John wrote:
"Pete C." wrote:
wrote:
Pete C. wrote:
wrote:
I'd take gas in a minute over oil any day. I've had homes with both
and in my experience, gas is far more reliable.
I've never had any reliability problems with oil burners or oil service.
The core of the
problem is oil has to rely on spraying pressurized oil out of a hole
the size of a human hair. It's common for the nozzle to get fouled and
then the burner won't light.
The nozzles also cost about $6 and take 2 minutes to change. Very DIY
friendly as are the filter at the tank and the filter screen on the
pump. I can do this level of annual service on an oil burner in 15
minutes for $20 and also inspect the condition of the burner, soot
buildup and roughly check the combustion.
You may be able to do it, but how about the typical homeowner, who
can't?
The typical homeowner *should* be able to do it, however we have as a
whole lost more and more skills over the years. It used to be that the
bulk of people changed the oil in their cars themselves, now most don't
even know how to open the hood, much less check the oil.
The typical homeowner *should* be screwing around with her oil burner innards?
Yeesh.
They *should* have the minimal skills necessary to change an oil burner
nozzle by following instructions. Recall this requires only the skill to
operate two wrenches and is little different from the skill to change a
faucet aerator, couple a garden hose or connect a propane tank to a
grill. Changing a nozzle does not require any knowledge of burner
controls, combustion adjustments or anything else technical.
Or how about the vacation house where there is no one ready
with another nozzle when it craps out?
If you're having an annual service done they get replaced well before
they would crap out unless you are buying the low grade, nearly crude
fuel oil they run cargo ships on. With most any #2 fuel oil the nozzles
and filters can easily last several years without failure so annual
replacement keeps them well within their life expectancy.
Plus, oil requires regular cleaning of
the burner, replacement of the nozzle and fuel filter, etc. In my
current home, I've been here 10 years and have never had to have a
service call on my gas furnace, while it was common with oil heat.
Unless a problem is noted with soot buildup or poor combustion I don't
need to call in anyone for service. When I see a problem I can get a
service call for a hundred dollars or so since I don't have a soot vac
or combustion tester and can't really justify spending the money on
since a service call every few years is pretty cheap.
I did take (and pass with the highest score in the class) an oil burner
service class at a local tech school so I have a pretty good idea of
what I'm looking at when I inspect the burner.
And are you suggesting that the typical homeowner should take a class
too? Or just use gas and avoid all this?
I'm suggesting that the typical homeowner should have at least *some*
knowledge of those hulking monsters in their basement, not total
ignorance. If you want to be ignorant you should be a renter.
Monster? Our gas furnace isn't much bigger than a small filing cabinet. Just
about as noisy as a filing cabinet too.
Monster as in the unknown which historically has scared people. Oil and
gas furnaces are about the same size for the same capacity unit. They
both used to be huge and both have steadily shrunk over the years as
technology (and home insulation) improved.
Noise levels for modern gas or oil furnaces of comparable capacity are
comparable as well. Older units of both types were noisier.
Using gas avoids nothing at all and indeed using gas can allow your
ignorance to kill you if you don't have annual inspections. You can just
as readily run an oil burner for years without inspections or service,
but in either case, oil or gas, the inspections are necessary for
safety.
I once saw a gas water heater that had the chimney connection completely
fall apart. The homeowner had not noticed it at all while it was pumping
out CO, where if it had been oil fired they would have noticed it in
minutes. They were lucky that it was in a service closet off the garage
and fairly well isolated from the house or they could well have been
killed by CO.
Gas furnaces are not immune to problems and indeed some dangerous
problems like cracked heat exchangers can go unnoticed readily on a gas
furnace and actually kill you from CO buildup where the same problem on
an oil furnace would typically choke you out of the house with
detectable fumes before the CO would get you.
And you can't have a cracked heat exchanger on an oil furnace? The
oil furnace has exactly the same issues, plus more.
Apparently you didn't read what I wrote.
A cracked heat exchanger on a gas furnace is far more likely to go
unnoticed than a cracked heat exchanged on an oil furnace due to the far
more noticeable fumes from an oil burner. Both can pump out CO which can
kill you, but the oil burner has the added safety of being readily
detected. It's the same concept as the odorant they have to add to gas
so you can detect a leak.
Oil furnaces are also less likely to have a cracked heat exchange since
they are generally built more ruggedly than their gas counterparts,
though you can of course find both crap and very high quality in both
types.
"Less likely?" My average gas furnace has a transferable Lifetime Warranty on
its Stainless Steel heat exchanger.
