Just got my oil filled

[briansol]

I have a split level house, and my stove is on my main (or 3rd out of 4 half levels). I have a boiler furnace which runs my lower level (family/tv room on level 2, basement is level 1 and has no heat. other than what the furnace throws off) as well as supplies my hot water. I haven't had a fill up since November and was about 1/2 tank down in my 275 gal oil tank.

Ouch.

124 gallons at 3.73 = 463 just to have hot water and keep that lower level on 55 most the time (i rarely use the room and keep it at 55 when not in use). 95% of the rest of the heat has been from the stove, at a cost of 2.6 tons at $245 / ton average = $637

So, its 637 for 2/3 on pellets around 65-ish
and 463 for 1/3 on oil around 55 ish


I don't know why more people don't get on this train.

Now, to pay this damn oil bill...............

 

[Pellet-King]

Get a Electric water heater, either on demand or cheapy one from HD, I'm sooo glad ..., that I dont have to use ZERO OIL!!

 

[briansol]

Yeah, it's something i'm looking in to. Space is the biggest issue for me. I don't have much room in my water closet area where the electric box and water come in to the house. I have a radon system in there taking up a lot of the room.

Plus, electric keeps going up too.


I need a windmill. lol

 

[geek]

Get a Electric water heater, either on demand or cheapy one from HD, I'm sooo glad ..., that I dont have to use ZERO OIL!!

how much is it installed?

 

[briansol]

normal ones are about 500-800 + a couple hundred for pro install.
The on-demand systems are quite a bit more.

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

...

The on-demand systems are quite a bit more.

And may also require an electrical service upgrade as well.

 

[Don2222]

Hello

I have a split entry with the Wood Pellet Stove in the basement and heats both levels of the house with no oil at all.

I do heat the DHW with oil and since the fillup I had on the last day in September, I currently have 1/2 a tank of oil. Therefore if I use 275 gallons of oil per year at say $3.00 per gallon if I buy in the summer that is $825.00

Does anyone know how much an electric hot water tank adds to their electric bill per month???

If it is $50 then it would be $600 for the year but I have no idea??

If it is $100 then it would be $1200 for the year but I have no idea??


I do have a 40 Gallon Water Tank so that would be 3,500 Kwatt hr per year of electricity usage.
http://www.wapa.gov/es/pubs/fctsheet/WaterHeating.pdf

 

[jtakeman]

Does anyone know how much an electric hot water tank adds to their electric bill per month???

Variables will keep us from giving the exact answer. Depending on its tank size, utility rate, temp setting and amp draw. Most have a energy tag on them that gives a breakdown of about what it will require for month/yearly use. My 4 year old 60 gallon unit has a $410/year use average. Reading the fine print the rating was in 1994's utility rate. I would say mine is more in the range of $700/year plus. And thats also using a timer to control its on/off time.

Do your home work here. It may take many seasons to repay the investment. I had no choice as my house is all electric.

 

[mpcm]

I've been considering this as well, an electric hot water heater. My local electric coop offers a reduced pricing on Marathon Heaters.

I'd like to move off of oil, as I currently have an ondemand coil, but the boiler barely does enough for the house heating during the winter anyway, and this would mean at least I was not running the oil boiler during the summer for DHW.

They seem to feel using an undersized heating element 3800 vs 4500w. Anyone here using one of these, or know about these types of heaters?

 

[Skippydo]

To get an accurate cost of a water heater, call you electric company.
You have to know what size water heater you will be installing....call and ask
for what details they need. They will work with you.
Hook up the water heater yourself.....it is easy....I am sure you know a friend
who will help you, in fact, one of your fiends will most likely have the wire, circuit
breaker and help with the hook up, cooper to PVC is easy!!

 

[save$]

I did the electric hot water thing for a while. Had to replace the tanks a few times. Went to propane, but then that went so high I took that out when I ripped out all the electric heat and the wood stove. Put in a oil forced hot air furnace and a separate oil fired hot water heater. I have to tell you that Oil fired hot water heater only sips oil. I used 196 gallons of oil in 15 months. that was for all the hot water and for the furnace which comes on if it is real cold (below 15 F) Just the wife and me here now. She does laundry about every other day an runs the dishwasher every day. I think the best way to handle heating needs now is to invest in a pellet furnace. I'm in no position to do that now. Being retired is good, but we have to be cautious with any major investments. The very best way to improve efficient heating is still with insulation.

