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Love that propane

K

Keith Molden

Well-known Member
We ordered propane 3 weeks ago and finally got 150 gal. this morning. Great price too NOT 2.3990 per gal. and they only brought 150 gal. They say we're having a big shortage of fuel, but it sure seems like this happens every year. We don't raise corn or anything in this area that requires dry down heat so the only thing is home heating so they feel justified in price gouging. Oh well, they do it to all of us at the same time so nobody is being signaled out LOL. Thin k it's time to go total electric, or at least give it some serious thought. Keith
 
I paid a young fellow $200 to cut up enough wood to do me the Winter,course I still have to pick it up and split it.Getting ahead of the curve for next year traded him a tiller
I paid $75 for to cut up next year's wood.
 
Fuel oil furnaces are very problematic.
I'll take propane any day. Or best yet free gas from a gas well.
 
Find a different supplier. I just got some at the beginning of this month. Did not hear of a shortage ? But the price did just go up after I got mine. IIRC I got it for $ 1.77 gal. delivered to my own tank. north central Ohio.
 

Get a bigger tank so you only buy propane in the summer.
When you own the tank, you can shop around.
 
Going total electric is the most expensive way to heat. Passing electricity through a short circuit to make heat is about the most inefficient way I can imagine.
Observe that homes that were built to be total electric are super insulated and airtight. If the same techniques were used on less expensive heating fuels, heating costs would be greatly reduced. I can understand being angry about what appears to be price gouging, but going to an even more expensive heat source is like shooting yourself in the foot.
 
Count your blessings. $3.20 is the average price in Sonoma County, CA. from a low of $2.55 to a high of $3.91 (I think there are surcharges on in town delivery).
 

Depends on the electric rate for your area.
Have a nephew who is a energy consultant for a local utility company. He told me the break even point is $2.00 per gallon in our area.
Below $2 pre gallon propane is cheaper pre BTU than electric.
Above $2 pre gallon electric is cheaper.
One has to figure in the cost of converting to see how long it takes to pay out.

My house is all electric, moms next door is propane, one of the nice things about hers is when the power goes out she still has heat. 2009 ice storm we were out of power for 10 days, the small 4 panel radiant heater in her living room kept the house above 64 degrees until the power came back on for the main heater to power up. We also took food to her house to cook on her gas range and have family meals.
We now have a small gas log insert for supplemental heat.
Having poultry barns we get a volume discount when filling the house tanks at the same time we fill the poultry barn tanks, pretty good savings.
 
Tell me about it. I didn't want to risk having the hydrant in the old milk house freezing up by not draining all the way out before it froze in all that cold weather like so many had happen during the polar vortex a few years ago,so I had a little electric milk house heater sitting in front of it on low every night for several weeks. On top of my $640 heating oil bill this month,my electric bill was $240 and some change.
 

My forced air electric during off peak rates is cheaper than propane per btu. Plus the added cost of installing a new furnace to “save money”.
That said I may swap the furnace out to LP at the same time as the central air is installed .
 

We are contracted at $1.20 per gallon. They keep the tank full. I don't even have to call. They just stop and check the tank anytime they are going by.
 
If you really want to be electric, install a mini split system. I have one in my shop and unless we get down around 0, it keeps up fine. Keep the LP system for backup. My backup in the shop is a pellet stove.
 
(quoted from post at 08:25:52 01/24/18) My nat gas bill was $103 last month
Click to expand...
Yes, the lucky ones have natural gas, no tanks to fill, just pay the bill. The only thing I hate about it is the monthly service fee.
 
Ozlander that's what I,ve done for 20 years bought my own 500 gal tank and start calling for pricing in july😊
 
Obviously done by the propane people... notice they quote effiency by the cu ft. Sounds good, but they don't sell propane or NG by the cu ft. Propane is a gallon (92000 BTU) NG by the Therm (100,000 BTU). So one gets marketed by volume, the other not.

NG has more energy per sold unit (100k BTU vs 92K) and in my neighborhood, usually A LOT less per unit.

So their statement of propane being twice as efficient AS NG is really misleading!
 
Have you every heard the propane song.
Parody of a song by J. J. Cale
Funny.
I think Pinkard and Bowden did the propane one.
 
Interesting ...... up here gas is now sold by the Gigajoule ...... something more to confuse a guy. Gigajoules can be converted to BTU's and maybe cubic feet (which used to be the measurement up here), not exactly sure what the conversion is. In the middle of winter, I just keep hoping that my furnace keeps working. Had never an issue with an old low-efficient furnace in my home for 28 years (until the heat exchanger needed replacing) so we had a mid-efficiency furnace installed 19 years ago. Not sure how efficient it is but I do know that it has a regular tendency to shut down for various reasons, two main contol panel replacements and countless flame sensor issues (which I finally found out how to remove, clean, and reinstall myself). Doesn't do a lot of good though if a guy is away from home for a few days and it shuts down (sometimes goes into restart mode) at very cold temperatures.
 