Yes and average oil furnaces are cast iron with similar warrantees. Many
low end gas furnaces are not stainless steel and have much shorter life
expectancies. Only a very few bottom of the barrel oil furnaces use
plain steel heat exchangers.
Annual inspections are an important safety requirement, whether you do
them yourself with appropriate training or call someone in. Whether oil
or gas the furnace does not necessarily need any actual service each
year, but since you have a tech there inspecting the filters and nozzle
get changed because they are too inexpensive not to just change
regularly. Unless you get really dirty oil the nozzle and filters can
easily last several years without problems.
I'd say a gas furnace could easily go 3 or 4 years between inspections,
while an oil furnace cannot.
I'd say you are absolutely incorrect. I know of several examples of oil
furnaces that have gone that length of time or longer with no issues and
these include some pretty old units.
As I said the annual inspection is primarily for safety, not out of need
for service. The service is done as a preventative measure since the
parts replaced are very inexpensive and the tech is on-site anyway.
At the very least, it's good to check the fan motor and clean the blower and/or
a/c coil as some amount of dust will inevitably get past a filter and very slowly
accumulate over a season.
Quite correct and with either oil or gas, if there is an A/C unit
incorporated there is a significantly greater need for service since air
(and dirt) is circulated all year instead of just during the heating
season. Without A/C both oil and gas are also comparable in cleaning and
service requirements.
I don't know where you live that you are so concerned with nat gas
outage. In 25 years of nat gas service, I've never had it go out for
even an hour.
I was in the northeast. I never had gas service, but I recall hearing
numerous reports on the news over the years of various areas having gas
service interruptions for various causes. In a large city vs. smaller
suburban areas it's probably a less frequent occurrence, but when it
does occur it probably affects more customers.
You are in dream land. I live in NJ and have neve had a gas
interruption. I have had plenty of electric interruptions though.
Just last week I was without power for 7 hours. Had gas the whole
time. So, why worriy about gas, when electric is already an order of
magnitude more prone to outage?
First off, it is not "dream land", you can check the news archives to
see the frequency of gas outages in most areas.
Please explain what the frequency is, since you are claiming this is relevant.
In the town I was in and the adjacent towns during the past couple
decades I recall hearing of a gas outage of some duration at least every
few months. This is also an area with relatively sparse gas service,
probably less than 50% coverage of residences in the area. I recall
several times there were multi day outages during the winter where
people had to go to shelters.
Second off, *I* have
backup for the electricity so it is not an issue for me. With oil I have
backup for heat and hot water as well.
Our furnace needs (a little with the ECM motor) electricity to operate, but our
water heater and range do not. They operate just as normal without caring if
power is lost, except I have to find matches to light my stove and might have to
reset the clock later.
Your point is? With oil heat / hot water and a generator (it doesn't
have to be a very big generator either) I have heat, hot water, range,
oven, clocks, TV, etc. with little more than a few minutes interruption.
With a diesel generator and the typical 275-300 gal oil tank even at
half full I have enough fuel for heat and generator for at least a week
without outside utilities.
For the vast majority of folks, they are far more likely
to lose electric power, and they don't have generators, which puts them
out of commission.
Why don't they have generators? Certainly loosing power can be more than
an inconvenience since you can have significant losses from frozen pipes
in cold weather and lost food in hot weather. A small generator is cheap
insurance against those losses.
Because it just aint' worth it. Like last week. My power was out from
10pm till 5am. No big deal. And that was one of the longest
interruptions in the last 25 years that I've had. And let me see,
what's easier? Replacing $150 worth of food in the slim chance that it
MIGHT spoil, or putting in a transfer switch, generator, and
maintianing a fuel supply for it? BTW, my fuel of choice would be nat
gas. But since you don't like that, tell us about how you keep a fresh
supply of fuel safely stored? How do you rotate it? Since you're
worried about nat gas exploding, how about the gas for a generator?
Diesel generator. Share the fuel supply with the nice safe reliable oil
furnace. #2 fuel oil and #2 diesel are exactly the same, the only
difference is transportation fuel taxes and a generator is not a
transportation use.
I had a near 72 hour outage during a winter ice storm in the northeast a
few years back. I ran on my diesel generator the whole time and went
about my life normally while people around me had freezing pipes and
freezing butts. At least their food didn't spoil since it was cold.
When you look at the pros and cons, a generator doesn;t make sense for
most people. Now, there are exceptions, like those in hurricane areas.
