"Pete C." wrote:

John wrote:

"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...ype=Printablen
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articl...12/ai_96369163

Etc. No shortage of gas outage reports.

Yeah, it's just happening all over. Gosh why haven't the insurance companies figured out that natural gas heated houses burn down so much more? Why aren't they as enlightened as you?

Because the total number is low enough not to bother them. That does not
in any way invalidate the relative difference in safety between oil and
gas.

Oh just earlier you were saying they were happening all over. Now the number is low enough not to bother the companies that pay for damage. Hmmm.
















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.

I live in a suburban/rural area and I have gas. "Not reliable" to you is never having an outage in *DECADES* to me.

Different areas have different reliability. If your gas lines were
installed fairly recently or your gas company is particularly good about
replacing older lines you're lucky. Not everyone has such luck.

So given that premise I should have had my gas service crap out many years ago.











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.

True. Fortunately that is not really necessary.

I suppose not really necessary if you enjoy spending a few nights in a
shelter with a hundred other people and don't mind repairing frozen
pipes.

Huh? Shelter with a hundred other people? Sorry dude, never happened. No outages either.

Never happened to you perhaps. I most certainly did happen to people
near me.

Yeah you know one neighborhood, you claim.









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.

I would hazard to guess that the "popular" percentage is still quite a bit lower than 17%,
which is the percentage that you said is "not significant" for oil generation in USA
(1973).

Correct, wood boilers are probably in the low single digits at this
point. Due in large part to their applicability to large heavily wooded
lots where you can log your own fuel.

Uh huh. So your point?

The point was noting the relative impracticality of providing backup for
unreliable gas service.

Well yeah of course it's impractical. Because you'd have to go find some "unreliable gas service."











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.

Wouldn't know. Never needed to be purged since it was up and running. Maybe we'll find
out some day if maintenance is needed on the pipeline, like water pipes.

Right. Some of the articles noted above give an idea of how long it
takes to get the lines purged and get everyone's pilots lit again.

Yeah, since pipes need replacing like every year I guess, and they always do that maintenance in the middle of the winter, that's a real concern!

The outages aren't often related to maintenance, they are typically
unscheduled emergency events. You do bring up the additional point that
even scheduled maintenance can cause gas outages though you at least get
a few days warning.

What outages? Again, decades of having natural gas heat. Not one outage.












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.

Well if that ever happens to me, I'll expect I'll heat my house with electric heat for a
few days. Or maybe just keep the wood stove working overtime. But it's good to know that
they could just move right back into their house, no long lived $$$ environmental clean up
required.

Why would you have a long cleanup if you ran out of oil, the equivalent
of a gas outage? The closest equivalent to an oil leak that would
require cleanup would be a gas explosion.

No an explosion or fire of any type would be a disaster.

Right, but that has no bearing on the multi day gas outage I referenced.
The houses were temporarily uninhabitable because the gas service failed
and there was no backup for it. No idea how much damage from frozen
pipes also resulted, probably a good amount since not many people know
how to drain the pipes before leaving.

'No idea." Now that I believe. Good thing that oil furnaces never break down in the winter or run out of oil.