Home Heating Opinions

House is an old two story farm house, with unfinished basement which is like a dungeon. Currently have 20 year old electric furnace in basement, and a wood pellet stove on 1st floor. The electric furnace needs to be replaced by something else (it's dying). We used to have a corn stove instead of wood pellet on 1st floor, and it REALLY put out the heat but a major downside was cleaning out the klinker in it everyday. The wood pellet stove is nice, but not nearly as warm as the corn was, and now the electric has to run more often.

Now I'm trying to figure out what would be best for this house. Parents are hitting 60's so outdoor wood furnace or anything majorly physical is out of question.

Contractor suggests we go propane. I was researching options, and propane and gas prices are directly related to crude oil prices since their both bi-products. They dont seem like great options with what crude oil is doing.

Natural Gas might be good, house is out in country though, is it possible to get this in tanks and what is it like?

Electric is out of question. I'm in Ontario and our electric rates are going to change for sure in near future and it sure as hell wont go down. We already have huge electric bills from everything running in the dairy barn!

Just looking for any suggestions/opinions from folks out there. TIA.

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The nozzle, the ignitor,and everything has to be bang on or efficency goes in the toilet.My oil supplier also told me I would need a new double walled tank, (200 imperial gallons) cost is about $1200.00 . The last nail in the coffin for oil is to find someone to service it in my area. They are becoming far and few between.

Corn is what I heat my shop with but cleaning out the clinker 2X a day is a pain in the but. Do the new corn burners really have no clinker ????
At 2.29 per bushel corn is cheap heat..

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I would favor propane, but I'd consult with the installer before having the furnace installed in the basement. There's a certain risk in having a propane appliance below grade.

My second choice is fuel oil, and it might be my first choice if the furnace has to be below grade. Note that you'll probably want the tank inside to prevent the fuel from gelling, and you may not have enough room in the basement to do so.

Note that the costs of all energy sources are interrelated, if the price of oil goes up, the cost of propane, natural gas, diesel and electricity will all rise.

I just installed an A-Maize-ing Heat 165,000 btu corn furnace in our shop this week and although the furnace was expensive corn cost a fraction of LP per BTU. The newer corn burners don't have the clinker problem the older ones had, the manual for our's says to clean the ash tray once a week. Your parents might not want to be carrying corn at their age and I fully understand that but if they wouldn't mind it or if you could fill their corn bin for them once a week or so it would be worth your time since corn cost about 20% as much as LP.

I burn natural gas in a turn of the century brick 2 storey, and my rate doubled in the last year, from 16c to 30.1c. That's harsh.

The house I'm renovating has an oil furnace and it seems cheaper to heat, even without insulation over the stone yet.

A friend put a high-efficiency gas/forced air furnace in with great ballyhoo, only to discover it had burned out three years later. The medium efficiency boiler the local guy installed ten years ago in my basement has run without a whimper ever since.

So oil may possibly be a good choice. Beware high efficiency units unless they look as though they will last a long time.

My two cents.

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As your parents get older, you might want to consider other things such a reliability. Generally, the more efficient a heating system, the more things there are to go wrong and shut down the entire system. If the electricity is off a wood stove will still work--but almost nothing else will.

As well as fuel costs, you need to consider the cost of getting your system installed. The wholesale cost of a 90%+ efficient gas or propane furnace is only a couple of hundred dollars more than the least efficient available. The most effient heat pump will be thousands of dollars higher than the least efficient. In Indiana, the dealer mark-up on geo-thermal installations prices it out of competition.

I didn't want to deal with an oil tank in my basement, and didn't want one buried in my yard. I too am out in the country, so natural gas is not an option. Next cheapest was wood or coal, but I've been there & done that and don't want to have to put up with bother anymore.
So I settled on propane. It's been in about a year now and I have no complaints yet.

The cheapest way to go propane is to own your tank, make it a big one and buy your propane in the off-season as much as possible. For instance, I bought propane in July for 98.9/gallon. It should be enough to last the winter. If it isn't I'll buy a small amount, just to get through the heating season, and fill it again in the summer.
There are about 7 or 8 of us, who live within about 5 miles of each other, who shop around together and buy from the supplier that gives us the best price.
BTW, insulate everything as much as possible, It's dollars well spent no matter what you heat with.

As for geothermal, my uncle has that, I'll look into it further. I'm assuming a truck would have to come in and drill/dig a hole quite deep and offhand I cant' think of a good spot near the house for this. Theres already big trees/pool and septic system surrounding it.

LP, fuel oil, or electric.

LP will be the best one most of the time.

--->Paul

I would really like to have GeoThermal but initial up front cost kept me out...I think in the long run it would have returned. HOWEVER here in Central, IL Geo will do a great job of cooling for pennies but for heating you still need supplemental...which meant essentially I still had to buy a propane furnace.

Can"t speak for your level of insulation but as you are looking at upgrading the heat source it may make sense to look at better retention. I bought an 11 year old house that was custom built by one of the better contractors in my area. In the past 4 years I have been busy caulking and venting and re-installing insulation to get the house buttoned up and I am saving more than 10% on my bills from when I moved in. This year that equates to more than $20.00 per month. Every little bit counts and the house is a lot more comfortable now.

You might want to explore some of the ground coiled heat pumps. Those things can work very well, particularly in cold air areas since their coils are down in the ground. They are all forced air I believe, though there might be an odd hot water system out there.