Month: June 2008

Pellet stoves and other alternate forms of heat?

Our dilemma.  We live in this drafty old 1850’s farm house.  It needs windows, but it has 23 of them to replace so that’s not going to happen any time soon.  We have covered them in the past and that’s helped, that’s a lot cheaper than the cost of new windows for us right now.

When we moved in, the cost of heating oil was $.68 a gallon  (68 cents).  That’s what we paid the first time we put oil in.   It’s now hovering at $4.20 per gallon.

Last winter we used 750 gallons of heating oil.  It was a cold winter, but for crying out loud.

750 gallons at $.68 to $1.50 a gallon would be something we could live with (and did).

At $4 a gallon (or more) it’s not happening.   $3k to heat a home is crazy, so we’re looking at alternatives.

The top of the list is a pellet stove, something that can hook into our existing ductwork and take over the bulk of the heat. 

At current prices it looks like this could save us about 1/2 the cost.

I need someone with smarts in this area to check my math and if you have any insight please share it.

Based upon the BTU’s available in a Gallon of heating oil, and our usage, it looks like we’d burn approximately 7 tons of pellets.

At current prices ($240/ton) that would run us $1680 vs $3200 in oil.   The popularity of pellets means they may be hard to get (so I’ve heard).

I also don’t look forward to manually moving around 7 tons of pellets (or 750 40lb bags).   That seems like a LOT of work to me.  Would I pay someone $1000 to move that around?  I don’t know, but I do know I already hate moving (4) 40lb bags of softener salt into the basement each month.

A wood burning stove offers the same issues.  I don’t want to spend my free time cutting/chopping/splitting wood.

A stand alone unit is fine for an occasional fire but it isn’t going to heat our house.  It’s only going to make the room it’s in hotter than hell and the rest of the house cold.

So I’m looking for advice.   Corn isn’t cheap, in fact it’s up there with heating oil right now so I don’t think a corn burner is the way to go.

anyone?

First the air conditioning in the attic.   the PTAC unit is installed, and wired.  It’s working really well.  Because of the long dimensions of the attic and the fact that it’s probably not as insulated as it should be, we could probably use two of them.

That being said it’s a world of improvement, it’s actually very livable up there.  It is warmer on the opposite end but it’s manageable with fans and what not.

The unit is very quiet.  I’d highly recommend this over a window unit.  For what it gives you AC and Heat, it’s pretty economical too  ($700ish).

Just know this:  You’ll need the wall sleeve ($40) and the outside grill ($25) neither of those come with the unit.

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The kitchen is done, I need to take photos of that.  We’re still dealing with the stairs.  We ripped the carpet off, and painted them.  I then screwed up the installation of a stair runner.   We thought we could do it w/o tack strips and padding.  That’s not a good thing.

We’re considering painting a runnier or design on each stair step but I’m somewhat afraid of that.  The stairs are now pretty noisy without carpet.  And painting each one seems like the never ending project.

More as it unfolds.