The other day I was totaling up my propane usage for 2017 when I was doing taxes. Propane for the house cost us $1150 for 2017. That includes heat, gas dryer and gas water heater. I was surprised it wasn't more than that. We live in an old mid-sized two story farm house that's insulated with new windows and siding but it's still not all that efficient. The heat is two gas heaters, one in the basement and one upstairs, no forced air so the heating system is not nearly as efficient as it could be. Propane to heat three shops was $1400 which also surprised me. It all has to do with cheap propane in this area. Some years the bill was easily twice that much.
 
We had fuel oil hot water radiant heat in my parents' home on the farm. We had 2-265 gallon barrels in the basement for holding and storing the product. The trouble in the most recent years and the last two fuel oil fired furnaces, is there seems to be nobody around who knows how to work on these furnaces, and as they shrunk in size to gain a higher thermal efficiency out of them, they became much more troublesome, as the heat exchanger would build up with soot in the middle of the heating season. Propane is what most people have gone with in our area, or if they are within a short distance of a natural gas line, they have gone to that, too. My parents switched over to natural gas a few years ago, and have been satisfied with the common central "boiler" for the radiant heat, and demand based water heater for domestic hot water. It is a high efficiency unit. As one other mentioned, the maintenance/connection fees are a bit expensive, in spite of my parents paying the cost for the 3/8 mile of gas line from the main to the house. I have had 2 propane forced air furnaces and went overkill on the LP tank, as I wanted to have a sizable reserve so I could buy the amount I wanted, when I wanted, and from whomever I wanted. I was able to buy more in "cheap years" and get through during the "expensive years" as that tank would take care of my needs for just about the entire heating season in our old house. Nine years ago I switched over to a ground source heat pump, since my furnace was 20 years old and my central A/C unit was nearly 40 years old. It was estimated the unit would pay for the cost difference between it and a conventional LP furnace and A/C cooling system in just under 7 years. This "cost differential" was based upon my receiving the federal tax credit on the heat pump. As near as I can figure, we managed to achieve that. I am quite satisfied with the unit we have and its performance, even when we had a very cold winter a few years ago and the frost went down so deep, water mains were freezing and breaking. We also have a lower rate for the heat pump, which is metered separately and our utility company can cycle the unit on and off during peak demand times. As far as what it has been like in the house, you wouldn't know it if it had been cycled or not. The reduced rate is about half of what our normal base rate is for electricity. The one thing I do want to do is install a propane fired fireplace for extra heat in a basement family room, and for back up in the event of a serious and long term power outage, which has never been the case, but I would rather be prepared.
 
1. Electric heat is 100% efficient. ALL the electricity is used to create heat. It's just the most expensive unless you live in a rate-controlled municipality. There are a couple of villages around here where the electric rate is way cheaper than the rest.

2. LP may be in short supply depending on where you live. A lot of areas that don't normally get cold got hit with long stretches of bitter cold. Usage goes up, supply goes down, prices go up. Nowadays the driveby media calls it "price gouging" but back in elementary school economics class they called it basic supply and demand.
 
If you have paid any attention to the weather you should know that fridgid cold has extended down clear to the coastal states like Alabama, Georgia, Carolinas, etc. Takes a lot of propane to heat those houses when it's below freezing.

But if you want to switch to electric heat, go ahead. Without a doubt, the HIGHEST COST method to heat a house there is.

I prepaid for my entire winter's supply of LP at $1.29.9/gallon, and I thought THAT was way too high.
 
(quoted from post at 11:49:27 01/24/18) The other day I was totaling up my propane usage for 2017 when I was doing taxes. Propane for the house cost us $1150 for 2017. That includes heat, gas dryer and gas water heater. I was surprised it wasn't more than that. We live in an old mid-sized two story farm house that's insulated with new windows and siding but it's still not all that efficient. The heat is two gas heaters, one in the basement and one upstairs, no forced air so the heating system is not nearly as efficient as it could be. Propane to heat three shops was $1400 which also surprised me. It all has to do with cheap propane in this area. Some years the bill was easily twice that much.
Click to expand...

Just figured mine out for 2017. Natural gas $754, electric $806, phones cable internet $3312....
3200 sq ft house I built in 2004, 40 x 84 shop, gas heat, hot water, cooktop and outdoor grill. Heatpump, but only used for AC (ng is a lot cheaper for heat) The gas usage includes the two days my wife forgot to turn off the outdoor grill :-(
 
My furnace is both propane or I can flip a switch and shut off the gas and heat with the electric part of the furnace. It was a very expensive unit when the former owners brother installed it, but I think I'll have the electric coils checked and see which will do the better job. Nat. gas is out due to there not being any here to connect to. I just get sooo tired of being charged double of what the rest of the country is paying. But I guess supply and demand is the key to everything. Boy, you think you're gonna take a step ahead and oops you fall 3 steps back. Just about like farming. Shoot, maybe I'll try that again this summer LOL.
 
