On Sat, 05 Aug 2006 22:16:34 GMT, "Pete C."
wrote:

John wrote:

"Pete C." wrote:

trimmed
The owner was also directed to have the boiler serviced as soon as possible.

That is / was *not* an explosion, not even close. I don't think a
blowback on a residential boiler has ever injured anyone, much less
killed them. Certainly it will scare the **** out of them and perhaps
teach them not to keep messing with the thing if they don't know what
they are doing.

Oil burners do *not* have blowbacks on their own, they have had the
safety devices to prevent that for decades. Blowbacks occur when someone
keeps pressing the reset button ignoring the warning not to press it
more than once. Oil burner controls from the last couple decades have
incorporated a "three strikes and you're out" lockout to prevent this.

Ok, that's not the case. You can reset ANY oil flame safeguard
relay control as many times as you like.

The nucleus of gas vs. oil residential heating safety lies in the
control methodology of the times.

Oil burners are direct fired. The full fuel output is ignited by a
strong arc. There is no pilot light. If it does not ignite, there is
approximately 10 seconds worth of atomized oil spray
inside of the combustion chamber. Flame detection is performed by a
Cad Cell.

Until recently, most all gas furnaces used a small pilot light to
achieve combustion, which in turn ignites the main burners. More of
today's furnaces are direct light off such as the oil burner, however
modern flame safeguards strategies are applied to bring an acceptable
level of safety to the gas burner.

There are better controls available for domestic oil burners
however they have not found their way into the residential product
lines.

Proportionally, there are many more instances of delayed ignition in
oil, then fuel gas.


So oil heat is not "safe" under your definition.

http://www.newburyfd.org/responding_...er_emergen.htm

That is an interesting link however you probably didn't read it
thoroughly:

This other bit:

"Fuel oil comes in several grades, number 1 to 5 grade oil, and has the
following general fire hazard properties: a flashpoint of 1007F to
1507F, a flammable (explosive) range of 0.7 to 5 percent when mixed with
air, and an ignition temperature of 4947F."
should give a bit of a reminder on just how difficult it is to get oil
to burn and the near impossibility of igniting oil spilled from a tank
leak.

Oh it won't burn pretty, but it WILL burn under far less stringent
conditions as these.



-zero

"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?





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.










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.





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.



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).





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.







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.

John wrote:

"Pete C." wrote:

John wrote:

"Pete C." wrote:

trimmed


They *should* have the minimal skills necessary to change an oil burner
nozzle by following instructions. Recall this requires only the skill to
operate two wrenches and is little different from the skill to change a
faucet aerator, couple a garden hose or connect a propane tank to a
grill. Changing a nozzle does not require any knowledge of burner
controls, combustion adjustments or anything else technical.

So since this is so easy, safe, and common, which oil equipment manufacturers recommend
this service as a customer done item, like changing light bulbs? (and lighting pilot
lights in the old days)

None that I know of since as I indicated the population as a whole has
lost a lot of skills and common sense over the years.

trimmed

Noise levels for modern gas or oil furnaces of comparable capacity are
comparable as well. Older units of both types were noisier.

I've never heard an oil furnace, even brand new top of the line, that was even close to
silent. Even thirty years ago natural gas was nearly silent (except the ho hum blower
motor and maybe the click of a relay and gas valve opening).

Perhaps the comparison is better between gas and oil boilers which I
have more experience with. Even so, with current oil furnaces the
difference isn't that significant. Old units were certainly louder.

trimmed

Yes and average oil furnaces are cast iron with similar warrantees. Many
low end gas furnaces are not stainless steel and have much shorter life
expectancies. Only a very few bottom of the barrel oil furnaces use
plain steel heat exchangers.

Cast iron would rust in a high efficiency (condensing) furnace.

Yes, it would. Oil furnaces don't do the condensing thing (yet) due to
cost factors mostly. If a fair increase in upfront cost would be
tolerated by the market they could bump the efficiency up further that
way with more expensive materials.

And what is causing the aforementioned "cost factors???"

(dirty exhaust, sulfer, soot, acids....)

Acids primarily.


trimmed

In the town I was in and the adjacent towns during the past couple
decades I recall hearing of a gas outage of some duration at least every
few months. This is also an area with relatively sparse gas service,
probably less than 50% coverage of residences in the area. I recall
several times there were multi day outages during the winter where
people had to go to shelters.

What town was that in? If natural gas service was really that unreliable, I'd be
looking at propane.

Look to the northwest corner of CT.

trimmed

Where should I look there?

Most anywhere. You'll find some small cities with gas service surrounded
by many miles of moderately dense semi-rural area with no minimal gas
service. Check the CT DPUC site or the sites of the gas utilities
covering the area and you should find reports of service interruptions.
I know the CL&P / Northeast utilities site has such reports for electric
outages, I expect the gas utilities have the same.




The costs of nat. gas also go up with the cost of other energy
commodities and also with the growth of nat. gas fueled electric
generation "peaking" power plants. Nat. gas is not some fixed cheap
energy source unaffected by the rest of the energy market.

And gee, why is so much electric production being shifted away from oil and to natural
gas?

Because it hasn't?

Nope.

Very little electric production was ever oil.

Oh really?

Really.


"At the time of the 1973 oil embargo, about 17 percent of U.S. electricity was generated by
burning oil, and about five percent from nuclear energy. But, twenty-five years later, oil
represents only about three percent of U.S. electricity production, while nuclear energy
supplies almost twenty percent."
http://www.house.gov/science/ee_charter_072500.htm

17% = Very little.


It's
gone to nat. gas from coal and of course nuclear because of both
political and economic reasons. Nat. gas used to be a lot cheaper before
those peaking plants were built, which is one reason they were built to
begin with. The siting and permitting for the relatively small nat. gas
peaking plants was also easier which also led to the increase.

By the way, a number of larger power plants have been outfitted to burn either oil OR gas.
Yet they are burning gas predominantly nowadays. Why?

Cost. And gas turbines are pretty multi-fuel to begin with.


And why would permitting and siting be so much easier for those natural gas plants? Seems
that it would be lot more harder. You know, they must be blowing up and exploding on a
regular basis.

Hardly. Industrial settings are the one place that gas is fairly safe as
they generally get serviced and maintained properly, particularly power
plants.




trimmed

Excuse me? I have solid reasons to have a generator as backup for the
electric companies outages. Outside of that the electric company can
provide me power at a lower effective rate than I can generate it myself
for since they can keep their generators fully loaded and therefore at
optimum efficiency.

A generator loaded to 25% of it's rated capacity as it would by much of
the time supplying a single home will still consume far more than 25% of
it's full load fuel consumption. If you could maintain a steady load
from the house so that you could match the generator size perfectly then
you could generate at close to utility rates.

So it is most economical to use an electric utility because of the lower
cost and the fact that it is practical and economical to have backup for
that utility. Electricity (like oil) also does not present the hazards
of gas. If the insulation on an electric line fails it does not fill
your home with explosive gas. If an electric line is shorted a circuit
breaker or fuse interrupts the power. Gas services generally do not have
comparable protective devices other than very recent seismic valves in
earthquake areas and those provide no protection from any other faults.

You said you are dislike gas because it is a regulated monopoly utility. You said you
dislike gas because it has nominal fees for minimum usage per month. Electric service
has both of these qualities. Therefore, your arguments are also in opposition to
electric service.

I *also* said nat. gas is less safe and less reliable than oil. All
those factors combine to give more than adequate reason to avoid nat.
gas.

And I *also* said that I disagree with your hypothesis.

You can disagree all you want. I still won't use gas any time soon.

If I were currently using oil, if the pricing was to get too high I'd
install a geothermal heat pump long before I'd consider nat. gas.




You are also incorrect with your electric service analogy.

Too bad you snipped it out, because you missed the point. You were all hot and bothered
about gas because a gas bill contains a minimum billing charge. I pointed out that
electricity utilities have the same deal, and also the savings from gas makes up for that
nominal fee in spades.

I'm afraid I don't make long term decisions like heating fuel choice
based solely on price.


I have more
than a dozen electric suppliers I can choose from, only the distribution
is a monopoly.

Umm, that's no different than gas supplier choice. You were all upset about the gas utility
"monopoly" so I pointed out that electricity is a monopoly too. Both for the distribution
portions. You appear to be located in Texas with a incumbent distributor of TXU and "choice"
options range from about 13.4 cents to 16 cents per kW/hr. So some "choice" but a very
minor spread between the highest and lowest, with most options very close together in
between, all with varying terms.

The effective spread is a bit larger than those numbers appear since
it's multiplied by a couple thousand KWH / month as opposed to a couple
hundred gallons / month.


Electric also is practical to provide backup for during
outages where nat. gas is not.


Absolutely false. Natural gas generators are a wonderful thing, and do not require tanks,
fuel storage, deliveries, etc. They also burn much cleaner than say, a diesel fuel.
Extremely practical.

You clearly don't read very well.

It is practical to provide backup for electric service outages with a
generator (gasoline, diesel, propane, nat. gas.)

It is not practical to provide backup for nat. gas service outages.
There is no practical way to provide on-site storage for a useable
quantity of nat. gas, gas appliances other than generators are
particular to the gas type (different burner orifices) so you can't
switch on the fly to a "hot dog" propane tank in the back yard either.
The only way to provide backup for nat. gas service is with redundant
appliances for an alternate fuel.

Pete C.

John wrote:

"Pete C." wrote:

John wrote:

"Pete C." wrote:

trimmed

Exactly where is this spotty gas service that you speak of?

Anywhere outside urban and close suburban areas. There are vast areas
without nat. gas service and many of those areas are also in colder
climates where backup is more critical. There wasn't gas service where I
was in CT and there isn't gas service where I am now either.

Well obviously if there is no nat gas service and propane isn't feasible, oil would be a way
to go in climates too cold for heat pumps to work well. Oil. Cleaner than Coal.

Propane is even more dangerous than nat. gas. Because it is heavier than
air it is even less likely to dissipate from a leak in a house. Because
it is not a pipeline service you have to store a large quantity on-site
in a tank that you can't smoke/grill/whatever around and that has to be
outside where it is exposed to the weather and more likely to rust than
an oil tank in a basement.

Wow! You can't grill near a natural gas tank! I think you just ruined a lot Labor day parties.
Nice going.


You have a nat. gas tank? You have your own refrigeration and
liquification facilities too?

The reference is to the large "hot dog" propane tanks of several hundred
gallon LP capacity. They can and do vent some gas while roasting in the
hot sun so you aren't supposed to smoke/grill/whatever near them.








In those areas they are
typically in basements to they are not consuming heated air.

The basement air is sealed from the air upstairs?

To a large extent yes. Warm air also rises so you aren't going to get
warm air from upstairs going downstairs. Indeed waste heat from the
furnace is rejected into the surrounding area and that warmer basement
air will rise and warm the floors above slightly.

Wow! I've never seen a house where the basement air was sealed from the house air. It's
nice to know that the air "consumed" into the oil burner wouldn't need to be made up from
air leaking into the house via window gaps, exhaust fans, cracks etc.

Air typically leaks into basements just fine through garage doors which
are damn near impossible to seal, utility penetrations, dryer vents and
other basement openings. You won't generally see a draft sucking under
the gap at the bottom of the one basement door.

Well my garage IS quite sealed from my basement, with a tight fireproof door with lots of weather
stripping. Of course it's a moot point for the furnace discussion,since the natural gas furnace
uses outside temperature air (colder air contains more oxygen too which it brings directly
inside for its use.

And your point is? Oil furnaces can and do use sealed combustion as
well. Neither gas nor oil furnaces used sealed combustion until fairly
recently and both are able to use it currently. No real difference.

Pete C.

John wrote:

"Pete C." wrote:

Robert Gammon wrote:

John wrote:
"Pete C." wrote:


When I was in CT I watched the town blast for three days just in the few
hundred foot stretch in front of my house to install storm drains. I
also watched weeks of blasting when widening the main road down the
street. I've watched major construction in my new location in TX as well
and there was no blasting required.


I'm sorry, I thought we were discussing natural gas lines, not huge storm drains, which often have
to be buried much deeper for gravity flow reasons anyway.

So if I could find an area in Texas where blasting WAS required, and some other area in
Connecticut where blasting was NOT required, that would pretty much "proove" the opposite,
wouldn't it?



Blasting IS required in the Hill Country of texas where rock is
frequently only a few feet below the top soil.

Right. Is that where the big housing boom is? The DFW area sure is
growing fast.

I thought it was where all of those natural gas heated houses going up in flames were.

No, they do that all over the country.

Pete C.

Raw natural gas hasnt been refined seperating butane propane and other
gasses. Raw natural gas s indeed used directly in peoples homes, know a
fellow with a abandoned oil well on his property, ewhen they quit
pumping it he paid some $ to leave the casing and heats his home and
water with gas from this well, its at 5 PSI reportedly high for butler
PA area.

since raw natural gas contains other gasses it has slightly more BTUs
than refined gas.

"Robert Gammon" wrote in message
m...
Martik wrote:
"Robert Gammon" wrote in message
news
Martik wrote:

"Robert Gammon" wrote in message
m...


Todd H. wrote:


"Martik" writes:




Are you referring to the chimney for the furnace? Why would anyone
put something in there. Sounds like a good way to murder someone!
Luckily we have 2 CO detectors.


Birds have a nasty habbit of not informing homeowners of their
nesting
plans. If only the birds would follow the permit process, by god,
lives would be saved.




Given that the top of the stack is a protected entrance, it will be
DIFFICULT, but not impossible for small birds to get in there. The
gap to my fireplace is a bit larger than my furnace flue, and small
birds do find their way to the fireplace from time to time. In 28
years, never such an incident in either gas water heater or gas
furnace.

A maintenance worker sticking a rag down the flue and forgetting to
take it out seems to be a more likely scenario. such an action is
more likely to occur at the bottom of the stack, at the furnace,
rather than on top of the roof.


Is there a sensor to detect lack of free flow thru the chimney that
would shut off the gas?





Not that I am aware of. It would require putting an electrically
operated damper in place, closing it, then venting a quantity of vapor
and attempt to detect back pressure. If only atmospheric pressure in 5
seconds after release, then open damper and allow furnace to run. Need
a largish supply of compressed air or an air compressor and a bottle to
store the gas.

This system would add at least $500 to the cost of the furnace.



I have a condensing furnace with both intake and exhaust horizontally
vented thru PVC and a draft inducer fan. Would this furnace have a safety
shutoff.


Nope, it RELIES on the fact the the exhaust vent AND the supply vent are
UNOBSTRUCTED. Both vents MUST be inspected on a REGULAR basis to ensure
that gas is free flowing thru BOTH of them.

I put my hand over the intake vent (outside) and the furnace shutdown within
2 secs.

John wrote:

"Pete C." wrote:

John wrote:

"Pete C." wrote:

trimmed

Try looking at the EPA and DOE sites.

Ok. What pages on these sites should we look at?

I don't have specifics handy, but I'm sure you can find them with a
search.

Oh, I thought you knew what you are talking about. Now you want me to go on an egghunt for your
claims.

Spend some time there, you might learn something.

WHERE is this "THERE" you speak of?

www.epa.gov? www.doe.gov?



trimmed

What is the number of deaths from natural gas versus oil? Can you show us the numbers or is
this just a FUD campaign?

They are out there on one of the government sites.

Oh you know the numbers are out there. Since you know, which sites did you find them on?

I'm not sure at the moment, I have too many bookmarks to find it easily.
Suppose that rather defeats the purpose of bookmarks.

Yes, how convenient.

Not really.





Certainly the ratio
of hundreds of gas explosions to zero oil explosions should be pretty
obvious. Someone was killed in a gas explosion at a motel just a month
ago, and no, I don't count the deliberate gas explosion suicide in NYC.

Zero oil burner explosions? Here's a recent one in New Jersey (nobody was killed in this case,
thank goodness!)

On March 21, 2005 at 8:44 p.m., the Teaneck Fire Department (TFD) responded
to a report of a loud explosion and smoke in the house at 501 Rutland Avenue.
Upon arrival, responding firefighters were guided into the basement to investigate
a problem with the boiler; however they could not find an odor or smoke. The
firefighters, who combined have more than 100 years of experience, began
investigating the area. They found that the emergency switch of the boiler had
been shut off and later learned that the mother living in the home had turned it
off.
The basement of the home was sectioned off to provide for various uses of the
area. There was a large portion that was used for a recreation/family room, an
area that contained two beds that were usually used by the house keeper and
one of the children, and two small rooms; one containing the oil fired boiler, the
other utilized as a laundry room.
After investigating the basement area, the responding firefighters determined that
a “blowback” of the oil burner had caused the reported explosion and smoke.
“Blowback” occurs when an accumulation of vaporized fuel oil in the combustion
chamber suddenly ignites due to a delayed ignition. This causes too much
pressure, which results in a loud bang and the release of smoke.
The firefighters found multiple problems with the boiler, including closed water
valves, a low water level, a non-functional low-water cut-off and a dirty flue pipe.
Fire personnel made the necessary adjustments to restore the boiler to a safe
and operable condition and advised the owner of the problems that were found.
The owner was also directed to have the boiler serviced as soon as possible.

