Heating bills to be about 10% higher this winter (unless you heat with wood)

[Jabberwocky]

Given that oil futures are running about 30% higher than last year, I'm surprised the prediction is only for 10%. .

Consider the source of the quote. This is the same government that keeps telling us that there is no inflation. I've been hearing +20% for natural gas and +40% for oil heat. But we shouldn't complain too loudly because it will attract the buzzards (probable KEYSPAN employees) who will claim that NG is cheaper than wood pellet heat.

 

[elkimmeg]

This was explained to me a while back the worldwide demand for gasoline means more competition for home heating oil and less supplies alloted for it.

It used to be refineries would gear up for home heating oil, but the demand for gasoline is greater. when the heating season in upon us competition has forced home heating oil higher,
than gasoline pro=ices even though more is refinable per barrel than gasoline. I live where oil will be in the 30% more area

Who knows some sneeze at a refinery or Mid east conflict. all bets are off on the pricing. Fortunately so far we have dodged a gulf coast hurricane.

 

[babalu87]

Did you do that with stoves or some kind of central heating appliance?

1800+ square foot Cape built in 1997
R-11 walls and R-35 in the attic
2 South facing sliding glass doors and 4 other windows facing South
One wood stove
Heat the house with the boiler running for showers and dishes only
At or around 3 cord of Oak

Back on topic, my brother is SCREWED. Good thing he has a tenant on the second floor, that boiler never shuts off all Winter and he keeps the house around 65! Oil man pulls in there every month and sometimes more often.

 

[Eric Johnson]

Did you do that with stoves or some kind of central heating appliance?

One stove, centrally located in a house with a wide open floor plan. No ducts involved. One ceiling fan above the stove to help distribute the heat.

My point was that it wouldn't be uncommon to burn 8-10 cords of wood if you have (thermostatically controlled) central wood heat. You seem to be implying that burning that much wood is some kind of anomoly. Depends on your equipment and setup.

We can debate which is better until we're blue in the face, but the fact is that wood consumption needs to be taken into context, instead of making blanket implications that burning more than 4 cords per season is a bad thing.

 

[Burn-1]

...unfortunately my hot water is within the boiler tankless system For years I thought about solar but so far with college tuitions and now weddings I never can come up with. a spare 15k

I have a tankless off the boiler as well, it's marginally ok in the winter but when I hear the boiler in the summer for our tankless I get a moment of dread, then anger. Pretty soon electric hot water on a timer will be looking good.

I'm looking at an indirect heater with an extra coil for solar but the problem is I would probably only need a 40-45 gallon capacity indirect but the ones with a solar HX start at 80 gallons. But as far a solar hot water installation goes, I went to several homes on this years Green Buildings Open House and very few solar hot water systems were more than $7,000 -$8,000 or so. Many were $3,000-$4,000 (DIY installs). Also there is a federal tax credit ending this year which will likely be renewed which helps write it down even more.

 

[tradergordo]

My point was that it wouldn't be uncommon to burn 8-10 cords of wood if you have (thermostatically controlled) central wood heat. You seem to be implying that burning that much wood is some kind of anomoly. Depends on your equipment and setup.

We can debate which is better until we're blue in the face, but the fact is that wood consumption needs to be taken into context, instead of making blanket implications that burning more than 4 cords per season is a bad thing.

So for the same climate - someone with "thermostatically controlled central wood heat" would normally burn twice as much wood as someone with a centrally located wood stove? That doesn't sound good to me, but what do I know. All I know is that if I had to process 12 cords a year, this little wood heat expariment would be over already

p.s. I didn't imply burning more then 4 cords was bad. I did imply that burning 12 cords was bad with a caveat based on climate. And I was responding to a guy that implied burning 12 cords was normal for someone heating 24/7 with wood (I do not believe this is true and in fact there have been threads here on hearth net where everyone was stating how much they burned and very few burned more than 6 cords a year).

