Keystone State Thread

Exactly. My current furnace is a Bryant oil burner unit from the early 90's. I'd like to get ahead of it and replace with NG in the next 3-4 years. Also I currently do not have central a/c and would like to do that at the same time. I've been told that the ducting will need to be upgraded to insulated if we do this. Regardless, it's not going to be inexpensive.

 

Oil is very hard to work on unless you hire somebody who does it for a living (you need very specialized tools to make sure it’s even running properly), it’s very expensive to run, it’s a nightmare for a mechanic to swap out because they have to figure out what to do with any residual oil in the tank. Plus it can be very, very, very dirty if not maintained properly

 

My new house has an oil burner. Previous owner lied and said the tank was full. The company came out to service the burner, measured the tank, said it was basically empty which freaked me out since it was supposed to be full. It’s an in ground tank. They filled it and said to measure it and let them know if it was leaking, and they’d just pump the tank back dry. I measured it twice a day for two weeks, level didn’t budge. Wasn’t happy that i had to fill it, but was glad it wasn’t leaking.

Their tech was here for about an hour, changed all filters and some control mechanism, and measured efficiency while making sure it was operating properly. It was running at like 83% efficiency. That cost me about $200 for the service, but that included an emergency service agreement with no additional fees except for parts if needed. I don’t mind that yearly service fee.

 

My brother and sister-in-law had an oil burner in their previous house with an oil tank that was buried in the yard out front. They had to get the tank replaced and it was ridiculously expensive.
My tank is in a corner of my basement.

 

Natural gas is about 1/3 to 1/4 the cost of oil plus the benefit of gas dryer and gas water heater and gas range. The Amish actually have NG powered ceiling fans. Oil has a higher energy per pound but the high efficiency of propane vs the cost of maintaining the efficiency of oil makes them a wash IMO. I'm a Thermodynamics kind of Mechanical engineer, and years ago helped to develop a 10MM Btu NG burner. Thing could drink 31lbs of LNG a minute, and needed 6400cfm of air to feed the mix chamber.

 

And natural gas generator. Way better than gasoline if you actually need it.

 

This one will be filled in and new tank will be placed in the basement or on grade if/when needed.

 

In ground tanks are insane and can be a permitting nightmare. Just plop it in the basement like everyone else.

I don't think oil is that hard to work with. For industrial though I'd never want to see an oil boiler above 25 HP ever again. Jesus that thing was a nightmare, propane is SO MUCH LESS WORK.

 

The 1st load in the new truck...a Christmas tree. Clark’s Christmas Tree farm in West Grove, $83 and we cut it, you talk about getting raped for a tree!!

 

If you need to replace the furnace or boiler, that’s the time to switch. Many times gas fired (either propane or natural gas) heaters are less expensive. There are less moving parts.
Find a local, reliable propane service co., they will supply the tanks and regulators. Go on automatic delivery. That way, they can’t tell you that you have to wait a day or two if you run out. That will be under a contract with you. You’ll probably pay a small lease fee in with the cost of the propane, but they own and MUST maintain the tanks and regulators.
The way to compare fuel oil to propane or natural gas is to compare cost per 100,000 btu, otherwise know as a therm. It’s the way to compare two fuels with different amounts of btu per gallon( oil or propane) or cubic feet ( natural gas). The oil company and propane companies can tell you that number, base on their cost per gallon.

 

Oil systems are no harder to learn then doing work on a vehicle

It is quite simple to extract oil out of a tank when changing to another source of heat in fact over the years I pumped enough oil out to heat for years.Some techs do find it hard because they try carrying it up stairs of any kind which sucks .

Special tools There in the HVAC Box about the only really special one that comes to mind is the stack tester

As far as Dirty no worse then neglected vehicles

Expensive when oil gets up to $5.00 a gallon and one burns a 1000 gallons a month yes it is expensive

I would go Propane no problem but no one will deliver in the winter and those 100 pound tanks get heavy if you need to get several.

What is your preferred choice?

 

I burn wood mainly. I probably go through less than 50 gallons of oil a year.

 

I was a power plant supervisor for ten years, we had three 800hp Cleaver Brooks fire tube steam boilers. Oil/natural gas that were cheaper to run on oil. In cold weather we we would go through a tractor trailer tanker truck a day.

 

We run 4x 100hp 3pass Hursts and get deliveries of propane 2x a week atm. The fuel company says we have a 3 day buffer for missed deliveries.

 

We use Propane here - built the house and put in a propane fired boiler to feed our hot water and in-floor radiant heat. I opted to purchase the tank so I could shop propane prices, if necessary. Bought a 1000 gal tank and buried it in the yard about 30' off the garage. It also fuels our cook-top and the whole-house emergency generator when necessary.

 

Oil tank in the basement is like immortal. We moved ours inside with the new house. No freezing issues, no rust issues.

 

We use wood for heat but the oil for the hot water. We have baseboard radiators but they rarely come on down stairs and never upstairs.
We also have a propane generator as we lose power here all the time and we flood without the sumps running.
If/when we build our "last" house, we will use some solar and wood since we will have plenty of both and we will not be in a good place to take oil/gas deliveries. We may dabble in hydro since we have a lot of water bubbling up but no streams. We can tap the ponds though.

 

I have an OWB with full hydronic so I use a heat exchanger during the winter for my residential hot water. Use electric during the summer though.

 

Speaking of Tacoma's, we just dropped the truck off for a lift and tires. Next will be scheduling the TSB for the trans that just came out in September.