Hurricane areas, ice storm / snow areas, tornado areas, flood areas,
basically almost every area. Since power plants are few and far between
relative to consumers, a problem a good distance away can leave you
without power even if everything else is ok locally.
So, why worry about the far more remote possibility
of a gas outage?
Because they are not "far more remote" unless you are in a large city.
BS. Gas outages are very few. If you never had it, how would you even
know? By reading the newspaper about the rare occurance where a
construction crew hits a line? Even then, it;s likely out for a few
hours, not days. Compare that to electric, where a summer storm can
put it out.
I heard of dozens of gas outages in my immediate area over the years
when I had not a single oil outage. As I noted, I am well prepared for
an electric outage, with gas you don't have the option of being prepared
for a gas outage.
The much higher safety risk of gas is also another reason for oil. I
recall a brief ad campaign by a gas company touting gas as "Clean, Safe,
Dependable" which mysteriously changed to "Clean, Dependable" presumably
after a false advertising lawsuit.
Thousands of gas explosions every year vs. about zero oil explosions
every year certainly calls that "Safe" claim into question. The hundreds
of CO deaths each year are heavy on the gas furnace failure end due to
the lower detectability of the fumes from a gas furnace vs. oil.
Yeah, oil just brings things like $100K environmental disasters when
the tank rots out. Or the insurance company denying coverage. If nat
gas is so unsafe, why do insurance companies that have to pay claims
not have any issue writing policies, while it you have oil they want ot
know how old the tank is, where it's located, etc?
Politics pure and simple. Large gas monopolies have more lobbyists than
the smaller competitive oil dealers. The big energy companies don't care
much either way since they sell both NG and oil.
Huh? Do you think the "smaller competitive" oil dealers are manufacturing oil
somehow? Or do they participate in the global oil market? They can charge
whatever they like, and the only thing the competition does is keep the costs
similar, but the costs will all go up with the price of crude and/or refined
product.
The costs of nat. gas also go up with the cost of other energy
commodities and also with the growth of nat. gas fueled electric
generation "peaking" power plants. Nat. gas is not some fixed cheap
energy source unaffected by the rest of the energy market.
By the way, we can now "choose" our gas supplier, so if that was
really a concern that issue is moot. Gas distribution is a regulated monopoly
and as such they cannot raise their prices unless their costs increase, and the
price they charge must by law be in line with their costs.
My concern is that they are allowed to charge you even when you do not
use gas. This has no parallel with oil. If I don't use any oil I don't
pay anything. With oil you also have the option of having a larger tank
and purchasing off season to get better prices something you can not do
with gas.
The cleanliness claim is also questionable since a modern properly
maintained oil burner is just as clean as a modern properly maintained
gas burner. The clean claim is largely based on the bogus comparison
between a new gas burner and a 50yr old oil burner.
The efficiency claims you also see are also questionable with the
difference between top oil and gas units being only a couple percent.
Unless you have already done every possible thing you can with regards
to insulating, caulking, high R windows and ERVs, that couple percent is
pretty irrelevant and might save you enough to buy a cup of coffee each
year.
And again being locked into a monopoly that charges you every month
whether you use any product or not is the final nail in the gas coffin
for me.
Pete C.
You can say MONOPOLY all you want, but all the data say nat gas and oil
are competitive in price. And they have to be, otherwise people would
switch. The utilities are regulated in terms of prices they can
charge,. just like the water company.
Regulated means little. The fact remains that the gas monopolies are
allowed to charge you even when you are not using any of their product,
which is not the case with oil. That and the other problems with gas
provide solid reasons *not* to use gas.
So you forget to mention that you have solid reasons *not* to use an electric
company.
Excuse me? I have solid reasons to have a generator as backup for the
electric companies outages. Outside of that the electric company can
provide me power at a lower effective rate than I can generate it myself
for since they can keep their generators fully loaded and therefore at
optimum efficiency.
A generator loaded to 25% of it's rated capacity as it would by much of
the time supplying a single home will still consume far more than 25% of
it's full load fuel consumption. If you could maintain a steady load
from the house so that you could match the generator size perfectly then
you could generate at close to utility rates.
So it is most economical to use an electric utility because of the lower
cost and the fact that it is practical and economical to have backup for
that utility. Electricity (like oil) also does not present the hazards
of gas. If the insulation on an electric line fails it does not fill
your home with explosive gas. If an electric line is shorted a circuit
breaker or fuse interrupts the power. Gas services generally do not have
comparable protective devices other than very recent seismic valves in
earthquake areas and those provide no protection from any other faults.
Pete C.