New hone owner with general questions

JohnNY

It's spelled three pass, but it's pronounced tree pass.

This is a New Yawk thread, ya know .

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Ellis Horowitz

New home owner with general questions

I just bought a home with two oil funaces and two air conditioning units. I already had to have a heat exchanger replaced on one of the furnaces and I suspect that I will need to address the whole system within a few years. While money is always an issue, I am willing to invest what is necessary provided that I feel that I doing the best/right thing. Unfortunately, I am too far away from the natural gas lines, so I either have to have oil (or possibly gas) delivered or go with an electric system. How do I go about this? I can ask the oil supplier for recommendations, but I am not convinced that I am getting unbiased advice. I had wanted to go with a geothermal system, but they seem to be too costly relative to the savings. Is getting propane delivered via truck cost effective relative to getting heating oil delivered? Are hydro-air systems worth the extra cost? Are there firms out there that can do an energy audit of my house and provide unbiased advice? I live in the NYC metro area where we get cold winters and hot summers (although not as sever as some other parts of the country).

Weezbo

N.Y.,

has a lot of nice steam systems in older homes...might be something to consider ....

oil is the most reliable although the prices will never go down.... propane LP gas has some advantages when you are not connected to the nat gas distribution system , it seems unlikely that its prices will go down either.

[Deleted User]

hydro air

You should look into a hydroair system, Go with two hydro air units and use a tree pass oil fired boiler with an indirect hot water heater. That will be the best way to go in my opinon. If you want to add radiant later the option is there also.

Rocky_3

Mike meant \"three pass\", not tree pass

Just to head off any possible new homeowner confusion ;-)
Rocky

GW

new heating

99% of the heating contractors won’t be able to offer a "real" assessment on your home's thermal performance. If you want that much detail, you're gonna need to hire a home energy auditor. Just be aware that if the dude shows up without a blower door, you've got issues.

The hydro air is a nice set up; less things to break and likely more efficient. It would be silly to have a boiler installed and NOT install an indirect water heater.


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Chris_89

geo

It is true you need to have an energy audit, but aprofessional HVAC contractor should have the ability to do a heat loss on your home and come up with what it would take to properly size a new heating system in your home!! I deal with mainly geothermal with heating contractors in the MN area, you may look at the fact the upfront replacement cost is conciderably more than most traditional and hybird systems, but what you need to pay attention to is the life savings over the systems, geothermal equipment has a life expectance of 20+ years where as most gas equipment's life expectance is 17 years! If you have a contractor that has done geo work in your area, they should have the ability to perform a pay back from geo to gas or electric equipment, it should be shown in months or yearly savings on you utility bill, with that amount add up what your utility bills should be, over the next 20 year and you will be amazed at what a life savings has to offer! Now the next figure to look at is the maintanence cost per year from geo to gas, with geo there are no burners or heat exchangers to clean, infact if you look at the over all picture, if you have a system with central air, you have no outdoor coils to clean, the only cleaning you will need would be on the air coil in the unit if you have a forced air system, the only other cleaning would possibly be coaxil coil (water to refigerant coil) and the only time you would have that done is if you were having problems with the system, so yearly maintanence cost will be quiet a bit less! You still have filters in the forced air systems that need to be replaced! Another thing to check into is if your power co. had any discounted electric rates for geothermal (not off peak rates), in some areas there is a very nice incentive to go geothermal I have seen up to 2/3"s of the cost of the standard meter rate. So don't over look the complete savings over each system, and also there is a time when geo just does not fit into the picture!! There is a new offering on water to water units that have the ablity to do 145* temps which makes going into hot water systems of an idea, but make sure you hire a quilified HVAC contractor, ask for back ground info to know the have been through training, and that they understand how the systems operate, there are many out there that do it correctly and a few that just do it, and cause the rest to suffer!