Oil to propane, Kingston NY area - EDITED.

put in the cost of oil and LP

https://coalpail.com/fuel-comparison-calculator-home-heating

LP at 95% and oil at 85.
oil is cheaper!

ok

Go propane!

@HydronicMike has a good point there. However there are some larger companies that employ a salesman that works on a commission that often will provide a "Free Estimate" for new equipment. I was that salesman at one time for a few years working for a fuel dealer. If you wanted your heater fixed and you wanted a free estimate, I would show up for free and tell you how much you might spend on a replacement boiler or furnace. If you wanted me to tell you how much it would cost to fix the heater you had in your basement already, (even though I knew how) I was not properly dressed in my white shirt, tie and dress shoes… or equipped in my small salesman car with no tools or parts. So I would give you the free $X0,000.00 price for a new heater but your broken heater was still broken when I left.

On the other hand, If you wanted a technician with all the training and a truck full of tools and parts to show up and fix your heater for under $1,000.00 because the nozzle was plugged, the you needed to pay for a service call. Then you would get the correct person for the job. They would have nozzles and filters and many other parts you might need.

With my experience and if the customer was not being a PIA. I might suggest that the repairs will be worth the price of a service call to find out the cost, and you may even decide to have the technician do the repair while they are there, so you have heat tonight.

The difference is the salesman gets paid a commission, and it there is no sale there is no pay. The technician on the other hand gets paid by the hour even if you tell him the repair is too expensive and ask him to leave without fixing the heater. So, if you want that guy to show up, you got to pay for his time along with all the time the support staff in the office gets paid for him to be able to get there.

I used to call my minimum charge for showing up a "Diagnostic Fee". I'm gonna use really old pricing so not to break any "Discussing price" rules. My Diagnostic fee was $39.00. That minimum charge would get a fully insured technician with all his knowledge, training, and a truck full of tools and parts in front of your defective equipment. The would diagnose the problem and then fix it if it was a simple easy fix. If it needed parts or additional labor the tech would provicee a writen estimate for your approval befor any additional charge work was done. if you decided not to have the repairs completed, all you owe is the $39.00 and yopu get to keep the priced written report.

That was pretty basic and most folks understood the rules. But every once in a while we would get the guy that called and said that he wasn't gonna need to pay for a diagnostic fee because he already diagnosed the problem and all he needed was a (Part XYZ) replaced.

I would use this old auto mechanic sign for inspiration: Then I told my customer service people that answered the phone to give the alternate price for the minimum charge to show up.

If you don't want to pay the Diagnostic fee, then we have a Service truck house call that is $50.00 minimum charge, or you can come and pick up the service tech and drive him to your house for only $45.00 and save $5.00. Labor will be charged from the time the technician leaves the shop until you return them to the shop. You must also provide a paid lunch break and feed them when they are working on your equipment for more than 1.5 hours.

If you wanted to save even more you can bring your heater to our shop and we will work on it for a minimum charge of $29.00 but you may need to leave it for a week or so, because all the technicians are on the road diagnosing and repairing other customer's problems.

If the customer had a sense of humor, they usually elected to pay the $39.00 minimum charge. If the customer was just looking to cheat us out of our minimum fee then the call was usually terminated without scheduling the service visit.

We usually got a return call after the customer found out the everyone else was charging a $50.00 minimum fee because the going service rate was $100.00/hr back then with a 1/2 hr minimum. At that time we used the $39.00 low ball number but charged a Flat Rate for repairs where the parts and labor were included in the cost of the repair. We marked up the parts and we had a higher than average labor rate, but no one ever knew it because we didn't post the labor rate. We just had a price book with flat rates for all the usual repairs. Our customers loved it because the price was quoted before the work was done so they were not worried how much the mystery repair bill might end up being at the end of the repair.

@joea99. I recently had a bathroom remodel and the salesman from the contracting company showed up for free and said that the scope of the job was more involved than just a quick "Free Estimate" price like Bath Fitters™ or other nationally franchised over priced shower replacement companies might offer. I needed a complete tear out to the studs and rebuild with a shower that my wheelchair could roll into with no curb.

The job would cost a minimum of $29,000.00 but in order for us to form an actual Quote with virtual imaging with renderings of all the walls fixtures and appliance. They could provide that comprehensive quote for $2,500.00 that will be applied to the total cost of the job. I agreed and gave them a check for $2,500.00

If I didn't give them the $2,500.00 then they didn't need to spend hours selecting tile and wall colors and fixtures and other handicap accessible features. Then I would just need to go with some other less professional handyman where I needed to turn into the general contractor and bark out instructions on how they needed to do their job. I selected the professional job and the quote came out to $45,000.00 and the bathroom turned out perfect. Easy to get my wheelchair everywhere I needed to get in that bathroom

I could have just had a replacement shower enclosure for 15,000 to 20,000 but the wheelchair would not fit everywhere. I might as well just do nothing if I was going to go that route.

So there are contractors … especially general contractors that will provide you with an estimate for an addition to your home the will charge you for calculating the total cost of the addition. You wan a free estimate ther will use a ballpark using a price per square foot based on experience, but to get an engineer to draw up the blueprints and do the calculations, the will cost you big $$$ before you even get a price for the actual work.

