Home Heating - Oil vs Gas

diehardbiker said:
The biggest difference is M O N E Y. Oil is now at least 4 times more expensive than Natural gas.

Secondly, you pay AFTER you use Natural gas where you have to pay before to get your oil tank filled. Meaning more stable with monthly budget when using NG.

For me, in the last two years I have been using straight firewood. Since I harvest it myself and it really beats the rest.
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Hopefully you use recently fallen or standing dead timber.
 
Well, I hate cut live timbers, I will cut whenever the property owner wants them dropped. I have no control over this. If they want drop it, whats point of refusing?

I have at least 5 trees on my property, and I won't cut them down. Two of them will yield at least a cord each! One of them is Ash and I refused to kill it.

Tousi said:
Hopefully you use recently fallen or standing dead timber.
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The natural gas is huge saving.

Use heat via electric is expensive, make electricity bill goes up.
 
Well, where Reba lives is really in subtropical, which means that they don't generally get brutal cold winter. Most of the time it would be mild so heating issue is really minimal, she don't have much choice. The best HVAC option as cost wise for her home would be all electric.

If your in Hawaii, you don't need any HVAC at all. You can if you want to but really pointless. But if your here in Upstate NY, AC is not that required because only few hot days, not much and long cold winter then heating is concerned so cheapest is Natural Gas, next is coal, then wood. The rest about the same (Propane, electric, and oil). Coal is cheaper than Natural gas, the reason Natural gas is the cheapest is because homeowner can do practically NOTHING to maintain the heating while coal, homeowner have to shovel the coal, same with wood and yes Coal is cheaper than wood if not cut trees by homeowner like I do.

Foxrac said:
Oh wow, I hopefully you don't have bitter winter.
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Ours is electric as well and last year, we never turned it on. Have to find what they are using in WA state. I know the listings we saw just said heat and fireplace. Some fireplaces were pellet (don't know what that is), and then wood.

We have never used a fireplace before, so that will be a learning experience.
 
Pellets are made out of wood! Same thing just more compression in it, just more of recycling them. I forgot about this one, it still cheaper than oil or propane. About the same cost as firewood. Advantage of pellet is easier to control them, load em and turn on.

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KristinaB said:
Ours is electric as well and last year, we never turned it on. Have to find what they are using in WA state. I know the listings we saw just said heat and fireplace. Some fireplaces were pellet (don't know what that is), and then wood.

We have never used a fireplace before, so that will be a learning experience.
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Kristina, a strictly pellet stove is pretty automatic. You can set it and there's an auger that drops pellets into the fire a pre-determined amount of pellets for a set length of time.......Since pellets aren't real cheap, maybe get an all steel (as opposed to cast iron) stove and your fuel options open up.....you would probably be able to buy the stove I mentioned cheaper than a pelletized stove, too
 
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Foxrac said:
Oh wow, I hopefully you don't have bitter winter.
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I lived here since 1978, and no long bitter winters yet. Besides, we also have a very nice wood stove and lots of firewood.
 
Pellets are cheap here for the pellet stoves, you can buy a very large bag for under $3 a bag

Something else I was looking into is the Rocket stoves, very energy efficient and very cheap to build. I can get all the barrels I want free.
Rocket stoves are cheap, easy and safe to build, can use wood or pellets to burn, and its a clean burn too.
 
Reba said:
I lived here since 1978, and no long bitter winters yet. Besides, we also have a very nice wood stove and lots of firewood.
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We have short bitter winters in different year - 2012-2013 was bad but 2011-2012 was not bad.

It isn't like upper midwest or northeastern states that where you have long bitter winters.
 
diehardbiker said:
Well, where Reba lives is really in subtropical, which means that they don't generally get brutal cold winter. Most of the time it would be mild so heating issue is really minimal, she don't have much choice. The best HVAC option as cost wise for her home would be all electric.