 

[jjbaer]

This was explained to me a while back the worldwide demand for gasoline means more competition for home heating oil and less supplies alloted for it.

It used to be refineries would gear up for home heating oil, but the demand for gasoline is greater. when the heating season in upon us competition has forced home heating oil higher,
than gasoline pro=ices even though more is refinable per barrel than gasoline. I live where oil will be in the 30% more area

Who knows some sneeze at a refinery or Mid east conflict. all bets are off on the pricing. Fortunately so far we have dodged a gulf coast hurricane.

Also, before there were so many NG powered generators (to meet clean air acts) NG usage was somewhat cyclical (cheaper in summer) but now demand is more level and NG prices can remain higher than they once were, even in the summer.

 

[jjbaer]

...unfortunately my hot water is within the boiler tankless system For years I thought about solar but so far with college tuitions and now weddings I never can come up with. a spare 15k

I have a tankless off the boiler as well, it's marginally ok in the winter but when I hear the boiler in the summer for our tankless I get a moment of dread, then anger. Pretty soon electric hot water on a timer will be looking good.

I'm looking at an indirect heater with an extra coil for solar but the problem is I would probably only need a 40-45 gallon capacity indirect but the ones with a solar HX start at 80 gallons. But as far a solar hot water installation goes, I went to several homes on this years Green Buildings Open House and very few solar hot water systems were more than $7,000 -$8,000 or so. Many were $3,000-$4,000 (DIY installs). Also there is a federal tax credit ending this year which will likely be renewed which helps write it down even more.

Solution: get rid of the hot water that runs off the boiler and replace it with an electric water heater. The main question is (if I understand your set-up correctly) why should a boiler be running in the summer when it only supplies hot water?? To me, that's a waste...... Get a 40 gallon electric and train yourself to use your hot water within a narrow window each day. That way you can activate it once per day to bring one tankful (40 gallons) of approx 60F water up to, say, 125 deg F and it costs you a whopping 90 cents per day (assumes your electric costs 15 cents/kw hr). This equates to $27/month. This saves wear and tear on your boiler, you're not heating spaces you don't need to in the summer and you save your wood or whatever powers your boiler.

 

[jjbaer]

My point was that it wouldn't be uncommon to burn 8-10 cords of wood if you have (thermostatically controlled) central wood heat. You seem to be implying that burning that much wood is some kind of anomoly. Depends on your equipment and setup.

We can debate which is better until we're blue in the face, but the fact is that wood consumption needs to be taken into context, instead of making blanket implications that burning more than 4 cords per season is a bad thing.

So for the same climate - someone with "thermostatically controlled central wood heat" would normally burn twice as much wood as someone with a centrally located wood stove? That doesn't sound good to me, but what do I know. All I know is that if I had to process 12 cords a year, this little wood heat expariment would be over already

p.s. I didn't imply burning more then 4 cords was bad. I did imply that burning 12 cords was bad with a caveat based on climate. And I was responding to a guy that implied burning 12 cords was normal for someone heating 24/7 with wood (I do not believe this is true and in fact there have been threads here on hearth net where everyone was stating how much they burned and very few burned more than 6 cords a year).

There are other considerations that could cause the wood consumed to approach high levels with boilers: 1) usually someone with a large boiler will keep all the rooms in their home very toasty because they have, essentially, unlimited hot water and this means burning wood much of the time; 2)even in summer, many run the boiler to just get hot water which means burning wood all the time. However, most wood burners who claim to heat their entire home with wood (you might be an exception with your open design) do not have the ability to evenly distribute heat to all rooms so they're really not consuming the same number of BTU's as if they used, say, forced hot air which did heat all the rooms. Therefore they consume less BTU's (wood) but have rooms that are far cooler than is the main stove room.

