saving money on the heat bill

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fbelec

Minister of Fire
Nov 23, 2005
3,669
Massachusetts
reading a thread down a few got me thinking. beside burning wood because we like to see the fire. it saves money. and keeps us warmer for less. and coal for the same. pellets is a on going thing on if it saves money or not. gas stoves do they save money on the heat bill? from what i've seen gas stoves burn at 80% eff. now this question could be answered by someone that has a gas stove as well as the stove dealer. but i could never see the advantage on running a gas stove at 80% eff. and running a boiler with 90% or more eff.

so why a gas stove?
 
Part of the allure of a gas stove is that you can heat the one room you are in to a nice temp. and leave the rest of the house cool. We don't have one but some that do explain it that way. If you have the luxury of 'heating zones' with your boiler or furnace, it might not save much to have a gas stove in a room.

The most puzzling thing I have seen is the folks who put a gas burner and the fake logs into an open fireplace. I guess that way they can enjoy the 'look' of a fire while having the 10% efficiency of an open fireplace.
 
PAJerry said:
Part of the allure of a gas stove is that you can heat the one room you are in to a nice temp. and leave the rest of the house cool.
Click to expand...

That is why I would have one if gas was available here. That and the fact that I could have more heat in a particular area with the click of the switch or cut it off any time I want. Hard to stop a wood stove on a dime with a hot fire going when it gets too warm. Also fuel consumption stops instantly with gas when you turn off the stove. With thermostatic control it would pretty much be like having a zone furnace for the most used area(s) of the house.
 
You might want to look at one using propane. It might save you some money in the long run. Granted, it is difficult to learn to control the heat with a stove or insert, but it can be done. My wife and I used our insert on several cold evenings over the last 2 weeks and have learned to adjust the wood loading and blower setting to get just about the right temp. I think that having a smaller insert allows for more flexibility in adjusting the fire. Surprisingly, the glass in the door is staying perfectly clean, so we are either burning correctly or PE makes one hell of a forgiving unit.
 
A lot of gas fired hot air systems have only one zone and thermostat, it heats the entire home. A gass stove can heat one room or so
New high effeciency gas burners approach 97% effeciency, sure as hell beats 80% of a stove.
What makes less sense is the additional cost of LP just for the stove. Yes this happens all the time
and we all know LP cost a lot more, plus the extra plumbing and tanks.
So why? ITS as if it is a yuppie thing,. the ability to remote control on and off instant attmosphere of a flame. Really it would be hard to make a case for heat, when your furnace is at 95% effeciency. By the time one buys a stove, they pay almost the same price for a high effeciency burner. This is an attitude thing, its got nothing to do about heat or being effecient, maybe for a very few.
The builder perspective, it is cheaper to direct vent a gas stove than build a brick chimney.

This attitude is no different than having the biggest suburan in the neighborhood or, got to have that in home theather, Effeciency is not in the mind set. I have seeen this with pellet stoves, This lady bought a quadra fire pellet stove,I think 4100, Drives this huge suburan, has two childern, Pays top dollar for pellets, the first of Jan, then also buys a Cheata ash vac. Total bill $215 ea tons pellets, Vac, Pellet insert with full liner installation $6750. She works with my wife. Braggs how much fuel she saved. Making matters worse, one zone heat so remote to the pellet stove, that it is not effected, so the thermostate does a regular cycle anyways.

My wife comes home to tell me the story, like this lady found nivana in energy savings. I look at my wife, two wood stoves running 15 cords of wood already piled, I guess I should be a chump, no way can I compete with her alledged savings?????
 
Good point there, elk. Concern with efficiency should be across the board in all aspects of one's life. We were never too concerned about this stuff until I hit the big '50' and started to think about what I should be doing to prepare for eventual retirement. We spent a lot of sweat equity insulating the house, and we began putting the shrink-wrap plastic on the inside of our windows for winter. It makes a noticeable difference, even on triple-pane vinyl windows. 3 years ago I got rid of my truck and bought a Prius. I can still haul 2x4s and all sorts of stuff with the hatchback, just not the horse manure I use in the garden, but a neighbor does that for me now at a small fee. 50 mpg is a lot better than 18. The insert is our latest step. With 5 acres, 4 of them in woods, it made sense. Right now I have 4 cords of wood drying for next winter and only bought 1 from a neighbor - total cost $165. Highest gas bill last winter was $365 in Feb. and I swear it will never happen again. Due to health problems, my wife now works only part time but it is not a problem because we are learning to use less. I tell my kids that we are now more tied to our land than Grandpa Joad from "The Grapes of Wrath", but I think that is a good thing. The big garden feeds us and the woods will keep us warm. Retirement should be good in 7 more years.
 
