switching from oil heat?

[gentlemango]

Newscasters are predicting $8 or $9/gallon gas and oil prices in the next 24 months?????? We can NOT do that. We can not live on that.

Oour house is oil heat. Help me, frugal board! What can we switch to? Has anyone switched their houses from oil to some other form? Was it expensive? Tell me about the hassle. I'm begging for information and anecdotes. Please.

We've been looking at wood stoves, wood pellet stoves or big wood furnace things that attach to the side of your house. Does anyone here have a furnace system? Did you put in ducts or use existing ones? How do they work exactly? I've heard they are difficult to maintain. I have no idea what you have to do to keep them going. Do you gather your own wood or buy it, if you buy is it really less expensive than oil? Are wood stoves easier to work? The pellet stoves sound like the most convenient, you don't even light anything, you set the thermostat and it takes care of everything by itself? We live close to lumberland (most wood pellets come from maine around here, i think?). The availability of pellets isn't a problem like I've heard it can be in other parts of the country. But in a power outage we would be SOL with a pellet stove. Wood stoves seem like the most common alternative around here.

Is it possible to switch a house completely over and never turn on our oil furnace again? I worry about freezing the pipes if we do something wrong.

If oil goes through the roof won't firewood prices soon follow?

Ohmygod! We cannot handle $8/gallon gas. We're wicked poor NOW. This is panicking me.

[lisalulu]

I'm sure someone else will have tons more info than me but our last house had been converted from oil to electric by the previous owner-tank got decomissioned, etc.

[gentlemango]

Did they put in electric baseboards? I looked at those because they're cheap to install, but supposed to be a fire hazard? We had electric heat growing up in the south, forced hot air.

[shayinme]

I'm in Maine where most houses heat with oil, so I feel your pain . The only reason we were not screwed this winter is we did a budget plan but this is the first year where I am paying for my heat well into the summer. Which sucks because generally I only would have paid for oil from Nov-April, but there was no way I could pay the cash price this year. My house runs 275 gallons a month, and the current price is crazy.

I have known people who did the pellet stoves and have heard nothing but good things abou them. Outside of the initial costs, its pretty reasonable.

Sorry I can't answer your other questions, but will be looking to see what others have to say.

Shay

[kdabbler]

:

Oil user here. We always talk about converting to natural gas. We'd love to have a tankless water heater.

[Purple Sage]

No advice, just sympathy. We were shocked that our heating oil bill this winter averaged over $300 a month for this tiny 900sf house. That's one reason we're moving back to Texas, to get away from astronomical home heating bills. It's just plain wrong. I'll be watching this thread for ideas of alternative heating options, though, because the house we're moving to has no heat right now. Even though it is in the South, we'd still like to have something other than electric space heaters to get us through next winter. Good luck to you, mama.

[Sharlla]

We use those oil filled heaters. Our electric bill runs about $100 a month in the winter months.

[lmonter]

Our house has a combo of electric baseboard and gas furnace. We decided both of those were too pricey (4 years ago!) and replaced the sad old fireplace insert in the living room and installed a free-standing one down in the den.

We haven't had to worry a lick about freezing pipes. The indoor temp usually stays between 74*-84*F, we leave the patio door to the backyard open a crack in the dead of winter when the kids are outside playing for hours, and sometimes we just have to open a few windows to cool it off in here. That's just with the one insert in the living room going - the den one only gets fired up usually when we hit 20*F or colder.

But. Here's where it's a good deal for us.
Hubby treats wood cutting as his hobby - we don't buy the wood from someone else. He has his chainsaws (he's got 3 - like I said, his hobby), the pickup (which only gets used for hauling things here and there - like the dump once a month or 6 weeks so we don't pay $35/mo for weekly curbside trash pickup), and he gets a permit from the state Forest Service for $5/cord and goes out and cuts down dead wood from Forest Service land. Plus then he gets a morning out with his guy friends (no kids hanging off him!) and so on. Then he has to split it and stack it, which is also good exercise. I can't split wood to save my life, I'm pretty lame that way. But he doesn't mind.
My "hobby" is gardening and canning, so we're both equally weird in our own ways.

But we're rather happy that if the power goes out, we may not have running water (stupid water district), but at least we'll be warm and able to cook. Oh, and that Avista isn't getting $300-$400/mo from us for gas/electric.

