Propane vs Electricity

[280plus]

Just a quick rant. I don't know if you're seeing them in your neck of the woods but here in CT we've had this TV campaign ad going on for a while now that touts the better efficiency of propane over electricity for your house. I have to laugh because, if you notice, propane is not mentioning a single word about oil and natural gas. WHY? Because it doesn't compare, at all. To the best of my knowledge oil fired hot water has always been the cheapest way (of the fossil fuels) to heat your home. Natural gas is second but comes close due to the fact that there is little maintenace needed for a gas fired appliance. Of the 3 fossil fuels propane is by far the most expensive.

And besides, if you REALLY want to barbeque. Are you going to use PROPANE or natural charcoal?

[Ben]

Looks at 280plus, looks at Peg, shakes head:  "Peggy, that boy just ain't right."
"For pennies more, you get clean-burning, efficient propane along with Strickland service, plus I won't kick your ass."

[280plus]

I KNEW Hank Hill was watching all this...

I was thinking "What would Hank say?" when I wrote it.

Pennies more my @$$...

I love the episode when Hank discovers Bobby and Peg have been using CHARCOAL for grilling. What a classic!

[Brad Johnson]

Many rural areas don't have gas service, so delivered fuels or electric are the only choices.

Around here you hardly ever hear of an oil-fired anything any more. There may be a few commercial oil-fired systems around but most are natural gas. Those who don't have gas service or an all-electric home just call the propane co.

Brad

[K Frame]

I grew up in an area (North East) where for the most part oil ruled unless you were in town.

The town I grew up in didn't have gas, virtually everyone had oil, while some holdouts still had coal.

The town where my parents grew up and now live again had gas. The house they live in originally has gas service, but I'm not sure if it was for the furnace or not. By the time that my Grandparents bought the house in 1943, it had been converted to a coal-fired boiler for gravity hot water. In 1956 Dad and Grandpa took out the coal boiler and put in an oil forced water system. That's the boiler that's in there today (Mom and Dad bought the house from the estate).

Here in Northern Virginia, though, most people have either gas or electric. There's no gas in my community (built during the moratorium to new fossile fuel hookups in the late 1970s), so I have an electric heat pump.

Mtnbkr's house (he's hunting this weekend, so I can talk about him!) was built in the middle to late 1980s, IIRC, and has gas.

I'd love to have a system where the heat coming out of the vents was actually warmer than from the heat pump, but I really don't feel like paying those insane gas bills.

What I really want is a coal stove and 5 tons of anthricite in a bin in the back yard.

[Ben]

I love the episode when Hank discovers Bobby and Peg have been using CHARCOAL for grilling. What a classic!

That was a great one.  And you KNOW they weren't doing so on the Wagner (pronounced "Vahgner") Deluxe grill.

To the actual topic -- in the rural area where my folks live, the standard is generally electricity except for heating (water and air), which most everyone uses propane for. Propane has really shot up recently according to my dad, but before now, it was looked at as the cheaper alternative in their neck of the woods, though that may have more to do with Calif electricity prices than anything else.

[280plus]

See, I'm learning here. Up here in the NE we have a hodge podge of all of those. Nat gas or oil in the cities and Propane or oil mostly in the rural areas. Some wood, some coal or wood pellets. Recently I haven't put any nat gas systems in  just propane or oil. Oil is the cheaper way to go especially of you put in a nice 86% boiler and use hot water to heat. Some people do prefer the minimal maintenance of gas or propane over oil. VERY FEW heat with electricity that I know of and heat pumps got a bad rap up here and are avoided like the plague these days. But people are starting to look at them again.

So from what everybodys telling me the propane vs electricity argument is valid in other parts of the country because oil usage is not as prevalant (sp?) in other areas as it is here. To me it's like Propane? Electricity? I wouldn't recommend either!

Thanks for the info!

[Sylvilagus Aquaticus]

In my part of Texas it's the de facto standard to use NG for water heating and central heating and sometimes, for cooking, unless you live in one of those 'progressive' homes built in the late 60's to mid-70's that was all-electric. My Dad was a builder during that time period and built the first 'all electric' home in our small town. The city refused to give the buyer a certificate of occupancy until they had a signed-off gas permit! (The 'gift' of a peach basket of fish heads topped with a layer of peaches, left in the city inspector's office late Friday afternoon after he'd left for a 3-day weekend solved that problem).