There's a difference between gas furnace efficiency ratings and gas stove/fireplace/insert ratings. A furnace manufacturer can only give you the burner efficiency (how much of the available heat in the fuel is extracted) of his product. Delivered efficiency will be unique to each installation, as it is affected by other factors like heat loss per foot of duct, etc. It is not uncommon for a 90+% extraction-efficiency-rated forced air gas furnace to have a delivered efficiency of only 50% or so.

The efficiency rating for an in-room heater like a stove, fireplace or insert, is a Delivered Efficiency rating (how much of the heat extracted is delivered to the living space). This is an easy number to come by, as the test lab can determine how much heat is extracted from the fuel (burner efficiency), then compare the heat transmitted into the room to the heat lost out the exhaust system, as these are the only two places for heat to go in an in-room heater situation.

Depending upon the outdoor temperature and the house involved, it is very possible to heat an entire home with an in-room heater: most of our customers do just that, and so do I. And I can personally testify that my gas stove burns less gas to heat my house than my 94% Pulse furnace does.

You can read more about this online at http://www.chimneysweeponline.com/hoinvsfu.htm
 
thechimneysweep said:
There's a difference between gas furnace efficiency ratings and gas stove/fireplace/insert ratings. A furnace manufacturer can only give you the burner efficiency (how much of the available heat in the fuel is extracted) of his product. Delivered efficiency will be unique to each installation, as it is affected by other factors like heat loss per foot of duct, etc. It is not uncommon for a 90+% extraction-efficiency-rated forced air gas furnace to have a delivered efficiency of only 50% or so.
Click to expand...

Mr. Sweep is very correct, although I would expect modern insulated and zoned 95% hot air units to deliver a total efficiency of 70% or above.

Gas stoves and even LP stoves can save a lot of money. As a for instance, I had an office and music room at my old house which was about 800 sq ft - the top of a detached building. I installed an Avalon DV stove there as the sole source of heat and hooked it to a setback thermostat. The unit hardly ever went on, and when it did it heated the place quite quickly (about 32K BTU).

At the time this was a bare bones gas stove at about $1400 list, but I got it wholesale ($850)...plus maybe 150 worth of DV pipe and hook up for gas line. Turned out much cheaper than anything else I could do to heat that area.

Even if the fuel cost for LP or gas is high, the use of space heat had advantages. One is as mentioned above. The other is on the "shoulder seasons", those months where just an hour or two of heat takes the chill off in the morning and nothing else is needed. Central systems are most efficient when run hard.

The fact that a stove is also "furniture" and a entertaining fire are very important in buying decisions.....after all, when you consider what folks spend in other furniture and plasma TV's, the stoves start looking downright reasonable.

Economics alone, we'd all have scrounged wood stoves and wood piles, hand-me down furniture (most of mine is anyway) and 1200 Sq. Ft houses. We tend to pick our mates, our clothes, where we live, our cars and much more based on style...and same with stoves. I can tell ya for certain that Martha would not allow me to put an ugly stove in the house.....until and unless we ran out of money....then she becomes reasonable.
 
Maybe best on the green room but, Craig is right. up to 35% of hot air heat is lost in transmission. Leaking improperly sealed duct work inadequately insulated to boot. As much as this is a hearth related forum , I never understood why buy an axillary heat source when so many inadequcies exist with your current heating system. Lacking proper sealing. and pipe or duct insulation
 
well the way i work to heat my house is during the day i set my furnce at 45 i set my pellet stove on low so they will even,, at night i set it on med and furnce at 60 to keep the house at 74
 
great replies on this. thanks.
my brother and had this conversation a few times. he was trying to get me to go with a gas stove to be easier on the slip disc in the back. but i could not see the logic to put in the gas stove because i have a 90% eff hot water boiler that is zoned. the boiler is not a cast iron block it's aluminum. it transfers heat quickly. 50 degree water to throwing heat out the baseboards in 4 minutes. the exhaust of this boiler go's out a 3 inch pvc pipe and pulls almost all the heat out of the gas it uses. the exhaust is running at about 80 degrees as measured with a bacharach meter. so that was my logic on not doing the change from wood to the gas. it thought i would just run the boiler if i had to. but as long as my back holds out i stick with the wood stove

thanks for the different points of view.
frank
 
It is not uncommon for a 90+% extraction-efficiency-rated forced air gas furnace to have a delivered efficiency of only 50% or so.
Click to expand...

This is exactly right. One of the advantages a pellet, gas or wood stove have is that most of the heat that doesn't head up the flue goes directly into the heated living space. For a number of reasons, poorly designed HVAC systems are not that uncommon.

