John wrote:

"Pete C." wrote:

trimmed

If you're leaving for vacation and don't review the house status and
things like turning off the water and looking at the level on the oil
tank then you're an idiot. If I'm getting ready for vacation and the oil
tank is low I just call my supplier and ask them to deliver the next day
(before I leave). Doesn't cost me any extra and is no more effort than
turning off the water or unplugging some appliances.

Oh I always turn off the water too. After all any furnace (including oil with that big
red RESET button) could sense a fault and shut down or the power could fail, or
everything could work perfectly and a pipe breaks etc etc. Someone posted a neat
picture (link in this newsgroup I mean) of a house that had been vacant in the winter
and the oil company had not filled the tanks with the expected amount of oil and the
pipes froze in zero degree F weather. Cool glacier coming down the garage doors.

That picture was attributed to not turning off the water before going on
vacation when it got very cold and a pipe froze and burst in the ceiling
over the unheated garage. I've never seen any reference to the type of
heating system in the house or a fault with it.




Oh by the way, if we do have a
power failure, we can still take lots of hot showers and cook on our stove
indefinitely.

Same here. With my diesel generator and oil heat I can go for weeks.

A natural gas generator could keep you going too, offer auto start (and auto charging
the batteries weekly, monthly, whenever you prefer) and burn much cleaner than a diesel
engine.

Diesel generators offer auto start, exercise cycles etc. as well. As for
burning cleaner that depends on the particular engine. Larger and more
expensive units will be cleaner than small inexpensive ones. Run it on
biodiesel or WVO and you have yet another comparison.





Oil is a great choice if you have no natural gas service available and your
climate is too cold for heat pumps.

Oil is indeed a great choice under those conditions and it is also a
very good choice under many more conditions, particularly if you are in
a cold area even if gas is available.

By the way, no climate is too cold for geothermal heat pumps, you just
have to get the coils below the frost line where you have a nice
constant temperature.

That would be nice but unfortunately there is more to geo heat pumps than just putting
coils below the frost line.

Such as? A properly sized and installed geothermal heat pump will
operate just fine in most any environment.

Pete C.