Nosebleed NYSEG Bills - Boiler Question

mgambuzza

Question for the experts and/or users out there. I have a Utica Boiler PEG300CDE and I'm in Upstate (Auburn - outside Syracuse) NY. In 30 years of other home ownership I've had Octopuses or converted to forced air. Bills on the Octopuses back in the 90's if I ran around72 would average 300-400 per month(much less if I set thermostat at 68). My last year in my 2300 sqft house, 100k BTU 80% efficiency would range in the $250-300 per month range.
My new(1830s home) is larger - 4000 sqft, and with thermostat at 68 consistently, last month was about $803 (just the gas usage), and now that I'm just doing this months reading, at 1149 (almost twice as much as last month) I'm about to throw up on what this month will cost. Is this normal with Steam heat? I do have about 22 radiators, replaced almost all air valves, but the gas usage seems to be way out of hand, unless this is normal for steam heat. Is there something I should be looking at that may be causing the boiler to be overworking to get the house to temperature, causing the excess running of the boiler?

Steamhead

There could be a bunch of things you can do, depending on the system's current configuration. Perhaps most important is venting the steam mains quickly, which will reduce the time the boiler needs to run to heat the house. In one case of ours, an extensive venting job cut the fuel consumption of an apartment building by a third.

mgambuzza

Devils advocate on this issue, in 30+ years of homeownership, different homes, and different heating systems, the steam heat of this home is the most comfortable of any home we have ever lived in!!

ethicalpaul

Steam’s not more expensive but 4000 sf built in 1830 sure can be

retiredguy

I would start with tightening up the house to reduce heat loss through the walls, windows and doors. In most cases reducing the heat loss is the most cost effective means to reduce heating and cooling bills.

Jamie Hall

It's not steam heat that's causing your bills to go up. You must not conclude that your gas usage is out of hand, unless you are comparing cubic feet or therms -- but you are comparing dollars. And, I regret to say, there are a number of factors which are driving the cost of fuel higher for everyone. And I'm not going to comment further, as the driving factors are all political.

Others have commented above on ways to reduce the energy usage of your structure, which, in turn, will cut the amount you are paying for energy.

ChrisJ

mgambuzza said:

Question for the experts and/or users out there. I have a Utica Boiler PEG300CDE and I'm in Upstate (Auburn - outside Syracuse) NY. In 30 years of other home ownership I've had Octopuses or converted to forced air. Bills on the Octopuses back in the 90's if I ran around72 would average 300-400 per month(much less if I set thermostat at 68). My last year in my 2300 sqft house, 100k BTU 80% efficiency would range in the $250-300 per month range.
My new(1830s home) is larger - 4000 sqft, and with thermostat at 68 consistently, last month was about $803 (just the gas usage), and now that I'm just doing this months reading, at 1149 (almost twice as much as last month) I'm about to throw up on what this month will cost. Is this normal with Steam heat? I do have about 22 radiators, replaced almost all air valves, but the gas usage seems to be way out of hand, unless this is normal for steam heat. Is there something I should be looking at that may be causing the boiler to be overworking to get the house to temperature, causing the excess running of the boiler?

You almost doubled the size of the house and you're surprised the heating bill more than doubled?
Especially with an 1830s house.

How did your other houses compare in style? I.E. 2 story, 3 story vs ranch etc? Multiple story houses are cheaper to heat than a ranch.

How many windows? Windows are a big deal when it comes to heat loss even new ones.

I own an 1860s house and I'd describe their building methods as more of "We want to survive" than "We want to be comfortable". 1600sqft with single pipe steam and I've seen $300 a month using some of the cheapest natural gas in the country a few years back. Meanwhile right next door is a similar house built by the same family as mine and it was converted to forced air. Their bill was $20 more than mine.

Does that mean forced air is less efficient? Not really, what it means is the house is the main issue not the heating system 99% of the time.

Old houses, especially ones with no upgrades aren't cheap to heat ever and even with a lot of improvements still often aren't great. 4000sqft is huge. Put the two together and you're puking.

AdmiralYoda

80% efficient steam is going to use about the same amount of gas as 80% forced hot water. It isn't the steam.

