Gas and Oil Home Heating Furnaces - A tough one

Thats what 2 contractors I have called out have said.
I live in upstate NY on a tall hill thus -10 with 40MPH winds happen more often than I would like. It is a 16 year old house, with a 12 year old ground water heat pump with electric auxialliary heat and a 120 gallon electric water heater. Prev. owners feb Electric bill was about $1000. :eek:
It seems the heat pump is woefully undersized (I think it is a 5 ton unit for a 4000 sq ft house with almost 900 sq ft of double pane glass circa 1988).

I suspect that if the aux heat was not electric I could much more efficiently heat my house. I don't have natural gas and lp gas is pretty expensive around here (about 1.5 times more than oil per btu) so I am trying to find a way to get oil to provide the aux. heat and hopefully hot water too.

What makes life tough is that there is no chimney access in the basement utility room and the outside walls are about 20 ft. away through a crawl space that is only about 3.5 ft high. One contractor was suggesting an Weil Mclain Ultra "boiler" that could be pvc ducted out to the side but this is lp and well that is 1.5x operating costs. I have not found any oil boilers than can be ducted that far and am wondering if there are any that are short enough to sit in the crawl space over near one of the walls so that it can be direct vented. To complete the idea, I want to use this boiler water to run through a heat exchanger that sits in the duct on top of my heat pump to provide my auxialliary heat (hopefully I can get the signal from the thermostat that is currently going to the electric aux (WHICH I WANT UNPLUGGED) to control the boiler).

Of course if I can get hot water out the beast (either from "tankless" mode or from an indirect ) it would allow me to retire the other beast that only an electric utility company could love. I have installed a water softener and so I should not have a scale problem anymore (I hope).

I am open to advice/experiences of the web and hopeful that someone can point me to warmer days (and nights).

Only thing I can think of is putting the boiler in the garage or another room that you could give up in the basement, and then pipe the water supply line to the are where the air handler is at???

Also, do you use set back on your set up? If you do.. DO NOT use set back.. Set it and forget it.

Do you know often the aux is kicking in vs the heat pump itself?

You know if some one by 'mistake' put in a sensor control, that it is set too warm that it turns off the pump?

I'm not sure of the max vent length on a Tjernlund Side Shot. I'm not fond of power venting but sometimes, you have to do what you have to do. Do not try to vent on the windward side of the house. www.tjernlund.com/oilsidewall.htm

Good luck

I think that you are tring too many different fuels.

I assume that this is on a closed loop system.
What I would try to do is split the central system up and have two or three heatpump systems. Then tie them into the loop.

Well I have created a mess here haven't I. Thanks very much to those that replied even though my question was probably better suited to the boiler group that I just found.
Anyway, I will reply to those kind enough to offer advice here and in the heat pump thread in my post below and try to move over to the appropriate group. If you are wondering what I am replying to, you may have to look at the heat pump group if the person did not reply in this thread as well as there.

Jay: Yes I have been cheating by dropping the thermostat back at night and while we are gone for 10 hours of the day. I know heat pumps don't like this and I have been using the gas fireplace (see below) to boost the temperature but perhaps I should try your suggestion of leaving it fixed. When it is cold (< -5), the aux light is on anytime the gas fireplace is not running...I only run the gas fireplace while I am awake and here so that means most mornings I wake up to find the aux light on and it has probably been on for hours as the heat pump is apparently unable to hold 65 degrees. I will watch next time to see if the heat pump is cycling off with the aux on (I think mythermostat tells me when the heat pump is on and if it doesn't opening my ears usually tells me as the compressor is not quiet). My impression is that the heat pump is almost always on so I don't think I have the sensor problem.



Grady: Thanks for the headsup on that. Will investigate if powerventing (the last resort) is required.




Ed: Yes I have done the math. That is where I come up with LP being 1.5x oil in my region. When my heatpump is functioning with a COP=3 it beats oil by about 1.4x but when that aux light comes on COP goes to 1 the tables turn and I am writing checks to the utility company that I don't like. It seems to me that LP just barely beats resistance electric and not by enough to justify several thousand investment. As for digging out, I misled you. I call it a crawlspace because being 6'4" I have to crawl but it is in fact a concrete slab. The water heater has heat exchanger and that helps a lot in the summer but I don't think I have the excess capacity in the coldest months to share and so I have it turned off for now. Is this what you were asking?
I did look at the DXGEO site you pointed me to once before and I did not find residential info on the site. Do I need to call them to get info? How is it different than ground water?

redjed: kind of doing that now as I am running my ventless logs with the damper shut and a large air filtration unit running as close as it can get without melting. This was to required to keep the soot managable. This also moves enough air across the mantel that it does not get TOO hot though it is hotter than I would like. They are ventless logs but yes they still produce soot. I suppose if I went to true blue flames that would improve. This is not a long term strategy but a stop gap and yes I have the CO alarm nearby just in case the OD circuit does not do its job.


scottg. Doing that already...sortof. There is a second zone unit of unknow tonnage that services my second floor. Sadly the system pumps the "hot" fluid up to my attic space where the blower sits ABOVE the insulation. Even though I have insulated ducts between the long run of the refrigerant and the extremely cold attic this guy blows about 85 degree air that may warm the room from 65 but not exactly comfortable or efficient.

It is a closed loop and the company that installed it now thinks it is insufficient. After a couple of days at -10, I do develop frost on the outgoing line. After a couple more I get frost on the incoming line as well (e.g. I have frozen the ground outside of my loop with my glycol lines). It still functions here but you know my COP is dropping like a rock at this point. The company is reviewing their records (I have only been in the house a month and the previous owner left me little) to try to find out more about the loop design and see if there is an opportunity to improve it with a reasonable price tag. For the record I do get low pressure failures from time to time as well on the main unit.