Oil or LP for new heating system?

Steamhead

in addition to Ed's points, it's much cheaper per BTU once you've done the math, and safer in that LP can collect on a basement floor and explode. In fact, I remember reading somewhere that some codes now outlaw LP equipment in basements, for this reason.

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Steven_4

Which is better?

We have a bid for a new construction 2200 sq ft SIP home with a heat loss of 38000btu. The system is a buderus gb142 with an indirect. Radiant in the slab, staple up on the 1st floor and both radiant and baseboard on the second. We do have an LP range and dryer. Is one system better than the other and why?

ed wallace

oil vs propane

oil produces 140,000 btu per gallon propane 93,000 btus per therm oil you can fire the oil company. propane company owns the tank,

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joel_19

LP

LP is very exspensive compared to oil go oil for heat and then just go LP for your appliances.

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ed wallace

oil vs propane

i see you have a dryer in ma if you put the dryer in basement the oil burner has to be 18 inches off the floor in case of propane leak

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Weezbo

Ed you have always sounded sharp, what about....

a floor drain in a garage with a propane fired heating appliance on a private sewage system...? do you see a problem with that ? as suppositions go, suppose the trap doesnt have a trap primer...

Mark Hunt_2

Which nozzle


would most closely match the heat loss for this dwelling?

This person posted that the heat-loss on design day was 38,000 btu's. That is design day, the majority of the season it will be well below that number. Even with the smallest nozzle available the oil fired unit will still be grossly over-sized on design day, yes? How does that equate with "efficiency"? Short-cycle anyone?

They could install outdoor reset, but they will only be resetting the system water temp, NOT the btu consumption of the burner. It is fixed. Now add in the extra stuff required to protect that oil fired boiler from LOW return water temps. The boiler still has to get hotter than what is actually required to heat the space. Where did my savings go?

Until the oil industry gets serious about being a viable fuel for the 21st century and beyond, they can count on their customer base shrinking.

No way oil is the best fuel for this house. Right now in my area oil is $2.13/gal and so is LP. Difference being that there are several boilers that will modulate consumption according to need with LP, none currently exist with oil. .50 gph nozzle regardless of what the requirement is. Too big.

Mark H



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Joe Brix

With oil and an indirect

like an Ergomax or Turbomax, the extra BTU's would go into heating the DHW anyway. A free buffer tank. 38K BTU's wouldn't do much on the recovery time of an indirect. You'd still need a modulating gas boiler to give you 60-80K BTU's for DHW.

don_116

you know

I dont want to sound gay or anything like that..but man I
love this guy Mark Hunt...

Talk about someone that thinks out the box,and not what they hear as gospel.

You're the man!!

Saggs

We just installed a couple Burnham Revolution LP boilers. They work great and are well made,quiet, and cast iron. They have a built in circulator and tstat to modulate flow thru the boiler-I believe it's like having your primary loop already piped in. You can feed it cooler water and it will mix it's own to prevent condensation. Check them out.

Constantin

Allow me to quibble...

Mark, you raise a number of excellent points WRT how the oil industry is behind the 8-ball in the US. I too lament the fact that there are no small oil boilers approved for sale across the US (by small, I mean something like a 50kBTU input boiler). Hence, the energy-efficient homes we love are likely to have a vastly oversized oil-fired system.

However, even with an oil-fired system being less than perfectly efficient in terms of matching the heating load, some steps can be taken to lengthen the firing periods to reduce the occurance of short cycling. For example, if you take a condensing oil boiler like the Monitor FCX and attach a buffer tank to it, you might find that it'll perform happily even in a home that has a design-day heat loss 1/2 of the total boiler capacity.

Plus, if I read your post correctly, oil is 45% cheaper in your area since gallon for gallon, #2 oil has far more BTUs than propane.

Mark Adams

Cost/BTU Counts

Gang,

The cost per million BTU is as follows:

Oil: 7.25 x $/gal / efficiency
Propane: 11.1 x $/gal / efficiency

In Buffalo, the current prices are $1.50/gal for LP and $2.05 for oil. So, assuming an 83% efficient oil or gas boiler, the cost per million BTU is:

Oil: $17.93
LP: $20.06

If you have a design heat loss in Buffalo of 35,000 BTU/hr, I'd guess you'd use something like 60 million BTU for heating per season. So, ($20.06-$17.93)*60 = $127.80 / year EXTRA for propane vs. oil.

