On Mon, 19 May 2008 07:03:30 -0700 (PDT), Dairy Godmother
wrote:

Hi there,

Just bought a house in CT and am navigating options (my first house).
The house has an oil tank (which I find hard to wrap my head around,
I'm from CA and we didnt have oil tanks) which works fine, though it
has been patched and the inspector told me it could not be insured as
a result. So it got my mind to thinking about the options and I
realized I had no experience to even begin to have an opinion, so here
I am. Here are the facts:

-- Stamford, CT house built in 1925
-- gas lines run into basement but not used
-- oil tank and boiler (not sure of boiler age, I'm thinking not that
new but not too old)
-- radiators in each room
-- electric appliances (but would love gas one day)
-- no central a/c (would love that one day too)

I'd like to know what scenario would make the most sense if I want to
be economical in the long run. Here are my questions if anyone is
interested / can help:

-- If we put in central air, would it require gas or is electric
possible?
-- if C/A requres gas, does that mean the heat should be gas as well?
I prefer radiator heat, but is it lame to have a sep. system for
cooling and heating? (oil heat and gas a/c)
-- can you run radiators with gas (vs. oil)? seems inefficient
-- given that we dont like it too warm (60-65) and are happy to heat
only those rooms as we need them, is there an electric-based option
that saves money (short of portable space heaters)?

Lastly, anyone from the area able to comment about price of oil vs.
gas vs. electric?

I really appreciate any commentary -- I see other entries along these
lines but some are old and some are not from the Northeast. thanks!

Hi D-G,

As per your previous thread, if you already have gas to the outside of
this home and you must replace the oil tank because it cannot be
insured, then now is a great time to make the switch to gas.

From what you've described here and elsewhere, you have a hot water
heating system, so to install central air requires that you run duct
work throughout your home. That's likely to be costly and potentially
messy work in an older home such as this. If you want air
conditioning, you might consider going with one or more ductless heat
pumps [or, alternatively, a multi-zone model], also known as
mini-splits.

If you're not familiar with this technology, here are a couple
brochures to get you started:

http://www.fujitsugeneral.com/PDF_06...6_brochure.pdf

http://www.friedrich.com/downloads/D...s_Brochure.pdf

They provide both air conditioning and economical heat even in CT
where electricity sells for $0.16 to $0.18 per kWh. How economical?
At today's prices, as little as one-half to one-third the cost of home
heating oil.

Bear in mind no one knows how much oil, gas or electricity will cost
five, ten or twenty years from now. As I said before, a lot has
changed in just the past two years alone. Your *ONLY* safe bet is to
insulate and air seal this home to the greatest extent possible so
that regardless of whichever fuel you use, you'll be using very
little.

Cheers,
Paul