated all winter, just when needed but when I inquired with my insurance agent, they were willing to play ball since it was part of the dwelling but the rate increase would have easily paid for NG heat twice over every year so it was a non-starter.

[rusticretreater]

The below link leads to a site that has a series of tables and instructions for calculation of the break even point for natural gas, LP, heating oil and electricity.  No firewood calcs though.

https://www.otpco.com/builders-contractors/fuel-comparison-tables/

[kantuckid]

The below link leads to a site that has a series of tables and instructions for calculation of the break even point for natural gas, LP, heating oil and electricity.  No firewood calcs though.

https://www.otpco.com/builders-contractors/fuel-comparison-tables/

Solid fuels have a life span based on your bodies ability to handle them. I have a friend & neighbor who doesn't own any trees & they live in a small antique dovetailed log cabin and are same ages as me. I've allowed him to cut his wood on me and given him wood I cut for years. he can no longer drop trees but can split with a powered machine.
 He's one of those people who've worked hard an entire lifetime and he's also unwilling to deal with joint replacement surgeries such as whats kept me mobile. I badgered him for a longtime just to get a knee shot-several years in fact! He pulls his wood in a garden wagon from a storage shed to the front porch.
 Cheaper vs. what's possible is a worthy thought.

[21incher]

One thing those charts don't  get into to help you compare costs is the UEF rating of an appliance which basically replaces  the old efficiency  ratings  with energy output.  This heatpump has a 4 UEF rating  that basically means for every  one dollar worth  of energy  consumed it will output  4 dollars worth  of energy. Most water heaters using conventional  technology are in the .8 to .95 rating that means you you get you get less then a dollars worth of output for every dollar spent. The government seems to be switching  to this rating due to new technology pushing efficiency over 100% as used to be the max.

[SwampDonkey]

A dehumidifier up here is $50 a month and that is pretty much continuous, you must have a low rate if it's only $9 a month for electric. In the winter with wood all the time it's not used here. By comparison, my A/C consumes less power and cools the whole house. Also, my electric use in the winter is less than in the summer. But that is only because my wood is my own. If you factor in 1.5 cord a month at $300 a cord it's likely saving $100-150 a month versus electric furnace in the cold months. Heat pumps I've seen and used and they can not heat the house alone up in this country, it falls behind and needs a supplemental heat, so everyone has to have an electric furnace in the system. Gas of any kind has been off the charts for years. Plus if your out of electric for heat in the winter for a week, your out of luck. A wood furnace can heat with a low fire by itself or turn on a generator. And if your smart about it, you don't need to run one all day and night all week. On sunny days I don't need to run a  furnace fan or burn wood all day. I've had people tell me what they think they're saving with all the gadgetry until I show them my bare bones set up with nothing special is still cheaper. There's a lot of quackery out there.

And like mentioned, things tend to work nicer (cutting firewood) when the body cooperates. ;D You work with what you can, sometimes $$ is harder on ya than a sore elbow. I never found any pinned to tree branches yet. :D Life is a bunch of trade offs and convenience always costs extra. ;)

[kantuckid]

One thing those charts don't  get into to help you compare costs is the UEF rating of an appliance which basically replaces  the old efficiency  ratings  with energy output.  This heatpump has a 4 UEF rating  that basically means for every  one dollar worth  of energy  consumed it will output  4 dollars worth  of energy. Most water heaters using conventional  technology are in the .8 to .95 rating that means you you get you get less then a dollars worth of output for every dollar spent. The government seems to be switching  to this rating due to new technology pushing efficiency over 100% as used to be the max.

With kitchen appliances they will change up routines for use of an oven to achieve better numbers on those yellow stickers. Our new GE range has an airfryer feature that manual says to not preheat. My wife is a very experienced cook and learned after several tries that if you didnt pre-heat it works poorly to say the least. There have been other similar manual details along that same line of thought, all towards making a user think it's saving energy.
Our elec WH has several settings on it's electronic control that we cannot tell one is any better than the other. 

[Crossroads]

Timing is everything, we had been off grid since august of 2018, built the apartment in the shop and has LP water heater, fridge, stove, dryer and freezer. We ran 2 generators depending on the need. 3200w for lights and everyday use and a 9500w when doing laundry/running the well. In November of 2021 we got connected! Gas prices were on the rise, so no more generator was good. The freezer is gas/electric, so switched it to electric. My wife was working at lowes at the time and we picked up a returned electric dryer that was heavily discounted. Then we ended up getting a returned fridge that was heavily discounted. When I wired the house, I didn't pull a circuit for an electric water heater, so the LP heater will stay. I like cooking with gas, so the stove will also stay, but the changes we've made have resulted in quite a savings, in this time of high gas prices. With the gas appliances that we still have, we could still live very comfortable in a power outage. 