That is / was *not* an explosion, not even close. I don't think a
blowback on a residential boiler has ever injured anyone, much less
killed them. Certainly it will scare the **** out of them and perhaps
teach them not to keep messing with the thing if they don't know what
they are doing.

Oil burners do *not* have blowbacks on their own, they have had the
safety devices to prevent that for decades. Blowbacks occur when someone
keeps pressing the reset button ignoring the warning not to press it
more than once. Oil burner controls from the last couple decades have
incorporated a "three strikes and you're out" lockout to prevent this.

Yet it didn't work in this one case.

What didn't work? The lockout? There is no mention of the boiler being
new enough to have the lockout controls. Indeed from the long list of
problems mentioned it appears likely it was a pretty old unit.










Nat gas continues to increase
in market share, while oil heat is now down to 4% of new homes. If
it's so unsafe and unreliable, why is that?

1) Consumer ignorance - Believing nat. gas somehow avoids buying foreign
energy. They apparently are not aware of the LNG super tankers
delivering foreign LNG just like oil tankers delivering foreign oil.
Both nat. gas and oil are produced in the US and both are also imported
from foreign sources.

The amount and proportion of natural gas that is imported to the USA is tiny compared to
oil. Much of the imported natural gas comes from right here in North America, not hostile
areas of the world like the Middle East.

How does it compare to the 50% or so of oil that we import?

The best numbers I have are the US produced 539 cubic meters in 2003, (exported 24.19 cubic
meters) and imported 114.1 billion cubic meters of natural gas. Compare those ratios.

I'm assuming you forgot a billion on the US numbers. So importing
something like 18% nat. gas vs. 50% oil. Not that drastic a difference
and given the current trends the gap is likely to close further.

Yes all numbers are in billions sq meters. It's a huge difference in terms of energy, as total gas
imports was estimated at 114.1 billion cubic meters total for the year. Oil imports were 13.15 million
barrels per DAY average or 4.790 billion barrels .

To compare, 1 cubic meter of natural gas contains about 36 409.2241 BTUs, 1 barrel of oil contains about
5 800 000 BTUs.

(calculations by the Department of Energy website
http://www.eia.doe.gov/kids/energyfa...alculator.html)

4154293 billion BTUs natural gas imports
27782000 billion BTUs oil imports

Or to put it in another way, natural gas was about 1/7 of oil imports.

Not really a valid comparison. Compare US oil production to oil imports
and US gas production to gas imports. In both cases we are importing
sizable amounts because we do not produce enough domestically.





The general
public seems to think we get 99% of our oil from the middle east which
certainly isn't true.

No it's not, nevertheless middle east oil production has a huge impact on our foreign policy and
national spending.

Our perpetually inept middle east foreign policy has less to do with oil
than the anti war folks claim. There are serious issues there that we
need to deal with that have nothing to do with oil. Those issues did
come largely as a result of oil, but not directly from US actions.

Please. I'm not an "anti war folk" but get real. The United States will spare no expense to keep the
Straits of Hormuz open and flowing.

I don't know about that. It's a different world and different US from
the 70s oil embargo days. I'd be rather interested to see what effect
another embargo would have. I also seriously doubt that any of the OPEC
folks would consider an embargo and indeed would fight one since they
have learned that it would not be in their interest and could do them
long term damage if people once again get serious about alternatives.
Why do you thing the 70s embargo ended? Couldn't have had anything to do
with people starting to look seriously at alternatives could it?




The sudden appearance of the oil wealth in the middle east contributed
to the downfall of their other economic sectors and the rise of their
corrupt / oppressive governments and the resulting collapse of most of
their civilization.

Which civilization was "collapsed" by oil? Saudi Arabia (formerly wandering nomads?)

The whole islamic world which used to be a seat of learning and
knowledge but has now degenerated into a cesspool of violence and
hatred.




If we had not been in the market for oil when it was discovered there,
if there culture had advanced more and stabilized before oil was
discovered there, or if the Brits hadn't been meddling over there the
problems would likely have been avoided.

Uh huh.

Yea, that hindsight thing. A bit late now to undo the mistakes of many
decades ago.








2) Marketing - Some deceptive as in the case of the short lived "safe"
in one gas suppliers advertising.

Which supplier are you talking about? What is the definition of "safe?"

It was Connecticut Natural Gas as I recall. I don't know the details
exactly, but their "Clean, Safe, Dependable Natural Gas" campaign only
lasted like six months before mysteriously becoming the "Clean,
Dependable Natural Gas" campaign.

On their web page, I noticed that it is "What can Natural Gas offer over my existing fuel?
Dependability. Versatility. Affordability. Convenience. Efficiency. Plus, it is also
environmentally friendly! "

That campaign was a while back. Notice that safety is not included in
their current campaign either. Their claim that it is environmentally
friendly is more or less true, the implication that other options are
not is however untrue.

Natural gas burns much cleaner than oil. Don't take my word for it, super efficient condensing furnaces
are common with natural gas but oil doesn't even burn clean enough for a condensing application, all the
soot and sulfur and crap makes it a show-stopper. New electric plants are favored to be gas because it
burns cleaner and has lower emissions, which is now important. Transit agencies are even starting to
buy clean "natural gas" buses for the simple reason that they have so much less emissions than #2 oil
(aka Diesel fuel)

Not really, there are a number of available technologies that make oil /
diesel burn cleaner however they are being largely overlooked due to the
political / emotional stigma of the word "oil" due to the middle east
issues.







My definition of safe would be free from threat of catastrophic and
potentially fatal failures i.e. explosions.

So oil heat is not "safe" under your definition.

http://www.newburyfd.org/responding_...er_emergen.htm

That is an interesting link however you probably didn't read it
thoroughly:

"There are many possible causes of oil burner emergencies and fires.
Fortunately, despite human error and poor maintenance practices, the
millions of oil burners in use today function without a mishap year
after year. When they do malfunction, the fire department is called and
usually remedies the situation with little effort. But never forget that
these seemingly harmless emergencies can and sometimes do turn deadly,
whether it be from fire, explosion, or carbon monoxide poisoning, and
you must be ever on guard against such instances."

Additionally most of the failure modes they indicate are all but
impossible with burners and controls manufactured in the last couple
decades. Most are very unlikely with burners or controls even older. Due
to the longevity of oil equipment there are however some really old
units out there.

This other bit:

"Fuel oil comes in several grades, number 1 to 5 grade oil, and has the
following general fire hazard properties: a flashpoint of 1007F to
1507F, a flammable (explosive) range of 0.7 to 5 percent when mixed with
air, and an ignition temperature of 4947F."

should give a bit of a reminder on just how difficult it is to get oil
to burn and the near impossibility of igniting oil spilled from a tank
leak.

No oil will generally not go boom, unless it is atomized, but that doesn't mean that an oil burner
malfunction can't fill your house with soot or burn it down.

In Eastern Massachusetts last winter, a home had to be abandoned due to an oil leak causing heavy fumes
and making the home uninhabitable. The family wasn't going home anytime soon, and the last I heard
about it they were talking of demolishing the structure.

What they do in the People's Republic of Taxachusets is hardly a model
for the rest of the world. Look at their big dig disaster.








Deceptive price comparisons that do
not account for service charges during periods of no use. Deceptive
claims of reliability of oil fired equipment. Deceptive claims about the
cleanliness of oil burners. Deceptive comparisons of "upgrade" costs to
low end gas equipment with service lives in single digit years.

Service charges? Like the $4/month minimum billing fee that I pay for my natural gas
service? My electric company charges more than that so your argument is opposing electric
service too. Even including that fee (which includes service for my hot water heater, gas
grill, stove, and dryer) I'm still way ahead with gas, and I have a very efficient furnace
too.

Electric service is rarely without some usage. With gas service it is
not uncommon to have periods of zero use. Certainly this is not true in
every case, but again, this is only one of many reasons to not use nat.
gas, not the sole reason.

Well yeah the reason not to use natural gas is to save a few bucks in non usage charges (similar
to what you get with electric service) to save far more in higher efficiency. Besides even in
those "zero use" periods, I'm still making hot water, and if I'm home there is a good chance I'm
eating (using the grill, stove) or doing laundry (dryer.)

A 10% efficiency difference

Efficiency difference? Read again, I was referring to your complaints about "service charges" during
non-use periods (summer).

during a period when you were only heating
hot water (to keep the comparison fair) would amount to about $5 with
today's high prices.

Yeah, except the main consumption of natural gas and reason for using it is heating the HOUSE.

I don't know about you, but during the summer months I am not heating my
house, I am only heating water.










I'll also note that that market share is rather slanted to southern
states whe

1) There are minimal heating requirements which means consumers can get
low end gas systems to last longer.

How so?

When the low end gas furnace is only required to operate from November -
February it will clearly have a longer service life than the same unit
required to operate from September to April.

Oh I see. Good thing that same furnace wouldn't be needed for a/c in those climates.

A/C operation only affects the blower. There is no stress on the burner
or heat exchanger. Unless of course the POS unit leaks condensate into
the heat exchanger and it's rusted out by the time heating season rolls
around.

Yeah it only affects that "cheap" blower, remember???

The main problem with those low end gas furnaces is not the blower, it's
the thin, non SS heat exchangers. Rather like the couple very low end
oil furnaces out there with steel heat exchangers, not cast iron.







2) Gas companies cover larger service areas in large part due to lower
installation costs vs. the northern states with more rock to cut and
blast through.

Huh? What is your source of this claim?

Check with any gas company for the cost of extending gas service to your
street in say CT vs. OK for comparable distances.

You made the claim. Which gas company(ies) did you check with?

I didn't because I don't use gas.

But you're making claims about gas, which is what we're discussing.

I base that on construction knowledge.

What construction knowledge? And using that construction knowledge of yours, please show the numbers.




When I was in CT I watched the town blast for three days just in the few
hundred foot stretch in front of my house to install storm drains. I
also watched weeks of blasting when widening the main road down the
street. I've watched major construction in my new location in TX as well
and there was no blasting required.

I'm sorry, I thought we were discussing natural gas lines, not huge storm drains, which often have
to be buried much deeper for gravity flow reasons anyway.

This was a small storm drain on a road with a significant grade. No
issues with gravity flow, no excessively deep installation.

Uh huh. So what does that have to do with natural gas?

A lot. whether you are installing storm drains of gas mains you have to
get through the horrendous amount of rock and ledge in the northeast.





So if I could find an area in Texas where blasting WAS required, and some other area in
Connecticut where blasting was NOT required, that would pretty much "proove" the opposite,
wouldn't it?

No, not really. An individual town may be an anomaly, but the regions in
general have notably different underground utility construction costs.
This is changing a bit with some scary new trenchers able to cut through
granite without blasting and leave nice cuttings to back fill with.

Good thing natural gas is the only underground utility, right? And natural gas is so expensive that
nobody can afford to install it, right? Good thing sending huge heavy trucks with people driving them
around to everyone's house is so cheap and efficient.

In those areas nat. gas, city water and city sewers are very sparse due
to the huge installation costs. Oil heat, wells and septic systems are
the norm.







I've also dug a 650' trench in CT for conduit and an 80' trench in TX
for conduit and I can assure you the TX trench went far faster and
easier per foot and required much smaller equipment than the CT trench.

Well there you go. Irrefutable proof that installing gas lines is always more expensive in
Connecticut than Texas.

Find me any part of CT away from the shore where you don't have
significant boulders and ledge to deal with.

If you're talking about new construction on an apples to apples comparison, it is possible you might
need to do some blasting to install some utilities. However that also includes sewer pipe (which is
generally a lot more deep than nat gas), water, maybe electric, telephone in newer subdivisions, etc.
Big deal.

Generally it is a big deal.

In new subdivisions the developers are required to do all that work and
that is one of the reasons that new housing is more expensive in the
northeast. If the developer has to shell out the money to install all
those utilities they add it to the sales prices.

In all the existing neighborhoods where it is individual houses filling
in, not large developments, those utilities are not installed by the
builder and generally remain unavailable for a long time.










3) Gas companies market more since they generate more profits from
service charges during the long hot months where they have to supply
minimal gas.

You said they are a monopoly. Why would they need to market? I hear a lot of advertising
by oil dealers, or the collective oil dealers, operating as one.

They market to get you locked into their nat. gas monopoly. They market
to those that use other energy sources.

So why does that no-colluding oil heat lobby advertise about "today's oil heat" and how hot it is,
blah blah blah. Keep in mind this is not one dealer advertising against other oil dealers, but an
obligarchy of many/all oil dealers.

A cooperative advertising arrangement is not in any was a monopoly and
indeed it's the only way many of the small oil dealers could get
advertising outside local newspapers and direct mail. They little local
oil dealers don't have the deep pockets of the big state wide nat. gas
monopolies.

So to rectify that they collude together. Big deal.

Cooperative advertising is not collusion by any stretch of the
imagination. I guess you think the various commercials from the egg
board, dairy council, etc. all represent collusion between all those
little dairies and egg producers eh?








4) The southern states have been having a huge housing boom as a whole
due to lower construction costs and most tract housing gets gas systems
not because they are better in any way, but simply because the cheapest
low service life units available are in gas which means more profits for
the developers and replacement costs for the consumer a short time down
the road.

What are your numbers for your cost comparison?

No handy online reference, but a low end gas furnace installation is at
least a thousand dollars less than a low end oil furnace installation.
The low end gas unit will also have a service life expectancy about half
of the oil unit. Both will be blow the service life of the average units
in each class, but the oil still last longer there as well though the
ratio is not as extreme.

If you say so.

I do.

But you don't provide any reference for you claim, so it is just rambling.

Find some online prices for furnaces. They aren't out there online
(rather anticompetative) so it's not really possible to provide
references.

Pete C.

zero wrote:

On Sat, 05 Aug 2006 22:16:34 GMT, "Pete C."
wrote:

John wrote:

"Pete C." wrote:

trimmed
The owner was also directed to have the boiler serviced as soon as possible.

That is / was *not* an explosion, not even close. I don't think a
blowback on a residential boiler has ever injured anyone, much less
killed them. Certainly it will scare the **** out of them and perhaps
teach them not to keep messing with the thing if they don't know what
they are doing.

Oil burners do *not* have blowbacks on their own, they have had the
safety devices to prevent that for decades. Blowbacks occur when someone
keeps pressing the reset button ignoring the warning not to press it
more than once. Oil burner controls from the last couple decades have
incorporated a "three strikes and you're out" lockout to prevent this.

Ok, that's not the case. You can reset ANY oil flame safeguard
relay control as many times as you like.

One of many examples:

http://www.carlincombustion.com/products/50200.htm

"Serviceman Reset Protection ( Latch-up after three consecutive
lockouts)"


The nucleus of gas vs. oil residential heating safety lies in the
control methodology of the times.

Oil burners are direct fired. The full fuel output is ignited by a
strong arc. There is no pilot light. If it does not ignite, there is
approximately 10 seconds worth of atomized oil spray
inside of the combustion chamber. Flame detection is performed by a
Cad Cell.

Right, but what does that have to do with the three strike lockout?


Until recently, most all gas furnaces used a small pilot light to
achieve combustion, which in turn ignites the main burners. More of
today's furnaces are direct light off such as the oil burner, however
modern flame safeguards strategies are applied to bring an acceptable
level of safety to the gas burner.

If you're indicating that gas burners until very recently have had very
minimal controls with limited safeties you are correct. Many had no
electronics at all and relied on a thermocouple heated by the pilot as
the only safety for pilot loss. Most had no detection if the main burner
actually lit off properly. Most had no easily accessible emergency off
switch, you had to find the gas valve, etc.


There are better controls available for domestic oil burners
however they have not found their way into the residential product
lines.

Huh? Those features are on nearly every residential oil burner
manufactured in the last decade. They are certainly on the oil burner I
had installed this spring.


Proportionally, there are many more instances of delayed ignition in
oil, then fuel gas.

For pilot units probably. And for delayed ignition on an oil burner
rarely anything of consequence without human intervention overriding the
safety.


