just wondering other than tax and dye, what's really different between home heating oil #2 and diesel????

 

i think it's the same where i live

 

my fuel oil bill states under fuel type " Dyed diesel fuel "

 

They are both the same #2 fuel oil.

 

Don't laugh... I've never lived (more than a month in the summer) North of Interstate 10!!!

How do you heat a house on diesel? Do you just simply burn it in your Central A/C unit like a natural gas heater? Wouldn't Natural gas be cheaper and/or safer? Are there any better ways of heating the house in the winter up north than burning diesel? Wood? Natural Gas? Electric Heater?

 

Oil fired furnace is very common up here. Natural gas is not piped into rural communities, so that leaves wood, and or wood pellet stoves or propane. I have a 275 gallon fuel oil tank in my basement that supplies my forced hot air furnace. Darn heat is still kicking on at night and sometimes during the day still. 30's at night, then struggling to get to 55-60 during the day. as far as electric heat goes, I have electric baseboards in all the rooms, it was installed with the house when we built it 19 years ago, that lasted 1 winter, the $4oo dollar a month electric bills (back then) made the decision to get oil heat easy. Not so sure now though.




Tim

 

I go through ~1800 gallons of the stuff in the winter with the thermostat at 62. Ugh. Forced air fuel oil furnaces are highly inefficient, my house is old and big. Bad combo.

My furnaces are getting canned this summer. I'm biting the geothermal bullet.

 

1800 gallons??? So it costs you around 7k a year to heat your house? I am pretty lucky to have coal close by and I can usually heat my house for 600$ a year. (2800 SqFt.)

 

If you are abel to get off peak rates in your area you would cut the 400 in 1/2 if you can't get natural gas I assume your in the country. Contact your electric company about off peak rates.
My shop is 3564 sq feet and it cost me $350 to heat (electric boiler and floor heat) at 60 over the winter and this is in ND. My off peak rate is .035 KWH

 

Again, please forgive my Southerness...

I have a 3600 sq foot house and I just use a heat pump...


http://www.americanstandardair.com/H...eritage18.aspx

I run a 4 ton unit down stairs and a 3 ton unit upstairs... and usually set my thermostat on 68 during the Winter and between 72 and 75 during the Summer... My bills usually run $115-$120 a month in the winter and upwards of $160 to $180 a month during the summer...

I know comparing southern winters and northern winters is like asking what's the difference between a crack in the sidewalk and the grand canyon, but would a system like this not work up north? Maybe a smaller house would require the same size unit that I have, but wouldn't it be cheaper? I know that thing puts out some heat... we have to keep it on 68 degrees otherwise the house gets too hot at night... and that is with it being in the high 20's outside... Which for the south is BALL FREEZING COLD!!!

 

Heat pumps just do not seem to work well up here. This year we had 6 months of snow on the ground and a 3 week period where the temperature never made it warmer than -30 C, (2 nights where the temp was -56 with the wind). Electric would be just too expensive (we only have a 1050 sq ft house) so natural gas is the way we have to go (or geothermal, but they want $20,000.00 to put that in)

 

Yep...I know. That's why we're taking the geothermal plunge this summer. The added bonus is I'll get A/C too, which will alleviate sleeping in the bathtub this summer.

Regarding heat pumps, it just gets too GDarn cold in the winter for them to be an effective solution as a freestanding outdoor unit. That's why we have to go geothermal. The ground provides a constant temp in the 50's year around and the media is liquid, so the BTU's per cubic foot are way more dense than air.
That said, the geothermal will still need electrical heat supplement on really cold days. The electric heat on the system I'm putting in can provide a 25% boost if needed.
One final bonus is that we may use the geo to supplement our water heater system as well. Still trying to balance that option against the instant hot water heaters out there.

 

My neighbor has been talking about and researching geothermal heating for his place and he has come up with a $20k figure also. I've been kicking around the idea of making my own biodiesel and using it. I have a water baseboard heating system with an oil burning furnace, much like a boiler system. I burn heating oil year round because it also does the hot water for the house. I just haven't figured out the cost effectiveness of coverting over. I don't know if I need to replace or modify my current furnace to burn bio. Whether I should buy a turn key bio still or build one up myself, I have no experience in bio brewing. I definitely don't have the $$$ for geothermal.

 

Ok... It makes sense... how can a heat pump work and allow air to flow across the coils when they are 6 foot deep in a snow bank!!!

I also guess the geothermal route is similar to me wanting to put solar panels on my roof... The back half of my roof has about 57 square of useable space facing the southern sky and unobstructed by trees and what not... I could put enough panels on my house to service my house and bleed off any extra back into the grid for others to use... Basically the meter runs forward when I am using grid power (at night and stormy weather) and runs backward when I am producing more than my house is using (sunny days, when I am at work and every thing is shut down to minimum)...

But it would cost $150k.... and seeing as how I built my house for $155k... I thought that would be a bit much... I would take 30 years to recover the cost on the front end!!!

The government and environmentalist want us to go green, but I say make it affordable and many more people would!!!