Closed loop geothermal heat pump. $150/month electric on budget plan year-around (that includes probably $20/month for hot tub heater). $20/month for gas for clothes dryer, gas grill, and domestic hot water when the heat pump doesn't make enough. 1200 sq. ft. house. We've had geothermal since fall 2008, unit has never once failed or gone to backup heat. I'd buy another one in a heartbeat.
 
A therm (unit) of heat is the same whether it?s natural gas, propane, electric, oil or wood. You need to compare different fuels at the cost per therm.
 
I miss my N. Gas farm tap. They pulled my meter going on 2 yrs now,said the line was getting old{put in in 1937}. Had to go propane as I stated a few weeks ago. N.gas co.paid for everything. Was on a budget plan w/n.gas. Just filled propane 2 weeks ago at $1.15 gal.
 
Dr that depends on where one is . Here in Tennessee with heat pump and all this real cold weather our 15 Dec to 15 Jan bill was only $113.00. 2600sq ft with electric hot water and electric cook stove. Seven year old house with good insulation and windows that are energy efficient . We do have propane back up , but the tank is really for a standby generator. Buy it on summer per pay for like $1.25 of so but we never use over 150 gal a year.
 
I have an all electric house here in eastern Iowa, serviced by a rural elec coop and have been out of power only once due to a bad ice storm. The service allows for wood heat (my emergency set up) and cuts the electric rate to about .05/kwh on a special meter they control from Oct to March.
Monthly bills range year around from 150-300 per month for this well insulated 3600 sq ft house. I love all electric...no dikering, no ooopses, no venting problems...not everyones cup of tea, I suppose.
BTW, heating and AC via pump and dump geo furnace.
Leo
 
Jan. 17, propane $2.25 gal here in northwest Ohio Add on top of that 7.5% sales tax. Got 236 gal. Have untill Feb. 28 to pay bill. And no electric stove or water heater for me. And in that time I was using several portable electric heaters as well, have 3 of them turned on as I type this. No idea on cost for them.
 

A lot of propane goes to the Natural gas companies to keep the pressure up in cold weather. The colder it gets the more they have to use.
 
You are correct... my point was the common unit of measure for LP is less than a therm, but still costs more than a therm of natural gas.
 
I was looking at a pipeline map of your area if there was enough interest in gas service in your area the company I work for might run a line to supply gas to that area
Just a thought check with your neighbors to see if they might be interested and it might just happen
My email is open and I will do all I can to help
John
 
I put in a ground source heat pump. About a half mile of line buried six feet down. They call it a closed loop. Costs about 1/3 of propane.
 

My last load of heating oil was $2.81/gallon and got 350 gallons. You do the math and add on for the Ohio sales tax (total bill was about $1,064 and change)! We have two tanks so our deliveries are usually pretty big.
 

You guys that have gone all electric---what is your back-up heat source? My back-up source is our propane kitchen stove. When the electric goes out, we can light the stove with a match, set a couple big pots of water on it, and keep the house more or less comfortable.
 
(quoted from post at 11:00:09 01/24/18) We ordered propane 3 weeks ago and finally got 150 gal. this morning. Great price too NOT 2.3990 per gal. and they only brought 150 gal. They say we're having a big shortage of fuel, but it sure seems like this happens every year. We don't raise corn or anything in this area that requires dry down heat so the only thing is home heating so they feel justified in price gouging. Oh well, they do it to all of us at the same time so nobody is being signaled out LOL. Thin k it's time to go total electric, or at least give it some serious thought. Keith
Click to expand...
When I bought a foreclosed house next to my property and fixed it up, it was o propane. The natural gas main stopped next door. Gas company said $8k to extend it about 400 ft and hook me up but would be about half that if neighbors downstream also hooked on. Not one of the dozen or so they contacted signed on. I couldn't believe it. Been about 5 yrs. I think my break even is about 8-10 and it will certainly enhance the resale value being on gas. This is in SE Michigan. Glad I did it
 
(quoted from post at 16:20:41 01/24/18)
A lot of propane goes to the Natural gas companies to keep the pressure up in cold weather. The colder it gets the more they have to use.
Click to expand...

That has got to be a myth. I've never heard of putting propane into a natural gas pipeline (propane gets removed at the gas plant to get the BTU content down). But I only worked in the pipeline business for 45 years. We did install an air compressor on a gas pipeline once to lower the BTU content when the customer would not pay for the higher BTU content.
 
Hello, fellows.........propane cost comparisons from one location to another are totally useless unless you take the tax out of it!
 
The figures I quote and get quoted from suppliers are without sales tax. That is always tacked on later. Some are even charging extra for using credit cards and still others are adding on a haz mat fee and even delivery charges too.
 
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