Pete C. wrote:
John wrote:

"Pete C." wrote:


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.

Well the warranty gives some sort of an indication of how long things are expected to
last. And if one thing is going to last a damned long time, I'd want it to be my heat
exchanger, which is what separates my house air from my combustion exhaust.


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. "

And what is the efficiency of that unit again?


What does efficiency have to do with the lifetime heat exchanger
warranty you were crowing about?



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).

There you go with the claims of all those gas outages again. With so many outages, it
makes me wonder how all of those explosions can any gas to blow up.


http://www.dailynorthwestern.com/med...rthwestern.com
http://www.wric.com/Global/story.asp?S=4218169&nav=0Rcx
http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2...102003/1163272
http://girardpress.com/stories/12210...51221038.shtml
http://www.wowktv.com/story.cfm?func...y&storyid=1683
http://www.ktre.com/global/story.asp...Type=Printable
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articl...12/ai_96369163

Etc. No shortage of gas outage reports.


Do a search for rail car derailments that spill petroleum products
including fuel oil and you find a big collection too, spanning the last
5 years as these stories do.

Dp a search for oil pipeline breaks/leaks and you can find several of
those too.

This is LIFE, SH?T happens from time to time, and there are NO
guarantees for ANYTHING.

Heating water with oil is not problem free. Equipment must be
maintained and inspected. Leaks must be dealt with, leaks that can
contaminate the land to the point that the property may not ever be
sold, except to the town, and at a BIG loss. Spot shortages can develop
due to several factors, and yes, diesel fuel is a backup.





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.

Well if that was true, I wouldn't want gas service in that neighborhood either, and I
wonder how long it took them to switch. To anything.


That's my point. If you are in a pretty urban area gas is probably
fairly reliable. Out in suburban pushing rural areas and particularly
long established area vs. new developments gas service can be fairly
unreliable.



Unreliable gas service, in my opinion is MUCH more likely to exist in
OLD neighborhoods where the piping has been underground for a long time,
access to the piping is difficult and expensive due to roads and
buildings built over the distribution lines after the piping was installed.

In a new development, by definition, everything is new. Only ongoing
construction in the area is a risk, but even then the construction crews
KNOW where the gas lines are buried. Spotty or unreliable gas service
is unlikely.

I suggest that the majority of gas service interruptions are caused by
work crews who dig where they are not supposed to, and water lines that
are too close to the frost line.