More of a heating question

[Jerseydaze]

i have a customer renovating a small home and wants to know if electric baseboard with separate thermostats in each room would be cheeper to run then a new oil burning furnace with 1 zone ? Small 2 bedroom ranch

 

[infinity]

Given the electric rates in New Jersey I would guess no but then again oil isn't very cheap either. No option for natural gas?

 

[zbang]

Unless you know the cost of oil, the cost of electricity, and the conversion efficiency of the oil burner, it's at best a WAG.

Here's my WAG

From http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/energy-content-d_868.html:
1 gallon heating oil @ 139000BTU/gal = 40.7 KWH @ 3412 BTU/kwh

Electric baseboard heaters are 100% efficient
For discussion, call an oil heat system 80% efficient, so to get the same amount of heat as electric, 40KW = 1.25 gallons of oil.

Oil is around $4/gal (http://www.eia.gov/petroleum/heatingoilpropane/), which works out to about $0.13/KWH. If electricity is cheaper than that, it'll cost less to operate. Likewise, since you probably have separate thermostats for different rooms, you can play with the settings and potentially save more.

 

[gadfly56]

Unless you know the cost of oil, the cost of electricity, and the conversion efficiency of the oil burner, it's at best a WAG.

Here's my WAG

From http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/energy-content-d_868.html:
1 gallon heating oil @ 139000BTU/gal = 40.7 KWH @ 3412 BTU/kwh

Electric baseboard heaters are 100% efficient
For discussion, call an oil heat system 80% efficient, so to get the same amount of heat as electric, 40KW = 1.25 gallons of oil.

Oil is around $4/gal (http://www.eia.gov/petroleum/heatingoilpropane/), which works out to about $0.13/KWH. If electricity is cheaper than that, it'll cost less to operate. Likewise, since you probably have separate thermostats for different rooms, you can play with the settings and potentially save more.

Nice back-of-the-envelope calculation! Based on that, it's going to be better to go with oil, since $0.13/kWh is just the product charge for most of NJ, not including the delivery portion.

 

[zbang]

Thanks. BTW, propane is about 91k BTU/gallon, or about 26.6 KWH and around $2.50/gal, if you want to figure that in. A decent gas furnace should be at least 85% efficient.

 

[don_resqcapt19]

Nice back-of-the-envelope calculation! Based on that, it's going to be better to go with oil, since $0.13/kWh is just the product charge for most of NJ, not including the delivery portion.

Wow!! We are at 4.369 for the power and another five cents for the distribution charges.

 

[infinity]

Wow!! We are at 4.369 for the power and another five cents for the distribution charges.

Basically you don't want to heat anything with electricity in New Jersey. This is from my most recent bill:

Distribution Charge= $.03993/KWH
Transmission Charge=$.01209/KWH
Basic Generation Charge=$.1156/KWH
Plus miscellaneous other charges, taxes and surcharges that add another ~10% on top of everything else.

 

[zbang]

One thing I didn't take into account is installation and maintenance cost. Electric baseboard heaters aren't that expensive to install (only need mounting and wiring) and have effectively no maintenance cost. Oil needs other things, like a tank, and also the occasional care and cleaning. If the energy costs in a given area are close, that may tip the balance.

Demonstration of the preceding is left to the student as an exercise.

 

[GoldDigger]

... that may tip the balance.

Demonstration of the preceding is left to the student as an exercise.

Next exercise:

Consider that baseboard will not require forced air and will also help prevent draft effects by running directly under windows and cold spots if you put them on exterior walls. But they also limit furniture placement is a way that forced air does not.
If you are considering fluid-based oil heating, the complexity takes a large jump upward.

 

[__dan]

No furnace, nothing forced air.

Electric baseboard (backup) with a high quality pellet stove would be my first guess. Electric heat pump for DHW. If the customer wants to spend 10 grand more and take the next step up, I would be looking at a Froling P4 pellet boiler for heat and DHW (that's if my only choices were oil, propane, and electric).

You may be able to cut your heat loss from 30 btus/sf to 15 btus/sf with a hardcore exterior renovation. Wrap the building with 2" rigid foam board exterior with new siding, new Andersen 400 windows, new roof, new flashing, inside attic, basement insulation. Pretty much every house I would look at needs that.

 

[gadfly56]

No furnace, nothing forced air.

Electric baseboard (backup) with a high quality pellet stove would be my first guess. Electric heat pump for DHW. If the customer wants to spend 10 grand more and take the next step up, I would be looking at a Froling P4 pellet boiler for heat and DHW (that's if my only choices were oil, propane, and electric).

You may be able to cut your heat loss from 30 btus/sf to 15 btus/sf with a hardcore exterior renovation. Wrap the building with 2" rigid foam board exterior with new siding, new Andersen 400 windows, new roof, new flashing, inside attic, basement insulation. Pretty much every house I would look at needs that.

If you're an efficiency junkie you might implement everything in your last paragraph in NJ for about $20,000. Based on my last house, built in ~1929 in NJ and the current price of fuel oil, that's 20 years of home heating. As an engineer, I appreciate the allure of doing the most with the least, but a 20-year payback is a little too steep to indulge that inclination. New construction, maybe a different story.

 

[kwired]

Next exercise:

Consider that baseboard will not require forced air and will also help prevent draft effects by running directly under windows and cold spots if you put them on exterior walls. But they also limit furniture placement is a way that forced air does not.
If you are considering fluid-based oil heating, the complexity takes a large jump upward.

Then also consider if you are going to have additional ducting and air handler for a cooling system - that same ducting could be shared by a heating system making heating and cooling more of a single system instead of two systems.

 

[__dan]

If you're an efficiency junkie you might implement everything in your last paragraph in NJ for about $20,000. Based on my last house, built in ~1929 in NJ and the current price of fuel oil, that's 20 years of home heating. As an engineer, I appreciate the allure of doing the most with the least, but a 20-year payback is a little too steep to indulge that inclination. New construction, maybe a different story.

It's been ten years since I built my house that way, material prices are up a lot. Materials only, I would SWAG the window package at 10, siding and flashing materials at 8, the 2" rigid foam board could be $1/sf at 8., roofing at 4, that's 30 grand for (best, premium) materials, and when I say the house needs insulated siding, windows, roofing, and a boiler, the budget figure I throw out is 60 to 80 grand.

And I certainly agree, the job would be a tough sell at 20. That standard is priced over what the market wants to pay, but I've never been able to see building cheap, where the market price is. The design lifetime is 25 years, the payback time would have to be 3 to 5 years, but the same original homes are still standing 50 years later with the new owners paying the second or third 30 year mortgage the house has seen since its build date.

I could see the conventional way of doing things but find it's easier just to look at my shoes.

I put in the Froling FHG-L cordwood boiler and love it. I'm burning a 2 gallon pail of twigs to make DHW this summer. Boiler was 9.5 on sale, accessory, trim materials, and chimney almost 5. Job is 25 G's installed. Unsaleable at that price and that's why people think they're doing great burning 500 gallons oil annually at $2000., number wise, compared to taking out another note for 20 to 40 grand more (without even talking about the interior freshen up).

The new high end pellet boilers are one of my top recommendations for people who do not have gas, to get off oil.