So oil heat is not "safe" under your definition.

http://www.newburyfd.org/responding_...er_emergen.htm

That is an interesting link however you probably didn't read it
thoroughly:

This other bit:

"Fuel oil comes in several grades, number 1 to 5 grade oil, and has the
following general fire hazard properties: a flashpoint of 1007F to
1507F, a flammable (explosive) range of 0.7 to 5 percent when mixed with
air, and an ignition temperature of 4947F."
should give a bit of a reminder on just how difficult it is to get oil
to burn and the near impossibility of igniting oil spilled from a tank
leak.

Oh it won't burn pretty, but it WILL burn under far less stringent
conditions as these.

Yea if you get it on a wick and apply direct flame to it to get it
started ala oil lamp. An inch of oil across the basement floor has
little chance of ignition even if there were a burning pilot light
nearby. In the very unlikely event the oil level to make it to the pilot
light there is near 100% probability it would simply extinguish the
pilot. Nat. gas (or propane) if they leak and build until they are in
proximity of a pilot have a near 100% probability of exploding.

Pete C.

John wrote:

"Pete C." wrote:

zero wrote:

On Fri, 04 Aug 2006 21:10:29 GMT, "Pete C."
wrote:


CO deaths are a result of poor combustion adjustment combined with flue
leakage, both of which have a higher probability with a gas furnace due
to:

1) People believing that a gas furnace does not require annual
inspections / service. This creates a greater probability of the furnace
falling into disrepair and the poor adjustment and leakage forming.

And the average Oil burner in a home that is not serviced properly is
JUST as dangerous.

That has been my point when people keep claiming that gas burners don't
need service. The fact is that any combustion appliance is dangerous if
it's not serviced properly.

Who was claiming that gas burners don't need service, let alone "keeps
claiming" that?

Someone in this thread.





No disrespect intended, Pete.

This whole thread seams to be diminishing the attention due to oil
burning equipment.

A delayed ignition that has not left the confines of the combustion
chamber may not be an explosion according to some, however it is an
unplanned event.

It also rarely occurs without human intervention not heeding the
warnings on the unit. New units take the human factor into account as
well with lockout modes.


What you learn in a classroom is fine. It prepares you to go into the
field. Once you've been in the field for 3-4 years, you realize just
how little you knew that first year.

Many things go wrong with oil burners. YOU may know to stop resetting
your protectorelay after the third time, however most DO look at it
like an elevator button.

Right, but that is not the fault of the oil burner and newer oil burners
prevent that as well.


Most are filthy. Just have a fly on the wall look-see at most HVAC
shops and watch the service techs try to casually avoid the oil
service calls.

Because most do not get their annual service. No annual service for a
few years and nozzles begin to clog causing the combustion to go out of
adjustment, soot to form and efficiency to plummet until finally someone
calls for service. If they were serviced even every other year they
would be nice and clean.

Same with a natural gas furnace. Of course I'd rather have a nat gas furnace
that hasn't been serviced in years than an oil furnace.

Oddly enough I'd rather have a furnace that has received proper
servicing.





Oh, by the way, standing in front of a 750 HP boiler (30,131,000
btu's per hour./ 215 gal. per hour) while it huffs itself out for .5
seconds, and then back into high fire with out shutting off the main
fuel valve will forever makeup ones mind on weather or not an oil
burner can or cannot explode.

Yea, large commercial / industrial boilers of either gas or oil can do
interesting things. Recall one story of a fairly small nat. gas
commercial boiler on about the 20th floor of a building that had it's
own little blowback and blew the boiler door off barely missing the
service guys before it went through the wall and fell the 20 stories to
the street below.

Blowback? Who puts a boiler on the 20th floor? (I could understand a
furnace).

Blowback, delayed ignition, whatever you want to call it. A gas buildup
in the combustion chamber prior to ignition. Boilers are commonly
located on upper floors in tall buildings. Furnaces tend not to be used
in large (tall) commercial buildings in favor of larger boilers serving
multiple heat exchanger air handlers.

Pete C.

John wrote:

"Pete C." wrote:

John wrote:

"Pete C." wrote:

John wrote:

"Pete C." wrote:

" wrote:

Gas being lighter than air normally dissapates if it leaks.

That only works to a limited extent and less and less as homes get
"tighter". If windows and doors are closed well nat. gas will just
accumulate from the ceiling down. LP gas is heavier and will accumulate
from the floor up. In either case unless the home is quite drafty /
leaky it will continue to accumulate until it finds an ignition source.

There shouldn't be any gas at all outside the furnace or plumbing.

There shouldn't, if pipes, regulators, valves and controls were all 100%
reliable. As can plainly be seen from all the gas explosions that occur,
that is not the case.

How many explosions is "all the gas explosions?" Or people that awake to find
their home and its contents are destroyed by oil or that their basement is now an
oil spill site?

Relative to the total number of units? Very few. Relative to each other
there is a significant difference.

In numbers, what is the "significant difference" that you claim?

I don't feel like digging up numbers at the moment.











Oil pools and settles , causing a possible safety clean up issue with
guys in moon suits hauling away contaminated soil

This is *not* a safety issue, it is an over hyped environmental issue.

When your house is not inhabitable due to heavy oil contamination and fumes,
it *is* a safety issue. "Over hyped" environmental issue? Yeah right, unless
you consider oil contaminated earth and pollution as part of your
environment.

First off, uninhabitable meaning you have to leave during cleanup, and
uninhabitable because it collapsed after the gas explosion are vastly
different things. If you are home when the oil leaks you simply leave,
safe and sound. If you are home when the gas leaks you can easily end up
dead.

As for the environmental part, yes, it is over hyped. Cleanup of even
300 gal of fuel oil that leaks in a concrete basement is pretty minor if
it's done reasonably soon.

Cite? I know it is a lot more than that because a house near me had exactly that
happen to it, and the house was condemned during the cleanup last year.

Yes, well it can be overblown if you let yourself be taken in by the
hype. Even then it still pales in comparison to rebuilding from the

crater the gas explosion left, or paying for the funeral.

Yeah an oil spill into the ground causing environmental damage to the ground, not to
mention the damage to the house and its contents and/or making the house uninhabitable is
just "hype." I don't think there is a difference in funeral costs from people dying in
burning houses caused by oil, gas, or whatever. If oil is so much safer, which
insurance companies give the oil heat discount or gas heat surcharge?

The idea that an oil spill on the ground automatically is some
environmental disaster is exactly the hype I'm talking about. Unless
that oil is getting into ground water or heading for a stream there is
no environmental damage. Oil getting into ground water takes a good
amount of time, after all the ground water isn't 3" under your house or
your house would be floating. Have a spill and clean it up promptly and
the oil has not had an opportunity to go anywhere and there is no damage
despite what some dropout eco-nut might claim. Killing some soil
bacteria 3" below my basement slab is not environmental damage.





Cleanup of oil leaked from an underground
tank is a different matter since until the advent of the double wall
tanks with monitoring you aren't likely to detect the leak for months or
years. That is why we replace 50 yr old underground tanks with indoor
tanks or new double wall underground tanks.

I'm suspicious of underground tanks for residential use. And who is doing all of
the required monitoring? If the inner tank breaks, why can't the outer tank break
too? If the outer tank is already corroded when the inner tank breaks, what good
is it (or the monitoring system?)

The outer tanks are poly or fiberglass and they have leak detectors
between the inner and outer walls that will trigger an alarm mounted in
the house. Basically just a smaller version of the tanks they now use at
gas stations.

Great. So this residential detector needs to be working properly in a decade or two or
three when the tank starts leaking. How common is this?

More like five or six or more decades. I don't know how common it is,
probably fairly common with some XL houses in the northeast where a
couple 300 gal indoor tanks won't really do.




Not particularly cheap, but if you need the capacity and don't have the
room for several conventional 300 gal indoor tanks they are a good
option.


Gas station tanks have caused enough horrors (at least 7 spill sites from leaking
tanks in my town alone), and they supposedly are tightly regulated and inspected
regularly. Recall that the MTBE fiasco is caused primarily from gasoline leaking
from underground tanks!

Old tanks certainly caused problems, new tanks generally do not.

The MTBE fiasco was caused primarily by eco-nuts pressing for something
to be done without adequate research. The problem was not just from
leaking tanks and those tanks were likely old tanks, not new.

What are they putting in your Texas water? The problem with MTBE is that it gets into
the water and travels. It travels much farther than the leaking gasoline/petroleum mess
in service station leaking tanks disasters.

Nothing in my water, I've got rather good water here. Nice and soft too,
I don't miss the hard water in the northeast at all.

What do the characteristics of the MTBE problem have to do with why we
have the MTBE problem? The fact is that loud moth eco-nuts badgered the
government into requiring MTBE without adequate research and the MTBE
problems are the result of that knee jerk reaction.


The
problem that the MTBE lowered mileage enough to cause more gas to be
consumed to offset any pollution reduction was an even bigger problem
resulting from the knee jerk nonsense. So not only was no pollution
reduced from the tailpipe,

That's false. MTBE actually did help meet clean air goals, which is the reason it was
used. The oil companies weren't buying it for nothing. In the cylinder, this ether is
an oxygenate.

Oil companies bought it because it was required by the feds, not because
it did anything productive. MTBE looked like it helped meet clean air
goals based on the emissions from combustion of a gal of gas with MTBE
vs. without MTBE. The reality that was discovered later was that the
MTBE reduced the mileage of vehicles using the gas with it so they used
more gas with the MTBE in order to travel the necessary distances
thereby producing pretty much the same emissions as they did burning
less gas without MTBE.

There are other technologies available to get extra oxygen into the
engine without resorting to chemical additives in the gas by the way.
These of course require changes to the engine so if they were introduced
in new cars they it would take some time to achieve any significant
vehicle turnover.


additional pollution from the additive was
generated, all of which could have been avoided with a year of research
and testing.

Yeah, it's all the "eco-nuts" fault. Like President Bush, who just eliminated federal
protections for oil companies for MTBE lawsuits. Funny how all of the oil companies
phased out their MBTE faster than they could lift up a price changing pole. The fed
government didn't ban MTBE by the way; several states have.

Why should the oil companies by liable for problems from an additive
that the federal government required them to put in their product? Want
to blame someone for the MTBE problem blame those who pushed for it and
those that pushed it on the refiners.









Fuel oil has a strong smell and is very likely to be noticed before much
leaks. Even when a lot leaks, most undamaged concrete floors contain it
pretty well if it's discovered and cleaned in a day or two.

I guess if your concrete floors are watertight and sealed (so the oil doesn't
soak into them) and you don't have any drains or perimeter drains. Oh and if
you don't mind everything saturated in #2 oil.

Concrete floors are fairly water tight if they are in good condition.
Oil will eventually soak through, but at a pretty slow rate. Not that
many basements actually have drains either.

Well just about every house around me has a perimeter drain. Prevents any concerns
of water in the basement. I didn't realize that basement floors and walls were
supposed to be petroleum spill containment systems.

Actually, per building codes, they are. There is supposed to be a
concrete or block containment wall around tanks of sufficient height to
contain the contents of the largest single tank in the space. I don't
have the codes handy, but I think it should have a sealer applied to the
wall and floor as well. Fairly recent code.

I have never seen that, even in brand spanking new houses finished two months ago.
Which building code are you talking about?

Last reference to it was in CT, but I believe it is in the IRC codes. I
was researching when looking at building a house in CT and the oil tank
room required a short concrete containment wall around it. There was
also a limit of I believe 600 gal in a single fire rated space.







As for saturated in #2, I'd vastly prefer that over a smoldering crater
where my house used to be. The oil can be readily pumped and vacuumed up
from the surface and the concrete if it's saturated can be removed and
replaced with far less expense than rebuilding the whole house after the
gas explosion (if I survived the explosion).

Gas just doesn't blow up a house unless something goes really wrong, like a backhoe
out front hitting a pipe. Even then the smell of the gas is pretty obvious before
it reaches an explosive ratio with oxygen. In that case it doesn't matter if your
particular house has gas service if the gas follows a water or sewer or electrical
conduit into your basment instead of following the outside of a gas line.

Well, I keep hearing of people killed in gas explosions in their houses.
Many are elderly which may be a result of reduced ability to smell the
leaking gas, not remembering warnings to not turn on lights and get out
if they smell gas, forgetfulness in having the equipment serviced
regularly, very old equipment, or a combination of all of those.

Yeah, it's so common now, the news doesn't even bother covering it anymore.

There was someone killed in a gas explosion at a motel somewhere within
the past month. Collapsed the whole corner of the two story building. It
was on the news and I think CNN. Certainly a search on CNN.com for "gas
explosion" produces quite a few valid results including some doosies
like one that ripped up a mall parking lot.











Thats why homeownerts insurance is requiring oil tank replacement based
on age of tank.

And that is why new underground oil tanks are double wall construction,
just like new tanks at gas stations. Some new indoor tanks are double
wall as well though most are still single wall since there is minimal
risk. Just because a 50 year old single wall underground tank is no
longer viable in no way means that oil heat is no longer viable.
Technology changes and advances and the current high velocity flame
retention burners and controls with pre and post purge cycles are a far
cry from the old burners as well.

Yeah, technology changes, like inducer motors that shut everything down if
there is an exhaust blockage in gas furnaces (very very rare).

Current oil furnaces have the same feature available.

But as you pointed out, CO for oil furnaces isn't a concern for you since you can
just smell the dirtier oil furnace fumes.

When they are out of adjustment and producing a lot of CO, yes. When
they are operating properly they produce little CO and little fumes.

You keep changing your topics. My comment was directed at your complaints that natural
gas burns too cleanly for someone to smell the fumes if somehow they come into the house,
unlike oil, thus CO would be more likely to kill. Even if that was true, it's moot with
CO detectors, which everyone should have anyway.

You're the one who keeps claiming that nat. gas burns cleanly and oil is
dirty which is false. Both are pretty clean with proper combustion
adjustments. Improperly adjusted, oil is more detectable than improperly
adjusted gas. It's not a function of cleanliness, its a function of
different detection thresholds for different chemicals.








So, what oil company do you work for? Typical new high efficency gas
furnaces get about 94-96% efficiency (AFUE) My neighbor has the exact same
house as I do and he has oil heat. I keep my house a little warmer and last
winter's bill was less than 2/3 of his. After comparing numbers, he's very
interested in switching too. What is the AFUE of your oil furnace?

I work for a bank.

How old are each of your furnaces? Where in the model range is each one?
Both make a big difference. New vs. 30yr old isn't a fair comparison and
neither is new high end vs. new low end.

About five years old. Fine, let's compare it with a four or even a brand new oil
furnace. What AFUE rating



Also since both nat. gas costs and oil costs fluctuate it's difficult to
make a really valid comparison based on cost, particularly when someone
buying their oil off season can get lower prices than someone buying
just month to month. Rate lock-ins are also more frequently available
for oil service.

The last furnace I just had installed at my mothers house this spring
(Weil-McLain WTGO4 with a Becket burner) is 85% AFUE, but it is not a
high end unit. If I was going for high end it would be a Buderus boiler
with a Riello burner. The house needs a lot more insulation so the
burner efficiency is a small factor at present.

What oil furnaces can do 92%-96% AFUE?

Ones that presently cost too much for residential use.

And which ones are those ? With that huge residential oil market, why would it cost so
much to make a high efficient furnace from a such a superior product like oil, when
they've been around for years with natural gas? Maybe the natural gas market is just so
much larger due to the need to keep replacing the furnaces when the house keeps blowing
up.

I've already noted why the nat. gas market is larger.

A few gas explosions:

http://archives.cnn.com/2002/US/08/1...ion/index.html
http://cbs4boston.com/local/local_story_313162110.html
http://cbs4denver.com/local/local_story_089161935.html
http://wcbstv.com/topstories/topstor...347103431.html
http://www.boston.com/news/local/art...gas_explosion/
http://wboy.com/story.cfm?func=viewstory&storyid=10207
http://news.minnesota.publicradio.or.../04/27_ap_gas/
http://ksdk.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=89827
http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/a...WS05/603070325
http://www.11alive.com/news/usnews_a...?storyid=74159
http://cbs2chicago.com/topstories/lo...087114934.html
http://www.wutc.wa.gov/webimage.nsf/...7!OpenDocument
http://cbs4.com/topstories/local_story_105231940.html
http://www.texnews.com/1998/2003/tex...ural_g220.html

Just a sample, plenty more to be found. Some doosies too.

Pete C.

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.

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.

Pete C. wrote:
John wrote:

"Pete C." wrote:


John wrote:

"Pete C." wrote:

trimmed


They *should* have the minimal skills necessary to change an oil burner
nozzle by following instructions. Recall this requires only the skill to
operate two wrenches and is little different from the skill to change a
faucet aerator, couple a garden hose or connect a propane tank to a
grill. Changing a nozzle does not require any knowledge of burner
controls, combustion adjustments or anything else technical.

