Hi experts

I am getting my 1950's hot water boiler replaced this spring. Currently it uses diesel oil for fuel.

When I get my boiler replaced I have the option of using oil or natural gas.

There is already natural gas in the house since I use it for my hot water heater. My oil tank is new (2005) so if I stick with oil I would not need a new tank.

I like that oil is prepaid (you buy it then you use it) but my last bill was around $580. and the tank lasted about 6 weeks. However gas bills are more spread out throughout the year, but I have heard that it ends up being more.

Which option would be most likely to have the lowest overall heating bills every year? Opinions?

 

Natural gas is the way to go. It is cheaper than oil in most locations (per Btu) and is much simpler to burn. Many people that have only fuel oil available would love to be able to switch to natural gas.

I think most people would consider it an advantage to pay for their fuel after it is burned (gas) than before (oil). Many gas suppliers have a "budget" plan that allows you to pay a level monthy bill throughout the year. Best to start it just before the start of the heating season - otherwise, you are giving the gas company an interest-free loan.

You used $580 in oil over six months? Where do you live and what was the weather like? Depending on the size of your house, that may not be very unusual. For that price, you could could only stay about two nights in a Florida motel?
Doug

 

Sorry, for my typo - it's $580 in six weeks.
Doug

 

ME! ME! I HATE OIL! I hate the smell, I hate the look, I hate the extra maintenance on the boiler, I hate when my tank leaks and half my house is up on STILTS, and there's a 16' deep hole 30x40 in my front yard... and it goes into the street, and they have to build a temporary road across the front lawn to divert the traffic on my dead end road because they have to dig up the road...

but I do like fire... BLUE fire!

 

You can enjoy the ride when the gas leaks...Beer 4U2

 

Jeez... NJ probably had a much better chance of taking a ride to the bottom of that 400' hole they dug under his house taking out contaminated soil! LOL

 

Probably ought not hijack poor Avatars thread... but I think Who is referring to this:

 

Most commercial and small industrial boiler plants have the option of burning either gas or oil with minimum trouble. They almost ALWAYS opt to burn gas. Take your cue from that.

 

Thanks for all the great replies. Sorry about your house NJ Trooper... but... You have to admit you are a lot luckier than this guy:

(natural gas explosion image from Paragon Oil Company (888) 685-7250 News)

All other things being equal, i am one of those wierdos who would prefer to stay with oil. I know.... strange.

I know of exactly one family who switched from oil to gas. They say their heating bills doubled (on natural gas). This was a number of years ago, maybe 10. I realize oil has gone up since then. They had a forced air furnace.

My oil company offers a payment plan. Mine would be $240 a month. People who have forced air gas furnaces cannot believe how much I pay for heat. My parents have a larger house than me and pay about $70 a month for heat on their gas billing plan. Again, forced air gas.

I was hoping someone on here has experienced both oil and gas with a boiler and could tell me that one was cheaper than the other. I am looking to save money every month. That is basically my only question. Thanks for the responses... keep em coming.

 

Natural gas per gallon is cheaper than oil per gallon and has been for a long tome. But if I am not mistaken, it takes more natural gas per gal to equal the same BTUs in oil. With the high cost of oil right now, I would have no doubt that Nat gas in cheaper. Let's not forget that gas systems can be much more efficient than oil.
(please do not correct me on the terms. I just used gallons as a common figure, but I know there is some formula to convert therms to btu's as there are for gals to btus)

Proper sizing and installation of the heating system, along with proper insulation and heating methods will affect the cost of your heat.

Safety speaking, I feel oil is a little bit safer, but not by much. When you get a gas leak, and explosion, everyone hears about it, but when there is an oil leak or a house burns down from oil, it is not so media worthy.
Every major city in the country runs on natural gas and we dont hear of buildings just blowing off their foundations everyday. But if jus one house burns down from gas, it is televised all over.

I also feel that gas is usually cleaner and needs less yearly service work compared to oil.

