John wrote:

"Pete C." wrote:


trimmed

Completely false. This argument against nat. gas is based on facts about
it's safety, reliability, cleanliness and the service life of the
equipment.

Yeah. Decades of living with natural gas and never one service interuption. Real
unreliable. Houses are just blowing up all over the place that have natural gas
too. I guess everyone is keeping that a big secret from the home insurance
companies. Service life? My furnace has a lifetime warranty on the heat
exchanger. How many oil furnaces have that? The blower of course will die sooner,
but I believe oil furnaces have a blower too.

A lifetime warrantee on one component is not necessarily a good thing if
you keep replacing the components around it.

That mid range Weil-McLain WTGO4 boiler I just had installed in my
mother's place has a comparable warrantee:

"Limited Lifetime Warranty
Covers cast iron sections. "


I have ignored price per BTU since that is constantly in
flux.

You mean your argument. A FUD one at that.



Price is the only argument made in favor of nat. gas that has even short
term validity. All other arguments in favor of nat. gas have been based
on either myths, or comparisons of brand new gas equipment to 50yr old
oil equipment.

That's nonsense. Where do you come up with this crap, now you are claiming "50 yr
old oil equipment" comparisons. Compare an average highest efficiency gas furnace
with an average highest effiency oil furnace. Which is more efficient and wastes
the least amount of energy so that it can heat your house instead?

Efficiency isn't everything. If the 8% more efficient gas furnace saves
me $200 in fuel during a heavy heating season, but subjects me to a gas
outage that I have no way to provide backup for which cause $1,000 in
damage due to frozen pipes (neglecting the fact that I know to drain the
pipes, most people don't).








is subject to outages and is far
more dangerous than oil.

With oil you have multiple suppliers in competition that you can choose
from,

Who all have to buy from the same source yielding little difference in
price.



you have an on-site fuel supply that is not subject to outages


No outage here in 35 years.

I've asked several times where Pete lives that he thinks nat gas
interruption is a big concern.

And I've mentioned several times that I'm referring to the northeast.
It's CT in particular where I lived for 36 years before moving a couple
years ago.

How many gas interruptions did your neighorhood have in Connecticut?

My immediate neighborhood did not have gas service, guess the gas
company didn't want to spend months of blasting to install lines.

The neighborhoods within 10 miles of me that did have gas service had at
least a couple outages per year that I heard of and since I was not
there to personally count them probably several more per year that got
little press. Multiply that times 36 years and compare to the same 36
years of flawless oil service.



It obviously isn't for 95% of us who
use it. I've had nat gas service for 25+ years, that has never gone
out once. I live in central NJ, 50 miles from NYC. But I've sure had
electricity go out.

Indeed I did as well and when it did I simply started my generator and
went back about my normal business without more that a few minutes
interruption.

Good for you.

Yep. Better to be prepared than screwed. Almost like a boy scout, except
I was never a scout.




And it;s the nature of the two systems that's key.
An underground piped system is immune from much of what can halt
electric service. A thrunderstorm, snow storm, car hitting a pole,
all are common electric system weak points, that gas generally is
immune from.

You are ignoring the fact that it is possible and economical to provide
backup for the electricity, something that is not possible with the gas.

Are you nuts? You have never heard of automatic standby generators connected to a
gas line? If your electric service is crappy enough to warrant it, that's the way
to go. No fuel to have to worry about storing and engines last a long time with
nat. gas, maintenance is very low too.

You misread that statement. I said it is possible and practical to
provide backup for electric service. It is not possible or practical to
provide backup for gas service.

Providing backup for gas service in a residential setting would require
a redundant backup furnace or boiler fired by an alternate fuel like oil
or electricity.

Wood fired boilers are becoming popular in the northeast, but as primary
sources, not backup for the most part. Some commercial sized burners are
available in dual fuel (oil / gas) though and can switch between fuels
at any time.



Additionally time to repair a damaged electric line is significantly
less than time to repair a damaged gas line in most cases. You also
don't have to spend additional time purging a repaired electric line
before returning it to service as you do with a repaired gas line.

Purging a gas line takes seconds or minutes.

For lines inside a home, not for the distribution lines in a
neighborhood.




Again, when you put this in perspective, the gas outtage
thing is another red herring.

Tell that to the folks who lived within 10 miles of me that had to spend
several days in a shelter due to a gas outage.

When was that? Where was that? What was the cause?

Somewhere between 5 and 10 years ago. In CT, I believe in the Avon /
Simsbury area. I think it was a gas line rupture, not a dig up or
anything. Should be somewhere in the Hartford Courant archives if you
want to look.

Pete C.