Until I moved to Washington 13 years ago, I always had piped-in natural gas. Here, I have a 125 gallon propane tank that feeds the gas furnace in the living room. Neighbours a couple hundred feet away have natural gas. My street is between two gas mains. But Cascade Gas won’t pipe the street. A few years ago, someone put together a plan to get gas. It fell apart because Cascade Gas insisted their own contractors dig the trenches – at a much higher cost than the contractor found by the organiser. Bastards!
This morning the house was just a little chilly. I’d turned the heat down to 60º before I went to bed, but it seemed colder. I turned the thermostat up, and… nothing. It’s been a month since the tank was filled. December has been pretty cold, and Mrs. L.A. turns the thermostat up to 70º or more. And she leaves the heater on all night. Sure enough, when I checked the tank, the gauge showed zero.
I started a fire in the wood stove insert, and it’s been toasty. About a half an hour ago, the gas man came and filled the tank. They fill to 80%. So almost 100 gallons, and $169. He even lit the pilot light on the furnace, which sometimes gives me trouble.
So we have gas, and I assume we’re not going to run out between fill-ups. But man, I wish we had piped in gas.
I’ve been told Propane is more expensive than natural gas.
A friend has propane. His kitchen stove use it. But he primarily heats with wood pellets. Comes in a 40 lb bag. A efficient wood pellet stove can heat several rooms.
Per standard volume. $/energy has always been greater for propane everywhere I’ve lived. But fuel prices vary by region, especially for propane. EIA has price information if anyone is curious about their particular area.
Click on the + signs to get the state prices. You can see propane prices currently range from $1.10/gallon in Iowa to $4.76 in Florida.
On the other hand prices for heating oil are much closer together: ranging from $1.99/gallon in Iowa to $2.84 in New York (and $3.32 in the District of Columbia–but only 2% of the D.C. population uses it)
But few people worry about running out of propane (like what happened to the OP). Instead the route man regularly checks it and refills when it gets down to 30%-40% or so full.
I have propane and my GF (who lives a half-block away) has Natural Gas.
She pays a fixed cost of $15/mo (Called a Customer Charge) for the Natural Gas.
When that cost is included, I am generally paying less for my heat than she is. But I also keep the house 5-6 degrees cooler than she does in the Winter.
I have 250 gallon tank, which I filled up last March, and it will be filled up next month. I am hoping that is the only time I fill it this winter.
I live 6 miles out of town. Town has natural gas. Everyone out of town has propane. There’s a high pressure gas pipeline that runs about 1/2 mile from my house, but I have a 250 gallon tank for my cook stove and stand by generator. I fill about every 8 months or less.
In my last house I installed geo. As a consequence my only natural gas consumption was the cook top and the dryer, which cost about $2 per month versus the $12 customer charge. Damned if I didn’t consider trying to convert them to propane!
I may consider geo in the current house, but the yard is really, really small and I worry about the price of a vertical loop field.
WOW what a cheap price for a tank of LP. I hate LP. Was always too expensive to fill the tank. Prices have come down…we have natural gas now. Lots easier on the wallet. No upfront costs!
We got some info from the natural gas company in our area awhile back saying they’d be willing to run lines in our neighborhood, but only if EVERYONE who already had LP was willing to switch. That didn’t happen, so no natural gas in our neighborhood yet.
That said, LP is fairly expensive here. A few years ago, we put in a new dual-fuel unit that uses electric for AC and which we can set to switch from electric to LP based on the outside temp for heat. That and some mild winters have saved us a ton of cash on LP. It’s more than paid for itself by now. We use LP for central heat, our stove and the fireplace.
The LP fireplace did save our bacon a few years after we moved here and we had a bad ice storm. The electricity was out for a week. The fireplace isn’t dependent on electric for ignition, so it heated our house until the power came on again.
Natural gas is probably cheaper in part because of the lines. Propane is trucked, which adds to the price. If they shipped NG by truck, it would probably not be price-competitive with propane.
curmudgeon here. Propane for $1.69 a gallon is not a terrible price. Wholesale to the delivery people is around 60-65 cents per gallon, and, sadly, they sometimes try to gouge customers because (1) they don’t know any better, so are willing to pay up to $4.00 a gallon, and (2) they rent you a tank that no one else can fill. If you don’t use much fuel, maybe just for a grill and a gaslog, like us, the tank costs more than the propane over time. A local TV station here recently did a feature where the most interesting bit was that they discovered a propane business who would charge $4 per gallon, but if you complained, that price was cut to $3, and if you still were not happy, $2. They have an enormous margin and, I suspect, make lots of money.
Many folks take advantage of decent prices for 100# tanks and take them (upright) to a refilling station of their choice. But, still, you need to negotiate prices. If you pay the posted price, you are probably getting screwed. Many suppliers will give a discount if you press them.
Only by having a choice, like having a choice where to fill up your car with gasoline, will the prices become ‘reasonable’. Prices at refill stations right now should be around $1.50, maybe a little less. If you go to a home improvement store or grocery where they have tank exchange for 30 pound (5 gallon) tanks, you’ll generally pay $4 to $5 per gallon. If you take it to a refill station, you should be able to cut that in half.
I was wondering if I could call another propane company to fill the tank, if the one who rents me the tank isn’t available. Incidentally, the tank rental is about $45 per year.
It would be difficult to take my tank to a station to be filled. It’s 125 gallons, not 100 pounds. But speaking of that, I got a gas grill this Summer, and Mrs. L.A. bought a gas fire pit. The 20-pound (5 gallon) cylinders, filled to 90% (4.5 gallons), cost under $10 to fill at the hardware store. Maybe $2.20/gallon. The gas station charges $4.00/gallon for propane.
I suspect your big tank rental is that low because you use a lot of propane. We pay $75/year and haven’t used up all the contents in over 4 years. For me, the deal now is to use the contents, then have the tank removed…and to buy a 100# tank. I’m still able to handle that matter, physically, and it would be a decent savings.
If you rent a tank from a propane company you have to get it filled from that company. How much propane do you use in a year? I am thinking your best approach is to buy a 500 or 1000 gallon tank and get it filled once a year in the summer when prices are lowest (call around). Since generally tanks are filled to about 80% and should be refilled when they get down to 20% this gives a 300 gallon or 600 gallon usage respectively.
The tank rental is low compared to what you pay, but I’m sure the rate varies by region. I might be paying ~$45/mo. because that’s just the going rate here.
We don’t have room for anything larger than the 125 gallon tank. My grandparents had a tank about twice the size of the one on the propane truck (maybe bigger than that), but they had 40 acres. How much propane do we use in a year? Hard to say. Just guessing, we generally use the heater from November through February (we might use it some before and/or after those months), and 100 gallons lasts maybe six weeks. Or not, as has been seen. So a 500 gallon tank might do it, but there’s no place to put it.
But speaking of that, I got a gas grill this Summer, and Mrs. L.A. bought a gas fire pit. The 20-pound (5 gallon) cylinders, filled to 90% (4.5 gallons), cost under $10 to fill at the hardware store. Maybe $2.20/gallon. The gas station charges $4.00/gallon for propane.