So since this is so easy, safe, and common, which oil equipment manufacturers recommend
this service as a customer done item, like changing light bulbs? (and lighting pilot
lights in the old days)

None that I know of since as I indicated the population as a whole has
lost a lot of skills and common sense over the years.

trimmed


Noise levels for modern gas or oil furnaces of comparable capacity are
comparable as well. Older units of both types were noisier.

I've never heard an oil furnace, even brand new top of the line, that was even close to
silent. Even thirty years ago natural gas was nearly silent (except the ho hum blower
motor and maybe the click of a relay and gas valve opening).

Perhaps the comparison is better between gas and oil boilers which I
have more experience with. Even so, with current oil furnaces the
difference isn't that significant. Old units were certainly louder.

trimmed


Yes and average oil furnaces are cast iron with similar warrantees. Many
low end gas furnaces are not stainless steel and have much shorter life
expectancies. Only a very few bottom of the barrel oil furnaces use
plain steel heat exchangers.

Cast iron would rust in a high efficiency (condensing) furnace.

Yes, it would. Oil furnaces don't do the condensing thing (yet) due to
cost factors mostly. If a fair increase in upfront cost would be
tolerated by the market they could bump the efficiency up further that
way with more expensive materials.

And what is causing the aforementioned "cost factors???"

(dirty exhaust, sulfer, soot, acids....)


Acids primarily.


trimmed


In the town I was in and the adjacent towns during the past couple
decades I recall hearing of a gas outage of some duration at least every
few months. This is also an area with relatively sparse gas service,
probably less than 50% coverage of residences in the area. I recall
several times there were multi day outages during the winter where
people had to go to shelters.

What town was that in? If natural gas service was really that unreliable, I'd be
looking at propane.

Look to the northwest corner of CT.

trimmed

Where should I look there?


Most anywhere. You'll find some small cities with gas service surrounded
by many miles of moderately dense semi-rural area with no minimal gas
service. Check the CT DPUC site or the sites of the gas utilities
covering the area and you should find reports of service interruptions.
I know the CL&P / Northeast utilities site has such reports for electric
outages, I expect the gas utilities have the same.



The costs of nat. gas also go up with the cost of other energy
commodities and also with the growth of nat. gas fueled electric
generation "peaking" power plants. Nat. gas is not some fixed cheap
energy source unaffected by the rest of the energy market.

And gee, why is so much electric production being shifted away from oil and to natural
gas?

Because it hasn't?

Nope.


Very little electric production was ever oil.

Oh really?


Really.


"At the time of the 1973 oil embargo, about 17 percent of U.S. electricity was generated by
burning oil, and about five percent from nuclear energy. But, twenty-five years later, oil
represents only about three percent of U.S. electricity production, while nuclear energy
supplies almost twenty percent."
http://www.house.gov/science/ee_charter_072500.htm


17% = Very little.


It's
gone to nat. gas from coal and of course nuclear because of both
political and economic reasons. Nat. gas used to be a lot cheaper before
those peaking plants were built, which is one reason they were built to
begin with. The siting and permitting for the relatively small nat. gas
peaking plants was also easier which also led to the increase.

By the way, a number of larger power plants have been outfitted to burn either oil OR gas.
Yet they are burning gas predominantly nowadays. Why?


Cost. And gas turbines are pretty multi-fuel to begin with.


And why would permitting and siting be so much easier for those natural gas plants? Seems
that it would be lot more harder. You know, they must be blowing up and exploding on a
regular basis.


Hardly. Industrial settings are the one place that gas is fairly safe as
they generally get serviced and maintained properly, particularly power
plants.


trimmed


Excuse me? I have solid reasons to have a generator as backup for the
electric companies outages. Outside of that the electric company can
provide me power at a lower effective rate than I can generate it myself
for since they can keep their generators fully loaded and therefore at
optimum efficiency.

A generator loaded to 25% of it's rated capacity as it would by much of
the time supplying a single home will still consume far more than 25% of
it's full load fuel consumption. If you could maintain a steady load
from the house so that you could match the generator size perfectly then
you could generate at close to utility rates.

So it is most economical to use an electric utility because of the lower
cost and the fact that it is practical and economical to have backup for
that utility. Electricity (like oil) also does not present the hazards
of gas. If the insulation on an electric line fails it does not fill
your home with explosive gas. If an electric line is shorted a circuit
breaker or fuse interrupts the power. Gas services generally do not have
comparable protective devices other than very recent seismic valves in
earthquake areas and those provide no protection from any other faults.

You said you are dislike gas because it is a regulated monopoly utility. You said you
dislike gas because it has nominal fees for minimum usage per month. Electric service
has both of these qualities. Therefore, your arguments are also in opposition to
electric service.

I *also* said nat. gas is less safe and less reliable than oil. All
those factors combine to give more than adequate reason to avoid nat.
gas.

And I *also* said that I disagree with your hypothesis.


You can disagree all you want. I still won't use gas any time soon.

If I were currently using oil, if the pricing was to get too high I'd
install a geothermal heat pump long before I'd consider nat. gas.


And the question for you is, would you opt for a water to water
geothermal heat pump for radiant heat, or would you go with forced
air? What drives your decision in this case?

I am not going to try to convince you that nat gas is safe and reliable
in residential use as you are clearly so frightened by the risks that
you will go to almost any lengths to avoid using natural gas.

As it stands presently in Texas with the electricity and natural gas
prices we have now, geothermal heat pumps make enormous financial sense
as they are 4-5X more efficient than electric resistance heat, and in
dual speed compressor models, run at EERs above 20 in low speed and at
EERs of 15-17 in high speed. A properly sized geothermal heat pump
would rarely run at high speed in the winter in south texas, and would
run in high speed mode only when outdoor temps exceed 90-95F in a
properly insulated and sealed home. OK, they are NOT cheap to install
as the wells or ground loops are very expensive to install.

You are also incorrect with your electric service analogy.

Too bad you snipped it out, because you missed the point. You were all hot and bothered
about gas because a gas bill contains a minimum billing charge. I pointed out that
electricity utilities have the same deal, and also the savings from gas makes up for that
nominal fee in spades.


I'm afraid I don't make long term decisions like heating fuel choice
based solely on price.


I have more
than a dozen electric suppliers I can choose from, only the distribution
is a monopoly.


Umm, that's no different than gas supplier choice. You were all upset about the gas utility
"monopoly" so I pointed out that electricity is a monopoly too. Both for the distribution
portions. You appear to be located in Texas with a incumbent distributor of TXU and "choice"
options range from about 13.4 cents to 16 cents per kW/hr. So some "choice" but a very
minor spread between the highest and lowest, with most options very close together in
between, all with varying terms.


The effective spread is a bit larger than those numbers appear since
it's multiplied by a couple thousand KWH / month as opposed to a couple
hundred gallons / month.


Electric also is practical to provide backup for during
outages where nat. gas is not.


Absolutely false. Natural gas generators are a wonderful thing, and do not require tanks,
fuel storage, deliveries, etc. They also burn much cleaner than say, a diesel fuel.
Extremely practical.


You clearly don't read very well.

It is practical to provide backup for electric service outages with a
generator (gasoline, diesel, propane, nat. gas.)

It is not practical to provide backup for nat. gas service outages.
There is no practical way to provide on-site storage for a useable
quantity of nat. gas, gas appliances other than generators are
particular to the gas type (different burner orifices) so you can't
switch on the fly to a "hot dog" propane tank in the back yard either.
The only way to provide backup for nat. gas service is with redundant
appliances for an alternate fuel.

Pete C.

And MOST of us with gas service have NEVER had a gas service
interruption in many many decades of service. We just don't worry about
it, we don't worry about the need for a backup.

Pete C. wrote:
John wrote:

"Pete C." wrote:


John wrote:

"Pete C." wrote:


John wrote:

"Pete C." wrote:


" wrote:

Gas being lighter than air normally dissapates if it leaks.

That only works to a limited extent and less and less as homes get
"tighter". If windows and doors are closed well nat. gas will just
accumulate from the ceiling down. LP gas is heavier and will accumulate
from the floor up. In either case unless the home is quite drafty /
leaky it will continue to accumulate until it finds an ignition source.

There shouldn't be any gas at all outside the furnace or plumbing.

There shouldn't, if pipes, regulators, valves and controls were all 100%
reliable. As can plainly be seen from all the gas explosions that occur,
that is not the case.

How many explosions is "all the gas explosions?" Or people that awake to find
their home and its contents are destroyed by oil or that their basement is now an
oil spill site?

Relative to the total number of units? Very few. Relative to each other
there is a significant difference.

In numbers, what is the "significant difference" that you claim?


I don't feel like digging up numbers at the moment.





Oil pools and settles , causing a possible safety clean up issue with
guys in moon suits hauling away contaminated soil

This is *not* a safety issue, it is an over hyped environmental issue.

When your house is not inhabitable due to heavy oil contamination and fumes,
it *is* a safety issue. "Over hyped" environmental issue? Yeah right, unless
you consider oil contaminated earth and pollution as part of your
environment.

First off, uninhabitable meaning you have to leave during cleanup, and
uninhabitable because it collapsed after the gas explosion are vastly
different things. If you are home when the oil leaks you simply leave,
safe and sound. If you are home when the gas leaks you can easily end up
dead.

As for the environmental part, yes, it is over hyped. Cleanup of even
300 gal of fuel oil that leaks in a concrete basement is pretty minor if
it's done reasonably soon.

Cite? I know it is a lot more than that because a house near me had exactly that
happen to it, and the house was condemned during the cleanup last year.

Yes, well it can be overblown if you let yourself be taken in by the
hype. Even then it still pales in comparison to rebuilding from the

crater the gas explosion left, or paying for the funeral.

Yeah an oil spill into the ground causing environmental damage to the ground, not to
mention the damage to the house and its contents and/or making the house uninhabitable is
just "hype." I don't think there is a difference in funeral costs from people dying in
burning houses caused by oil, gas, or whatever. If oil is so much safer, which
insurance companies give the oil heat discount or gas heat surcharge?


The idea that an oil spill on the ground automatically is some
environmental disaster is exactly the hype I'm talking about. Unless
that oil is getting into ground water or heading for a stream there is
no environmental damage. Oil getting into ground water takes a good
amount of time, after all the ground water isn't 3" under your house or
your house would be floating. Have a spill and clean it up promptly and
the oil has not had an opportunity to go anywhere and there is no damage
despite what some dropout eco-nut might claim. Killing some soil
bacteria 3" below my basement slab is not environmental damage.


Well there is the environmental cleanup issue with the soil that is
contaminated. Any such leak to the soil ANYWHERE on your property, if
detected by others MAY make the property UNSALEABLE!!!

Pete C. wrote:
John wrote:

"Pete C." wrote:


John wrote:

"Pete C." wrote:

trimmed


If you're leaving for vacation and don't review the house status and
things like turning off the water and looking at the level on the oil
tank then you're an idiot. If I'm getting ready for vacation and the oil
tank is low I just call my supplier and ask them to deliver the next day
(before I leave). Doesn't cost me any extra and is no more effort than
turning off the water or unplugging some appliances.

Oh I always turn off the water too. After all any furnace (including oil with that big
red RESET button) could sense a fault and shut down or the power could fail, or
everything could work perfectly and a pipe breaks etc etc. Someone posted a neat
picture (link in this newsgroup I mean) of a house that had been vacant in the winter
and the oil company had not filled the tanks with the expected amount of oil and the
pipes froze in zero degree F weather. Cool glacier coming down the garage doors.

That picture was attributed to not turning off the water before going on
vacation when it got very cold and a pipe froze and burst in the ceiling
over the unheated garage. I've never seen any reference to the type of
heating system in the house or a fault with it.

No kidding, except it wasn't a "vacation" and if you did you see you'd know it wasn't just
the garage. If you read what I wrote above, you would also know that I was discussing
generally why it was a good idea to shut off your water when you're away in the winter
because I wrote, "furnace could sense a fault and shut down or the power could fail, or
everything could work perfectly and a pipe breaks etc."


Right and that situation can occur with both gas and oil and even
electric for that matter.




Oh by the way, if we do have a
power failure, we can still take lots of hot showers and cook on our stove
indefinitely.

Same here. With my diesel generator and oil heat I can go for weeks.

A natural gas generator could keep you going too, offer auto start (and auto charging
the batteries weekly, monthly, whenever you prefer) and burn much cleaner than a diesel
engine.

Diesel generators offer auto start, exercise cycles etc. as well. As for
burning cleaner that depends on the particular engine. Larger and more
expensive units will be cleaner than small inexpensive ones. Run it on
biodiesel or WVO and you have yet another comparison.

I'm glad you have room for a diesel generator. No way it can burn as cleanly as a natural
gas engine can, and that doesn't require stored fuel either.


Room? A diesel generator doesn't require any more room than any other
type of generator.




Oil is a great choice if you have no natural gas service available and your
climate is too cold for heat pumps.

Oil is indeed a great choice under those conditions and it is also a
very good choice under many more conditions, particularly if you are in
a cold area even if gas is available.

By the way, no climate is too cold for geothermal heat pumps, you just
have to get the coils below the frost line where you have a nice
constant temperature.

That would be nice but unfortunately there is more to geo heat pumps than just putting
coils below the frost line.

Such as? A properly sized and installed geothermal heat pump will
operate just fine in most any environment.

Yes, but that "properly sized" part can be a show stopper if you don't have a bunch of land,
or a pond nearby, or can use wells.


Not really. Vertical loop is workable most everywhere, "wells" typically
refers to the old style open loop geothermal which is rarely done these
days. The newer trenched vertical coil also doesn't require a lot of
area.

Pete C.

One contractor here in Houston TX recently completed a project for a
RESIDENCE that used SIXTY FIVE wells, 300 feet deep. The contractor
sizes the project at one well per ton of installed capacity so this was
65 tons of HVAC. Considering that most of us can get by with a ground
source heat pump in the 3 ton to 6 ton range, one wonders just how big
this house is.

The contractor has a 3000sq ft house deep inside the city limits and
uses geothermal himself. Lot sizes are small so clearance to neighbor's
property line is only a few feet in many cases. One of the wells for
his house is under the slab!! He keeps the house at 65F year round and
has cooling bills of under $175 Heat in Houston is just not a big
concern as there are so few days a year that the temps fall below 40F
and almost never get below 25F. What we worry about is keeping cool.

wrote:
Raw natural gas hasnt been refined seperating butane propane and other
gasses. Raw natural gas s indeed used directly in peoples homes, know a
fellow with a abandoned oil well on his property, ewhen they quit
pumping it he paid some $ to leave the casing and heats his home and
water with gas from this well, its at 5 PSI reportedly high for butler
PA area.

since raw natural gas contains other gasses it has slightly more BTUs
than refined gas.


Also, the same nat gas that is flared off at production sites is being
used, at least in part, to generate onsite power. I remember seeing a
TV program that showed how they were doing it. The problem with
getting this energy from remote locations is that there is no economic
way to transport it, which is why much of it is flared off.

But what does any of this have to do with nat gas heat being unsafe,
unreliable, unclean, etc?

Paul M. Eldridge wrote:
Well, if the theft of heating oil could expose me to this kind of
liability it would certainly be of concern to me. My friends are now
estranged from their neighbours (it didn't do much for their own
marriage either), their property and that of their neighbours has been
torn-up to remove the contaminated soil, they're out of pocket a
considerable amount of money, they can no longer get homeowner's
insurance and they can't sell this property because the Department of
Environment won't sign off on the clean-up (apparently they're still
detecting traces of oil). It's just one big mess.

Be it related to theft as in this case, a leaking tank or falling ice
damaging the supply line, the consequences of a fuel oil spill are
pretty grim no matter how you look at it.

Generally speaking, an inside tank is your best choice. That said,
thirty years ago, my mother's oil tank, which was in located inside a
finished basement, began leaking while she was away on holidays. The
stench when she returned was unbelievable and all the carpets on the
lower level had to be replaced. They brought in big fans to try to
clear the smell but it lingered on for months; when you walked through
the door, you just wanted to gag.

My home is Toronto is all gas (heat, hot water, cooktop, wall ovens,
fireplaces, dryer, patio heater and BBQ) and, quiet honestly, if
natural gas were available here in Halifax, I would be pushing my way
to the front of the line.

Cheers,
Paul

On Sat, 05 Aug 2006 22:56:45 GMT, "Pete C."
wrote:

I'm not sure you can conclude much of anything from an incident that
resulted from criminal activity.

Pete C.


Funny isn't it how any incidents involving oil just get dismissed,
while anything bad that happens with nat gas gets carefully logged as a
matter of great significance?