Or you can look for some old school ready to retire plumber to look over the job and quote you a price for his son to do it for him. They can compete with the One Hour, or Ben Franklin or Sparky national franchise when it comes to getting the equipment from the manufacturer's at low costs, and training classes for the workforce that will be walking on your carpets with shoe covers. As others have stated there is no free lunch.

Gas conversion burners are a good idea when there is natural gas available. With LP Gas, not so much but your area may be different than where I used to work in Southern NJ and the Greater Philadelphia area. If you purchase the fuel tank and you own it wether it is buried in your yard or above ground, you can shop the price for your LP Gas from one company to another. Just like you can shop for fuel oil dealers with the best deals. When you are using it just for cooking and DHW you probably didn't purchase your own tank so the LP Gas distributer owns your tank. that means that you can only get your gas form the company that owns the gas tank. Those companies charge a premium for filling that tank because you are actually paying a kind of rent to them for letting you use their tank. The rent is calculated in the higher LP gas per gallon price.

If you are going to use that tank for the next yerar after you convert the heating to gas, you will need to use the higher price per gallon you are paying now for DHW and cooking. What is the number and what is the oil per gallon in your area, those prices will be on your latest metered delivery receipt. I have punched in some Kingston NY average prices numbers for today, but winter heating oil usually cost more in February then in June.

The best part is the last number on the chart, I like to see how much it might cost Elon Musk to heat his home if he used 100 dollar bills to burn in his fireplace.

This chart is from https://coalpail.com/fuel-comparison-calculator-home-heating where I have posted the current price of #2 heating oil burning in a Burnham boiler at about 83% efficiency, You should be able to get that form your Burnham. The LP gas in a new ModCon boiler at over 90% AFUE. and the Burnham with a Conversion burner installed. The cost per 100 million BTU of each fuel adjusted for the combustion efficiency leaves the LP Gas cost of operation higher than the oil burner operation in both cases.

To put things in prospective the average 3 bedroom in your area of NY State might use 100 million BTU of heating energy in about 1.5 winter seasons. To quote a recent auto advertisement: Your mileage may vary

Oil can get as high as $5.99 per gallon in February, so try to purchase fuel in September, before the price jump and then again in December or early January. Try to refrain from purchasing in February if you can. You might be able to save if you get the boiler cleaned and the burner adjusted for optimum efficiency without making any soot or smoke number on the smoke spot test. Also installing a second 275 Gallon tank will help you purchase more fuel at lower cost to help you thru the most expensive fuel price season. I personally used a 550 Gallon tank and if I needed fuel in February, I purchased 100 Gallons, Once the price drops in April or May, I would top off the tank for the summer.

I also repaired the Fuel Oil Dealer's heating and cooling equipment in his home and several rental properties. We had a deal, I would charge regular price for my service and he would charge regular price for fuel and we would barter the services rendered. It worked out great because I only had to pay cost for the full price services I did for him and he only paid cost for the full price oil he delivered. No one got cheated out of anything that way.

You can bring up that calculator and put the real numbers you actually paid for LP Gas for the past year and Fuel Oil for the past year to see what is more cost effective based on what you actually paid.  

Ed when has oil ever got to $5.99? I’ve never seen it in almost 40 years in the Mid-Atlantic area.

^^^^^

THIS

Nobody gets 84% cycle efficiency on oil. NOBODY!

THIS is why a mod-con can provide a fuel savings of 30%. It is constantly running at the require level to just MEET the heatloss of the building.

Those that compare the combustion efficiency of a mod-con at, say, 92% with the combustion efficiency of a fixed output oil fired boiler at 84% and conclude that the mod-con will save them only 8% in fuel (as measured in BTU utilized for the season) are making a serious error!!

How about we stop obsessing abut numerical efficiencies — which none of us can measure accurately, if at all, and worry about overall running and maintenance costs?

@joea99 , what model V8? What burner is on it, and do you know what nozzle is in it?

Is the aquastat relay on the boiler a HydroStat or AquaSmart? Post a pic if you're not sure………..

But, how many people actually get proper maintenance done?

It's the same basic principle that makes me favor probe-type low-water cutoffs on steam boilers as opposed to float-type. Folks tend to forget to blow the float-type ones down. Yes, probe units do need to be checked annually, but annually is not weekly.

ISTR @Mark Eatherton once ran a mod-con without maintaining it, just to see what would happen. Its efficiency dropped noticeably. I've forgotten how much, it's been quite a while.

TLDR? in your case Too Lazy Didn’t Read? Funny you ask for advice then don’t read it. But you apparently did read it.

Another bit about the mythical 85% oil burner is the actual efficiency. Look at the post here of what the real efficiency is. Add on the bit above about cycling and the efficiency is way worst.

A modcon with low return water temps will actually get you real mid 90's efficiency. Not hard to do if you have larger emitters and a good outdoor reset curve.

Fuel — of any kind — is more expensive in New York, but I wouldn't have thought it was that much more. Of course, I bulk buy (three properties, a total of 3,500 gallons). This year #2 was $3.09 per gallon in northwestern Connecticut (and it's a major dealer).

The spot market, however, can be a lot higher… I've never seen it lower than bulk, though.