My wife and I have been going over this for the past few days too. We got the pellet stove and loved it because it really saved us a lot. Why? Well, not because we're lazy yuppies, but because it put the heat right into the heated envelope of the house. Our propane furnace, though 92% efficiency rated, is in a small, unheated basment pit, and the ductwork is no longer insulated (see the vermin threads). The system is not well designed because they couldn't run a trunk duct due to the base of the fireplace being in the way. Instead they octopussed lots of 6" runs off of the central plenum. So at best we were seeing maybe 50% efficiency. The pellet stove was in the heated envelope of the house, efficient and over 5 years the cost of pellets was constant (propane went up 50% during the same time).

Now the house is going up in the air on Wednesday. Fireplace is gone, so proper ductwork can go in. The house will get a new insulated foundation. The heating system is 20 years old and really needs re-ducting to work well (there are other issues with it too). We'll still heat with wood in the evenings and weekends, but need to decide on the primary system. We're trying to decide whether to re-duct, with insulated ductwork, the eventual goal of switching to a heat pump when the furnace dies. Or to bite the bullet now and switch completely to hot water. Question is what will give the best savings over the life of the system? Or would we be better with plan C, getting a woodstove with much longer burn times? Keep in mind that I have to work at my day job, so often will have to buy firewood @ $200/cord. (Though this year we've already scrounged a cord so far.)

With good insulation and tightening of the heating system, the pellet stove has lost some advantages here and anyway, the fireplace is gone, so it is going to be sold. Our fuel options are oil, propane or electricity. Locally, propane is heading north of $3 soon and at this rate and oil is not too far behind. Electric is at 9 cents/kw and would be a bit lower except we're still paying off Enron's gouging in 2001.
 
Throw this option into the mix Bio fuel for your oil burner?. Be it duct work or hot water piping both should be insulated.
Hot water issue, gas is best for generation and faster recovery. Then a very close second, is a separate oil fired hotwater heater,
which again can burn bio fuel. Another alternative is a tankless system of your boiler. If you opt for an oil burner have a motorized damper and a fire retentioner will improve effeciencies. I have to really look into bio fuel for oil burners. Gas has an effeciency advantage and no need for storage tank. If hot air/Ac system, it is real important to make sure the ducting is sealed and not
skimping on the return side of the system. Flexible ducts should be as short , straight, and pulled as tight as possible. If they have a lot of 90 degree bends, then use hard pipe 90 to make the bends It is proven bending flexible pipe 90 drgrees can reduce air flow up to 50% or more. There is another system that should be considered. A high velosity air system using 3" ducts. Same amount of coverage as a conventional system, but using 3" ducting which can fit in 2/4 walls and get to places common ducting can't

Electric around here is an expensive way to heat, but with oil and gas prices rising quicker, the price differencial has lessened ,till the electric companies raise prices again

Do you get enough sun for solar hot water options?
 
if it were me, judging by what propane goes for and what electric goes for and those were my two options i'd go with the electric heat. very reliable, way cheaper to install and if something goes wrong with a piece of heat the rest of the house still has heat.

i have always heard water heat is the most efficient. and with water heat if you wire in a computer controller you can save that much more fuel. if your going to stay with propane and do water heat buderus makes a wall hung boiler that takes a very small amount of space and has a 99% eff rating. plus if your going to install air conditioning you can install the system for air cond and not for both heating and cooling and get the most out of your air cond efficientcy. having a system for both something usually suffers depending on how the installer put it in

just my 03 cents worth.
inflation had to raise it
 
No need for air conditioning here. Nature takes care of that for us. Most of the summer we get a gentle steady north wind that blows over Puget Sound before hitting us. It rarely gets in the high 80's at our house and nighttime temps are rarely above 75. Humidity stays low. If we had it, it wouldn't get used more than 2-3 days per year. So let's consider this a heating only issue. If I had my choice, I'd relocate and would build new on a south facing lot. But this is a nice, view property and my wife likes older homes (she doesn't have to work on them), so it looks like we're here for awhile.

Before the house gets raised, there isn't room to work in many parts of the crawl space. At parts, the ground is only about 8" from the floor joists. That's why not much has been done down there so far. But for about 3 weeks, it's going to be 4 foot in the air. That will make working under there pretty easy. During this time I want to get stuff fixed up asap. If we stay with forced air, then that is what will get attention. If we choose hot water, then I'll rough in the plumbing runs.

We have a local hydronics seller that I am going to contact today about this. And our oil company also sells biodiesel at the pump, so I'll ask him what they think about it's future locally for heating fuel. Natural gas hasn't shown up in 12 years and won't show up anytime soon. 5 acre zoning keeps housing density to low for them to pipe the neighborhood. So this will either be an oil, propane or electrical system. The house has an 80 year old redwood tree to the south and is on a north slope, so that pretty well eliminates solar.