Especially since your house was built in 1830...lots of people have probably had the chance to screw up your steam system. Cover the basics first:
1. Post some pictures of your near boiler piping.
2. Post some pictures of how your pressuretrol is configured. What is the typical operating pressure?
3. A low pressure gauge is a must. 0-2 psi would be good for now. Your system should never operate above 1.5psi. Ounces is even better.
4. How is the main venting? With 22 radiators you should have a bunch of large main vents all over the place.
5. Calculate the EDR of your radiators. How does that compare to the capacity of the boiler?
6. Are your main pipes insulated?

A botched up steam system can waste plenty of energy. A properly configured one will be as efficient as any new atmospheric vented heating system.

pecmsg

You've gone from 1990 unknown Sq Ft to 2300 Sq Ft to 4000 Sq Ft and surprised the bills went up? everything has doubled or tripled in the last 30 years!

Tighten the envelope. Keep the heat in.

Long Beach Ed

As others have said, there are three issues here. One is the condition of your system, which can probably be optimized and may be operating in a wasteful manner. The other is this year's 50% or so increase in New York gas prices, due in part to a political effort to discourage gas use, single family ownership and encourage installation of electric heating. Another is the heating load; size of your home and heat losses.

We can help optimize your steam heating system. Post some pictures of the piping around the boiler and the air vents on the ends of the steam mains. I'm in New York too. Your $800/month isn't unusual this year for 4000 sq. ft. of heating.

dabrakeman

I have ~4700sqft of 1890 sieve. For system performance I track Mcft used per month per total heating degree days per month. For cost just simply $/Mcft used. In the attached plot I have made no system or appreciable house changes in the last three seasons including this one. You can see how much cost is going up. Just look at the trendline vs the monthly data points because I just used the total gas bill in the calculation so $/Mcft used would be higher for shoulder season months where actual gas usage is lower but fixed fees stay the same. Guess next spring I will get back to making more storm windows and adding insulation more insulation. As everyone has said, it is not the steam, it is the house and the cost of gas.

Rusty2

Ironically, Natural Gas futures were trading at 9.68 (per million BTU's) last summer 2022. As of right now (2/5/0223) they're trading at 2.38 (per million BTU's). That's over a 400% decrease in price from the peak 6 months ago. Natural gas is expensive? Says who? The electric companies? Go figure.

Does everyone remember when oil futures went negative during the Covid pandemic? Oil futures were trading at a negative dollar amount (you read that right right, below $0) in April of 2020 because all the oil storage facilities were full. There was no place to store the oil and people were in an absolute panic they'd be forced to take delivery of the futures they were holding. Tankers were sitting fully laden outside every port being used as storage, running up a bill for whoever owned that oil. There was no place to put it. The world had shut down. To the best of my knowledge this was the first time in history that the price of oil actually went below $0.

gmcinnes

FWIW spot prices for NatGas dropped below zero in Europe last October. /shrug 

Mad Dog_2

That's a good sized Steam Plant for a residential.  Without question, your system can be more efficient and fuel saving. Mad Dog 

Mad Dog_2

I'd love to see pictures of the System and the house itself.  Can't beat the character, soul and class of Antique Homes. Mad Dog

Rusty2

I know we're getting a little off topic, but are you sure gmcinnes? I'm seeing a low on Oct 25, 2022 of 99.79 EUR/MWh (Natural Gas EU Dutch). Today 2/8/23 its about 53.68. Their high was 339.20 in the Summer/ Aug 25. Can you imagine?

gmcinnes

Pretty sure.  The storage was full so they couldn't accept more... It was in the media so it was quite possibly bs... Let me check...  See here:. https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/26/energy/europe-natural-gas-prices-plunge/index.html

I can't imagine.  Most of my family is in the UK and their energy bills have tripled. A lot of people don't have that kind of headroom in their budget.  Lucky it isn't a brutally cold winter so far.