In addition to the story of outside tanks leaking and causing big
problems, every so often I see news reports of the old wrong delivery
address incident. This happened again last winter on Long Island, NY.
The oil company delivered oil to the wrong address. Turns out where
they delivered it the home once had oil heat, removed the basement
tank, but did not remove the fill tube. So, they pumped a couple
hundred gallons of oil into the wrong home's basement. On TV they
showed the huge cleanup underway, the family was forced to leave the
home for an indefinite period until the house was declared safe again,
etc.

Now, this can be traced to stupidity. I wouldn't say it makes oil
unsafe, or a bad choice, depending on the other options available, etc.
But the difference is, I see this and put it in perspective. While
Pete sees anything go wrong with nat gas, and it's suddenly a big
issue, blown out of proportion, while oil gets a free pass.

"Pete C." wrote:

John wrote:

"Pete C." wrote:

John wrote:

"Pete C." wrote:

trimmed

Exactly where is this spotty gas service that you speak of?

Anywhere outside urban and close suburban areas. There are vast areas
without nat. gas service and many of those areas are also in colder
climates where backup is more critical. There wasn't gas service where I
was in CT and there isn't gas service where I am now either.

Well obviously if there is no nat gas service and propane isn't feasible, oil would be a way
to go in climates too cold for heat pumps to work well. Oil. Cleaner than Coal.

Propane is even more dangerous than nat. gas. Because it is heavier than
air it is even less likely to dissipate from a leak in a house. Because
it is not a pipeline service you have to store a large quantity on-site
in a tank that you can't smoke/grill/whatever around and that has to be
outside where it is exposed to the weather and more likely to rust than
an oil tank in a basement.

Wow! You can't grill near a natural gas tank! I think you just ruined a lot Labor day parties.
Nice going.


You have a nat. gas tank? You have your own refrigeration and
liquification facilities too?

Sorry, should have said a *propane* tank. I'm sorry that I confused you, although I'm not sure why you
think refrigeration and liquification facilities would be needed for a natural gas tank. ???



The reference is to the large "hot dog" propane tanks of several hundred
gallon LP capacity. They can and do vent some gas while roasting in the
hot sun so you aren't supposed to smoke/grill/whatever near them.








In those areas they are
typically in basements to they are not consuming heated air.

The basement air is sealed from the air upstairs?

To a large extent yes. Warm air also rises so you aren't going to get
warm air from upstairs going downstairs. Indeed waste heat from the
furnace is rejected into the surrounding area and that warmer basement
air will rise and warm the floors above slightly.

Wow! I've never seen a house where the basement air was sealed from the house air. It's
nice to know that the air "consumed" into the oil burner wouldn't need to be made up from
air leaking into the house via window gaps, exhaust fans, cracks etc.

Air typically leaks into basements just fine through garage doors which
are damn near impossible to seal, utility penetrations, dryer vents and
other basement openings. You won't generally see a draft sucking under
the gap at the bottom of the one basement door.

Well my garage IS quite sealed from my basement, with a tight fireproof door with lots of weather
stripping. Of course it's a moot point for the furnace discussion,since the natural gas furnace
uses outside temperature air (colder air contains more oxygen too which it brings directly
inside for its use.

And your point is?

Basements are not sealed from houses.

Oil furnaces can and do use sealed combustion as
well. Neither gas nor oil furnaces used sealed combustion until fairly
recently and both are able to use it currently. No real difference.

The difference is that all oil furnaces dump a lot of heat up the chimney. Condensing furnaces do
not, and they just don't exist for oil since it is a much dirtier burning fuel.

Robert Gammon wrote:

Martik wrote:
"Robert Gammon" wrote in message
news
Martik wrote:

"Robert Gammon" wrote in message
m...


Todd H. wrote:


"Martik" writes:




Are you referring to the chimney for the furnace? Why would anyone put
something in there. Sounds like a good way to murder someone! Luckily
we have 2 CO detectors.


Birds have a nasty habbit of not informing homeowners of their nesting
plans. If only the birds would follow the permit process, by god,
lives would be saved.




Given that the top of the stack is a protected entrance, it will be
DIFFICULT, but not impossible for small birds to get in there. The gap
to my fireplace is a bit larger than my furnace flue, and small birds do
find their way to the fireplace from time to time. In 28 years, never
such an incident in either gas water heater or gas furnace.

A maintenance worker sticking a rag down the flue and forgetting to take
it out seems to be a more likely scenario. such an action is more
likely to occur at the bottom of the stack, at the furnace, rather than
on top of the roof.


Is there a sensor to detect lack of free flow thru the chimney that would
shut off the gas?





Not that I am aware of. It would require putting an electrically operated
damper in place, closing it, then venting a quantity of vapor and attempt
to detect back pressure. If only atmospheric pressure in 5 seconds after
release, then open damper and allow furnace to run. Need a largish supply
of compressed air or an air compressor and a bottle to store the gas.

This system would add at least $500 to the cost of the furnace.



I have a condensing furnace with both intake and exhaust horizontally vented
thru PVC and a draft inducer fan. Would this furnace have a safety shutoff.



Nope, it RELIES on the fact the the exhaust vent AND the supply vent are
UNOBSTRUCTED. Both vents MUST be inspected on a REGULAR basis to
ensure that gas is free flowing thru BOTH of them.

Your condensing furnace doesn't have an automatic shut down if if the exhaust is
blocked? If that's not working properly, you need service.

"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.

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?













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.









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.






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?








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!









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.

"Pete C." wrote:

John wrote:

"Pete C." wrote:

John wrote:

"Pete C." wrote:

trimmed

What is the efficiency rating (AFUE) for these "modern efficient oil furnaces?" My
natural gas furnace is about 96% efficient (AFUE), meaning that about 96% of the
energy in the gas becomes actual heat in my house. How does your "efficient oil
furnace" compare?

Well, no, it means that the furnace sends 96% of the energy in the gas
to it's output as heat, whether that actually becomes heat in your home
is dependent on other factors. A good oil fired boiler I looked at was
86.8%, I don't have numbers handy for oil furnaces at the moment. Again,
there are multiple reasons to choose oil over nat. gas.

Not true. Heat that goes up the chimney or out the exhaust is not included in AFUE. It
would make AFUE pretty pointless if the heat being measured in its rating wasn't used to
go into the distribution system. (I am assuming that all heat in the duct system goes to
the house and that you aren't running ducts outside, through an ice cellar, or through a
cold attic).

I was referring to the losses after the furnaces heat output, not the
stack.

So what? You keep claiming that oil is so efficient. I say again, my average condensing
furnace is about 96 AFUE. Which oil furnaces come close to that again?

The bulk of them are in the single digit difference range, 85%+.

Uh huh.








Bad assumptions as well since a large percentage of furnaces and related
duct work travel through unconditioned space. Horizontal configuration
gas furnaces in particular often end up in cold attics.


"The Annual Fuel Utilization Efficiency (AFUE) measures the amount of fuel converted to
space heat in proportion to the amount of fuel entering the furnace. This is commonly
expressed as a percentage. Energy Star labeled furnaces must meet or exceed 90% AFUE
energy-efficiency ratings." http://www.waptac.org/sp.asp?id=6841

Yes? And? As I said there are a lot of losses after the furnace output
and gas furnaces often end up in icy attics where oil furnaces almost
never do.

So if you need to put a furnace unit in an attic, you are out of luck with oil again. Oh yeah,
insulate those ducts.

No, you are not out of luck, it is just rather uncommon.

And why would that be?

"Pete C." wrote:

John wrote:

"Pete C." wrote:

John wrote:

"Pete C." wrote:

trimmed

Try looking at the EPA and DOE sites.

Ok. What pages on these sites should we look at?

I don't have specifics handy, but I'm sure you can find them with a
search.

Oh, I thought you knew what you are talking about. Now you want me to go on an egghunt for your
claims.

Spend some time there, you might learn something.

WHERE is this "THERE" you speak of?

www.epa.gov? www.doe.gov?

Those are home pages. There is nothing on those home pages that support your claims. So you don't even read
the pages you say proves your claim.






trimmed

What is the number of deaths from natural gas versus oil? Can you show us the numbers or is
this just a FUD campaign?

They are out there on one of the government sites.

Oh you know the numbers are out there. Since you know, which sites did you find them on?

I'm not sure at the moment, I have too many bookmarks to find it easily.
Suppose that rather defeats the purpose of bookmarks.

Yes, how convenient.

Not really.

Oh, I'm sure you have all of those sites on natural gas deaths versus oil deaths all bookmarked. I really am.







Certainly the ratio
of hundreds of gas explosions to zero oil explosions should be pretty
obvious. Someone was killed in a gas explosion at a motel just a month
ago, and no, I don't count the deliberate gas explosion suicide in NYC.

Zero oil burner explosions? Here's a recent one in New Jersey (nobody was killed in this case,
thank goodness!)

On March 21, 2005 at 8:44 p.m., the Teaneck Fire Department (TFD) responded
to a report of a loud explosion and smoke in the house at 501 Rutland Avenue.
Upon arrival, responding firefighters were guided into the basement to investigate
a problem with the boiler; however they could not find an odor or smoke. The
firefighters, who combined have more than 100 years of experience, began
investigating the area. They found that the emergency switch of the boiler had
been shut off and later learned that the mother living in the home had turned it
off.
The basement of the home was sectioned off to provide for various uses of the
area. There was a large portion that was used for a recreation/family room, an
area that contained two beds that were usually used by the house keeper and
one of the children, and two small rooms; one containing the oil fired boiler, the
other utilized as a laundry room.
After investigating the basement area, the responding firefighters determined that
a “blowback” of the oil burner had caused the reported explosion and smoke.
“Blowback” occurs when an accumulation of vaporized fuel oil in the combustion
chamber suddenly ignites due to a delayed ignition. This causes too much
pressure, which results in a loud bang and the release of smoke.
The firefighters found multiple problems with the boiler, including closed water
valves, a low water level, a non-functional low-water cut-off and a dirty flue pipe.
Fire personnel made the necessary adjustments to restore the boiler to a safe
and operable condition and advised the owner of the problems that were found.
The owner was also directed to have the boiler serviced as soon as possible.

That is / was *not* an explosion, not even close. I don't think a
blowback on a residential boiler has ever injured anyone, much less
killed them. Certainly it will scare the **** out of them and perhaps
teach them not to keep messing with the thing if they don't know what
they are doing.

Oil burners do *not* have blowbacks on their own, they have had the
safety devices to prevent that for decades. Blowbacks occur when someone
keeps pressing the reset button ignoring the warning not to press it
more than once. Oil burner controls from the last couple decades have
incorporated a "three strikes and you're out" lockout to prevent this.

Yet it didn't work in this one case.

What didn't work? The lockout? There is no mention of the boiler being
new enough to have the lockout controls. Indeed from the long list of
problems mentioned it appears likely it was a pretty old unit.

Ok.












Nat gas continues to increase
in market share, while oil heat is now down to 4% of new homes. If
it's so unsafe and unreliable, why is that?

1) Consumer ignorance - Believing nat. gas somehow avoids buying foreign
energy. They apparently are not aware of the LNG super tankers
delivering foreign LNG just like oil tankers delivering foreign oil.
Both nat. gas and oil are produced in the US and both are also imported
from foreign sources.

The amount and proportion of natural gas that is imported to the USA is tiny compared to
oil. Much of the imported natural gas comes from right here in North America, not hostile
areas of the world like the Middle East.

How does it compare to the 50% or so of oil that we import?

The best numbers I have are the US produced 539 cubic meters in 2003, (exported 24.19 cubic
meters) and imported 114.1 billion cubic meters of natural gas. Compare those ratios.

I'm assuming you forgot a billion on the US numbers. So importing
something like 18% nat. gas vs. 50% oil. Not that drastic a difference
and given the current trends the gap is likely to close further.

Yes all numbers are in billions sq meters. It's a huge difference in terms of energy, as total gas
imports was estimated at 114.1 billion cubic meters total for the year. Oil imports were 13.15 million
barrels per DAY average or 4.790 billion barrels .

To compare, 1 cubic meter of natural gas contains about 36 409.2241 BTUs, 1 barrel of oil contains about
5 800 000 BTUs.

(calculations by the Department of Energy website
http://www.eia.doe.gov/kids/energyfa...alculator.html)

4154293 billion BTUs natural gas imports
27782000 billion BTUs oil imports

Or to put it in another way, natural gas was about 1/7 of oil imports.

Not really a valid comparison. Compare US oil production to oil imports
and US gas production to gas imports. In both cases we are importing
sizable amounts because we do not produce enough domestically.

Are you serious? Earlier you just made the claim to wit, "So importing something like 18% nat. gas vs. 50%
oil."
I give you the ACTUAL figures and now you say, oh that's "not really a valid comparison."

You'd make a helluva football official. Keep moving those goal markers around until your guys could a ball in
the endzone. Or just keep changing your mind about what you are asking.

US Oil production 2.77 Billion barrels per year
US Net Oil imports 4.412 Billion barrels per yeyar

US Nat Gas production 539 billion cubic meters per year
US Nat Gas net imports 89.91 billion cubic meters per year











The general
public seems to think we get 99% of our oil from the middle east which
certainly isn't true.

No it's not, nevertheless middle east oil production has a huge impact on our foreign policy and
national spending.

Our perpetually inept middle east foreign policy has less to do with oil
than the anti war folks claim. There are serious issues there that we
need to deal with that have nothing to do with oil. Those issues did
come largely as a result of oil, but not directly from US actions.

Please. I'm not an "anti war folk" but get real. The United States will spare no expense to keep the
Straits of Hormuz open and flowing.

I don't know about that. It's a different world and different US from
the 70s oil embargo days. I'd be rather interested to see what effect
another embargo would have. I also seriously doubt that any of the OPEC
folks would consider an embargo and indeed would fight one since they
have learned that it would not be in their interest and could do them
long term damage if people once again get serious about alternatives.
Why do you thing the 70s embargo ended? Couldn't have had anything to do
with people starting to look seriously at alternatives could it?

Embargo? If the USA was so dependent on middle east oil, it could get the hell out of the Persian golf.
Instead we make pals with our "friends" the Saudis, sail nuclear carriers up and down the persian golf, and
spend much of our foreign policy trying to "stabilize" that minefield as much as possible.







The sudden appearance of the oil wealth in the middle east contributed
to the downfall of their other economic sectors and the rise of their
corrupt / oppressive governments and the resulting collapse of most of
their civilization.

Which civilization was "collapsed" by oil? Saudi Arabia (formerly wandering nomads?)

The whole islamic world which used to be a seat of learning and
knowledge but has now degenerated into a cesspool of violence and
hatred.

Oh ok.. The "whole islamic world," right?







If we had not been in the market for oil when it was discovered there,
if there culture had advanced more and stabilized before oil was
discovered there, or if the Brits hadn't been meddling over there the
problems would likely have been avoided.

Uh huh.

Yea, that hindsight thing. A bit late now to undo the mistakes of many
decades ago.

Yeah just blame it on the Brits running around almost a hundred years ago. US oil dependence TODAY has
nothing to do with our foreign policy expenditures in the region. No siree bob.











2) Marketing - Some deceptive as in the case of the short lived "safe"
in one gas suppliers advertising.

Which supplier are you talking about? What is the definition of "safe?"

It was Connecticut Natural Gas as I recall. I don't know the details
exactly, but their "Clean, Safe, Dependable Natural Gas" campaign only
lasted like six months before mysteriously becoming the "Clean,
Dependable Natural Gas" campaign.

On their web page, I noticed that it is "What can Natural Gas offer over my existing fuel?
Dependability. Versatility. Affordability. Convenience. Efficiency. Plus, it is also
environmentally friendly! "

That campaign was a while back. Notice that safety is not included in
their current campaign either. Their claim that it is environmentally
friendly is more or less true, the implication that other options are
not is however untrue.

Natural gas burns much cleaner than oil. Don't take my word for it, super efficient condensing furnaces
are common with natural gas but oil doesn't even burn clean enough for a condensing application, all the
soot and sulfur and crap makes it a show-stopper. New electric plants are favored to be gas because it
burns cleaner and has lower emissions, which is now important. Transit agencies are even starting to
buy clean "natural gas" buses for the simple reason that they have so much less emissions than #2 oil
(aka Diesel fuel)

Not really, there are a number of available technologies that make oil /
diesel burn cleaner however they are being largely overlooked due to the
political / emotional stigma of the word "oil" due to the middle east
issues.

The cleanest oil or sweet light crude comes from the Middle East.










My definition of safe would be free from threat of catastrophic and
potentially fatal failures i.e. explosions.