Now, as a guy who is responsible for the EPA required Spill Prevention, Controls and Countermeasures plan at a major University, I feel that environmental regs are getting to be unreasonable in this arena. It won't be long before homeowners are held to the same standard as a business. A spill may someday result in a cleanup that requires a basement slab removal! This is already happening in parts of Canada. If you do go with oil, make sure you provide adequate secondary containment so a spill does not become an issue.

Just my $0.02,

Mark

Mark Adams

Heat Loss

Steven,

38,000 sounds high to me unless that includes your basemnt, or you have a glass wall on the N side of your home. In what city are you building? I feel that some of the heat loss programs have trouble with losses between floors. It is also very easy to make a bum assumption regarding the basement.

Mark

Ron Schroeder

Short cycling is not always a problem with oil boilers.

The majority of my work with oil fired boilers is in buildings with a heat loss far lower than 38K btu/hr. Short cycling can be reduced or eliminated with either a buffer tank or an aquastat with a high limit that has an adjustable differential. Some of the new electronic triple aquastats from Honeywell have adjustable high limit differentials.

With a low loss home it is also quite practical to store an entire winter's fuel on site and only buy oil "off season" at cheaper prices.

Ron

clammy

lp gb142

I would have to think the modulation and higher eff of a lp unit would more then make up for lower btu output of lp and with such a small load most oil boilers would be oversized and short cycle which is not good for any oil burner .Another plus is with a condensing modulting boiler like a gb142 you would be saving yourself the cost of building a suitable oil rated chimmey and also the need for a combustion make up air .I'm all for oil fired equipment but on new constuction with radiant it 's to me a no brainer in the few condensing gas fired modulating boiler i have installed the HO saw saving over there old boilers and these systems where all baseboard and there gas comsumpition was cut at a minuim of 25 to 30 % .I hope i'm not starting anything ?peace clammy

Darin Cook_3

BTU Utilization

While it is true that Oil contains more BTU's than propane there is no oil fired boiler that can match the THERMAL EFFICIENCY of one of the propane modulating condensing boilers. So where do all the rest of those 140,000 btu's go to? Why they go up the chimney of course. You can have stack temps of 300', 400', or even in the 500' range with a oil boiler. Ever try to hold your hand over the flue of a oil boiler, not likely very long, but you can hold your hand over the outlet of a gas condenser without getting burned. Why is that? Because the condenser is making much more efficient use of the energy. If you cannot use all the BTU's being produced then you lose them. Now this is not about beating up on oil boilers. But when you have homes with gas fired(propane) stoves,ovens,dryers,fireplaces,barbeques, etc it makes sense to stay with the same fuel source. The more propane you use the cheaper it gets in price per gallon. When they start making oil fired appliances operate in the same range as gas equipment then by all means it will be the cheapest fuel.









Darin

Ron Schroeder

All to often I see a major fuel savings attributed to a new boiler where in reality, 90% of the savings is replacing a boiler with a sooted up heat exchanger with a boiler with a clean heat exchanger and replacing poor controls with ones that more match the system. In selecting a fuel, btu/dollar is number one. Controls and overall system design is #2. Condensing/modulation trails behind at #3 especially due to the higher equipment cost. Cost of equipment especially make a big impact on life cycle cost in low btu usage cases.

If adjusted properly, oil boilers will operate much closer to thier rated efficiency than condensing LP boilers throught the heating season especially in installs other than radiant floors. Typically, a condensing LP boiler will have less than 5% better thermal efficiency than a properly set up non-condensing oil boiler. That doesn't come close to making up for the btu/gal. difference.

Ron

Ron

ED_29

Oil V LP

Found all the post`s to be very interesting,BUT having been on the service /install side of the business. I have a problem,You can heat a house in less time with oil heat. Have seen this time & again. Have even taken out LP boilers,because they couldnt keep up with demand. Yes ,a heat loss was done. Home Owner was very impressed with how fast the house came up to temp. 4 zones & indirect was added. They couldnt get over 64* prior to changeover! Four year old house,well insulated. ED! p.s. their propane bills where outrageous!

Darin Cook_3

Just so I understand

So you are saying a 100,000 btu propane boiler does not create the same amount of energy as a 100,000 btu oil boiler? Did you replace the propane boiler with a bigger oil boiler? Did you do a combustion analysis to see what the propane boiler was running for O2 and CO numbers? Was it underfired? Btu's are Btu's. It is a fact that #2 burns at a hotter temp but if you are putting in the amount of energy to the home that is being lost then it does not matter what piece of equipment is sitting there producing the heat. You left out alot of data to just paint it with a broad brush.








