Alternative Home Heating technologies?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I had a rather nasty shock when I was talking with my parents tonight, it seems the family home (200+ year old Colonial house), a rather large house, had quite the appetite for fuel oil this year…

$7000 worth, yes, SEVEN THOUSAND dollars, the price of a good reliable used car!

in the winter, rooms that are unused are closed off, room temperature is set to 68 degrees, the house is well insulated, and we use a Rinnai natural gas heater as a supplimental heating source

still, $7000 in oil was burned…

Dad’s a stubborn ol’ guy, he (for some unfathomable reason) refuses to lock in to a pre-set oil price at the beginning of the season, so while he was paying $4/gal, my sister was paying $2 (she DID lock-in the price)

So, I’m trying to figure out some good additional heating sources, to reduce the amount of oil burned, our neighbor up the road uses wood and oil heat, and he only used about $400 worth of oil this season, and has a similar sized house, he did burn through almost four cords of wood though

there’s a small wood stove in the sunroom, and a thermally controlled electric fan, but the woodstove hasn’t been used in at least 2-3 years, so it’s in need of a good cleaning, but when it’s running well, it can heat a good portion of the house just by itself

Dad’s getting up there in years, though, and would prefer not to lug wood up from the basement to feed the woodstove, however, he’s in the house most of the day anyway, so he could feed the woodstove

I’ve started doing some research on alternative heating sources, and one that looks promising to me is the wood-pellet stove, it burns small pellets of wood, has a 98% combustion rate, and produces minimal ash (40 pounds of pellets yield about 3 ounces of ash)

Any Dopers familiar with wood-pellet heating, do you need a dedicated pellet stove, or can a conventional woodstove be retrofitted to burn pellets?, I’d imagine pellets to be the best solution for Dad, lightweight, easy to handle, and produce incredible amounts of heat, one of our local hardware stores had a pellet stove working, and the massive quantities of heat it produced was amazing, I couldn’t stand next to it for more than 3 minutes before the heat became unbearable

2

When did he last have the oil system checked out and a combustion analysis done?

3

First off, have you done all the standard stuff to reduce air infiltration, such as caulking around the windows, replacing old weatherstripping, plugging air leaks around electrical receptacles and pipes going through the wall, etc? That will reduce your heating requirements.

Since your house is a heritage house, you may not be able to add a vapour barrier all the way around to seal the house, but if you can, it’s a good idea. If you do seal the house, though, you need to explicitly add ventilation; you need around three (I think) air changes per hour to keep the air fresh and breathable inside. With explicit air intake, you can use an air-to-air heat exchanger to warm the incoming air with the outgoing air. That cuts down on the heating needed for the incoming air.

Also since your house is a heritage house, can you insulate?

I’d also think about adding mass inside your insulation to store your heat, but that’s a more long-term (and possibly structural) modification.

Assuming you’ve reduced your actual heating requirements as much as you can, then…

I’m not sure about pellet stoves. Yes, their fuel is cheaper, being made from sawdust and whatnot, but I have reservations about being tied to an industrial process to generate that fuel. I knoiw people who’ve been caught short when their suppliers ran out of pellets. IMHO (and I may be wrong here), I’d go with a stove that can use both pellets and regular wood (if such a thing exists).

Here’s a place that offers pellet stoves and pellet fireplace inserts. Do you know what your heating load is (the amount of heat output required to keep your place at a steady temperature in worst-case conditions, which around here is -40C (or F; when it’s that cold, it doesn’t matter)? The linked pellet stoves are described as around “30 000 to 45 000 BTU” (I think they mean BTU/hour; that’s what the linked brochures say. 1000 BTU/h = 293W)

4

About the only problems I’ve heard with the wood pellet stoves is a supply problem with the pellets. Seems in recent years they couldn’t keep up with demand, don’t know if this has been corrected or not. I highly recommend that you pose this question over at the Mother Earth News forums, as you’re likely to get not only answers on this question, but also answers from folks who live in the same area as your father, and might be able to point you to suppliers, but also to things that might work better.

5

Funny you should mention M.E. – their last issue has a feature on “how to heat your house for free”. I haven’t gotten around to reading it yet, but now I have a reason. I’ll glance at it and report back later.