So oil heat is not "safe" under your definition.

http://www.newburyfd.org/responding_...er_emergen.htm

That is an interesting link however you probably didn't read it
thoroughly:

"There are many possible causes of oil burner emergencies and fires.
Fortunately, despite human error and poor maintenance practices, the
millions of oil burners in use today function without a mishap year
after year. When they do malfunction, the fire department is called and
usually remedies the situation with little effort. But never forget that
these seemingly harmless emergencies can and sometimes do turn deadly,
whether it be from fire, explosion, or carbon monoxide poisoning, and
you must be ever on guard against such instances."

Additionally most of the failure modes they indicate are all but
impossible with burners and controls manufactured in the last couple
decades. Most are very unlikely with burners or controls even older. Due
to the longevity of oil equipment there are however some really old
units out there.

This other bit:

"Fuel oil comes in several grades, number 1 to 5 grade oil, and has the
following general fire hazard properties: a flashpoint of 1007F to
1507F, a flammable (explosive) range of 0.7 to 5 percent when mixed with
air, and an ignition temperature of 4947F."

should give a bit of a reminder on just how difficult it is to get oil
to burn and the near impossibility of igniting oil spilled from a tank
leak.

No oil will generally not go boom, unless it is atomized, but that doesn't mean that an oil burner
malfunction can't fill your house with soot or burn it down.

In Eastern Massachusetts last winter, a home had to be abandoned due to an oil leak causing heavy fumes
and making the home uninhabitable. The family wasn't going home anytime soon, and the last I heard
about it they were talking of demolishing the structure.

What they do in the People's Republic of Taxachusets

And what is the Sales Tax in Texas again?

is hardly a model
for the rest of the world. Look at their big dig disaster.

What does the big dig have to do with an abandoned house due to an oil heating system? Please explain your
fancy comparison.












Deceptive price comparisons that do
not account for service charges during periods of no use. Deceptive
claims of reliability of oil fired equipment. Deceptive claims about the
cleanliness of oil burners. Deceptive comparisons of "upgrade" costs to
low end gas equipment with service lives in single digit years.

Service charges? Like the $4/month minimum billing fee that I pay for my natural gas
service? My electric company charges more than that so your argument is opposing electric
service too. Even including that fee (which includes service for my hot water heater, gas
grill, stove, and dryer) I'm still way ahead with gas, and I have a very efficient furnace
too.

Electric service is rarely without some usage. With gas service it is
not uncommon to have periods of zero use. Certainly this is not true in
every case, but again, this is only one of many reasons to not use nat.
gas, not the sole reason.

Well yeah the reason not to use natural gas is to save a few bucks in non usage charges (similar
to what you get with electric service) to save far more in higher efficiency. Besides even in
those "zero use" periods, I'm still making hot water, and if I'm home there is a good chance I'm
eating (using the grill, stove) or doing laundry (dryer.)

A 10% efficiency difference

Efficiency difference? Read again, I was referring to your complaints about "service charges" during
non-use periods (summer).

during a period when you were only heating
hot water (to keep the comparison fair) would amount to about $5 with
today's high prices.

Yeah, except the main consumption of natural gas and reason for using it is heating the HOUSE.

I don't know about you, but during the summer months I am not heating my
house, I am only heating water.

Irrelevant to the comments about "service charges" which is what I was directly responding to. Another
non-sequitur.













I'll also note that that market share is rather slanted to southern
states whe

1) There are minimal heating requirements which means consumers can get
low end gas systems to last longer.

How so?

When the low end gas furnace is only required to operate from November -
February it will clearly have a longer service life than the same unit
required to operate from September to April.

Oh I see. Good thing that same furnace wouldn't be needed for a/c in those climates.

A/C operation only affects the blower. There is no stress on the burner
or heat exchanger. Unless of course the POS unit leaks condensate into
the heat exchanger and it's rusted out by the time heating season rolls
around.

Yeah it only affects that "cheap" blower, remember???

The main problem with those low end gas furnaces is not the blower, it's
the thin, non SS heat exchangers. Rather like the couple very low end
oil furnaces out there with steel heat exchangers, not cast iron.

Uh huh.










2) Gas companies cover larger service areas in large part due to lower
installation costs vs. the northern states with more rock to cut and
blast through.

Huh? What is your source of this claim?

Check with any gas company for the cost of extending gas service to your
street in say CT vs. OK for comparable distances.

You made the claim. Which gas company(ies) did you check with?

I didn't because I don't use gas.

But you're making claims about gas, which is what we're discussing.

I base that on construction knowledge.

What construction knowledge? And using that construction knowledge of yours, please show the numbers.

Well? Can you show any information at all or do you just make your stuff up??






When I was in CT I watched the town blast for three days just in the few
hundred foot stretch in front of my house to install storm drains. I
also watched weeks of blasting when widening the main road down the
street. I've watched major construction in my new location in TX as well
and there was no blasting required.

I'm sorry, I thought we were discussing natural gas lines, not huge storm drains, which often have
to be buried much deeper for gravity flow reasons anyway.

This was a small storm drain on a road with a significant grade. No
issues with gravity flow, no excessively deep installation.

Uh huh. So what does that have to do with natural gas?

A lot. whether you are installing storm drains of gas mains you have to
get through the horrendous amount of rock and ledge in the northeast.

Yeah that just explains why there isn't any gas service in "the northeast." Sure. I'll bet that ledge you
complain of only affects gas lines too. Good thing there is no sewers, water service, underground utilities,
etc. "in the northeast."








So if I could find an area in Texas where blasting WAS required, and some other area in
Connecticut where blasting was NOT required, that would pretty much "proove" the opposite,
wouldn't it?

No, not really. An individual town may be an anomaly, but the regions in
general have notably different underground utility construction costs.
This is changing a bit with some scary new trenchers able to cut through
granite without blasting and leave nice cuttings to back fill with.

Good thing natural gas is the only underground utility, right? And natural gas is so expensive that
nobody can afford to install it, right? Good thing sending huge heavy trucks with people driving them
around to everyone's house is so cheap and efficient.

In those areas nat. gas, city water and city sewers are very sparse due
to the huge installation costs. Oil heat, wells and septic systems are
the norm.

Oh who can afford to blast through all that ledge to build their leach field "in the northeast?"









I've also dug a 650' trench in CT for conduit and an 80' trench in TX
for conduit and I can assure you the TX trench went far faster and
easier per foot and required much smaller equipment than the CT trench.

Well there you go. Irrefutable proof that installing gas lines is always more expensive in
Connecticut than Texas.

Find me any part of CT away from the shore where you don't have
significant boulders and ledge to deal with.

If you're talking about new construction on an apples to apples comparison, it is possible you might
need to do some blasting to install some utilities. However that also includes sewer pipe (which is
generally a lot more deep than nat gas), water, maybe electric, telephone in newer subdivisions, etc.
Big deal.

Generally it is a big deal.

In new subdivisions the developers are required to do all that work and
that is one of the reasons that new housing is more expensive in the
northeast. If the developer has to shell out the money to install all
those utilities they add it to the sales prices.

In all the existing neighborhoods where it is individual houses filling
in, not large developments, those utilities are not installed by the
builder and generally remain unavailable for a long time.

So what? Doesn't make oil a better fuel than gas, which is what your only thesis is.



\
3) Gas companies market more since they generate more profits from
service charges during the long hot months where they have to supply
minimal gas.

You said they are a monopoly. Why would they need to market? I hear a lot of advertising
by oil dealers, or the collective oil dealers, operating as one.

They market to get you locked into their nat. gas monopoly. They market
to those that use other energy sources.

So why does that no-colluding oil heat lobby advertise about "today's oil heat" and how hot it is,
blah blah blah. Keep in mind this is not one dealer advertising against other oil dealers, but an
obligarchy of many/all oil dealers.

A cooperative advertising arrangement is not in any was a monopoly and
indeed it's the only way many of the small oil dealers could get
advertising outside local newspapers and direct mail. They little local
oil dealers don't have the deep pockets of the big state wide nat. gas
monopolies.

So to rectify that they collude together. Big deal.

Cooperative advertising is not collusion by any stretch of the
imagination. I guess you think the various commercials from the egg
board, dairy council, etc. all represent collusion between all those
little dairies and egg producers eh?

You mean like the interstate Dairly Compact, a sort of OPEC for milk? No, no collusion at all, sir. No
gambling in this casino either.










4) The southern states have been having a huge housing boom as a whole
due to lower construction costs and most tract housing gets gas systems
not because they are better in any way, but simply because the cheapest
low service life units available are in gas which means more profits for
the developers and replacement costs for the consumer a short time down
the road.

What are your numbers for your cost comparison?

No handy online reference, but a low end gas furnace installation is at
least a thousand dollars less than a low end oil furnace installation.
The low end gas unit will also have a service life expectancy about half
of the oil unit. Both will be blow the service life of the average units
in each class, but the oil still last longer there as well though the
ratio is not as extreme.

If you say so.

I do.

But you don't provide any reference for you claim, so it is just rambling.

Find some online prices for furnaces. They aren't out there online
(rather anticompetative) so it's not really possible to provide
references.

How convenient for your claims.

"Pete C." wrote:

John wrote:

"Pete C." wrote:

Robert Gammon wrote:

John wrote:
"Pete C." wrote:


When I was in CT I watched the town blast for three days just in the few
hundred foot stretch in front of my house to install storm drains. I
also watched weeks of blasting when widening the main road down the
street. I've watched major construction in my new location in TX as well
and there was no blasting required.


I'm sorry, I thought we were discussing natural gas lines, not huge storm drains, which often have
to be buried much deeper for gravity flow reasons anyway.

So if I could find an area in Texas where blasting WAS required, and some other area in
Connecticut where blasting was NOT required, that would pretty much "proove" the opposite,
wouldn't it?



Blasting IS required in the Hill Country of texas where rock is
frequently only a few feet below the top soil.

Right. Is that where the big housing boom is? The DFW area sure is
growing fast.

I thought it was where all of those natural gas heated houses going up in flames were.

No, they do that all over the country.

Well, don't tell that to the insurance companies that write fire policies. They'd hate to know your
"facts!" Ha, ha.

"Pete C." wrote:

John wrote:

"Pete C." wrote:

zero wrote:

On Fri, 04 Aug 2006 21:10:29 GMT, "Pete C."
wrote:


CO deaths are a result of poor combustion adjustment combined with flue
leakage, both of which have a higher probability with a gas furnace due
to:

1) People believing that a gas furnace does not require annual
inspections / service. This creates a greater probability of the furnace
falling into disrepair and the poor adjustment and leakage forming.

And the average Oil burner in a home that is not serviced properly is
JUST as dangerous.

That has been my point when people keep claiming that gas burners don't
need service. The fact is that any combustion appliance is dangerous if
it's not serviced properly.

Who was claiming that gas burners don't need service, let alone "keeps
claiming" that?

Someone in this thread.

Who?







No disrespect intended, Pete.

This whole thread seams to be diminishing the attention due to oil
burning equipment.

A delayed ignition that has not left the confines of the combustion
chamber may not be an explosion according to some, however it is an
unplanned event.

It also rarely occurs without human intervention not heeding the
warnings on the unit. New units take the human factor into account as
well with lockout modes.


What you learn in a classroom is fine. It prepares you to go into the
field. Once you've been in the field for 3-4 years, you realize just
how little you knew that first year.

Many things go wrong with oil burners. YOU may know to stop resetting
your protectorelay after the third time, however most DO look at it
like an elevator button.

Right, but that is not the fault of the oil burner and newer oil burners
prevent that as well.


Most are filthy. Just have a fly on the wall look-see at most HVAC
shops and watch the service techs try to casually avoid the oil
service calls.

Because most do not get their annual service. No annual service for a
few years and nozzles begin to clog causing the combustion to go out of
adjustment, soot to form and efficiency to plummet until finally someone
calls for service. If they were serviced even every other year they
would be nice and clean.

Same with a natural gas furnace. Of course I'd rather have a nat gas furnace
that hasn't been serviced in years than an oil furnace.

Oddly enough I'd rather have a furnace that has received proper
servicing.





Oh, by the way, standing in front of a 750 HP boiler (30,131,000
btu's per hour./ 215 gal. per hour) while it huffs itself out for .5
seconds, and then back into high fire with out shutting off the main
fuel valve will forever makeup ones mind on weather or not an oil
burner can or cannot explode.

Yea, large commercial / industrial boilers of either gas or oil can do
interesting things. Recall one story of a fairly small nat. gas
commercial boiler on about the 20th floor of a building that had it's
own little blowback and blew the boiler door off barely missing the
service guys before it went through the wall and fell the 20 stories to
the street below.

Blowback? Who puts a boiler on the 20th floor? (I could understand a
furnace).

Blowback, delayed ignition, whatever you want to call it. A gas buildup
in the combustion chamber prior to ignition. Boilers are commonly
located on upper floors in tall buildings. Furnaces tend not to be used
in large (tall) commercial buildings in favor of larger boilers serving
multiple heat exchanger air handlers.

Blowback? Who puts a boiler on the 20th floor?

My home here in Nova Scotia is heated with oil. The boiler when I
purchased this home four years ago was then thirty-four years old (so
too the separate oil-fired hot water tank) and I suspect neither were
all that efficient. If natural gas were available, I would have
switched immediately, without a second thought. Since that wasn't an
option, I installed a high-efficiency oil-fired Slant Fin boiler, a
SuperStor Ultra indirect hot water tank and a Tekmar boiler control
system. I chose this particular boiler because it can be easily
converted to natural gas when that happy day comes (it's certified to
operate on either fuel).

Last year, with the addition of a small ductless heat pump, I was able
to cut my fuel oil consumption by more than half (from 1,973 litres to
828 litres). Of the remaining 828 litres, I'm guessing roughly 500
litres or so are related to domestic hot water production (an average
of 1.4 l/day x 365 days/yr). Given the relatively modest space
heating demand, if I had to do it all over again I would have
installed an electric boiler as a backup to the heat pump and
eliminated oil altogether. With heating oil and electricity here in
Nova Scotia running at about par, there would be little or no economic
penalty to going with electric and I could eliminate the need to store
fuel oil on my property.

I should add that the previous homeowners used 5,700 litres of heating
oil in the year prior to my purchase (and that happened to be a fairly
mild winter). By upgrading the heating and DHW systems, careful air
sealing, window and door replacement and adding more insulation (e.g.,
the attic went from R6 to R60 and the walls from R6 to R22), I was
able to reduce my fuel oil consumption by 65 per cent. With the
ductless heat pump, I've been able to cut that by more than half
again. At current prices, I'm now saving over $4,000.00 a year on my
heating and DHW costs.

Cheers,
Paul

On 6 Aug 2006 06:14:41 -0700, wrote:

Funny isn't it how any incidents involving oil just get dismissed,
while anything bad that happens with nat gas gets carefully logged as a
matter of great significance?

In addition to the story of outside tanks leaking and causing big
problems, every so often I see news reports of the old wrong delivery
address incident. This happened again last winter on Long Island, NY.
The oil company delivered oil to the wrong address. Turns out where
they delivered it the home once had oil heat, removed the basement
tank, but did not remove the fill tube. So, they pumped a couple
hundred gallons of oil into the wrong home's basement. On TV they
showed the huge cleanup underway, the family was forced to leave the
home for an indefinite period until the house was declared safe again,
etc.

Now, this can be traced to stupidity. I wouldn't say it makes oil
unsafe, or a bad choice, depending on the other options available, etc.
But the difference is, I see this and put it in perspective. While
Pete sees anything go wrong with nat gas, and it's suddenly a big
issue, blown out of proportion, while oil gets a free pass.

In addition to the story of outside tanks leaking and causing big
problems, every so often I see news reports of the old wrong delivery
address incident. This happened again last winter on Long Island, NY.
The oil company delivered oil to the wrong address. Turns out where
they delivered it the home once had oil heat, removed the basement
tank, but did not remove the fill tube. So, they pumped a couple
hundred gallons of oil into the wrong home's basement. On TV they
showed the huge cleanup underway, the family was forced to leave the
home for an indefinite period until the house was declared safe again,
etc.


thats why when the tank is removed with a permit all the oil feed lines
MUST be removed.....

Those pesty rules are there for good reasons!

wrote:

wrote:
Raw natural gas hasnt been refined seperating butane propane and other
gasses. Raw natural gas s indeed used directly in peoples homes, know a
fellow with a abandoned oil well on his property, ewhen they quit
pumping it he paid some $ to leave the casing and heats his home and
water with gas from this well, its at 5 PSI reportedly high for butler
PA area.

since raw natural gas contains other gasses it has slightly more BTUs
than refined gas.

Also, the same nat gas that is flared off at production sites is being
used, at least in part, to generate onsite power. I remember seeing a
TV program that showed how they were doing it. The problem with
getting this energy from remote locations is that there is no economic
way to transport it, which is why much of it is flared off.

