Alternative heat source thoughts

seriously doubt that pipe problem is an issue anymore - it's PEX almost everywhere now .... and it's cheap as hell for the gas company to run mileage now - we have farmers drying fall corn & beans using natural gas now instead of propane ....

 

Just be aware that an 18,000 BTU heater will burn a gallon of propane in about 5hours, and a 20lb bottle holds 4.7 gallons....so you won't get 20hrs of burn on one bottle.

 

I grew up in a very small cabin while living in the mountains , and most of the living was in the kitchen which had a door to the bed room and a door to the back porch and another going out side.
This was a bat and board construction so all there was , was tar paper and older vinyl flooring in the walls keeping out the wind ,no insulation .
Since this was the only room with plumbing it was the only room that needed heat which the gas stove handled well . we also had an oil heater and a fire place ,but being accustomed to the cold the heat left over from the kitchen spilled over into the bedroom when we shut things down before going to bed . the stove was not left on at night . and if temps were expected to hit zero we left the faucet drip through the night .
The toilet and shower were separate from the cabin and had the water heater which managed to not ever freeze through the winter. Broken out side pipes occurred due to squirrels stealing the insulation , It as my job to make the repairs .
When water had to be shut off for repairs, we had a hand dug well we drew from we preferred for drinking over the city water.
Usually the 150 gallon propane tank lasted us a year unless we had others staying with us, you don't expect others to live the way you do .
The oil heater was efficient and only used in special events as well as the fire place , more for ambience than heat .
Looking back I would rather have had a wood cook stove for cooking and heating .
Later in my late teens I had my own 12X14 cabin I used a log stove for heating , and to this day I prefer to use my wood cook stove during the winter and propane during the summer months .

 

When I posted my numbers saying how much propane I could get for a year worth of natural gas surcharges I was wrong.
I was assuming 2.50 a gallon.
I just got one of my 40lb tanks filled for $1.71 a gallon.
So if your surcharges are around $20 per month you could buy around 140 gallons a year and if you are in the country with higher surcharges, closer to $30 a month that's over 200 gallons a year you could buy with surcharge money.

 

That is a good price for small tank. Here, it runs about 2.30/gal (and up) for 20-100lb tanks. My summer fill up rate on 500gal tanks is around 1.80/gal

 

My primary heat is wood. If I buy it, it's 60 a face cord (8'x4'x16"). If I cut it myself off the farmers wood lot / blow downs .. it cost me 20 dollars for gas/oil for saw and truck for 3 face cord .. ok plus aspirin for the sore back after hauling it from the woods to the truck.

Our backup heat is electric base board but I'm not sure if those even work as we've been heating a 1600 sq ft ranch with wood for 20+ years now.

They ran natural gas down our road this summer but want 30k for hookup. Bwhaahahahhah No fricken way. I'd also have to figure out how to retrofit it into a house that wasn't designed to have a furnace. So until I'm tired (or body gives out) of going down stairs to stoke the stove at 5-6 am, I'm sticking with wood.

 

Ah, there's the rub. If Mrs. VT is on the war path. Time spent of wood cutting is free. Otherwise, it's probably a wash at best.
Then there is the benefits of going into winter in the best shape of the year.

 

I cheat. Yes I do have some woods of my own but I buy logs from a logger for around $500 a load. This is usually all hardwood logs, like oak, some others, so good stuff for firewood, but not straight logs for selling to mills. I have an outdoor wood boiler that provides hot water heat to two homes. Only problem is the boiler is getting older and now has a leak. I'm waiting on a welder to come fix it, but it's winter and he is waiting on a day he can get to it that isn't raining, snowing or toooo cold. In the mean time LP gas furnace is keeping our homes warm. Backup generator will run the furnace if electric fails.

 

Must be a long run. I used to live in a cul-de-sac first house in, and the gas company had a line running right past it. They told me $1200 to hook me up, but once they moved the line in, I'd get a rebate for everybody who hooked onto it. I think I ended up with 4-5 of the 8 neighbors on the line. All in all, cost me about $500, which I made up quickly. I was in the Pacific NW (you can figure out which base) over the electric heat we had.

Couple of things RE your query. Hard to make a recommendation if we don't know how big of a space you wish to heat. A whole house set up is different than a room or two. From what I see around here, it takes about one 40# bag of pellets for 36 hrs on low burn for the average pellet stove, although they do have blowers and thermostats on some.

If you design a passive solar system you can add some heat into your house without costing you anything. Lots of plans for radiators, solar gain systems, etc. on the web. I built a solar room onto my house in the 1980's there in the Pacific Northwest, and it would stay 55 degrees with no heat from the house at all. If you use low E glass, you won't add a lot of heat in the summer either, which is a passive solar issue...you can end up too warm in summer.

Fly Navy, the best always have! JC

 

@Navyair
Whidbey Island. has seen SUN ? Im Comox -Nanoose Base & web feet these last few months .
My harvest is very low. Im PV & Collectors

Sloth

 

After looking around some I also had the idea of a whole house propane generator that could run everything. More expensive but would be nice to run every thing want. The house is 2k sqft I wasn't think of heating all of it just the main living space about 300sqft

 

I have never heard of that. Interesting. Part of it sounds like a heat exchange system. I will do some research. Thanks!

 

You could use an EGR cooler from a diesel truck to extract exhaust heat.

 

Now I get it. Interesting that it is available for a non industrial use. When I worked in corporate America I tried many times to get a project to go through for a heat exchange system. I could never get the required payback savings they wanted.

 

I may have lost power here on the beach for a few hours total in the last 30 years, but I was without heat for several days a couple years ago. Not on mild Crystal Coast winter days where you need a jacket in the morning and turn the A/C on in the car on the way home from work. We had about five days of temperatures that never got out of the low 20's during the day. Right at the beginning of the cold snap I stepped outside one morning to investigate a noise, and found my heat pump was a giant white pile of ice.

So I had power, but no heat. I pulled the outside breaker on the heat pump so it couldn't destroy itself and figured I'd wait for it to warm up. (I absolutely refuse to run the giant toaster that is called supplemental heat.) On a good day in winter we keep the house at 60. I can often see my breath in the morning inside the house. That week I was home alone... unsupervised. I could have had a wood fire on the living room floor, (concrete floor, 14' ceilings and functional dormer windows) but my heat solution was more elegant. I broke out two Aladdin 23A table lamps. I shut off most of the house so I didn't have to heat it all, and managed to keep the smaller space above about 50 during the night after I had put the lamps out. I think my Rayo center draft lamp makes about as much heat and darn near as much light as the Aladdin's, without the need for a mantle.
Both these lamps are silent, so they have a distinct advantage over gas pressure lamps that hiss.

If I'm ever without electricity and heat I'm certainly going to want to have light with my heat, so why not enjoy both at the same time.

 

I wish calcium carbide was easier to come by , stirred with water makes acetylene gas good for a whole lot of things . before electricity it was common every where and even the source of light for the movie industry .
Some where i my collection I've got gas lamps and of course use acetylene for cutting and welding .
I have a can of calcum carbide that is over 50 years old and still functional ,better then storing other fuels.