With our 12-year-old boiler making scary noises in the basement, my wife and I are mulling over replacement options. We live in the Boston area, to give you an idea of the winter temperatures.
We currently use oil to heat our hot water – water that gets used both for appliances/showers, and for heating our 1900 sq. ft. house (baseboard hot water). Other than the ever-escalating price, I have no inherent aversion to oil heat, but we’re also considering electric and gas. The biggest cons for each, as near as I can tell are:
Oil: Stupidly expensive.
Gas: No lines currently running to our house; could explode; price rises along with oil.
Electric: Notoriously slow warm-up time, and possibly as expensive as oil given it would have to heat the whole house.
I’d prefer something simple – wacky options that would require major renovations to install aren’t really on the table. Also, we have a supplemental solar system, but I don’t know how much that matters. (Solar panels on the roof pre-heat some of the water, so the boiler has less work to do. Great in the summer, not as much good in the winter when the panels are covered with snow.)
I’m interested in collecting opinions from the collected Dopers here – any thoughts?
Gas: don’t worry about it exploding, as long as you have licensed people putting it in. The price is less vulnerable to overseas fluctuation because the US as a lot of natural gas. We have gas in our house and it seems both safe and efficient.
Another possibility is propane. You have to install a tank as well as piping, but it might be that buying in bulk would make it cheaper (I have no idea of the price of propane vs. natural gas).
Another possibility for either gas or propane is on-demand (tankless) water heating, as opposed to a tank water heater. This is supposed to save money, but I don’t know how it would work with baseboard hot water home heating. Maybe you already have on-demand water heating.
If you’re up for an investment (perhaps using a tax-deductible home equity loan), maybe it’s time to install solar panels and let the resulting electricity heat the water. Still slow, but it will greatly increase the value of your house immediately and even more down the road, and it will eventually pay for itself.
Roddy
Huh. Well, maybe it’s just the cold weather then. But we get much less benefit from the solar panels in the winter than in the summer, which seems logical on the face of it.
First question: Is there natural gas service in your neighborhood? It won’t do you any good to trench the yard and run a line to the street only to find there’s no gas main on your street.
If gas is available, it’s almost certainly going to be your best option. It’s always there, doesn’t need to be ordered and delivered, you’ll be able to reclaim the space occupied by your oil tank, and it’s cheaper than electricity.
Look into divorcing your domestic hot water entirely from the heating boiler, so you can shut down the heating system entirely during the summer. Your energy utility will probably have figures on what it costs to fire the whole boiler just for domestic hot water in the summer vs a regular tank-style or “standing” water heater, or a tankless heater. You may find it’s not worth the added installation costs to do this.
One caveat to tankless heaters is that they have some surprisingly substantial needs for gas supply and venting. It’s often challenging to replace a standard tank heater with a single whole house-sized tankless, but as this will be a whole system renovation, it can be planned in. If the house is big, you may find it’s better to install multiple smaller tankless units - one at the upstairs bathrooms, and one under the kitchen sink, for example.