 

[briansol]

I've also looked into the pellet furnace. Looks like those need a lot of space and the manual labor involved in keeping a pellet load for it may be a bit much for me. I have a tiny garage and no hatchway to the basement, so it's a pain in the ass to load/stock. Either way, that's not something I would consider installing until my current furnace dies/blows up/otherwise needs more than $2000 in repairs.

I'm still trying to figure out how to damn the 'babbling brook' at the edge of my property and set up a water wheel :D

 

[Alternative Guy]

Off topic - there was a company in NJ that made a high efficiency oil-fired HW heat/hot water system called System 2000. I was told about it back around '95, and my friend installed one about 3 years ago. I went the woodstove route with a propane furnace backup. I like the low maintenance of gas. Not the cost though.

Back to the topic, you know they have electric heat pump water heaters now. More expensive, but good for some areas. With my standard 15 year old tank, I figure I pay about $1-1.50 per day for one person and a 60 gallon tank. I use a timer, and get a cheaper rate at night. There are two 2500 watt elements, but only one operates at a time. A new tank may be $400-500, and a heat pump was over a grand I think - maybe $1500.

 

[rickwa]

I have looked at the heat pump WH. But the puzzlimg thing is that in the winter is is using heat out of your house to heat your water? Summer that is great , but winter it seems you are not saving anything because it already cost you once to produce the heat w/ stove furnace ect then you transfer it again to water. I know you loose a little at every transfer. I use propane for Hot water, clothes dryer, cooking range, and grill is tied in. I used a total of 275 gal worth last year which cost me $465. Heat w/ corn and pellets. Water heater is 40k btu I think so it only uses 1 gallon every 2 1/4 hr. , dryer is 30k 3 loads a week 1 gal. / week

 

[TLHinCanada]

I just changed my hot water heater, the price was $239.00 for a fifty gal. if you can fit a 220 circuit into your electrical panel its a fairly easy job. I use a hot water timer which runs the heater for 4 hrs. a day. Also wrapped the tank with a extra blanket ($25.00), if you need more just switch it onto manual, it takes about 20 min. to heat up. These are canadian prices so down south its probably a lot cheaper.

 

[Dougsey]

I've been considering this as well, an electric hot water heater. My local electric coop offers a reduced pricing on Marathon Heaters.

I'd like to move off of oil, as I currently have an ondemand coil, but the boiler barely does enough for the house heating during the winter anyway, and this would mean at least I was not running the oil boiler during the summer for DHW.

They seem to feel using an undersized heating element 3800 vs 4500w. Anyone here using one of these, or know about these types of heaters?

Looking at this option from Co-Op as well. Please share if you get any input.

The only trouble with turning off the boiler in the summer is they can sometimes start to leak.

 

[Don2222]

Hello

Thanks for the input on electric water heaters. I do have an almost new Superstor Indirect with a cold start boiler so the efficiency is close to a separately fired oil DHW tank at somewhere around 200 - 250 gallons a year with a family of 4. It looks like the electric is not much cheaper than oil so I may be stuck with this for a while.

The Insulation improvements in the Attic I made really helped.

I have 2x4s in the outside walls with old Corning Fiberglass Insulations R7 !! I am thinking of tearing out the sheet rock in the room and upgraded to R13 Fiberglass or R15 Roxul with R4 foil stapled on top! Then put up new drywall.

That would give R19 in the 2x4 walls, does anyone think this would make much of a difference to justify the work??

 

[turbotech]

When I want to figure out if electricity is better I just use a few electric bills. Take the total $ bill amount and divide by the total KW value. This gives a decent estimate of your actual $ per KW including ALL charges. Around here it is $.185 per KW.
Electricity is 100% efficient so a 5KW water heater on for 1 hour would cost: .185 * 5 = .94 or almost $1 per hour. How long does your current water heater run in a day and watt is the heat BTU value of it?