[4evermom]

My mom's oil furnace needs to be replaced so we're looking at gas but heard electric was a good idea since it can be made in different ways and the price of electric would hopefully come down as alternative methods got used (solar, wind, etc).

[4evermom]

Originally Posted by Sharlla

We use those oil filled heaters. Our electric bill runs about $100 a month in the winter months.

We use those in the rooms we actually hang out in most of the time to keep them comfortable while the rest of the house is kept cold.

[Sarah8Jane]

We have oil baseboard heat, but alot of the people around here use monitor heating systems which are oil heaters in a central location (i.e. living room). To prevent frozen pipes they attach heat tapes to pipes and plug them in when needed (usually people can watch the weather and if it's going to be below zero, they'll plug them in, when it warms back up, they'll unplug them).

[yeahwhat]

We have electric baseboard heat, but our electric rates are pretty low.

We converted a rental property my fil owns from oil heat to electric last fall. The building is still hot water heat, but now it's heated by an electric boiler rather than an oil one. It's saved money even this year compared to what we'd have expected to pay for oil, but again, electric prices are fairly low here.

[lisalulu]

Originally Posted by gentlemango

Did they put in electric baseboards? I looked at those because they're cheap to install, but supposed to be a fire hazard? We had electric heat growing up in the south, forced hot air.

Yes they were baseboards-I think she must have had them installed in the 70's or 80's. I don't really know much about safety except that I remember at our inpection, he told us that the ones in the house were safe but not all are?? I honestly wasn't happy with them. We had no insulation in the walls so it always felt drafty but I grew up with gas forced air.

[AuntNi]

A gal I know on another money management discussion group is buying a new furnace. Here's a bit of info she gave about it: "It's called a "storage unit" because the heat coils are between and around bricks. They superheat the bricks and each morning and evening for about 5 hours, the power company turns the furnace off remotely and the furnace pulls heat from the bricks. The bricks will stay hot for up to 12 hours."

She's negotiated with her power company to buy the power during off-peak hours, so she's saving 40% on her electricity that way. She said the cost is going to be $4300 for the furnace plus $2000 for the installation. Not sure if that's feasible for you, but it's something I'm considering for when my ancient furnace dies.

[Pfeiff99]

We have oil heat and electric baseboard in the upstairs bedrooms. The prices are insane, we barely made it this year and never turned the heat higher than 59 degrees. SO...we're going to get a pellet stove. We'll take whatever we get from the Federal Stimulus thingy and then somehow save the other half and get it done by the middle of the summer.

There isn't really any other choice.

[mnnice]

Originally Posted by gentlemango

We've been looking at wood stoves, wood pellet stoves or big wood furnace things that attach to the side of your house. Does anyone here have a furnace system? Did you put in ducts or use existing ones? How do they work exactly? I've heard they are difficult to maintain. I have no idea what you have to do to keep them going. Do you gather your own wood or buy it, if you buy is it really less expensive than oil? Are wood stoves easier to work? The pellet stoves sound like the most convenient, you don't even light anything, you set the thermostat and it takes care of everything by itself? We live close to lumberland (most wood pellets come from maine around here, i think?). The availability of pellets isn't a problem like I've heard it can be in other parts of the country. But in a power outage we would be SOL with a pellet stove. Wood stoves seem like the most common alternative around here.

Pellet stove are pretty common around here too, but I don't know much about them

My parents just got a wood furnace it uses their existing ducts (previously they used propane). They still have propane for back up and to run their stove and dryer. I heard they were pretty reliable, but the are not cheap. I think my parents spent around $5000. Also they need a nominal about of electric to work. They have enough wooded area on their land to keep it feed with no problems.

[sewingmama]

Our (200-year-old, in need of some work to make it more efficient) house had oil heat on the main floor when we bought it. This past year, we converted to a wood-burning outdoor boiler, and we *love* it. We considered a woodstove, but the boiler turned out to be a better option for us, though it is more expensive than a woodstove. We went with the company Central Boiler, as they got rave reviews from friends. It will take a few years to recoup the investment, but we anticipate that either we'll be here for that duration, or it'll reflect itself in a higher selling price if we do move. It's supposed to last about 25 years. It's not actually attached to the side of our house; it looks like a small shed a few feet away from the house, with a big pipe going into the house.