If your in Hawaii, you don't need any HVAC at all. You can if you want to but really pointless. But if your here in Upstate NY, AC is not that required because only few hot days, not much and long cold winter then heating is concerned so cheapest is Natural Gas, next is coal, then wood. The rest about the same (Propane, electric, and oil). Coal is cheaper than Natural gas, the reason Natural gas is the cheapest is because homeowner can do practically NOTHING to maintain the heating while coal, homeowner have to shovel the coal, same with wood and yes Coal is cheaper than wood if not cut trees by homeowner like I do.
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I checked the map and yes, Reba is little more southern than my area, however both of us live in subtropical climate as well, but we get some bitter winter, depending on years - some years are worse. 1993 Blizzard put some southern states as bad as upstate NY with extremely bitter winter. That was rare event - about happen once a century.

Southern FL like Miami and Key West don't need heating at all, but they may have some unusual cold weather sometime.
 
Foxrac said:
We have short bitter winters in different year - 2012-2013 was bad but 2011-2012 was not bad.

It isn't like upper midwest or northeastern states that where you have long bitter winters.
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We get about 3 in. of snow every 10 years, and it's gone within a day.

Some winters it's not even cold enough to use the wood stove.

I've lived in northern and New England states, so I know the difference in winters. :)
 
natural gas is cheaper to heat than heating oil. I've been there and done that. I lived in a house in Seattle whom my great aunt owned and I took care of the house for 2 years at the time. Heating oil bill was like $200-300 every 3 months during cooler months. It's some kind of diesel fuel oil they use for heating.
 
Natural gas is cheaper, but Im tempted to go electric on my house due to the fact its a cheaper install, it will barely run with my wood burners going, and I want to install a whole house generator as well for power outages. ( I'd be the only house in the area with power ) gas lines can rupture in an earthquake so either way Id be screwed, no gas no power unless it runs on petrol...lol
 
FYI Diesel is just another word for Kerosene, the only difference is tax, Diesel has highway taxes built in, while Kerosene don't have highway tax. Its illegal to fill Kerosene in Diesel vehicle. I do that sometimes, in exchange for the gas I paid for which includes highway taxes for lawn tractor which never gets on highway. I just want fair exchanges on taxes, not being taken advantage of.
Heating oil is also kerosene too. Same family, The high end kerosene used for kerosene heater just add scent in it and cleaner, that is all and they are expensive. though

sequoias said:
natural gas is cheaper to heat than heating oil. I've been there and done that. I lived in a house in Seattle whom my great aunt owned and I took care of the house for 2 years at the time. Heating oil bill was like $200-300 every 3 months during cooler months. It's some kind of diesel fuel oil they use for heating.
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Natural gas is not cheaper, really CHEAPEST of all. Why I went for wood for heating? Simple put, I have what I need to collect free firewood. If I have to pay somebody to cut down and split logs for me, then I would stick with Natural gas.

What I have:
3/4 ton truck, meaning I can haul almost full cord (equilvent to three face cord) of firewood without need of trailer.
Chain saw
Ramp to get big log load onto my truck

I don't have log splitter, but I do have ax which would do. The reason why I don't have log splitter is because I found out it is cheaper to rent log splitter than to buy one so I don't have to worry about maintenance and storage.

sonocativo said:
Natural gas is cheaper, but Im tempted to go electric on my house due to the fact its a cheaper install, it will barely run with my wood burners going, and I want to install a whole house generator as well for power outages. ( I'd be the only house in the area with power ) gas lines can rupture in an earthquake so either way Id be screwed, no gas no power unless it runs on petrol...lol
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diehardbiker said:
Natural gas is not cheaper, really CHEAPEST of all. Why I went for wood for heating? Simple put, I have what I need to collect free firewood. If I have to pay somebody to cut down and split logs for me, then I would stick with Natural gas.
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So far, all our firewood has been free. We even gave some away.
 
diehardbiker said:
FYI Diesel is just another word for Kerosene, the only difference is tax, Diesel has highway taxes built in, while Kerosene don't have highway tax. Its illegal to fill Kerosene in Diesel vehicle. I do that sometimes, in exchange for the gas I paid for which includes highway taxes for lawn tractor which never gets on highway. I just want fair exchanges on taxes, not being taken advantage of.
Heating oil is also kerosene too. Same family, The high end kerosene used for kerosene heater just add scent in it and cleaner, that is all and they are expensive. though
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I could care less on that because it's a hassle to have a truck coming over to refill the tank. I'm fine with natural gas heat, at least for now.
 
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