Which fuel is cheapest to heat with?

I think you can click on this link.

You will also need to take into account the AFUE number of the different appliances you plan on using that fuel in.

When it comes to calculating the price for "utility fuels" you are best to use the KISS method. Take a winter fuel bill and divide the actual meter reading fuel usage by the dollar amount on the bill to get your cost per cubic foot or therm. You may need to do a little more math to get that meter reading down the an actual BTU cost because some natural gas is rated a little over 1000 BTU / Cu ft and others are a little under the 1000 BTU / Cu ft. Your gas company may publish this information. If not then just use the 1000 per Cu ft. Is should be close enough for comparison to LP and other options like #2 fuel oil. Some steam boiler can be converted to fuel oil without replacing the entire boiler.

Good morning brandonf,

I also heat with anthracite coal like member RascalOrnery and it is a less expensive heating fuel.

Please explain and expand your reference to a 3 tenement building.

Are you saying you own a three story building with individual steam boilers and oil fired water heaters for each of the three tenants???

The fuel comparison calculator from the www.,coalpail.com forum that Ed has attached is very easy to use and very informative.

If time allows can you take pictures of your heating systems and provide them for us to look at.

In the mean time please visit the heating help bookstore and purchase several of the well written books on steam heating that are available, they are well written books describing steam heating systems written for both the lay person and homeowner with a steam boiler heating system.

A lot of people forget the delivery charge.. I remember when my secretary was out sick and I had to do the accounting for two months. I came across my gas bill in July and discovered I was paying a gas bill which astounded me because I shut the boiler down from April through October.

Fixed fee (usually) for maintaining the network.

I pay PSE&G to read my meter and a delivery charge even when the summer house is closed for the winter

PSE&G NJ last August. $9 is just fine by me to have gas available 24/7/365. Your mileage may vary.

Essentially infinite gas available 24/7/365…..

good flucking luck!

If it passes I will buy a triple axle load of coal to burn for heat.

There is only few fuel you can make yourself and that is electricity or wood. Electricity tends to be more useful as you can use it for a lot of things other than heat.

In places with expensive electricity, PV even for house base load is a no brainer as ROI is pretty short. The cost increate to a larger array that can supply a good chunk of space heat is not that much more.

I'm in the land of cheap electricity and cheap gas but even here, heat pump is about break even on cost. Add in PV and it is the cheaper than anything else out there.

I'm guessing those huge battery packs they're selling now.

Cost effective etc……….No clue. I'm avoiding all of it for now.

I'll be heating using methane for the foreseeable future.

Buying 22+ tons of rice anthracite coal to heat my home and hot water and moving my stoker boiler to a prefab wood building on a 8,000 pound sand mix concrete slab and installing a pair of 490 gallon buffer tanks in the shed will cost me less than putting in an electric or pellet fired boiler with a separate 100 ampere service to do the same year around job with single phase 220 volt power.

I would install a grape trellis to hide the pair of closed cell pex tubing runs for the hot water heating loop and the domestic hot water coil in the coal stoker leaving the circulator and cold water mixing valve for the coil in the house at the propain water heater.

The shed would be large enough to store enough dried bagged coal in 25 pound bags for a years worth of heating and continuous hot water. With the shed as the heat dump zone all the bagged coal would be dried by a garage heater to dump excess heat.

Leon you've got coal fever! No doubt!

I do not live on the Island of Long, but Anthracite Coal heated the homes on the Island of Long, long before there was electricity, oil or gas.

If I could manage to bring a 50 ton less than carload lot of 10 dollar per ton bagged Wyoming Sub Bituminous coal here I would do it.

I would also be bagging a great deal less fly ash every week to send to the landfill too.

Burning coal, gas, oil, wood or any solid fuel would be illegal forever. Only electric could be used - with possible "rolling blackouts" for "short interval social justice pauses" whatever they are.

Read the law. This is real.

So how do I heat my house with electric? They tell me I'll save a lot of money using electric only. I'm figuring someone here who is on board with this could answer?

I always like to change the bottom number on that calculator to $100.00 bills Just to put things in perspective.

Here are the Natural gas and LP numbers for 100 million BTU. You will need to fill in your numbers for the state where you live. At about 20 cents per therm or $01.937 per cubic foot, natural as would be the same as LP Gas at $1.79 per gallon. Check with your local LP supplier and your actual gas bill to get your numbers.

Here is a Massachusetts gas bill example, Your actual bill may vary:

We can also include Big Macs at 2233 btu each.

Or Whoppers at 2685 btu each.

Ethical Paul,

I don't think the State of New York or the county he lives in would think kindly of a pair of deep drilled wells for geothermal heating as they would be drilling through the Long Island Aquifer which supplies a great deal of fresh water to the Island of Long.

Drilled wells whether for water or geothermal heating and cooling, are very expensive to drill. The other worries are if the seals fail on a compressor or the drop pipes develop a leak and………….

I could see it if a single 1,000 foot well with threaded well casing that is welded and dropped into bedrock with a FOREMOST drill with cement in the bottom of the well casing to seal it and with the top 200 feet of the annulus filled with sand mix concrete to seal surface water from the well bore.

Lets start with your heat load on design day. Then the type of emitters and required SWT. From there you design potential systems.

But you probably already know this?