Our house already had ducts for forced air heat on the main floor, so we didn't have to add any. (Our upstairs has electric baseboards, but we are intending to put ducts up there eventually so the boiler can heat up there too.) We have a source for wood; it takes DH about an hour every week to cut and stock up on wood, and he did that all winter (though he'd stagger it so he wasn't doing it in the worst of the cold and snow). However, I think (and I could be wrong) that it would still be cheaper than oil, even if we had to purchase the wood. Oh, and DH spent about 10-15 minutes every day loading the furnace (on really, really cold days, he would check it a couple of times a day to see if it needed to be loaded more -- you get a feel for how fast it burns after a bit).

We happened to have oil in our oil tank still, so we just turned its setting way down and kept it as a backup (which came in handy when a part went up on the furnace -- it was easily fixed but it was good to have the backup for that one night). The boiler can also come with an attachment that lets it heat your hot water too, which was nice for us, since our hot water heater is electric.

No maintenance that I know of, just removing the ashes every day and loading it again. Took a couple of days to install, but DH just turned it off a few weeks ago when we no longer needed heat on the main floor (no bedrooms there). Did a couple of little things to turn the hot water back to regular, and that was that. He's not here right now, so I can't ask him if there is some other pre-season or post-season maintenance that needs to be done.

It heated the house really well, and people commented that it felt nicer than the oil heat, like not as dry, maybe. Very easy to regulate too, with a wall thermostat. The one thing is that it does need a small amount of electricity to run its pump, so if the electricity goes out, we're out of luck there. That's not a small issue if you're in an area where that happens frequently.

As far as electric baseboards, when we bought the house, the previous owners had already pulled wires to install them, so we finished the job (we moved in during the winter and needed something immediately in the bedrooms). They heat well, and they haven't gotten so hot that I'd worry about someone getting burned if they bumped one by accident, but I do worry about stuffed animals or bedding being a fire hazard (DH says that won't happen, but I'm paranoid). They do very much affect furniture placement in a room, and electricity isn't cheap either, so we'd like to do away with them. (It won't cost any more to have the furnace heating the whole house rather than just the main floor, once we spend the money to put the ducts in.)

That's what I know -- hope that is helpful!

[mnnice]

cental boiler is the brand my folks have too.

[gentlemango]

Very helpful! Thanks so much for that explanation. Free heat and no hassle, almost sounds too good to be true! There are woods all over the place here, there must be a place we could get wood for free.

Def. going to make the switch now. if only we could ditch the car as well, sigh.

[sewingmama]

Originally Posted by gentlemango

Very helpful! Thanks so much for that explanation. Free heat and no hassle, almost sounds too good to be true! There are woods all over the place here, there must be a place we could get wood for free.

Def. going to make the switch now. if only we could ditch the car as well, sigh.

The downsides are that it takes a while to recoup the initial investment, and that someone has to spend something to get the wood -- either paying for it, or my DH spending his time to chop the wood, plus you do have to venture outside in cold/nasty weather to make sure it's full. It's a small sacrifice to make, but it's not negligible either. When DH went out of town for a weekend, it fell on me to load the thing. It's not too difficult, but it did take some effort for me, and it's not something I'd want to do every day (especially pregnant/with a baby in tow). Also, it makes it a little harder to go away for a weekend. We don't tend to go away much anyway in the winter (the grandparents would just as soon visit us anyway), but we did go away for a few days in February, and DH was worried about the furnace becoming empty and the pipes freezing. Thankfully, it was a pretty warm weekend, and we were able to set the thermostat low and rely on the leftover oil just in case. But we also watched the weather reports carefully, and if there had been a storm that knocked out power in our area, we would have high-tailed it back home to drain the pipes. We got back, and everything was fine, but if your whole family is often gone from home for several days in a row, you would either need to have a neighbor or someone who would fill it for you, or you should consider another option.

But it really is a great option if it works for you! Talk to them carefully about the size you need too -- you can go up a size and get good efficiency for anything you might ever want to do (like if you ever want to build a separate shop or garage or fill a hot tub or something) and not spend a lot more money.