But what does any of this have to do with nat gas heat being unsafe,
unreliable, unclean, etc?

Nothing. I never said anything about unclean, just notably less safe and
reliable than oil. Burning the "raw" gas from a well will indeed be far
less clean than burning the refined gas supplied by a utility though.

Pete C.

wrote in message

Funny isn't it how any incidents involving oil just get dismissed,
while anything bad that happens with nat gas gets carefully logged as a
matter of great significance?

Just as a plane crash that kills four people halfway across the country
makes the news, but in your state today and most every day, that many people
are killed in auto accidents. and it is rarely mentioned. Gas explosions
are really rare, but oil leaks just don't make the news. They are not "crown
pleasers" like the more rare happenings.



In addition to the story of outside tanks leaking and causing big
problems, every so often I see news reports of the old wrong delivery
address incident.

Now, this can be traced to stupidity. I wouldn't say it makes oil
unsafe, or a bad choice, depending on the other options available, etc.
But the difference is, I see this and put it in perspective. While
Pete sees anything go wrong with nat gas, and it's suddenly a big
issue, blown out of proportion, while oil gets a free pass.

A fellow I work with had the tubing from tank to heater broken and about 20
gallons spilled. Cause was trace to stupidity of one of his kids. Cost of
cleanup was about $8000. Never made the news.

Pete has posted some good information on this newsgroup and is a very
knowledgeable person. He also seems to have an un-natural fear of gas
though. I respect his opinions and ability, but on this subject he is over
reacting against gas.

Robert Gammon 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...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.

Rail derailments and pipeline ruptures do not happen in my basement or
threaten to kill me. Not a good comparison.


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.

I never said it was problem free, indeed I indicated that both oil and
gas burners require annual service. Oil is safer and more reliable than
gas. However low the incident probability is overall the probability is
lower for oil than gas.





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.

That certainly is a factor. Remember that apartment building in I think
NJ that was cut in half by a pipeline explosion under it perhaps 8 years
ago?


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.

For now. Give it some years and it will become unreliable. Oil service
does not have that built in degradation.


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.

Many are, others are the delayed result of improper pipeline
installation or damage to the pipeline during installation. I hear of
one pipeline rupture on a high pressure pipeline that was traced to a
slight nick on the pipe from a backhoe tooth. It did just fine for a
number of years before finally failing in the middle of winter.

But again, none of those problems affect oil service. A crew digging
down the street or a water main break down the street will not affect
the oil supply in your basement.

Pete C.

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...Type=Printable
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.














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.









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.







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.









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.










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.

Pete C.

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.

wrote:

Paul M. Eldridge wrote:
Well, if the theft of heating oil could expose me to this kind of
liability it would certainly be of concern to me. My friends are now
estranged from their neighbours (it didn't do much for their own
marriage either), their property and that of their neighbours has been
torn-up to remove the contaminated soil, they're out of pocket a
considerable amount of money, they can no longer get homeowner's
insurance and they can't sell this property because the Department of
Environment won't sign off on the clean-up (apparently they're still
detecting traces of oil). It's just one big mess.

Be it related to theft as in this case, a leaking tank or falling ice
damaging the supply line, the consequences of a fuel oil spill are
pretty grim no matter how you look at it.

Generally speaking, an inside tank is your best choice. That said,
thirty years ago, my mother's oil tank, which was in located inside a
finished basement, began leaking while she was away on holidays. The
stench when she returned was unbelievable and all the carpets on the
lower level had to be replaced. They brought in big fans to try to
clear the smell but it lingered on for months; when you walked through
the door, you just wanted to gag.

My home is Toronto is all gas (heat, hot water, cooktop, wall ovens,
fireplaces, dryer, patio heater and BBQ) and, quiet honestly, if
natural gas were available here in Halifax, I would be pushing my way
to the front of the line.

Cheers,
Paul

On Sat, 05 Aug 2006 22:56:45 GMT, "Pete C."
wrote:

I'm not sure you can conclude much of anything from an incident that
resulted from criminal activity.

Pete C.

Funny isn't it how any incidents involving oil just get dismissed,
while anything bad that happens with nat gas gets carefully logged as a
matter of great significance?

First off, the incident was a result of criminal activity, not of a
problem with the tank/furnace. It does not get counted for the same
reason that recent gas explosion / arson / suicide in NYC does not get
counted.

Secondly there is not enough information in the above story. How was the
insurance company able to weasel out of covering damages resulting from
a criminal act committed against the homeowner? They would be covering
in the case of a burglary, arson, etc. Also why was there no additional
source of assistance like a crime victims compensation fund?


In addition to the story of outside tanks leaking and causing big
problems, every so often I see news reports of the old wrong delivery
address incident. This happened again last winter on Long Island, NY.
The oil company delivered oil to the wrong address. Turns out where
they delivered it the home once had oil heat, removed the basement
tank, but did not remove the fill tube. So, they pumped a couple
hundred gallons of oil into the wrong home's basement. On TV they
showed the huge cleanup underway, the family was forced to leave the
home for an indefinite period until the house was declared safe again,
etc.

That is also not counted because it is not in any way a failure of and
oil tank or furnace. The fill pipes should have been removed and are
required to be removed or at the very least capped on both ends by most
codes.


Now, this can be traced to stupidity. I wouldn't say it makes oil
unsafe, or a bad choice, depending on the other options available, etc.
But the difference is, I see this and put it in perspective. While
Pete sees anything go wrong with nat gas, and it's suddenly a big
issue, blown out of proportion, while oil gets a free pass.

Nope, since I always insure my equipment is properly maintained, I look
at the risks from that properly maintained equipment and with gas that
risk is greater.

Pete C.

"Paul M. Eldridge" wrote:

My home here in Nova Scotia is heated with oil. The boiler when I
purchased this home four years ago was then thirty-four years old (so
too the separate oil-fired hot water tank) and I suspect neither were
all that efficient. If natural gas were available, I would have
switched immediately, without a second thought. Since that wasn't an
option, I installed a high-efficiency oil-fired Slant Fin boiler, a
SuperStor Ultra indirect hot water tank and a Tekmar boiler control
system. I chose this particular boiler because it can be easily
converted to natural gas when that happy day comes (it's certified to
operate on either fuel).

Last year, with the addition of a small ductless heat pump, I was able
to cut my fuel oil consumption by more than half (from 1,973 litres to
828 litres). Of the remaining 828 litres, I'm guessing roughly 500
litres or so are related to domestic hot water production (an average
of 1.4 l/day x 365 days/yr). Given the relatively modest space
heating demand, if I had to do it all over again I would have
installed an electric boiler as a backup to the heat pump and
eliminated oil altogether. With heating oil and electricity here in
Nova Scotia running at about par, there would be little or no economic
penalty to going with electric and I could eliminate the need to store
fuel oil on my property.

I should add that the previous homeowners used 5,700 litres of heating
oil in the year prior to my purchase (and that happened to be a fairly
mild winter). By upgrading the heating and DHW systems, careful air
sealing, window and door replacement and adding more insulation (e.g.,
the attic went from R6 to R60 and the walls from R6 to R22), I was
able to reduce my fuel oil consumption by 65 per cent. With the
ductless heat pump, I've been able to cut that by more than half
again. At current prices, I'm now saving over $4,000.00 a year on my
heating and DHW costs.

Cheers,
Paul

Indeed regardless of the fuel source, when you upgrade a decades old
system and more importantly address deficiencies in insulation, windows,
doors, etc. you can make a big difference in total efficiency and
operating costs.

I would suggest that before considering a fuel switch or equipment
upgrade for the same fuel, anyone with oil equipment manufactured in the
last couple decades would be better served to properly address
insulation, window and door issues first and wait a month or two to see
the change. In many cases the non equipment issues can losses 25% or
more.

If you have equipment (oil or gas) that is more than say 40 years old
you should be looking to replace it unless it's a particularly high end
model and efficiency testing shows decent numbers. The 50 year old
boiler that was replaced at my mother's house had been testing in the
79-80% range which while not as good as a modern unit wasn't bad at all
for a 50 year old unit.

Pete C.

Robert Gammon wrote:

Pete C. wrote:
John wrote:

"Pete C." wrote:


John wrote:

"Pete C." wrote:

trimmed


If you're leaving for vacation and don't review the house status and
things like turning off the water and looking at the level on the oil
tank then you're an idiot. If I'm getting ready for vacation and the oil
tank is low I just call my supplier and ask them to deliver the next day
(before I leave). Doesn't cost me any extra and is no more effort than
turning off the water or unplugging some appliances.

Oh I always turn off the water too. After all any furnace (including oil with that big
red RESET button) could sense a fault and shut down or the power could fail, or
everything could work perfectly and a pipe breaks etc etc. Someone posted a neat
picture (link in this newsgroup I mean) of a house that had been vacant in the winter
and the oil company had not filled the tanks with the expected amount of oil and the
pipes froze in zero degree F weather. Cool glacier coming down the garage doors.

That picture was attributed to not turning off the water before going on
vacation when it got very cold and a pipe froze and burst in the ceiling
over the unheated garage. I've never seen any reference to the type of
heating system in the house or a fault with it.

No kidding, except it wasn't a "vacation" and if you did you see you'd know it wasn't just
the garage. If you read what I wrote above, you would also know that I was discussing
generally why it was a good idea to shut off your water when you're away in the winter
because I wrote, "furnace could sense a fault and shut down or the power could fail, or
everything could work perfectly and a pipe breaks etc."


Right and that situation can occur with both gas and oil and even
electric for that matter.




Oh by the way, if we do have a
power failure, we can still take lots of hot showers and cook on our stove
indefinitely.

Same here. With my diesel generator and oil heat I can go for weeks.

A natural gas generator could keep you going too, offer auto start (and auto charging
the batteries weekly, monthly, whenever you prefer) and burn much cleaner than a diesel
engine.

Diesel generators offer auto start, exercise cycles etc. as well. As for
burning cleaner that depends on the particular engine. Larger and more
expensive units will be cleaner than small inexpensive ones. Run it on
biodiesel or WVO and you have yet another comparison.

I'm glad you have room for a diesel generator. No way it can burn as cleanly as a natural
gas engine can, and that doesn't require stored fuel either.


Room? A diesel generator doesn't require any more room than any other
type of generator.




Oil is a great choice if you have no natural gas service available and your
climate is too cold for heat pumps.

Oil is indeed a great choice under those conditions and it is also a
very good choice under many more conditions, particularly if you are in
a cold area even if gas is available.

By the way, no climate is too cold for geothermal heat pumps, you just
have to get the coils below the frost line where you have a nice
constant temperature.

That would be nice but unfortunately there is more to geo heat pumps than just putting
coils below the frost line.

Such as? A properly sized and installed geothermal heat pump will
operate just fine in most any environment.

Yes, but that "properly sized" part can be a show stopper if you don't have a bunch of land,
or a pond nearby, or can use wells.


Not really. Vertical loop is workable most everywhere, "wells" typically
refers to the old style open loop geothermal which is rarely done these
days. The newer trenched vertical coil also doesn't require a lot of
area.

Pete C.

One contractor here in Houston TX recently completed a project for a
RESIDENCE that used SIXTY FIVE wells, 300 feet deep. The contractor
sizes the project at one well per ton of installed capacity so this was
65 tons of HVAC. Considering that most of us can get by with a ground
source heat pump in the 3 ton to 6 ton range, one wonders just how big
this house is.

65 tons certainly is a huge house, a commercial building or a deep
freeze.


The contractor has a 3000sq ft house deep inside the city limits and
uses geothermal himself. Lot sizes are small so clearance to neighbor's
property line is only a few feet in many cases. One of the wells for
his house is under the slab!! He keeps the house at 65F year round and
has cooling bills of under $175 Heat in Houston is just not a big
concern as there are so few days a year that the temps fall below 40F
and almost never get below 25F. What we worry about is keeping cool.

I'm north of Dallas and currently all electric. When I look to replace
the older A/C in a year or two I will likely go with a geothermal heat
pump. I've got a few acres so the newer trenched vertical "slinky" loop
configuration will probably be most economical given the modest ~3 ton
requirement.

Pete C.

Robert Gammon wrote:

Pete C. wrote:
John wrote:

"Pete C." wrote:


John wrote:

"Pete C." wrote:


John wrote:

"Pete C." wrote:


" wrote:

Gas being lighter than air normally dissapates if it leaks.

That only works to a limited extent and less and less as homes get
"tighter". If windows and doors are closed well nat. gas will just
accumulate from the ceiling down. LP gas is heavier and will accumulate
from the floor up. In either case unless the home is quite drafty /
leaky it will continue to accumulate until it finds an ignition source.

There shouldn't be any gas at all outside the furnace or plumbing.

There shouldn't, if pipes, regulators, valves and controls were all 100%
reliable. As can plainly be seen from all the gas explosions that occur,
that is not the case.

How many explosions is "all the gas explosions?" Or people that awake to find
their home and its contents are destroyed by oil or that their basement is now an
oil spill site?

Relative to the total number of units? Very few. Relative to each other
there is a significant difference.

In numbers, what is the "significant difference" that you claim?


I don't feel like digging up numbers at the moment.





Oil pools and settles , causing a possible safety clean up issue with
guys in moon suits hauling away contaminated soil

This is *not* a safety issue, it is an over hyped environmental issue.

When your house is not inhabitable due to heavy oil contamination and fumes,
it *is* a safety issue. "Over hyped" environmental issue? Yeah right, unless
you consider oil contaminated earth and pollution as part of your
environment.

First off, uninhabitable meaning you have to leave during cleanup, and
uninhabitable because it collapsed after the gas explosion are vastly
different things. If you are home when the oil leaks you simply leave,
safe and sound. If you are home when the gas leaks you can easily end up
dead.

As for the environmental part, yes, it is over hyped. Cleanup of even
300 gal of fuel oil that leaks in a concrete basement is pretty minor if
it's done reasonably soon.

Cite? I know it is a lot more than that because a house near me had exactly that
happen to it, and the house was condemned during the cleanup last year.

Yes, well it can be overblown if you let yourself be taken in by the
hype. Even then it still pales in comparison to rebuilding from the

crater the gas explosion left, or paying for the funeral.

Yeah an oil spill into the ground causing environmental damage to the ground, not to
mention the damage to the house and its contents and/or making the house uninhabitable is
just "hype." I don't think there is a difference in funeral costs from people dying in
burning houses caused by oil, gas, or whatever. If oil is so much safer, which
insurance companies give the oil heat discount or gas heat surcharge?


The idea that an oil spill on the ground automatically is some
environmental disaster is exactly the hype I'm talking about. Unless
that oil is getting into ground water or heading for a stream there is
no environmental damage. Oil getting into ground water takes a good
amount of time, after all the ground water isn't 3" under your house or
your house would be floating. Have a spill and clean it up promptly and
the oil has not had an opportunity to go anywhere and there is no damage
despite what some dropout eco-nut might claim. Killing some soil
bacteria 3" below my basement slab is not environmental damage.


Well there is the environmental cleanup issue with the soil that is
contaminated. Any such leak to the soil ANYWHERE on your property, if
detected by others MAY make the property UNSALEABLE!!!

Unsaleable to the uninformed perhaps. To those who understand that
removing a few yards of soil and giving it to a construction company for
use under a road (where there is plenty of petroleum contamination
anyway) is pretty simple it should not affect saleability.

Too much uninformed and irrational hysteria in this country.

Pete C.

John wrote:

"Pete C." wrote:

John wrote:

"Pete C." wrote:

zero wrote:

On Fri, 04 Aug 2006 21:10:29 GMT, "Pete C."
wrote:


CO deaths are a result of poor combustion adjustment combined with flue
leakage, both of which have a higher probability with a gas furnace due
to:

1) People believing that a gas furnace does not require annual
inspections / service. This creates a greater probability of the furnace
falling into disrepair and the poor adjustment and leakage forming.

And the average Oil burner in a home that is not serviced properly is
JUST as dangerous.

That has been my point when people keep claiming that gas burners don't
need service. The fact is that any combustion appliance is dangerous if
it's not serviced properly.

Who was claiming that gas burners don't need service, let alone "keeps
claiming" that?

Someone in this thread.

Who?

Don't recall and I'm not searching the whole thread to find it either.








No disrespect intended, Pete.

This whole thread seams to be diminishing the attention due to oil
burning equipment.

A delayed ignition that has not left the confines of the combustion
chamber may not be an explosion according to some, however it is an
unplanned event.

It also rarely occurs without human intervention not heeding the
warnings on the unit. New units take the human factor into account as
well with lockout modes.


