New house - oil or gas?

New Hosue - Massachusets, Oil or Gas?

I'd like to know opinions on oil or gas for a new home in Boston area. I just got a 600.00 bill for March in my older, smaller house and thnking OIL HAS TO BE LESS.

We are using Icocynene insualtion, but I still think natural gas has goten very expensive. I know they don't give heating oil away, let me know your thoughts.....

I always like the convenience of natural gas.

Here's a cost comparison

It's from the Energy Information Agency or some such Government research office. It's written in Excel so you can input the cost of fuel per unit and the efficiency of the appliance and it will do the math and give you the net cost per million btu's purchased. Find out what the costs are for the fuels in your area and use the efficiency of the appliances you are considering. It'll give you a solid read on what's the best way to go right now.

I would ad a number of "it depends" to this however. The fuel use for your home is largely composed of heat and domestic hot water. There are other factors to consider if you want to use something other than electric for cooking and drying clothes. (I haven't seen a fuel oil fired range or dryer on the market if you get my drift) If you factor those in it will skew the balance toward gas if your electric KW rate is high.
Also, there are some really awesome condensing gas boilers with modulating burners on the market these days. This is a feature not found on residential oil burners as yet and it makes a difference in overall system efficiency. The AFUE numbers don't do a good job of reflecting this feature.

Enjoy the spreadsheet. It's listed as the attachment below.

Deregulation

Oil was deregulated(thrown to wolfs down on Wall St.) in 1978 . Gas was deregulated in 1992.... That was the only time gas has been cheaper then oil. Then add the fact that gas is skimmed like cream off the the oil fields and heavy industry is forced to use it over coal for emmision standards. My bet would be with oil. A matter of fact I switch over to oil a few years back ...

gas vs oil

remember that with gas you can direct vent and not bother the nieghbors but oil direct vent or power vent does give off an oder and will stain side of building

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Oil vs. gas

Oil is just a better way to go in my opinion.

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How much can you afford?

Like Steamhead, I like the choice. If your buying an oil boiler, make it something that can be converted in a price or pinch scurry.

The only boiler that can and has been designed to do both right out of the box is the Viessman Vitola.

The burners can also be mounted on the same bolts/points available with the boiler.

A knockout on the burner cover is all that seperates the appearence between the two....but the burners are two seperate units, fitted in the same housing.(actually, they use alot of the same components but are adaptive to both fuels)

When attending a class at the Viessman factory in R.I....I was told that they sell the boiler with both burners in a few situations. Apparently the saavy homeowner knew to buy it as such...and did. (smart....very smart!) Chris

Uhhh, Chris

the Biasi and its private-label incarnations are also approved for and sold with power gas burners. We'll be installing at least one Columbia Solaia which is a rebadged 3-pass Biasi this summer, factory equipped with a Heatwise power gas burner.

Why Columbia? Their local supplier is first-rate.

Watch the Wall for pics.

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Brad:

I say small, but its 3300 sq feet, plus a heated 2 car garage. It might not be all that well insualted, the new house will have the foam insualtion in the ceiling only. fiberglass in the walls.

Sounds like it should be oil. Gas is out of hand. Constantin, sounds like you made the similar decision and went with oil - that is good enough for me!

Question

When you drive your vehicle, do you floor it and use the brake to control your speed??? Or do you modulate the amount of gas you send to the engine according to what the driving conditions require?

So it is with the heating plant in ANY structure. ALL are designed toward worst case scenario, or "design day load".
9 times out of 10 the "design day" is grossly over-estimated and so follows the heating plant size. Grossly over-sized for 99.999% of the heating season and slightly too big for the rest.

We were contracted to install a heating system for a 5,000 square foot building two years ago. The rest of the "pros" came to the table with boiler outputs in the hundreds of thousands. We installed a modulating boiler (Munchkin T-80) with a max output of 74,000 BTU's. Our system has never failed to heat the building to 70 degrees.

The modulating boiler only eats what it needs on warmer days, non-modulating gas and oil units will eat like pigs each and every time they fire. Fixed-fire appliances do not care "what you need", they only care about "what THEY need".

With PERFECT combustion, oil is said to produce 140,000 btu's per gallon. Well what if you only need 15,000 btu's??? The fixed-fire units still eat like "Larry The Cable Guy's" sister at a buffet. (Now that's funny!)

You're building a new home that will be insulated better than most. What is the heat loss for your new home on "design day"??? What percentage of time will your home be at "design day"??? 10%?? 20%?? Maybe 5%....

The rest of the time you will be over-sized and WASTING FUEL!!! That, sir, is a fact.

If you still think oil is the way to go, fine. Then I would suggest this. Treat your oil burning system just like a wood boiler. Install a 1000 gallon thermal stroage tank and let your oil boiler work against that. THEN, just pull out what you ACTUALLY need. No different than burning wood. Burn it as hot as you can and yank every BTU you can from it. Store it and save it for later.

Mark H



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I agree.

Without a doubt, the Vitola is almost the perfect boiler. I have them fired with both oil and gas. I said it before, I'm fond of the Vitodens, but I love the Vitola! I wish I never had to install anything else.

hb

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Hmmm...

I agree that the first step towards lower fuel bills is to optimize the heating system WRT the building. The boiler is but part of that equation, as are emitters, transport lines, etc.

I would love to see some empirical comparisons between low-mass, modulating, condensing boilers and their non-condensing, high mass bretheren (think Vitola vs. Vitodens) assuming both are optimally sized. Some people I have met in the industry claim that the differences well installed systems are actually smaller than the real-life experience of the likes of Mike T in Swampeast or Brad White suggest.

However, given how well those two know their heating systems, I tend to tip my hand in favor of real-life conditions vs. lab results and/or hypothesis'.

For me, the choice of fuel is purely analytical. Both oil and gas will do a fine job of safely and reliably heating a home. Either can be had in a condensing package in the US, though only gas-fired units also offer modulation to date. So, I'd take a look at fuel price trends in your local area, compare the prices while accounting for efficiency differences and letting that determine the choice of fuel.

Local conditions traditionally made oil a less expensive fuel to use in this area. Other parts of the country have different conditions, so there is a need to research locally.