I have used both oil and gas and really have no preference as to which is better than the other

 

here is a little something from the net just for some reading.

Sunday, March 16, 2008
Natural Gas vs Heating Oil
Every now and then people write to us at EnegyBible.com with questions which strike us as the kind of thing a lot of people might be asking themselves. When that happens we will talk about the question on this blog and add them to our FAQ. Here is the question we got this morning along with our response. We hope you find it informative:


The AFUE ratings indicated a higher efficiency for gas over oil. I am about to replace my boiler. Would switching to gas make sense: economically, environmentally?


Ric thanks for your message. You are asking a very common question and unfortunately it is not all that easy to answer. You are correct that many natural gas boilers have a higher AFUE rating then some oil boilers. However, it depends somewhat on what kind of oil boiler you are talking about. Some types of oil boilers, particularly condensing oil boilers, have AFUE ratings that are as high as for natural gas boilers. Therefore, in order to make a good decision you have to look at factors such as boiler maintenance and the price of fuel going forward. Most heating and cooling experts we have talked to feel that in general oil boilers require more frequent maintenance than natural gas boilers. We have found that for most homeowners it is very important to have good regular maintenance of their boiler for both efficiency and safety considerations. A properly maintained boiler is less costly in the long run. You might want to consider a boiler maintenance plan if your utility company provides this service, and most do. You can compare service plan costs from your utility company or companies for each type of fuel. If the maintenance costs are similar then this may not be a factor but we have found that in many cases natural gas maintenance plans are less costly.

Boilers last a long time so in our opinion we think the biggest economic difference over time is probably going to end up being the cost of fuel. Therefore in order to judge which is best you are left in the unfortunate position of having to prognosticate the difference in natural gas vs fuel oil prices for the next twenty years. If you were to look at it today the pendulum would swing strongly in favor of natural gas. Fuel oil prices shot up by 97% in 2007 as opposed to natural gas which rose about 11%. As we enter the era of post peak oil we think it is likely both natural gas and fuel oil will continue to increase in price. However, we believe the competition for oil resources will be greater than for natural gas and so it is likely that the proportional increase in fuel oil prices will be greater. This is however a best guess based on limited economic data so please take this observation with a large grain of salt.

From an environmental standpoint frankly both natural gas and fuel oil are bad for the environment. They both take trapped underground carbon and release it into the atmosphere which increases global warming. Both types of fuel add to air pollution and both disrupt the land when we drill for them. All in all when it comes to fuel oil versus natural gas it is a lose-lose proposition.

There are a couple of suggestions we would make since you are considering replacing your boiler. You did not specify whether or not your boiler was for water heating or home space heating. If it is the latter then we would also recommend that you put in a new thermostats at the same time you put in a new boiler. Modern digital thermostats can provide much greater control over how you use heating in your home and are very inexpensive considering the improvement they can make in your energy costs. If you are using the boiler only for hot water heating you might also want to consider going with a solar hot water heater. These types of water heaters have improved dramatically over the last twenty years and are an extremely effective way of reducing your energy costs. In addition they do absolutely no damage to the environment. Most systems cost between $4000 and $7000 and can pay for themselves in just a few years. In addition, many states now provide tax incentives and rebates for solar hot water heaters which can further reduce the cost.

That was our response to our reader's question. Let us know what you think!

 

Just my two cents.

Gas appliances are VERY part specific. You cant mix and match inducers, gas valves , ignitors, thermal sensors, puff switches, from one brand to another. So good luck getting a part over a long weekend. And its not just brand specific, its also model specific.

Compare that with oil burners are very similar. They consist of componnents that can be very interchangeable.

As someone who goes to your house in the middle of a very cold night, to repair some unit thats parts sit only on a factory shelve in Utica NY.

I vote oil.

