Question on who keeps oil on?

Check your temps in room farthest from your stove,and also crawl spaces and anywhere water pipes are present. YOU can use a small digital temp guage ,WM has them for as low as $6. Or a infrared gun,Harbor freight $25. If you coldest spaces are running below 40 you may want to cycle your furnace on. A heat tape is also a good investment for crawl spaces as they are thermostatically controlled and only come on when it gets cold .

We have only turned the furnace on twice this past week for an hour at a time when it was 50 below with the wind chill.

This is only the second time we have used the furnace in 3 winters. The other time was waiting for a part for the pellet stove for a few days.

The basement pipes are always fine even in the extreme temps.

We have heat tape on the pipes in our unheated crawlspace. This year we had one freeze and burst. It froze where we did not have heat tape. It was just too cold.

Would running the furnace have stopped the pipe from freezing? No. The pipes have always froze in below zero temps in that crawlspace even with the furnace running full out.

That sounds similar to the output I get with my P35i in my home. I have the thermostats set at 58 so if something happens to the stove while I'm not home at least the baseboards can kick on. Also if the temps get in the negatives ill run the baseboards in my finished basement to keep the boiler warm to avoid the potential of pipes freezing.

I keep my thermostats about 5º colder than the stove maintains, in case of stove failure. In the coldest weather, I run each zone for a few minutes, twice a day, to make sure the heating pipes don't freeze. There are threads in here about this, including automated devices that do the same automatically.
So far, so good.

For several years we have kept our furnace off. Thanks to the wisdom of this forum, we now keep the thermostat at 55...just in case. I also run it every couple of weeks for an hour or so to keep things happy.

Ctcarl said:

Ok so I have a 1500 sq ft house.my harman p35i is a insert in The living room.Up stairs is two bedrooms downs stairs a office and dinning room then kitchen.I have been experimenting and keeping the stove on it keeps the main areas living room and two upstairs bedrooms very toasty at 72 to 75 .That's with no fans mind you.The kitchen around 65.My question is does anybody turn the oil complexly off?i fair frozen pipes on basement.Im in Connecticut. I also have a hot water heater so can still take showers with out oil switch on.any comments is appreciated thanx Ct Carl

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We are still using our coal stove and haven't made the switch to pellets yet. None the less, for 30+ years we have done this and left the boiler on ( main house 1800sq ft). The oil usage is insignificant compared with not burning the stove ( I tried that trick last winter, a mild winter and was rewarded with huge oil bills) and in the wee hours of the morning the central heat may or may not kick on for our house even with the stove going. Still a huge cut into oil consumption.

In the last several years we actually have to leave the boiler on because we have an attached 500 sq. ft. apartment on the house with a leasing tenant in there and the oil usage is still minimal by comparison with that being all relatively new construction over there. We have never frozen a pipe, except once years ago when the heat was shut fully off. I will never do that again, the temp in our house is set for 69 deg, the stove generally heats well above that, except on the coldest days.

bbfarm said:

Would running the furnace have stopped the pipe from freezing? No.

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There is a big difference between a boiler and a furnace. Since radiators are generally placed on outside walls, the plumbing to them is subjected to cold air leaking around the sills. This combined with the total lack of use due to pellet stove use makes for problems. Most of your savings from pellet use will go down the drain if you freeze up... There is a device to exercise your boiler ...one needed for each zone.

If you do turn it off and its a boiler turn off the valve for make up water.

We don't have a boiler or radiators. Forced air furnace.

The pipe that froze was for the kitchen sink cold water

In my case I have a forced hot air furnace. Our ranch is a little smaller than your house at about 1300 sq ft. My basement is only about 1/3 of the home and the rest is crawl space. Everything is surrounded by the old fieldstone walls. I have only turned on the furnace a few times this season during the extreme cold nights to gets some heat flowing .
I have been downstairs at various times(at least 10) and the coldest temp I got was 38 degrees. That was last week at 7:30 AM when it was -9 degrees and a -20 wind chill. Otherwise when it's in the 20's and 30's the basement has measured in the 43-48 range. I keep my thermostat set at 62 just in case the pellet stove breaks down or runs out of pellets, but otherwise the furnace stays off and my oil bill stays away

Ctcarl said:

Ok so I have a 1500 sq ft house.my harman p35i is a insert in The living room.Up stairs is two bedrooms downs stairs a office and dinning room then kitchen.I have been experimenting and keeping the stove on it keeps the main areas living room and two upstairs bedrooms very toasty at 72 to 75 .That's with no fans mind you.The kitchen around 65.My question is does anybody turn the oil complexly off?i fair frozen pipes on basement.Im in Connecticut. I also have a hot water heater so can still take showers with out oil switch on.any comments is appreciated thanx Ct Carl

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I have a p35i also I keep my oil thermostat at 58 in case I run outta pellets

iceguy4 said:

There is a big difference between a boiler and a furnace. Since radiators are generally placed on outside walls, the plumbing to them is subjected to cold air leaking around the sills. This combined with the total lack of use due to pellet stove use makes for problems. Most of your savings from pellet use will go down the drain if you freeze up... There is a device to exercise your boiler ...one needed for each zone.