What you learn in a classroom is fine. It prepares you to go into the
field. Once you've been in the field for 3-4 years, you realize just
how little you knew that first year.

Many things go wrong with oil burners. YOU may know to stop resetting
your protectorelay after the third time, however most DO look at it
like an elevator button.

Right, but that is not the fault of the oil burner and newer oil burners
prevent that as well.


Most are filthy. Just have a fly on the wall look-see at most HVAC
shops and watch the service techs try to casually avoid the oil
service calls.

Because most do not get their annual service. No annual service for a
few years and nozzles begin to clog causing the combustion to go out of
adjustment, soot to form and efficiency to plummet until finally someone
calls for service. If they were serviced even every other year they
would be nice and clean.

Same with a natural gas furnace. Of course I'd rather have a nat gas furnace
that hasn't been serviced in years than an oil furnace.

Oddly enough I'd rather have a furnace that has received proper
servicing.





Oh, by the way, standing in front of a 750 HP boiler (30,131,000
btu's per hour./ 215 gal. per hour) while it huffs itself out for .5
seconds, and then back into high fire with out shutting off the main
fuel valve will forever makeup ones mind on weather or not an oil
burner can or cannot explode.

Yea, large commercial / industrial boilers of either gas or oil can do
interesting things. Recall one story of a fairly small nat. gas
commercial boiler on about the 20th floor of a building that had it's
own little blowback and blew the boiler door off barely missing the
service guys before it went through the wall and fell the 20 stories to
the street below.

Blowback? Who puts a boiler on the 20th floor? (I could understand a
furnace).

Blowback, delayed ignition, whatever you want to call it. A gas buildup
in the combustion chamber prior to ignition. Boilers are commonly
located on upper floors in tall buildings. Furnaces tend not to be used
in large (tall) commercial buildings in favor of larger boilers serving
multiple heat exchanger air handlers.

Blowback? Who puts a boiler on the 20th floor?

People who understand commercial construction as you apparently do not.

Pete C.

"Pete C." wrote:

John wrote:

"Pete C." wrote:

John wrote:

"Pete C." wrote:

John wrote:

"Pete C." wrote:

" wrote:

Gas being lighter than air normally dissapates if it leaks.

That only works to a limited extent and less and less as homes get
"tighter". If windows and doors are closed well nat. gas will just
accumulate from the ceiling down. LP gas is heavier and will accumulate
from the floor up. In either case unless the home is quite drafty /
leaky it will continue to accumulate until it finds an ignition source.

There shouldn't be any gas at all outside the furnace or plumbing.

There shouldn't, if pipes, regulators, valves and controls were all 100%
reliable. As can plainly be seen from all the gas explosions that occur,
that is not the case.

How many explosions is "all the gas explosions?" Or people that awake to find
their home and its contents are destroyed by oil or that their basement is now an
oil spill site?

Relative to the total number of units? Very few. Relative to each other
there is a significant difference.

In numbers, what is the "significant difference" that you claim?

I don't feel like digging up numbers at the moment.

Of course not. We'll just take your word for it, since you appear to be so knowedgeable.













Oil pools and settles , causing a possible safety clean up issue with
guys in moon suits hauling away contaminated soil

This is *not* a safety issue, it is an over hyped environmental issue.

When your house is not inhabitable due to heavy oil contamination and fumes,
it *is* a safety issue. "Over hyped" environmental issue? Yeah right, unless
you consider oil contaminated earth and pollution as part of your
environment.

First off, uninhabitable meaning you have to leave during cleanup, and
uninhabitable because it collapsed after the gas explosion are vastly
different things. If you are home when the oil leaks you simply leave,
safe and sound. If you are home when the gas leaks you can easily end up
dead.

As for the environmental part, yes, it is over hyped. Cleanup of even
300 gal of fuel oil that leaks in a concrete basement is pretty minor if
it's done reasonably soon.

Cite? I know it is a lot more than that because a house near me had exactly that
happen to it, and the house was condemned during the cleanup last year.

Yes, well it can be overblown if you let yourself be taken in by the
hype. Even then it still pales in comparison to rebuilding from the

crater the gas explosion left, or paying for the funeral.

Yeah an oil spill into the ground causing environmental damage to the ground, not to
mention the damage to the house and its contents and/or making the house uninhabitable is
just "hype." I don't think there is a difference in funeral costs from people dying in
burning houses caused by oil, gas, or whatever. If oil is so much safer, which
insurance companies give the oil heat discount or gas heat surcharge?

The idea that an oil spill on the ground automatically is some
environmental disaster is exactly the hype I'm talking about. Unless
that oil is getting into ground water or heading for a stream there is
no environmental damage. Oil getting into ground water takes a good
amount of time, after all the ground water isn't 3" under your house or
your house would be floating. Have a spill and clean it up promptly and
the oil has not had an opportunity to go anywhere and there is no damage
despite what some dropout eco-nut might claim. Killing some soil
bacteria 3" below my basement slab is not environmental damage.

If you think that an oil spill and petroleum contaminated soil is merely "killing some bacteria" than you don't have
even a remote clue at what you are talking about. Soil removal and remediation is mandatory by law. Just because you
don't mind living atop a toxic site doesn't mean that it is safe for everyone else or legal.







Cleanup of oil leaked from an underground
tank is a different matter since until the advent of the double wall
tanks with monitoring you aren't likely to detect the leak for months or
years. That is why we replace 50 yr old underground tanks with indoor
tanks or new double wall underground tanks.

I'm suspicious of underground tanks for residential use. And who is doing all of
the required monitoring? If the inner tank breaks, why can't the outer tank break
too? If the outer tank is already corroded when the inner tank breaks, what good
is it (or the monitoring system?)

The outer tanks are poly or fiberglass and they have leak detectors
between the inner and outer walls that will trigger an alarm mounted in
the house. Basically just a smaller version of the tanks they now use at
gas stations.

Great. So this residential detector needs to be working properly in a decade or two or
three when the tank starts leaking. How common is this?

More like five or six or more decades. I don't know how common it is,
probably fairly common with some XL houses in the northeast where a
couple 300 gal indoor tanks won't really do.

"Probably."






Not particularly cheap, but if you need the capacity and don't have the
room for several conventional 300 gal indoor tanks they are a good
option.


Gas station tanks have caused enough horrors (at least 7 spill sites from leaking
tanks in my town alone), and they supposedly are tightly regulated and inspected
regularly. Recall that the MTBE fiasco is caused primarily from gasoline leaking
from underground tanks!

Old tanks certainly caused problems, new tanks generally do not.

The MTBE fiasco was caused primarily by eco-nuts pressing for something
to be done without adequate research. The problem was not just from
leaking tanks and those tanks were likely old tanks, not new.

What are they putting in your Texas water? The problem with MTBE is that it gets into
the water and travels. It travels much farther than the leaking gasoline/petroleum mess
in service station leaking tanks disasters.

Nothing in my water, I've got rather good water here. Nice and soft too,
I don't miss the hard water in the northeast at all.

Huh?



What do the characteristics of the MTBE problem have to do with why we
have the MTBE problem? The fact is that loud moth eco-nuts badgered the
government into requiring MTBE without adequate research and the MTBE
problems are the result of that knee jerk reaction.

Yeah the "eco-nuts," like the oil industry that came up with MTBE.




The
problem that the MTBE lowered mileage enough to cause more gas to be
consumed to offset any pollution reduction was an even bigger problem
resulting from the knee jerk nonsense. So not only was no pollution
reduced from the tailpipe,

That's false. MTBE actually did help meet clean air goals, which is the reason it was
used. The oil companies weren't buying it for nothing. In the cylinder, this ether is
an oxygenate.

Oil companies bought it because it was required by the feds, not because
it did anything productive. MTBE looked like it helped meet clean air
goals based on the emissions from combustion of a gal of gas with MTBE
vs. without MTBE. The reality that was discovered later was that the
MTBE reduced the mileage of vehicles using the gas with it so they used
more gas with the MTBE in order to travel the necessary distances
thereby producing pretty much the same emissions as they did burning
less gas without MTBE.

Cite for your 'same emissions' theory? Come on, don't be shy. I"m sure you have it "bookmarked!"



There are other technologies available to get extra oxygen into the
engine without resorting to chemical additives in the gas by the way.
These of course require changes to the engine so if they were introduced
in new cars they it would take some time to achieve any significant
vehicle turnover.

Which technologies are you discussing? Cite?




additional pollution from the additive was
generated, all of which could have been avoided with a year of research
and testing.

Yeah, it's all the "eco-nuts" fault. Like President Bush, who just eliminated federal
protections for oil companies for MTBE lawsuits. Funny how all of the oil companies
phased out their MBTE faster than they could lift up a price changing pole. The fed
government didn't ban MTBE by the way; several states have.

Why should the oil companies by liable for problems from an additive
that the federal government required them to put in their product? Want
to blame someone for the MTBE problem blame those who pushed for it and
those that pushed it on the refiners.

The federal government never mandated the product, they mandated the outcomes. In fact some companies (e.g. Getty)
chose to meet their goals without using MTBE. MTBE was one way to meet these outcomes. I don't really have a
problem with MTBE per se by the way. I *DO* have a problem with leaking tanks.











Fuel oil has a strong smell and is very likely to be noticed before much
leaks. Even when a lot leaks, most undamaged concrete floors contain it
pretty well if it's discovered and cleaned in a day or two.

I guess if your concrete floors are watertight and sealed (so the oil doesn't
soak into them) and you don't have any drains or perimeter drains. Oh and if
you don't mind everything saturated in #2 oil.

Concrete floors are fairly water tight if they are in good condition.
Oil will eventually soak through, but at a pretty slow rate. Not that
many basements actually have drains either.

Well just about every house around me has a perimeter drain. Prevents any concerns
of water in the basement. I didn't realize that basement floors and walls were
supposed to be petroleum spill containment systems.

Actually, per building codes, they are. There is supposed to be a
concrete or block containment wall around tanks of sufficient height to
contain the contents of the largest single tank in the space. I don't
have the codes handy, but I think it should have a sealer applied to the
wall and floor as well. Fairly recent code.

I have never seen that, even in brand spanking new houses finished two months ago.
Which building code are you talking about?

Last reference to it was in CT, but I believe it is in the IRC codes. I
was researching when looking at building a house in CT and the oil tank
room required a short concrete containment wall around it. There was
also a limit of I believe 600 gal in a single fire rated space.

"At any rate, there is no requirement under Use Group R-3 to provide secondary containment for fuel oil storage in the

basement, regardless of the amount of fuel oil stored inside the building.
For Use Group R-4, Section 2701.2 of the CABO code states that the maximum
amount of fuel oil stored inside of a building shall be 660 gallons with no mention of any
requirement for secondary containment."
http://www.ct.gov/dps/lib/dps/office...00/i-11-00.pdf












As for saturated in #2, I'd vastly prefer that over a smoldering crater
where my house used to be. The oil can be readily pumped and vacuumed up
from the surface and the concrete if it's saturated can be removed and
replaced with far less expense than rebuilding the whole house after the
gas explosion (if I survived the explosion).

Gas just doesn't blow up a house unless something goes really wrong, like a backhoe
out front hitting a pipe. Even then the smell of the gas is pretty obvious before
it reaches an explosive ratio with oxygen. In that case it doesn't matter if your
particular house has gas service if the gas follows a water or sewer or electrical
conduit into your basment instead of following the outside of a gas line.

Well, I keep hearing of people killed in gas explosions in their houses.
Many are elderly which may be a result of reduced ability to smell the
leaking gas, not remembering warnings to not turn on lights and get out
if they smell gas, forgetfulness in having the equipment serviced
regularly, very old equipment, or a combination of all of those.

Yeah, it's so common now, the news doesn't even bother covering it anymore.

There was someone killed in a gas explosion at a motel somewhere within
the past month. Collapsed the whole corner of the two story building. It
was on the news and I think CNN. Certainly a search on CNN.com for "gas
explosion" produces quite a few valid results including some doosies
like one that ripped up a mall parking lot.

Yep. Well you are right about one thing. Gas explosions only happen with gas. Good thing houses with oil never
burn down.













Thats why homeownerts insurance is requiring oil tank replacement based
on age of tank.

And that is why new underground oil tanks are double wall construction,
just like new tanks at gas stations. Some new indoor tanks are double
wall as well though most are still single wall since there is minimal
risk. Just because a 50 year old single wall underground tank is no
longer viable in no way means that oil heat is no longer viable.
Technology changes and advances and the current high velocity flame
retention burners and controls with pre and post purge cycles are a far
cry from the old burners as well.

Yeah, technology changes, like inducer motors that shut everything down if
there is an exhaust blockage in gas furnaces (very very rare).

Current oil furnaces have the same feature available.

But as you pointed out, CO for oil furnaces isn't a concern for you since you can
just smell the dirtier oil furnace fumes.

When they are out of adjustment and producing a lot of CO, yes. When
they are operating properly they produce little CO and little fumes.

You keep changing your topics. My comment was directed at your complaints that natural
gas burns too cleanly for someone to smell the fumes if somehow they come into the house,
unlike oil, thus CO would be more likely to kill. Even if that was true, it's moot with
CO detectors, which everyone should have anyway.

You're the one who keeps claiming that nat. gas burns cleanly and oil is
dirty which is false. Both are pretty clean with proper combustion
adjustments. Improperly adjusted, oil is more detectable than improperly
adjusted gas. It's not a function of cleanliness, its a function of
different detection thresholds for different chemicals.

Yeah, it's just my claim that natural gas burns more cleaner than oil.

"Natural gas burns cleaner than other fossil fuels, such as oil and coal, and produces less greenhouse gas per unit
energy released. For an equivalent amount of heat, burning natural gas produces about 30% less carbon dioxide than
burning petroleum and about 45% less than burning coal" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_gas












So, what oil company do you work for? Typical new high efficency gas
furnaces get about 94-96% efficiency (AFUE) My neighbor has the exact same
house as I do and he has oil heat. I keep my house a little warmer and last
winter's bill was less than 2/3 of his. After comparing numbers, he's very
interested in switching too. What is the AFUE of your oil furnace?

I work for a bank.

How old are each of your furnaces? Where in the model range is each one?
Both make a big difference. New vs. 30yr old isn't a fair comparison and
neither is new high end vs. new low end.

About five years old. Fine, let's compare it with a four or even a brand new oil
furnace. What AFUE rating



Also since both nat. gas costs and oil costs fluctuate it's difficult to
make a really valid comparison based on cost, particularly when someone
buying their oil off season can get lower prices than someone buying
just month to month. Rate lock-ins are also more frequently available
for oil service.

The last furnace I just had installed at my mothers house this spring
(Weil-McLain WTGO4 with a Becket burner) is 85% AFUE, but it is not a
high end unit. If I was going for high end it would be a Buderus boiler
with a Riello burner. The house needs a lot more insulation so the
burner efficiency is a small factor at present.

What oil furnaces can do 92%-96% AFUE?

Ones that presently cost too much for residential use.

And which ones are those ? With that huge residential oil market, why would it cost so
much to make a high efficient furnace from a such a superior product like oil, when
they've been around for years with natural gas? Maybe the natural gas market is just so
much larger due to the need to keep replacing the furnaces when the house keeps blowing
up.

I've already noted why the nat. gas market is larger.

A few gas explosions:

http://archives.cnn.com/2002/US/08/1...ion/index.html
http://cbs4boston.com/local/local_story_313162110.html
http://cbs4denver.com/local/local_story_089161935.html
http://wcbstv.com/topstories/topstor...347103431.html
http://www.boston.com/news/local/art...gas_explosion/
http://wboy.com/story.cfm?func=viewstory&storyid=10207
http://news.minnesota.publicradio.or.../04/27_ap_gas/
http://ksdk.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=89827
http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/a...WS05/603070325
http://www.11alive.com/news/usnews_a...?storyid=74159
http://cbs2chicago.com/topstories/lo...087114934.html
http://www.wutc.wa.gov/webimage.nsf/...7!OpenDocument
http://cbs4.com/topstories/local_story_105231940.html
http://www.texnews.com/1998/2003/tex...ural_g220.html

Just a sample, plenty more to be found. Some doosies too.

You can "prove" anything with anecdotal evidence. From your cited articles:

"Now, bomb and arson investigators are calling the blast suspicious and have declared the fire a possible arson."

"Authorities blamed the blast on a gas leak that opened when a line was hit during an excavation. "

"A natural gas explosion that killed three people last December was due to a metal pipe connector that failed because
it was not designed for use on plastic pipe, state officials said Wednesday."

"Officials said preliminary investigations showed that a pit dug by construction workers who were trying to remove an
underground oil tank collapsed and pinched a gas line just before 9 a.m."