Darin

Steve_35

Something else was wrong here other than the fuel

A building doesn't know the difference between an oil btu and a propane btu.

Now if you want to talk FHA, oil generally has a much higher temperature rise and the air coming out of the register will be warmer but the house will take as long to heat with either fuel assuming a properly sized, installed and set up system.

Constantin

Agreed...

... there is something to the thermal efficiency of a LP system on a condensing, modulating boiler vs. that of a badly-adjusted and/or old oil-fired CI boiler.

Having said that, a lot of it also depends on the balance-of-plant, i.e. the emitters used, the way that heat gets to those emitters, etc. If the house depends on an undersized baseboard system or hot-air coil to stay warm, then all the modulation and condensation won't even happen very much. Under those circumstances, I'll wager that the exhaust gas temperatures of gas boilers will ramp up too...

Furthermore, I invite you to take my Vitola or a Monitor FCX for a walk while it's attached to a RFH system in a well-insulated house. I think it was Mr. Milne that reported his Vitola's stack temperatures to be below 250°F... Perhaps not as low as some of the more efficient condensing boilers, but low enough for me. With a 90% AFUE while coupled to a RFH system, a large built-in buffer tank (31 gallons), a advanced control system, etc. I am happy that I chose a Vitola for my RFH system.

Our house has its share of gas-fired appliances (cooktop, dryer), but for now I prefer not to put myself at the mercy of Nstar for my gas supply. Being able to bunker fuel, being able to choose my provider, etc. are important features to me.

Paul Holland_3

btu consumption

Your point makes me curious. Outdoor reset does not make a boiler more efficient, it makes the system more economical. Yes? Outdoor reset also helps to prevent short cycling. I have seen in every case where outdoor reset saves energy. As I understand it, boiler reset in require on every new boiler in Europe.

Oil fired boilers are typically in the mid 80's on effiency. The new GB142 can burn at 98%. I believe that if you go oil, you should always use reset to save energy. What it comes down to is that both oil, LP and natural gas are fossil fuels and are not renewable resources. If you have a shortage of one, you have a shortage with the other.

Oil vs. Propane? I think it is really about personel preference. That is just my opinion and you know what they say about those.

Paul Holland_3

One step further

I am glad to see someone bring up HEAT LOSS and hot air. Something like 97% off all houses in the United States are heated with hot air. All that conventional heating systems do is replace the heat that the building loses.

I am in the plumbing and heating business, WET heat. Since water is a better way to heat, (you can pass more heat through a piece of tubing than you can with a duct 10 times it's size)Let's take oil vs. propane one step further and add radiant floor heat into the mix.

Now we're talkin'. Comfort, THE most efficient and the fastest growing segment of the heating industry and comfort. Did I mention comfort? Leave the duct work for A/c. Cold air is harder to move than hot air. How many of your ducted systems do you think are oversized to someday compensate for A/C? Again, I am curious.

Mark Hunt_2

good number comparison


but a condensing boiler will have much higher thermal efficiency and no boiler protection is required. Add in modulation and the numbers go the other way.

Stack temps lower than 1oo* most of the time compared to 300+ all of the time. Chimney cost for oil compared to PVC vent for condensing boiler. Direct reset of the condensing boiler compared to system reset of the oil unit.

Why heat water to 160* when all you need is 95*? Isn't this why plates are preferred on radiant installs? To keep water temps low? All of the extra work required just to get an oil fired boiler to work correctly in this situation seems like a huge waste to me. Kind of like using a sledge hammer to push in a thumb-tack.

When modualting oil becomes an option here then things will change.

I don't sell fuel so I have no vested interest one way or the other in what choice a customer makes with regards to fuel. But I don't see how using a blow-torch when a candle will do is better. 140k btu/gal when stoichiometric combustion is achieved. Not on this planet and the same applies to LP and nat. gas. AFUE? Assumed Ficticious Useless Efficiency, only applies at the lab where the tests are performed and have no bearing on real life applications. Combustion efficiency? Again complete stoichiometric combustion is assumed on every chart and in every combustion analyser. Flame temperature is assumed.

I hope John R gets his efficiency model worked out soon. This industry needs a breath of fresh air when it comes to calculating "efficiencies".

