does this sound right?

[curtis]

My house is around 2000 sq ft. It was built in the 70's and i have no idea what kind of insulation it has in it. When we moved in i called the oil company that had been providing the fuel oil for the forced air furnace, they told me that the past two years they delivered about 250 gallons of oil twice a year. So a total of 500 gallons. From talking to other people they seem to think that is low. And one thing we arent sure of is what the thermostat was set at the last two years because we are under the impression that the house was vacant so maybe the temp was set low like around 50? I live in Northern michigan and Michigan state university says that the average home in michigan requires 85.3 million btu to heat during the winter. Is there a way to find out how many gallons of fuel oil it would take to burn to get 83.5 million btu? The price of oil was $4.10 a gallon
And not to confuse anyone that read my previous post about the wood boiler, the two years im talking about in this post was '08 and '09. 2010 and 2011 i used the owb and have no way of knowing how many cord i used.

 

[mikefrommaine]

Oil at 4.10 with an 83% efficient boiler costs 35.62 per million btu
35.62 x 83.5 = 2974

http://nepacrossroads.com/fuel-comparison-calculator.php

 

[Frozen Canuck]

From engineering toolbox:

#1 132,900 - 137,000 btu/gal
#2 137,000 - 141,800 btu/gal

 

[curtis]

Oil at 4.10 with an 83% efficient boiler costs 35.62 per million btu
35.62 x 83.5 = 2974

Yea so that means based on averages they must have had the temp set pretty low in that house to only use 500 gallons that means that the house used roughly 67 million btu's. What do you guys think? 85 million sound about right?

 

[maple1]

I can only say that if I had to get by here (17 year old 2700 sq.ft. two story) a whole year on just 500 gallons of oil for heat - I'd be one cold puppy. And an alone puppy at that - my family would have left me.

 

[BoilerMan]

A general ### number of BTU/ heating season is kinda subjective. Type fo house, temp of house, size, etc. etc. A little old lady in a 70's ranch keeping it at 78F uses 1,200 gallons. She goes into the nursing home, and the house is vacant and kept at 50F and uses 650 gallons kinda thing.........................

TS

 

[curtis]

Yea i know it kind of hard to generalize heating needs but i am just trying to get a general idea of cost so i can figure out a return time on buying a wood gassification boiler. So roughly 3000 a year for oil or around 8 cord of wood for 520 and the savings would be almost 2500 a year. So if i had 10-15 grand in a complete system it wouldnt take long to start saving money.

 

[flyingcow]

FWIW- I live in a 2 story, 1800 sq/ft house. Aprox 16 yrs old. Avg insulation, R-19 walls R-38 in attic. Living on top of a windy hill in northern Maine. 2 adults, 3 teens. I was using 1000 gals of oil year round when the T-stat was set at 68f.

I replaced that with 6.5 cords of wood. But i am now burning 7.5 cords year round because the T-stat will get turned up to 74/76.......whatever makes her happy..... I'm happy. The T-stat is only that high for 4 or 5 hours at night. One of the next best things i did was hook up a nice set back T-stat. It will revert back to 70 in 2 hours, no matter how high it's set. Than set back to 62 later on.

seems to me 8 cord of well seasoned wood, with a gasser should do the trick.You get your wood seasoned for 2 years ahead now you're cooking!

Also, i figured my wood cost at $175 a cord for my ROI plan.

 

[curtis]

FWIW- I live in a 2 story, 1800 sq/ft house. Aprox 16 yrs old. Avg insulation, R-19 walls R-38 in attic. Living on top of a windy hill in northern Maine. 2 adults, 3 teens. I was using 1000 gals of oil year round when the T-stat was set at 68f.

I replaced that with 6.5 cords of wood. But i am now burning 7.5 cords year round because the T-stat will get turned up to 74/76.......whatever makes her happy..... I'm happy. The T-stat is only that high for 4 or 5 hours at night. One of the next best things i did was hook up a nice set back T-stat. It will revert back to 70 in 2 hours, no matter how high it's set. Than set back to 62 later on.

seems to me 8 cord of well seasoned wood, with a gasser should do the trick.You get your wood seasoned for 2 years ahead now you're cooking!