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This is true, in our case the heating water in the system has antifreeze in it, good to -10. Still, have not frozen a water pipe either down there . The only thing that may freeze is my wifes drain trap to her washing machine till the sun gets on the back of the house. .But this happens regardless of if the heat is on or not . The washer is in the kitchen extension which has no basement under it. The water pipes are fine to the washer, just the drain trap freezes up. I have to assume that the water pipes are wicking heat out from the basement, where the trap is against the wall ( inside the wall) with standing water in it obviously.

I live in a trailer unit that is 70X14 with an addition added on. I recently moved here and brought my pellet stove with me from my previous home. I could not think of any place to install the pellet stove. Except to put it into the addidtion. The stove is directly across from the door way leading into the main part of the house. My bed room is the the farthest part of the house. Up until the temp. drops down below 20 degrees. The stove keeps my bed room around 68 degrees. The rest of the house is around 70. The past couple of weeks the outside temps. have been going below zero. My hot air furnace will kick on for one cycle every 2 to 3 hours. Which I think is just enough to help get the air from my pellet stove moving through the house. I just started my second ton for the year and I've been burning the stove since the middle of October. Last week I had my first oil delivery and that turned out great as I only need 29 gallons of oil. A lot of my neighbors have been over to check out my stove. Because of the high cost of fuels to heat thier homes. Needless to say they are a little jellious of me.I brought my gen set with me also and had the set up installed. Which came in handy recently as we had a blizzard and the power in the area went out for several hours.. It powered everything including my pellet stove.

My oil burner is plumbed in with my wood boiler, when the storage tank drops below 135 degrees my oil boiler clicks on and goes into hot standby until such point where the Thermostats call for heat. With the new minisplit doing most of the heating I guess I will need to add a NC relay to keep the oil boiler off line unless he house temp drops below a low setpoint. I do on occasion intentionally let the storage temp drop just to let the oil boiler run for a few minutes.

peakbagger said:

My oil burner is plumbed in with my wood boiler, when the storage tank drops below 135 degrees my oil boiler clicks on and goes into hot standby until such point where the Thermostats call for heat. With the new minisplit doing most of the heating I guess I will need to add a NC relay to keep the oil boiler off line unless he house temp drops below a low setpoint. I do on occasion intentionally let the storage temp drop just to let the oil boiler run for a few minutes.

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Yes, I've considered this as well with either pellets or coal but probably pellets. Back in the Jimmy Carter years I had converted my boiler to coal ( old American Standard boiler), then back again to oil after the fake oil shortage was gone. Leaves a bit of a bitter taste in my mouth actually, so I'm not dwelling too much on a trip to the basement more or less daily to tend a boiler. But we shall see. The side by side operation has a certain intrigue to it on the flip side . This because it would also include the attached apartment we heat.

I leave the oil eating Bitach on just in case of a power failure nothing else and for my hot water burn about a tank a year that way

Each house is different. On the cold snap we had a week ago I bumped the boiler a couple of times during the night... 3 bucks in oil is cheap insurance. If you do not want to pay the oil guy go get off road diesel by the 5 gallon jug... for just in case... but I still think that is alot of effort for dropping 100 gallons in during the summer.

My old house was built in 1857. There was never any insulation in the walls except for the thickness of the wood. The boards were close to 2 feet wide and 21/2 inches thick.It was a drafty old house. All my plumbing in the old was inside the house. All the plumbing for the house was inside the house. Except for the main feeds which were run in the crawl space. But even though the plumbing to the radiators and sinks were inside. I was always worried about a freeze up. So when the temps got down below 20 I had the thermostat set so the oil burner would kick on if the temp got below 68.

Ctcarl said:

Well just convinced my oil guy to give my 50 gallons.im praying this gets through then In Summer gonna do a 150 gallon buy wear oil should be cheaper. Thank you all for the info I decided on keeping my temp at 55 when my Harman p35i keeps the house around 65 in the cold areas keeping living room and two upstairs bedrooms nice and toasty to what ever I set the rtm at.wear my family spends most are time in the winter.mind you I'm a fanatic when it comes to lower door drafts and constantly going around the house looking for major drafts. House was built in the 50s.So I can only do so much lol

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I agree with hockeypuck, if you see it getting close you can always go buy 10 gallons of diesel and dump it in yourself. I used to heat my garage that way, the oil tank was a 50 gallon drum, I'd keep about 20-30 gallons in there . If I was flushed and having the house tank filled I'd get the guy to top off the 55 but otherwise I'd dump a little in myself periodically. Hey there are times in our lives when we can't afford to be filling oil tanks all the time, especially when prices are out of hand. iN that garage I did automotive repair, it was nice to have heat at all !