Mark H














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Mark Hunt_2

You little quibbler you


>For example, if you take a condensing oil boiler like the Monitor FCX and attach a buffer tank to it, you might find that it'll perform happily even in a home that has a design-day heat loss 1/2 of the total boiler capacity.<

Ok, if we add wheels and wings will it fly? Why are we "adding" things? You're trying to squeeze a 300lb gorilla into cage designed for mice. You're re-engineering a product to adapt it to an application that it is clearly not designed for, hence the "attachments".

E-mail me the cost of the Monitor and I'll e-mail you the cost of a Buderus GB142 or a Munchkin T-50.

You said it all at the beginning of your post "....WRT how the oil industry is behind the 8-ball in the US. I too lament the fact that there are no small oil boilers approved for sale across the US (by small, I mean something like a 50kBTU input boiler)"

This man built a house that has an EXTREMELY low heat requirement. As I said in another post, why push a thumbtack in with a sledgehammer?

Mark H


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Mark Hunt_2

BINGO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


GIVE THIS MAN A PRIZE!!!!!!!!!!!

You nailed it, hit a homerun, hole in one!!!

My business partner and I discussed EXACTLY what you just posted today! They're ALL designed around A/C and in many cases that I have seen the return ducting is STILL GROSSLY UNDERSIZED. CFM required/btu/hr heat gain vs. CFM required/btu/hr heat loss. BIG difference.

Static pressure??? What's that???

Mark H

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Steve_35

> I am in the

> plumbing and heating business, WET heat. Since

> water is a better way to heat, (you can pass more

> heat through a piece of tubing than you can with

> a duct 10 times it's size)Let's take oil vs.

> propane one step further and add radiant floor

> heat into the mix.


It's WAY worse than that. You usually need about an 8x14 trunk to move the same amount of heating btus as 3/4" copper will carry.

> Now we're talkin'.

> Comfort, THE most efficient and the fastest

> growing segment of the heating industry and

> comfort. Did I mention comfort? Leave the duct

> work for A/c. Cold air is harder to move than hot

> air. How many of your ducted systems do you think

> are oversized to someday compensate for A/C?


There's nothing wrong, other than the extra cost of the material, in oversizing duct. Well, within reason that is.

We prefer water systems but the reality is most people have FA. I know we can make them very comfortable with a properly designed and installed FA system. So we'll install what the customer wants. After all, they have to live in the house, I don't.

Mark Hunt_2

Yes


if all you are resetting is the system water temp and leaving the boiler alone. When the "fuel eater" adjusts it's "appetite" according to actual demand, fuel consumption drops. How efficiently, better yet, effectively the "fuel eater" transfers the btu's contained in the fuel to the heat delivery medium is largely determined by the material the "fuel eater" is constructed from. Time how long it takes to get a cast iron boiler up to temp compared to how long it takes to get an aluminum or stainless boiler up. Lots of mass to heat up before btu one is delivered to the water. I liken this to having to let the hot water tap run for a bit before you actually get hot water from it. Not very efficient and quite wasteful.

The faster I can deliver btu's from point "A" to point "B" the better. The more control I have over the amount of btu's "eaten" compared to the amount of btu's "delivered" with regards to btu's "required" the better.

So on a 50* day and a requirement of 15k btu's, does it make more sense to fire a boiler at 15k btu's or 70k btu's?

Mark H

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Mark Hunt_2

Pitman9


You are 100% correct.

Just a guess here, but I would bet this person works for an oil company?????

Mark H

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jerry scharf_3

I hope to prove you wrong

Ron,

them's some pretty broad brush strokes. First, a radiant system (not suspended...) definielty favors a condensing boiler, it's just in the physics of low return temps.

Mark Eatherton is already reporting 98+% efficiency on his Munchkin T50. Then you can look at Mike T's experience with a Vitodens, where there was no "sooted up exchanger" and no external change in controls. He's running large standing iron with TRVs, and was showing 25-40% increase in efficiency over a standard gas boiler.

By this time next year, I should have a year of data under my belt, and I think I will be able to give you excruciating detail as to how much fuel was burned and where it went.

jerry

don_117

Now

thats just not true,you can get the rated btus you want from smaller duct,you just have to design your system around higher static and noise, and pick the correct fan to get the job done.

If I recall unico and some other company have allready figure away to do so.

I agree with you pitman 100%,you give the customer what they are willing to pay for..nothing more.