 

They each have their advantages & disadvantages.
For operating cost (fuel & maint.) the edge probably goes to gas.
On the side of oil, your fuel supply for at least a month or more is self contained on site so a disruption in the supply wouldn't have any effect on you. If you have a problem with your supplier, for whatever reason you can change. You can even go to your corner mini mart & get a few day's supply in a couple of 5 gallon cans.

 

I must disagree with one part and that is the maintenance issue. the newer mod/con boilers also require annual service and the parts are more expensive than the older boilers.
Historically the cost of fuel oil has risen less than any other fuel type ever. If you compare the cost of fuel oil from the early sixties to just before the large spike it did not even match inflation. It was due to go up dramatically. Today most of the east coast the price of gas and oil are compatible.

 

Quite true about the mod cons. I wasn't thinking about them. Parts prices are crazy & as NHPlumber said often very specific to a particular model.

 

You may have a point in New Hampshire. But in my area, in fact almost the whole Midwest, and many other places where gas is available, virtually everybody uses natural gas (and the ones that don't, burn propane). I would hate to try to find somebody to service an oil-fired boiler here.

As far as repair parts is concerned, my gas-fired hot-water boiler has only two parts that could reasonably be expected to fail (or that have failed in 60 years): the fuel valve and the thermocouple. A replacement valve is less than $100 and a thermocouple less that $10. Either can be replaced by a proficient do-it-yourselfer, and I keep replacements on hand.

The circulator could conk out, but it's no different for an oil-fired boiler. And, I keep a spare circulator cartridge on hand, too: a 20-minute replacement job. I could always manually open the flow-control valve, and get some gravity circulation if I couldn't fix the pump.

If my boiler split wide open, then I would be out of heat for some time. But, again, no different than for an oil-fired boiler.

We also use natural gas for cooking, clothes drying, and water heating. I don't have a permanently installed backup electric generator, but everybody around here that does have a generator uses natural gas as the fuel.

Farmers here in the cornbelt use major quantities of natural gas for grain drying. And a few people use compressed natural gas in vehicles.

Natural-gas refrigerators are still sold, but I don't know of anybody that has one.
Doug

 

NG is almost half the price of oil here. With NG you can lock in the commodity portion of the price (roughly 2/3rds of the total cost) where with oil you cannot do any pricing contracts in this area. Gas price increase require approval, oil floats with the price of crude, except when crude is really cheap like right now, then the prices don't drop much.

With regular scheduled oil deliveries based on demand and with market prices that would rise and fall on a regular basis with the price of crude or the oil companies profits, I was consistently amazed that no matter which oil supplier I used, they managed to always deliver my oil when the price was at the highest level.

In the Toronto area, a house heated with oil reduces the resale value and the insurance companies along with the TSSA (safety standards) have become ultra strict on oil tanks; no underground tanks and they have to be replaced once before they hit a certain age.

If the gas piping is actually done properly, your house and the house on either side are quite safe. Beer 4U2

 

NG is clean and easy to get for some people. I also agree that gas systems are simple systems before mod/cons and some others just prior to them. In the mid west and beyond I would use nothing but NG or Lp. I would not jump ship due to price. One fuel cannot stay that much more than the other for any period of time. I can remember a couple of time periods when natural gas was a fair amount more than oil. They always seem to equalize. The newer oil systems require less maintenance and the newer gas system require more than they used to. IT'S A WASH as far as I'm concerned, unless it is a commercial building heating with steam.
I was talking to two different gas utilities last week, one in Baltimore and the other in Reading (Pa) and they both said here the cost of oil is about the same as NG. Other than about that 1-1.5 year period they usually run close in cost.
I heat with a heat pump and have an oil fired hot water heater. I heat the water on about 100 - 125 gallons a year. My house is in a housing development just on the outskirts of the capitol and the airport. We have no NG in our neighborhood. If we did would I switch to NG? Probably but my female oil driver is so cute in her summer outfit! He He!

 

oh, i forgot - i also have nat gas piped to my patio for my bbq grill
doug