In rural areas, everyone had a 250 to 500 gallon propane or butane tank outside the house for cooking and heating.  NG lines weren't routinely placed outside the incorporated city limits.  Wood stoves were for the 'poorest of the poor'. Coal stoves were nonexistent then and now around there. Same for oil furnaces. The only one I ever saw was a homebuilt one in a machine shop that ran off waste oil.

Me, I'm gonna go solar and wind power when I build.  I know where I can get surplus Navy submarine batteries that will discharge 6 months before they need to be recharged.

Regards,
Rabbit.

[K Frame]

280,

You're in New Hampster, right?

Heat pumps simply don't have the ability to cope effectively with the long periods of cold weather that you have up there.

Even today's most efficient heat pumps can't extract much heat from the air once the ambient outdoor temperature gets below 20 deg. F.  At that point the secondary or supplemental heating kicks in, and in most applications, that's electric resistance.

In milder climates heat pumps are more effective. I'm mostly happy with mine, and at no point has my winter electric bill gone over $120, even in the coldest snaps. I keep the temp low and spot heat and wear sweat shirts, but I'm still comfortable.

The exception to the above rule are ground source heat pumps, either using wells or exchange coils buried in the ground. Those can be very efficient, even in the coldest climates, but they have to be installed by someone who knows EXACTLY what he's doing, or there will be problems. They also tend to be very expensive to install.

[Stand_watie]

Did you know that propane and natural gas are odorless?

That smell in it is ethyl mercaptan, added so you can detect a leak. The company that makes it is a subsidiary of my company, and I used to catch the phone calls when there was a leak of the product. The product is (with the exception of the olfactory value) essentially (by volume) approximately the same hazard to human life as propane (or NG) but a tiny leak of it of just a few milliliters dispersed on the wind can be smelled literally for miles.

[280plus]

Actually Mike I'm in CT but you're absolutely right. Air source heat pumps ain't no good down below about 40 or so. The outside unit freezes over and you have to defrost. I like hooking them to fossil fuel and below say 38* turn them off automatically  and turn on the supplemental fossil fuel by ODT (outdoor thermostat). they got a bum rap up here for many reasons. Cool output air, using electric heat as a supplement. And MOSTLY because most guys had no idea how to troubleshoot them and make them work correctly. Consequently they would use electric heat as primary heat and cost the home owner a fortune. Meanwhile he's blaming the heat pump and not the fact that it's working incorrectly.

I just heard a great story about a ground source HP that will not do the job below 40* and nobody knows why. Chances are the ground loop is too small or one branch got plugged or kinked during install. It wouldn't be the first time I've heard of a rock getting into underground piping. Anyways he had to ADD in duct gas fired furnaces to heat his house.

As far as the "all electric" houses. I remember those too. They used to have some kind of "Medallion" IIRC to indicate that they were one of these great new innovations. Scary thought now. Today you'd want to run like hell away from one of those!

Isn't that ethyl stuff the same stuff that makes a skunk smell like, well,,, a skunk?

[Art Eatman]

I set up for propane stove and water heater when I built my house in 1993.  A 250-gallon tank lasts about a year (filled to 80%).  Propane cost here has risen from around $0.80 per gallon to $1.60 per gallon.  My house is heavily insulated, so one burner of the kitchen stove keeps the main living area of some 1,000 sq ft comfortable when the outside temperature is no lower than barely freezing.  (I have the added benefit of being some 250 feet above the valley floor, so my morning lows are commonly some eight degrees higher than for "them flatlanders".)

Art

[280plus]

What state are you in Art?

[Art Eatman]

Down in the Big Bend of Texas, in the desert.  It can get cold, but it doesn't stay cold.  A morning low around freezing, sometimes, but it commonly warms up into the sixties and even more.  I've seen temperature ranges of as much as 60 degrees from sunup to early afternoon, although that's not common.

Down here the deal is coping with high summer temperatures.  We use "swamp coolers", evaporative coolers instead of A/C.  No compressor, so much cheaper.  I can get a delta-T of 30 degrees on a hot day, so ceiling fans keep life quite comfy.

[K Frame]

"Air source heat pumps ain't no good down below about 40 or so. The outside unit freezes over and you have to defrost."

OK, there's a couple of problems with that...

The higher the SEER efficiency, the more heat a heat pump will extract from lower temperature air. I have a Trane XL12, and it won't start kicking over to supplemental heat regularly until the outside temperature is around 29 deg. F. At that point the system is running pretty much 20 to 40 minutes per hour, but it's still a LOT more efficient/cheaper than all electric resistance heat at that point.

Pretty soon SEER standards are going to be close to 20, and the units will be pulling heat out of the atmosphere right down to about 20 deg. F.