Last option I'm thinking about is re-ducting the HVAC system and putting in an air-to air heat pump. Friends of ours did this 2 yrs ago during their remodel. Their max bill for Dec/Jan. was about $200 in a 50% larger, 3000 sqft house. They work ok here because the ambient air temp is typically 35-40 at the coldest. I'd prefer geothermal, but it will cost about $15K to install. If we installed the heat pump, we'd still use the woodstove as much as possible. But there is a dilemma. We get burn bans at least once a winter. The pellet stove was legal for that, but wood stove wasn't. So we'd be running pure electric, perhaps for as much as a week at a time.
 
Since you have no need for AC and I have a better understanding of what you are doing and your current house setup, Oiliofuel
is the way to go. I think FHW is also the best choice. Cleaner heat inside, easier to route, easier to zone This is especially important with a wood stove You can effectively close that zone off Your temps you are in little danger of freezing.

My final recomdation is Forced hot water by oil. Next choice is Hot water tankless. separate oilfired hotwater tank or electric.
I do not know your usage the most expensive would be separate oil fired hot water but most effecient . If you do not have a high demand usage ten electric might be the way to go also cheapest to install. then tankless off your boiler is cost effective but you boiler cycles in summer Get a decent boiler Someone mentioned Budurus (I know I misspelled it) I second his choice if I had the money one would be going in my home now. I get to see just about all of them this is a great boiler check it out on the Web
 
Just spoke with the oil company. They'll deliver biofuel or fossil oil. Same price $2.99/gal.. Conventional boiler is out because we don't have a chimney. Looking into PVC exhaust units.

Frank, can I get more info on your boiler? How long has it been running? Any issues? Please supply make and model. thx.

Has anybody read up on or looked at the Monitor FCX boiler?
http://www.proheatdirect.com/shopmonitorboilersmainfcx.asp
 
I don't have a chimney for the one in my garage, I have it power vented. One 90 degree elbow and a couple short lengths of standard glavanized pipe done deal

Here is a better plan direct vented oil burner Read the impressive features Bedurus brings to the table

And I just learned they can be direct vented Some nice features id adapting your heating needs by sensing the outdoor temps and indoor as well it will also learn you heating habits fully programable to boot optional hot water tank units that are fited to the boiler
and look at the effeciency ratings about the best in the oil burner industry and tax credits for the upgrage installation can burn Biofuel

www.buderus.net
 
Yes, I like Buderus. Spoke to my oil dealer about them. He prefers not to power vent a primary boiler if possible. Suggested considering an oil fired hot water heater instead.

Buderus G115 in our size is about 86% efficient. Monitor is 95%. Both run on biofuel which we can get direct from dealer here. Biofuel or fossil oil same price. One does need to keep biofuel above about 35 degrees to avoid gelling. Some use underground tanks, some use preheaters or insulate tank. Both boiler systems are running more than 7k installed.

Found out a few intersting things. Soon home heating oil will go lower sulfer like diesel. That may allow more options, exhaust should be less corrosive. Locally we will be voting to form our own PUD. First goal will be subsidizing conservation, so there may be some good grants on heat pumps. So, right now we are thinking that redoing the duct system this year for proper, insulated supply ducting and straight insulated runs + insulated return - all joints sealed well. That will set us up for either a hot water heat exchanger that is boiler fired like the Monitor, or heat pump. I like this because it gives us the most options for the future. It will run about $1200 and is reusable for the next fuel source. My guess is that energy conservation programs will start in earnest within the next few years, so if we can take advantage of discounts and tax credits, it makes sense to wait.

This year we have mega expenses already with house lift, foundation, insulation, new windows and relandscaping to new foundation and new patio. I still want to get a greenhouse in and the heating system is looking like too big a stretch right now. The practical side is kicking in and my wife is asking for moderation. So best I can do is set up for the future and tighten everything up for whatever heat source we settle on.
 
my boiler is a dunkirk quantum 90. they do make a quantum 90 plus that is 95% eff.
we have been running this guy for 5 years with no problem. very quiet boiler. aluminum block so it heats and transfers heat quick.

the other boiler i was speaking of was a buderus wall hung. this is a brand new model. one of my friends has this boiler and he is a plumber and loves it. he said that with no other changes to the system or the way he runs it the boiler saved him 30%

btw these are natural gas boilers and i think they can run on propane. i'd have to look them up
price wise the buderus wall hung is not cheap. my dunkirk is middle priced as compared to a stock cast iron boiler.

i wire quite a few buderus oil and gas boilers and can say these are nice boilers which ever you pick. the company also has their own computer for these boilers and makes them run sweet.
if your going to run hot water you could ruff plumb your baseboard for later. i know you said you'll run a air system but i'm not sure you could get the eff for a computer run boiler with running a hydro air system because if you cool the water off to much in a hydro air system the vents will feel like they are throwing cool to cold air.

good luck
lots of work to do
 
One other advantage of a gas stove is that if the power goes off for a day, I can stay at home until the power comes back on. If the gas also gets cut off, well, there's a Motel 6 up the road.

hitopp
 
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