Also, i figured my wood cost at $175 a cord for my ROI plan.

Man a 1000 gallons a year! That would cost a small fortune! I can buy a semi load of firewood wich is 20 cord for $1350. I just have to cut and split it.

 

[infinitymike]

On another level we need to remember that the cost of oil is only going to go up in price therefore decreasing the time to realize the savings.
I say bite the bullet and go for it.
But thats just me,
I mean, I never burned wood in my life other than a camp fire and jumped head first into a gassier and in one year have 17 full cord piled up!

 

[flyingcow]

Man a 1000 gallons a year! That would cost a small fortune! I can buy a semi load of firewood wich is 20 cord for $1350. I just have to cut and split it.

1000 gals is a small fortune up here. I think it's about $3.45 a gal for home heating oil. But when I had my house built, I think it was about .85 cents a gallon? maybe a $1 a gallon?

My wood in tree length is about the same money, but I still figure my time worth something. Avg price of rock maple/beech cut/split delivered is about $175 if you buy it at the right time of year.

 

[mikefrommaine]

I think most of who have bought a gasser plan on a simple payback of 3-5 years based on current prices.

I figure my time spent processing the free rounds that I get dropped off by a tree service is worth about $50 an hour. Gotta earn a 1.50 to spend a buck. Now if I could just get them to drop off oak instead of pine I could be making some real money

 

[Fred61]

1000 gals is a small fortune up here. I think it's about $3.45 a gal for home heating oil. But when I had my house built, I think it was about .85 cents a gallon? maybe a $1 a gallon

Everytime this discussion comes up I remember the distressed look on my poor mom's face when she received a notice that oil price was increasing from 15 cents to 18 cents a gallon.

 

[flyingcow]

Everytime this discussion comes up I remember the distressed look on my poor mom's face when she received a notice that oil price was increasing from 15 cents to 18 cents a gallon.

Now a days we have our older generation needing heating oil just to stay above freezing and to be comfortable. It's close to $1000 just to fill their oil tank once! not uncommon to have to fill it 3 or 4 times a winter. It sucks to see that.

 

[Fred61]

Now a days we have our older generation needing heating oil just to stay above freezing and to be comfortable. It's close to $1000 just to fill their oil tank once! not uncommon to have to fill it 3 or 4 times a winter. It sucks to see that.

That was in 1952. Now I'm the older generation.

 

[curtis]

I think most of who have bought a gasser plan on a simple payback of 3-5 years based on current prices.

Im not able to put a boiler in my basement so i have to build a small building ouitside to house the boiler and storage and then pipe it into my house wich would cost more than a indoor install, but still a money saver in the long run.

 

[maple1]

If I had to go outside with my boiler & storage, I would put it all in a nice sized well insulated garage close to the house. Practically speaking, it would be a garage. On paper & to satisfy insurers if necessary, it would be called a work shop. Some here partition off a small area of their garage for their boiler with its own outside entrance to meet insurance requirements - I would rather likely not do that and if needed have another small shed to store flammables, with the option of temporarily running something inside the 'work shop' to work on it if necessary. Here, a vehicle would end up outside all the time anyway - if you would want to keep your vehicle inside a garage, you'd likely have to go the separate room route for the boiler, maybe. Having boiler & storage inside the 'work shop' would keep the 'work shop' heated just from standby & latent heat loss. Either way, I don't think I'd just build a building solely for boiler & storage - I'd make it lots big to do other things inside of too.

 

[BoilerMan]

I've asked alot of people how much oil they burn. 1,000 is usually what they say, some say 1,200. This seems to be the norm for our Maine winters in the "average" house. Then there are they pellet stove guys, who say 600 gallons now, and 5 tons of pellets........ Hmmmm. Or my personal favorite, we use our electric Eden Pure quite a bit, burn 4 or 5 tons, and the rest is oil...........um yeah.

I'm not the older gereration quite yet, but the price of oil discussion always brings to mind my grandfather taking me outside and pointing to the chimney top and saying "see that Taylor, those are dollar bills flying out of there!" Then shaking his head and saying "it's up to 76 cents this year and there's is no tellen where it'll stop".

TS