Gas and Oil Home Heating Furnaces - New Oil furnace or.....

Hey There All

I've often been a poster here when my oil furnace is on the fritz.

Last year Grady told me that my furnace was on borrowed time. http://forum.doityourself.com/showthread.php?t=342801

That is not the furnace I thought it was, it's worse. Your furnace was made by Ducane & sold under at least a dozen different brand names. It is rare indeed that I come across one that is not cracked. The fact yours has an AFG, tells me it is one of the "newer" ones so you MAY have a few years left in it but I wouldn't want to put money on it. I strongly suggest you contact a reputable service company to do a complete cleaning & inspection. Don't be shocked if they tell you the furnace is ka-put.


I'm from the Phila PA area so my winters get pretty cold. I'm planning on a new furnace in the next few weeks.

I'm wondering if \ why I should purchase a replacement oil furnace as opposed to an elec heat pump or ? .

Now I know the heat pump isn't as efficient when the temp goes below 30* or 20*F.... However I don't think its too smart of me to budget $4000 or $5000 (250 gals * $4 per gal * 4 fillups) for oil this winter.


Natural gas is not an option as I don't have a feeder pipe on the street.

Thx for any ideas \ options.

dizzy

a bit more info in a new post since I can not edit my first post.

I have a 4 level split level house , about 2300 sq ft.

I have heating duct's that blow the forced hot air from the AFG burner. The whole house is on one zone.

In a few of the rooms I have separate electric baseboard heaters.

Thanks for any advise.

I know the price of oil is crazy but I think a heat pump would eat your wallet for lunch. A thousand gallons is a lot of oil & a lot of heat.
Just FYI: 1,000 gal. x 140,000 btu/gal = 140 Million btu. 140M x 75% efficiency = 105M btu of heat into the house.
In an "average" year for Philly (last year was warmer than average), there are 4746 heating degree days. Last year was something like 4280. This seems like a lot of oil considering the lack of cold weather.

I don't know if anyone makes a two stage oil fired furnace in a horizontal configuration or not. Your best bet would be to contact Thermo-Pride at http://www.thermopride.com/feedbacknew2.cfm

If anyone makes such a furnace, Thermo-Pride would most likely be the one. EXCELLENT equipment but certainly not cheap.

Hey Grady,

As always I really appreciate your help. :beers:

So let me know if this makes a dollars and cents difference...

Peco, my elec co, offers a discount from Oct 1st to May 1st (7 mos per year). Generation fees for the 1st 600 KWH of $.065 any KWH's over 600 is $.027. KWH cost me $.148 ea so generation fees are just under half the total cost per KWH.

All of my heat would be on the $.027 rate since my bill is way over 600 KWH every month already.

Would the discounted rate change your mind any??

Thanks again!

Consider something else in your math: Obama indicated that there would be much more pressure on any coal-fired utilities in his regime. If that truly comes to pass, your rates from Peco could go way up in future years either from their own generation costs, or the purchase cost form other generators. I just went through this analysis in New England and decided to stick with pure oil heat.

Dang it my crystal ball just stays fuzzy on the future price of energy. Lately the stinking thing has been fuzzy period.Beer 4U2

The first thing you need to do is run a manual J heat loss calculation. After that we can look into equipment.

If you are going to stay there long term, I wonder if it would be worth installing hot water baseboard? One super nice feature of hydronic heat is the ability to have as many zones as you want.

I am going to be staying here a long time, unless I hit the Powerball, which I doubt..

What do you think about Ground Source Heat Pumps?

They are far superior to simple air to air but can you get permission for the wells in Philly?

I live in Bucks County which is just North of Philly, not in Phila proper. I also spoke with my local code officer and he said it was no prob, there were GSHP's installed in the Twp and that they would issue one permit per well to be drilled. I see the ground source pumps are superior to conventional systems in their efficiency ratings like 30 EER. What about the reliability, should I expect compressor failures, controller failures etc? Thanks Very Much.

I'm not understanding why a regular heat pump is a bad idea for this poster? Even at $0.14/kWh, he saves a ton of money down to at least 20 degrees. If he really does get that enormous rate break at 600 kWh, he would be saving hundreds of $$ a year. Go here to calculate your potential cost per therm using both oil and a heat pump.

Warmair.com - Fuel Cost Comparisons (http://www.warmair.com/html/fuel_cost_comparisons.htm)

Make sure to enter the proper efficiencies for the equipment you would buy and also keep in mind that a quality heat pump will have a COP of 2.5 or better down to 15 degrees.

Consider something else in your math: Obama indicated that there would be much more pressure on any coal-fired utilities in his regime. If that truly comes to pass, your rates from Peco could go way up in future years either from their own generation costs, or the purchase cost form other generators. I just went through this analysis in New England and decided to stick with pure oil heat.

I'm sure I am probably wrong, but what I read said Obama would make it incredibly outrageous to "build" new fossil fuel power plants. I haven't seen anything about making existing plants more expensive to operate. If he did that, he would be trying to financially stress 90% of his constituency. I'm no Obama fan, but I don't think even he is that naive.

One thing you want to stay away from is a once thru or as they are called in the trade "pump & dump" system. For sure go with a closed loop. Be sure also to use a contractor well (no pun intended) versed & experienced in GSHP systems. As I recall, you are heating 4 levels. Some GSHP's are varialble speed (variable flow) based on load. With a system like that you could zone if you chose to.