My wife and I moved to Central WA last year. Heated the (approximately 1000 sq. ft.) house exclusively using the wood stove. We’ve gone through about 4 cords of wood, keeping the temperature between 72-78 the entire winter. We’re rather fortunate, as the wood didn’t cost us anything – we hauled the after-effects of my wife’s employer’s land management for the cost of a couple tankfuls of gas.

Oh, if a wood stove of any sort is in use, you might want to get one of these self powered fans to move the air. Gotta love the Peltier/Seebeck effect…

6

It turns out that the article wasn’t in the actual magazine, but rather in the supplemental “Mother Earth News Homes” that accompanied it. Turns out that it’s focus is exclusively on solar heating. Specifically, it concerns building a small, separate shed and piping hot water into the house to a radiant heating system.

Ugh. Billed as “Solar Heating Plan for any Home”, it seems to me that in many/most cases, it would require major construction. So, unless anyone requests a synopsis, I’ll just apologize for going off on a tangent and drop it.

7

I would go with a new duel system. One stage being wood if you can get a reliable supply, and the other a gas or oil fuel. This means your not tied down to being home in the winter within a certain time. A zone controlled heat system is nice to have. I’m going to bet well insulated is still not anywhere near what is considered so today. Also insulating settles and breaks down over time. A leak test can be done, by using a fan to pressurize the home and using a punk stick by windows, outlets and cracks. The smoke will go out the leak.

8

Well here’s another tangent: Have you considered a ground source heat pump? We have a vertical piping system installed in the backyard and it works quite nicely. Our house is about 3200 sq ft with 18 foot ceilings in 1/4 and 9-12 ft in the other 3/4. Almost the entire back side is windows, but laid out for solar heating in the winter and mostly shaded in the summer. Our electric bill averages about $225/month over the entire year (it was about $150 till they jacked up the rates last year), temp set at 67F in the winter and 75F in the summer. All of our appliances are electric, including 2 full size refrigerators, a freezer, water heater, well pump and outdoor hot tub just so you get an idea of the entire electric load.

It would cost several thousand dollars to install, but it’s clean and you don’t need to be hauling pellets all the time. For 7000 dollars in oil it would probably pay for itself in 2-3 years.

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I’ve been starting research on pellet stoves, turns out we have a few options available for the house, we could use a freestanding stove in the sunroom, or a fireplace insert for one of our three fireplaces, yes, the house has three two-sided fireplaces, one in the kitchen/artroom, one in the TV room/living room, and one in the dining room/Dad’s study

Come to think of it, with three fireplaces, and a conventional woodstove, is there any logical reason to burn $7K worth of oil?

the research continues, I’m going to stop off at a local woodstove retailer for more information

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Fireplaces send warm room air up the chimney. So do wood stoves although not as much thanks to Mr. Franklin.

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Some random thoughts.I don’t know your location,but a traditional heat pump and wood stove combo work very well in the NE U.S. Groundsource was still theoretical at time of my construction, but Sinjin has very good points.
H.S.Tarm is one maker of duel fuel woodstoves ( propane/natural gas or oil ) who offer water jacket and efficient design.

12

My friend who just had the home energy audit is looking at a new oil furnace with integrated water-heating assist. Combine that with solar water-heating assist for the summer and he may be able to cut wate-heating electricity use way down. But the first thing he’s doing is plugging all the damn leaks in the walls.

This is why you provide a separate inlet for combustion air, and use an insert to seal the thing off.

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Is that difficult for an existing fireplace? I guess it’s not more than glass doors and a vent to the outside, come to think of it.

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I was going to suggest geothermal.
A couple of years of $7K heating bills would go a long wat towards installing a system.

15

My 40 year old oil furnace is about ready to retire permanently. I just got an estimate for replacing it with a propane unit. The supplier said my 60% efficiency would go up to 90% plus using propane instead of oil would result in about 35% less fuel cost overall (for the same heat value).

New furnace, installed: $3500 plus an outside propane tank, installation of the tank and connecting lines. I figure it would pay for itself in about 4 years.

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I’m paying $3.00 a gallon for propane. How about you?

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I don’t know the local price, as I haven’t purchased any propane yet. Gotta get the furnace in first!

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My subtle point being that it follows the price of gasoline. I presume heating oil increases at the same rate, but you may want to ask around.

19 
      Northeast.Volume dependent- 100# tank @ 80% fill,about $4.00/gal

      500#, just over two bucks.