[21incher]

Well it's definitely going to be a big savings  with the electric heat pump water heater. The heat pump without elements keeps up with  our demand so far and we are at 1.5 to 1.8 kw a day. At 16 cents a kw it's about 30 cents a day for hot water now that makes it $9.00 a month.  With LP we were paying about   $80 a month last load of  $4.99 gallon  lp. Another  big plus is we no longer need to run a dehumidifier so that's another  $25.00 a month in the summer savings. The water heater makes about  the same amount of noise as the dehumidifier did. 
 Next I have to program  the app to turn down the temp at low demand times that should save us even more. Pretty  neat watching real time energy usage on the app. I did cheat and use sharkbite slip tees where I put it because of pipes going up through the floor making spreading the main runs impossible.  I also found out sharkbite  fittings don't carry the ground as sweat fittings do so I had to go back and add clamps and ground jumpers to meet code. Wish  I knew that beforehand because  that added extra cost. Left the LP heater in place for now should  there be a longterm blackout. 
  The app will let me track it when colder weather arrives and my basement  temp drops down in the low 60 to monitor if electric  usage goes up. Definitely was worth the switch over. Thinking  about  a ground loop and heat pump for AC and backup heat after  seeing how a heat pump works.

[21incher]

First full weeks results. So far so good. 9.49 KW x .16 KWH so hot water cost is about $1.50 a week now. About 10% of the propane cost. Love the app as it allows you to find the cost of hot water for anything. 


 

[SwampDonkey]

You need to look at long term. A lot can influence cost, like does it pay for the cost of setup before it goes haywire? I like to look 10 year out. My experience with heat pumps (2) in less than 20 years is they did not perform, either life span or sufficient heat for a house in NB winters. And I do not care for that pump noise all night when trying to sleep.

[kantuckid]

We only hear a very quiet fan as our system heats our home. Our Water Furnace has a heat exchanger same as a heat pump but no outside gizmo posed on a concrete pad, just the pond & ground loop and the basically silent blower. It does often go into "emergency heat" during very cold spells in the depth of winter, so full electric then. Two thermostats and on our 2nd blower since 1998, knock on wood. Honestly, heat pumps have come a long way since they first came out but then this isn't Canada here either, mostly we'll see a couple of months of hard, frozen ground cold weather in what's upper gardening zone 5 for us. 

[21incher]

Swamp Donkey Actually the tank has a 10 year warranty and the rest came with 1year. I purchased the 5 year extended warranty with replacement option for the entire unit if it can't be fixed. So I have zero worries for 6 years. They usually just toss them if there is a problem with the heat pump section because of repair expenses. In 2 years the savings will have over paid for it and the next 4 years should give me 4 to 6k of savings depending on propane and electric costs to buy a more efficient model of the latest technology when it goes. I plan on documenting everything.  We have plenty of hot water and the elements kick in temporarily to meet high demands and that's all you need from a water heater. Nothing lasts forever anymore and I chose the one that seems to have a decent lifespan. It doesn't run at night. I have the temp dropped back after dinner time now and it fires up at 6am to bring the temp back up. It's really fairly quiet anyway.  

[21incher]

Well here's the actual cost for the first  30 days. 41.99 kw x .16 = about $6.72 for the first 30 days or less than 10% of our actual cost using propane of $75.00. Plus electric bill went down by more than that by not running  the dehumidifier.  


 

[SwampDonkey]

Not running a dehumidifier will probably save $50 a month, it does up here and our rate per kwh is less than 12 cents. I do know hot water heating is probably the most draw on power. But it is also reliable especially with water having to pass through a softener first. I got 30 years on hard water and it never broke, so very reliable system, electric.

[kantuckid]

Here we have a FF thread about propane on a day I'm reading in the WSJ about California banning NG water heaters and furnaces by 2030. The gas folks there are thinking they might change to green hydrogen from NG.
What a world we live in huh? :D
My afternoon hot shower is worth every penny we pay.  8) I got in yesterday, turned on the water and got zilch as the watermain had broken down in town where there's a road job. Our private line is a 1/2 mile down to the pavement so I called around until I knew it wasn't on me. Back on in a couple hours, whew!