Rusty2

Sorry if I'm wrong, but I didn't see anything like that reflected in a chart.
https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/eu-natural-gas
there's a spike when Russia invaded Ukraine. As you can see the price has come down quite a bit from it's high. Those are EU prices.
https://heatable.co.uk/boiler-advice/where-does-the-UK-get-its-gas-from
I was surprised how little Natural Gas the UK got from Russia.
Then there's this interesting article that broke yesterday 2/8/2023 by Seymour Hersh about the Nord Stream Pipeline. Is it true?
https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/how-america-took-out-the-nord-stream

Jamie Hall

not a reliable source.

leonz

mgambuzza said:

Question for the experts and/or users out there. I have a Utica Boiler PEG300CDE and I'm in Upstate (Auburn - outside Syracuse) NY. In 30 years of other home ownership I've had Octopuses or converted to forced air. Bills on the Octopuses back in the 90's if I ran around72 would average 300-400 per month(much less if I set thermostat at 68). My last year in my 2300 sqft house, 100k BTU 80% efficiency would range in the $250-300 per month range.
My new(1830s home) is larger - 4000 sqft, and with thermostat at 68 consistently, last month was about $803 (just the gas usage), and now that I'm just doing this months reading, at 1149 (almost twice as much as last month) I'm about to throw up on what this month will cost. Is this normal with Steam heat? I do have about 22 radiators, replaced almost all air valves, but the gas usage seems to be way out of hand, unless this is normal for steam heat. Is there something I should be looking at that may be causing the boiler to be overworking to get the house to temperature, causing the excess running of the boiler?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hello my neighbor to the north,


I am sending you a PM.

Jamie Hall

It's not the steam heat. It's the heat loss of the house. First place, it's bigger. Therefore, more heat loss -- even if the construction was the same. Second place, it's older. How's the insulation? How's the air sealing?

gmcinnes

@Rusty2 That chart is for futures contracts. The drop below zero was in spot prices for upcoming delivery. I'm not sure how long it lasted. Less than a day, I think.

I tried to find a link to a chart for spot prices, but I can't. Don't have time to look further. But I did find that it's discussed on industry websites, so it definitely happened.

Rusty2

Sorry if I'm wrong gmcinnes.
https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/eu-natural-gas
There's a spike when Russia invaded Ukraine. As you can see the price has come down quite a bit from it's high. Those are EU prices.
https://heatable.co.uk/boiler-advice/where-does-the-UK-get-its-gas-from
I was surprised how little Natural Gas the UK got from Russia.
Then there's this interesting article that broke on 2/8/2023 by Seymour Hersh about the Nord Stream Pipeline. The next day there was mention of the article on Bloomberg regarding the Russians being pissed off and demanding answers. Now it seems to have gone silent, but quite a big deal if in fact the US did pull it off, not to mention Germany having to bear the initial brunt, knowing how severely their supply would be cut.
https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/how-america-took-out-the-nord-stream

Jamie Hall

The source for the article from substack cited is not regarded as a reliable source. Sorry. Makes for exciting reading, though... for what it's worth, the damage done was not particularly difficult to accomplish, and there are probably at least a dozen nation-states which could have accomplished it, never mind any number activist groups of all stripes.

The sourcing of natural gas in Europe is very complex. There actually is plenty of it within Europe itself, but certain "green" political forces are actively preventing exploiting it and using it -- not, for that matter, unlike the US. But that is entirely political, and thus has no place here on The Wall.

MaxMercy

mgambuzza said:

Is there something I should be looking at that may be causing the boiler to be overworking to get the house to temperature, causing the excess running of the boiler?

Many here have suggested the envelope, and I agree. I'm jumping in just to reinforce what's said so it isn't easily dismissed.

Theoretically, if your house was a perfect insulator, just humans living there would provide all the heat you would need, but heat gets out no matter how well the structure is built and insulated. The more heat that gets out, the more that must be replaced.

A 4000sq 1830s house is a big and old house by most people's standards, and unless it's been updated, it's a sieve leaking all that expensive and hard to replace heat out.

My current house that I built in 1993 is much bigger than the 50's house I moved from, but it costs less to heat (I use oil, so I watch the actual gallons). My "new" house is 2X6 framed with fiberglass insulation and double pane windows - my old house was 2X4 with no wall insulation, maybe 6" in the attic, and single pane with storms. If I stayed in my old house, I would have insulated the walls, upgraded the attic insulation and the windows.

If your house is uninsulated (with balloon framing) and has period correct windows, I wouldn't doubt a house that big would be expensive to heat.

So you have two areas to look at - your insulation but also your heating system. The insulation is a bigger problem, but for now, follow the advice of the steam pros here and post pics of your boiler. Follow their advice on venting and adjustments. The efficiency of your steam system might be able to be improved. Good luck.