 

[thephotohound]

Solution: get rid of the hot water that runs off the boiler and replace it with an electric water heater. The main question is (if I understand your set-up correctly) why should a boiler be running in the summer when it only supplies hot water?? To me, that's a waste...... Get a 40 gallon electric and train yourself to use your hot water within a narrow window each day. That way you can activate it once per day to bring one tankful (40 gallons) of approx 60F water up to, say, 125 deg F and it costs you a whopping 90 cents per day (assumes your electric costs 15 cents/kw hr). This equates to $27/month. This saves wear and tear on your boiler, you're not heating spaces you don't need to in the summer and you save your wood or whatever powers your boiler.

That works, but only if you're paying a reasonable rate for electricity. Including delivery costs, I pay 12 cents/kWh. My 15 year old Burnham boiler (oil, tankless HW) costs me less to run (around $20/month).

 

[jjbaer]

Solution: get rid of the hot water that runs off the boiler and replace it with an electric water heater. The main question is (if I understand your set-up correctly) why should a boiler be running in the summer when it only supplies hot water?? To me, that's a waste...... Get a 40 gallon electric and train yourself to use your hot water within a narrow window each day. That way you can activate it once per day to bring one tankful (40 gallons) of approx 60F water up to, say, 125 deg F and it costs you a whopping 90 cents per day (assumes your electric costs 15 cents/kw hr). This equates to $27/month. This saves wear and tear on your boiler, you're not heating spaces you don't need to in the summer and you save your wood or whatever powers your boiler.

That works, but only if you're paying a reasonable rate for electricity. Including delivery costs, I pay 12 cents/kWh. My 15 year old Burnham boiler (oil, tankless HW) costs me less to run (around $20/month).

You misread what I wrote or you had a typo. I said at 15 c/kw hr you pay $27/month. Then you said "that works, but only if you're paying a reasonalble rate for electricity" but then you go on to quote that you pay even less (12 c/kw hr) which then puts your hot water at an even lower amount of around $22/month......so, unless you had a typo and really meant to say you pay a higher amount of, say, 22c/kw-hr, I really don't understand your comment.....

 

[Eric Johnson]

Cast: With a hot water storage tank, you can fire the boiler up, say, once a week for a couple of hours and put enough heat into the tank to provide enough DHW to last until the next firing. That's free hot water for a couple of armloads of wood a week and minimal effort. Over time, at 12 cents per kw/h, that adds up to some savings if you have cheap or free wood.

In 15 years of wood-based central heating, Gordo, I don't think I've ever burned fewer than 10 cords in a season. I probably cut and split an average of 15 or 20. I live in northern New York State, where it gets pretty cold in the winter. And Cast is right, we try to keep the house at about 75 throughout, regardless of the outside temps. That's roughly 3,000 square feet of old farmhouse. And no gas bill, other than the availability fee and what little our clothes dryer uses. Free hot water, too.

I'm not trying to be argumentative, but people tend to assume that their situation is the baseline and that everyone else who comes up with different results is doing something wrong. I don't see anything wrong with burning 12 cords if a guy is happy doing it and it replaces his reliance on fossil fuels.

 

[thephotohound]

Actually, I didn't see your 15 cents/kWh. My fault. However, now I'm confused... how did you calculate the kWh usage per month? I used the following calculator: http://www1.eere.energy.gov/femp/procurement/eep_waterheaters_calc.html and got $47/month (using the average hot water consumption of 64 gallons/day).

 

[BrotherBart]

Major flaw in their logic on that site. They figure an average shower at 20 gallons which is close enough. But I don't know anybody that takes a shower running all hot water. If someone does I don't want to tangle with them in a bar fight. I know the mix in my hot showers is around 60 percent cold mixed with 40 percent hot.

There is the same issue with faucet flow and clothes washers. It ain't all hot water.

 

[thephotohound]

Well put. Something to think about. Can I assume that the general consensus among those in "the know" is that running my boiler for just hot water is usually a bad idea??

 

[Eric Johnson]

I don't think so. I hang out at some pro HVAC sites and the consensus there is that a boiler-heated indirect is the way to go. It seems counterintuitive to me, but that's what they say.