Defrost mode is more a function of outside humidity than anything else. If it's cold and damp outside, the unit will go into defrost. If it's cold and dry, it won't.

[280plus]

Ah, I can see why propane has more of a chance to compete in your neck of the woods. Up here I just watched a guy fill 2 - 330 gallon oil tanks @ $2.29 a gallon (641 actually delivered) $1467.89 was his aprroximate bill. Last I saw he was already down 25% and winter has not begun here. Now that the house is complete I believe he won't burn as much but I'm betting he'll go through it all and have to buy more before winter is over. He didn't build a small house BTW.

Mike, up here on a bad day a heat pump can defrost at least every 90 minutes or MORE depending how it's set up. Of course my experience goes back to the old analog days. I haven't dealt with the newest electronic controls yet. Like I said, I'm not doing much heat pump stuff up here at all. Granted a higher SEER (efficiency rating) will perform better but soon as you start throwing defrost cycles in your losing efficiency. If you can run your heat pump efficiently down to 29* that's great I'd LOVE to see that but my experience with the older stuff says to me "around" 40 as a rule of thumb. If I come across a sale of a high SEER HP I'll be sure to research all that though. It never hurts to take another look at things.

Reality around here is that unless the Gov't forces people to do so (which it is about to start doing) they will almost ALWAYS go for the lowest SEER appliance because it is invariably also the CHEAPEST appliance. You can talk untill your blue in the face about energy savings but when it comes down to the final decision it's the bottom line that calls the shot. Annoys the CRAP outta me too...

[K Frame]

"but my experience with the older stuff says to me "around" 40 as a rule of thumb."

That's like saying that all furnaces operate at only 75% efficiency. Sure, at one time 75% was about as good as it got, but obviously that's not the case anymore because designs have advanced markedly, and that's also the case with heat pumps.

If you haven't looked into heat pump systems since defrost sensors have been on the market (about 20 years) you really need to look into them again, because the information you've got is at least that old, and to be brutally frank, not worth a lot anymore.

Rules of thumb also once called for the installer making a wild-assed guess on how large a heating system a home required and the homeowners hoping like hell he was right. Normally there were enough BTUs in the system to heat the home comfortably, occasionally not (leaving chilly, pissed homeowners), but most of the time the system was GROSSLY oversized and wasted fuel like mad.

[Stand_watie]

..
Isn't that ethyl stuff the same stuff that makes a skunk smell like, well,,, a skunk?

I think it uses sulfides which make rotten eggs stink.

[280plus]

If you haven't looked into heat pump systems since defrost sensors have been on the market (about 20 years) you really need to look into them again,

As soon as I can sell one, I will, they're not exactly flying off the shelf. But be aware thermistors are not "new technology", when I said analog I meant timers and T'stats. I've dealt with electronics in them but just not recently. They STILL have a logic circuit that asks the electronic question. "Do you need a defrost?" as much as every 30 minutes if you set them up that way. I always tried the longest interval first  (usually 90 minutes) and if there were no problems left it at that.

A conventional furnace will still only do 80%, so will a standard boiler. Gas or oil. They DO make higher efficiency ones 90+ for gas and 86% for boilers but again we run into the bottom line thing. The stuff costs more and is only purchased by the very few who are forward thinkers and not afraid to spend a few extra bucks. The rest just want the cheapest price they can find. Which is NEVER a way to decide on what to buy cause, and I can't say it enough, "YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR!"

It never ceases to amaze me at the people who have a Mercedes or a Lincoln or even a freakin' Bentley in the garage but cringe at spending any more than the bare minimum needed to heat or cool their houses. But we all know that's because none of them will  be seen driving their HVAC system around town, so what does it matter?  

[Leatherneck]

I hate heat pumps, but it looks like this winter the cost of electricity will rise comparitively less than other energy sources. We always have supplemented the heat pump with a wood-burning insert in the fireplace. Works like a champ, since there always is a place one can go to feel really hot air. Looking at the six+ cords of cured hardwood in the woodshed is like looking at money in the bank.

TC

[280plus]

The other benefit of wood is the subsequent excercise derived thereof.

(How's that for some fancy words?)

[cfabe]

I stumbled across this company a few days ago. They make electric radiant heating equipment. The product that intrests me most is their cove molding heater, it's a ceramic radiant panel that mounts up near the ceiling and shoots heat down onto stuff in the room. They claim some significant cost reduction numbers compared to other heating types.

http://www.electricheat.com/radiant/prods.html