Darin Cook_3

You know as well as I do

That if your heat emitters are undersized then no matter what size boiler you put on it, it will not heat. But then again if that is the case you are dealing with a company that probably did not do any kind of heatloss calculations or any kind of engineering to boot. If you take a million btu boiler and hook it up to 1 foot of baseboard do you get a million btu's worth of heat? No! The atmosphere does because it goes up the chimney, because the energy produced was not used. Just like most oil boilers do once it is not design day anymore. Again a fixed rate firing appliance is sized everyday for worstcase scenario such as your Vitola. You cannot tell me that a appliance that can match itself to the outdoor temp everyday will use more energy. Not to mention you can own your own propane tank also, giving yourself the ability to shop around. I cannot speak for your area but in the upstate NY area you can pick your NG supplier also giving yourself the option of shopping. There are alot of oil boilers in my area and across the country and guaranteed there is a tremendous amount of energy being wasted but most people do not complain because they are WARM.









Darin

Constantin

Not married to one solution or the other...

All I'm trying to point out Mark is that there are accepted solutions that exist to tame an oversized boiler. A large water buffer (either built in or external) is probably the most cost effective way to do it.

Naturally, right-sizing a boiler to meet the heat load (and ideally be able to modulate down to meet it also during much of the heating season) would be better. The Hermann and other burners currently unavailable in the US would allow this, but given the preceptions about the US market, I doubt anyone will be able to entice Hermann to come over here to come play with an FCX (for which it could be ideal as long as no condensation starts to happen in the primary HX).

So, why would I still consider oil? Because in the long run, LP may end up being more expensive because of its much lower BTU/Gallon content. As a mere homeowner, I do not have access to trade pricing the way you do. Perhaps the initial cost differences are sufficiently high to warrant going with a small Munchkin because the anticipated savings of going with the higher BTU fuel do not amount to much. After all, you correctly pointed out that the heat losses from this home are very low and as such very little heating will be required.

Constantin

Agreed...

Darin, you bring up a number of good points. In an ideal world, we'd have condensing, modulating boilers that have no mass and infinite modulation capacity. On the gas side of the business, this utopia is 90% complete.

On the oil-side, the lack of burner innovation, the dirtiness of the fuel, and the unfamiliarity of the US oil industry with small nozzle sizes are likely reasons that it is as far behind gas as it is WRT small boilers. Perhaps #2 fuel will become cleaner as the EPA starts fining states for high SO_x emissions. The exhaust gas testing at BNL seems to have confirmed that the particulate and SO_x pollution is directly tied to the sulfur in the fuel.

However, smaller nozzles and the like will also extract a steep learning curve as distributors, installers, etc. come to grips with nozzles that are much more likely to clog if abused. Gas company customers benefit from a clean fuel, oil consumers pretty much have to watch out for what is delivered and then filter it... Firedragon has had 3 filters in series since 1984... I have 2... many have just one.

On the other hand, a large, well insulated buffer tank that is connected to a fixed input burner can be very efficient also, particularly if the boiler can modulate the tank temperature up and down to meet BTU demands. Since the Vitola has no limits on the return water or the internal tank temperature, it is unique in how it can achieve many of the features of a modulating boiler despite being fired by a fixed-input burner. This high-mass band-aid to the problem of a oversized burner is just that, a band-aid, and likely not as efficient a low mass boiler.

To reiterate, I'm not married to oil. There are many compelling reasons to heat with gas and if the local gas company was not as expensive as it is to ship and transport the stuff to me ($1.05/therm just for distribution), I might have considered it. We have no choice in this area WRT NG, so I'll heat with oil for now.

Ron Schroeder

Hi Jerry,

The origional post stated that most of the radiation was to be staple up and baseboard so the boiler would not be "fully" condensing due to the higher return temperatures. Remembe, a condensing boiler doesn't suddenly get maximum efficiency at the point that return temperatures start to allow condensing. The improvement in efficiency is gradual as the return temperature lowers. You need really low return temperatures to get 98% efficiency. Also LP has less latent heat to recover in it's condensate than natural gas does so natural gas will be more efficient than LP in a condensing boiler for a given return temperature.

BTW, there are some lower firing oil burners on the way down the pike and Hago now has .3gph nozzles.

bigugh_4

Giving what the Customer wants


The entire object here is communiqu

ken_27

go with oil

Two Main Reasons To Go With Oil

1.Cheaper To Run But Needs More Maint
2.Equipment Lasts Longer