A propane 90% efficient 40K btu water heater at $3.70 per gallon cost about (40K/93K) * 3.70 / .9 = $1.77 per hour

 

[velotocht]

Don2222:
R7 is pretty low for a 2x4 wall -- so R13 or R15 woudl be a big improvement.

I have a 2X4 wall house here in NY with R13 insulation. When we purchased it, it also had aluminum siding.

I pulled the siding off, changed all the aluminum windows to low budget Vinyl sliders (Lowes, Pella, very basic) and wrapped the whole house in Tyvek. I sealed it well with Tyvek tape ($10 per roll, ridiculous). Then I re-sided with Vinyl with ~1 inch of co-extruded foam stuck to the siding. The shiny brochures claimed R4 added value for the 1" inch foam insulation -- but I expect that is a bit high.

Doing all the work my self over a couple of years cost me ~12,000 in materials and some basic tools. But I saw my annual oil consumption drop by almost 50% the year after I added the siding (just before buying the pellet stove). Now, with the pellet stove, I burn about 250 gals of oil a year. That oil is for hot water and room heating on those really cold nights when the pellet stove can't keep up. I also burn ~2.5 tons of pellets per year.

My point here is that new insulated siding and windows may be cheaper than ripping out gyprock walls. Furthermore, the added siding also adds insulaton over the 2x4's. Changing the current insulation does nothing to improve (reduce) heat loss of the 2x4s.

Food for thought?

Take care. RonB

 

[slls]

I did the electric water heater in 5-08 during the panic, also the pellet stove, I wasn't fooling around.

 

[velvetfoot]

I guess I have to do the numbers too = I can't believe resistance electric water heat would be cheaper than oil or propane.
Then again, I just put in 208 gallon of oil at 3.78 a gallon.
I guess it doesn't hurt the boiler's condition by running it in the off season to supply an indirect tank.
It does provide a lot of hot water though.

 

[smalltown]

Alternative Guy I had a system 2000 installed over 10 years ago "great cold start boiler".

 

[IHATEPROPANE]

I have propane that runs a tankless water heater and the burners on my stove. I use about 1% of propane a week on a 250 gallon tank (200 max fill). I use zero propane to heat my roughly 2200 sq foot house. Before I bought the pellet stove I was keeping the house at 60-62 and filling up every 3 weeks (at about $2.50/gallon ) in Nov. and Dec. With the Pellets I keep it at 68-70 on 2 bags a day unless it is below 15 degrees or so. Then I may use another half a bag. I bet if I kept the house at 70 with the propane I would need to fill every other week about 8-$900 a month easy.

 

[CJ-SR4ever]

I am so glad I went with pellet over these last couple of years. About 3 years ago I used to heat my split level home with propane. And the sad part was, was that I didnt realize how much heating with propane was hurting the wallet until my first year with pellet. I first bought a small freestanding stove for the upstairs. I figured we would spend most of our time upstairs. That easily cut the propane bill in half! Then when I got my last propane bill at the beginning of this season, $3.52 per gallon, that is when i bit the bullet and invested money into a second stove for the downstairs. Now both floors are evenly heated and propane is only used to heat the water. Alot of people think that to switch over to pellet you need to spend alot to save, which in a way is true, but over just a year or two it can pay for itself. Maybe the next time someone fills their oil / propane tank, and sees how high the price went up this time, they will make the investment. In my opinion, and im sure im not the only one who thinks this, I would like to see a steady increase in consumers switching to pellet. More efficient, burns very clean, great for the environment, and best of all.........SAVES YOU MONEY!!

 

[Skippydo]

Since I got my Harman PF100 furnace, I had my propane filled (250 gallon) and now it is around 60%.
That was a couple of years ago. My rental is only $12.00 per year. If I did not go down to Florida last winter for a 10 day stay with a friend, the wife
would not have used the propane furnace. She doesn't want anything to do with the pellet furnace. Too much work. (see her point though)
You know who is in charge of the money affairs.
My electric rate was .0945 for February. That is taking the TOTAL amount due, divided by the KWH used.