New guy thirsty for info.

[heating oil hater]

Good evening guys. I'm in the early stages of research about adding an indoor boiler and making my oil burner the back up. I'm looking for some advice.
My home is a 1.5 year old well insulated 2 story with a full walk out basement. It's about 3000 sf give or take. Oil fired baseboard hotwater with a boilermate for hot water. I have an older Vt. Castings Defiant that I like a lot. I like the exercise of wood heat and I like the independence. My old stove does a pretty good job. I've got it in the basement with a few fans to circulate the air around. (hot and cold) The stove is under our kitchen in the basement. The stove warms the tile through the floor and turns the kitchen tile into a crude radiant heat. It's suprisingly effective. My first floor zone never calls for heat. Usually the stove keeps the first floor of the house about 72 to 74ish give or take a little depending on the outside temp. The second floor is where my stove can't reach so that zone calls for heat from the oil burner. We have a programable thermostat that helps save a little oil while we're sleeping.

Here's the point. Thanks if you're still reading.
May 07 to tomorrow (May 08) I used about 360 gallons of oil and about 7 cords of wood. Not bad for a pretty good sized house but I want to do better. I run the stove hot all the time to try to get the most out of it. That leads to shorter burn times and getting up at 2 am to feed it. That's fine at 40, but when I'm 60 I'm thinking not so fun.

Would adding an indoor "gasification" boiler make sense for me or should I be happy with the amount of oil I use? Would there be a big enough pay off to warrant the new setup? (boiler, big tank, and the protections you guys discuss)
I was also a little worried about some of the nasty things that could happen in an overheat or pump/power failure.
Thank you folks and good night.
The new guy.
Tom

 

[DenaliChuck]

Hi HOH,

Off the top of my head it seems like it will take a while for you to payoff the cost of installing a gasification boiler. I've posed a spreadsheet online that I used to estimate the "years to payoff" of installing and operating a wood boiler. In my case, even with a super insulated house, we still use a lot of oil and the payoff is just a few years out; with your annual oil use, it would be many years to payoff.

See it at: (broken link removed to http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pD5rtsILWkThd3M4ottXRPw)

Unfortunately the spreadsheet is read only but PM me and I'll email you a copy to play with.

If anybody else has input on what I did (and where my mistakes are) please let me know!

Chuck

 

[Nofossil]

I'm heating a similar size house in Vermont with about 4 cords a year and virtually no oil. Since you're already using wood, the payback for a gasifier is longer and more complicated. My crystal ball is broken, so I don't know what oil will cost over the next ten or twenty years, but the payback factors include the following:

1) Savings in oil
2) Savings in wood
3) Value of not getting up at 2:00AM
4) Value of a more even house temperature
5) Value of having a heating system that's cooler than your neighbors.
6) Value of a new hobby

 

[jebatty]

Wouldn't be out of line to think $10 oil.

 

[webbie]

Some of this depends on whether you have the $$ - or, if not, at what rate you will be borrowing it. Running a stove as hot as you do is relatively efficient, although your method for heat delivery is not. All in all, I think you might cut down to five cords of wood and 1/2 (or less) the amount of oil, plus enjoy additional comfort, etc. - If we were going to put a price on those items, it would probably be $2,000+ a year, so a $10,000 total install would take 5 years to pay off. That is a pretty good return on equity!