Robert Gammon 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?



85% according to the web site

But keep in mind, this thing heats water that get circulated to
radiators in each room, and or to radiant flooring. This is a boiler,
not the same as a gas fired forced air heater. Wall thickness in the
heat exchanger is much higher as a result of immersion in water, and
this also lowers efficiency. But 85% is nothing to sneeze at, pretty
darn good.

Someone with radiant heat will always stick with radiant heat. Switching
to forced air is very expensive. The installation disrupts the house
enormously while the vents are installed and radiators removed. In 90+%
of cases, a faulty boiler will be replaced with a similar product.

Right, the only time hydronic heat is likely to be replaced with FHA is
when the owner also wants to add central air.

Pete C.