Home Heating Electric vs Propane (Lewes, Milton: 2014, condos, houses)

[wvs820]

Hi Everyone,

I have never been a fan of electric cooking and electric heat. Where we live oil and gas are the preferred ways for heating and cooking. As we are getting closer to buying our home in Delaware the general consensus between the developers is going with electric heating and cooking. Gas is an option for us but we are confused now as to which option is really more economical. Should we go with Electric or Gas ? Thank you.

[Parnassia]

Too many unknowns and variables to give you an answer. There are various heating cost comparison tools available. Here's just one that might give you an idea how to approach it considering your specific house:

https://www.remodelingcalculator.org...ts-calculator/

Obviously, you'll want to compare the local delivered cost of gas, oil, and electric. Those costs aren't fixed. What might be "more economical" for one or more years might not be later. You wrote that "gas is an option", but your thread title stated propane. If natural gas isn't available, you're looking at propane but you need to incorporate tank placement (clearances, service and filling) into the property design.

Another approach to consider. Just because the house is heated by electricity doesn't mean you must cook with it. You could run a propane stove off a tank. I've lived in several houses that ran the dryer and stove off propane while the house itself was heated by an oil fired boiler.

[rothbear]

I can tell you what we did. We don't have natural gas in our community, only propane. Hubby is a geologist and he absolutely did not want propane for heating due to cost and availability. We ended up getting an electric heat pump for heating and have been happy with that.....well except for the fact that the one that the builder put in was a piece of junk. We upgraded to Carrier and it has been great. We have propane run into the house, but we only use it for hot water, but we also had a 220 line run into the house for electric hot water and I can't wait until this tank dies so we can go to electric. It is costing us $38-45 per month for propane just to heat our water, and there is only 2 of us! Ridiculous!! During the winter our total electric bill including heating runs about $150-200/month depending on how cold it is, where our neighbors who have propane are paying $350 and up per month just for the propane. Then they have their electric on top of that.

One other thing you might consider is for cooking. I have used smooth top electric since we were married, 48 years this year. I was actually considering going to gas but really didn't want propane. Then I discovered induction. I chose a Fridgidaire full stove (not a cooktop) with an induction top and convention oven. I absolutely love the induction as it controls like gas but it is a smooth top.....the best of both worlds. Yes you need pans that work with magnetics, anything with steel bottoms, but they are getting easier to find and I already had a set that worked fine.

[Mary2014]

OP,
To give you an example of how propane vs electric can vary for an individual home -

In my previous home I had a water heater 50 gallon tank located in an unheated basement - it was electric and accounted for $35 of my electric costs every month.

I moved into a condo with an on demand tankless water heater located in a heated area of my condo - which ran on propane. I used just less than 3 gallons every 2 months. The propane is metered to each condo unit from one underground tank. One "click" advanced on the meter equals 2.84 gallons. My monthly cost for propane for hot water is about $3.50 per month. I was so surprised at the cost savings of having propane to heat my water.

Of course that savings involved several factors - the tankless water heater, located in a heated space made a huge difference.

I bought a 15 year old condo and immediately updated the heating system to a duel fuel hybrid system. The furnace runs on electric heat pump with outside temperatures above 40 degrees. Below 40 degrees it automatically switches to propane.

When heat pumps have to operate below 40 degrees electric can get very expensive. Propane costs vary from week to week. It is metered to our condos - so we can't "fill up" the tank before winter - the cost is whatever the rate is at the time they do the monthly billing. Our condo association has one supplier and they give us a small discount off the monthly retail propane costs.

Which brings up another point about propane. Who owns the tank being installed in a new development? It may be owned by the supplier and you are required to use that supplier to buy your propane and they can charge you whatever they like. So, you may want to ask who has ownership of the tank - you, or the supplier who installs the tank and does the hookup.

There are a lot of factors that go into which is more cost effective electric or propane - and if you have cathedral ceilings the cost to heat and cool your home goes to a whole new level.

[nuts2uiam]

I will advise that as Mary alluded to, if you are buying into a new development and you want propane of any amount - you should buy the tank immediately. We had only a propane fireplace so or bills were never huge. That said the tank was a hundred gallons. We were paying through the nose because we were a low volume user and they owned the tank. Literally over $2.50 more than others were paying. So we bit the bullet and bought a tank with a new company. They had to dig up the tank and put a new one in and the original company had to pick it up. I think we had to pay $150 for the pick up. Fast forward, we bought a gas stove and the B-B-Que is all connected to it now. Even with the recent increase in price we are still paying $2 less per gallon. If you own the tank you can shop for propane, if they own it, only they can fill it. It is like dealing with the mob. We ahve more than made up the price of the tank and install.

[Seaponies]

To second what Rothbear and Mary2014 stated, I found propane to be outrageously expensive in Delaware. I had my own tank for heat and hot water and it was just too expensive. I would never get my own tank again because you are at the whim of when the propane company can get out to you for refill. If you had to have propane than a community propane is probably the way to go. I would also try not to use propane for heating my home. Instead I purchased infrared portable fireplaces. They cost $150-$300 each and I place them in rooms. Instead of turning on the central heating, I just turn on the individual fireplace, be it for the bedroom, bathroom, living room, etc when I need it. It costs about $0.25 per hour to run the infrared fireplace. Much cheaper for me than using propane. Mary2014's idea of the tankless water heater is great too.

[rothbear]

As far as tanks go, it all depends on the community. Here we are not allowed individual propane tanks. There are several huge tanks buried in the community and everyone hooks up to them, so we have no choice.....we are stuck, which is why I want to be done with it. We had a heat pump in our western PA home with oil backup. We went from filling up a 200 gal. oil tank twice a year (pre-heat pump) to only using about 25% of that in a year. But then that was snowy, cold western PA. This one we have has electric forced air back-up and it rarely comes on. Newer heat pumps are much better than they used to be in colder weather and here in DE we don't get the kind of cold that causes problems. Of course it is also variable on how hot you want it. We keep it 70 during the day and 68 at night in the winter.

That being said, it's you who has to make the final decision according to where you are purchasing and what you are comfortable with.

[NYCresident2014]

I'll just chime in to say that another option is to use a heat pump as the sole source of heat. Recent advances in heat pump technology allow the heat pump to stay in "heat pump mode" all the way down to -25F. I use this system to heat my home in NY state; no resistance strips/backup strips, and no fossil fuels of any kind on the property for heating.

My heating costs are lower now even in the coldest months than my heating costs were were back when heating oil was $2.10 per gallon; oil is almost $3/gal now so the savings are even bigger now.

I use "mini splits", but that doesn't mean wall units- I have both ducted and ductless. You just need to make sure it's an "ultra low ambient" model. Some heat down only to 5F, but you need the ones that go all the way to -25F. It's about the amount of heat it puts out at 0F that matters, not just presence or absence of heat, and the -25F models put out more heat at single digits than the less efficient units.

A perk is that they cost very, very little to run as air conditioners because they are extremely efficient. We're talking 22 SEER or more. So you get to reduce your heating bills and reduce your cooling bills. The systems weren't very expensive either; raw equipment was $6k to heat my 2600 sq. ft. house. Probably $20k all-in installed (though I did it myself so my cost was only around $7k all-in).

[wvs820]

This is all great information thank you. We have a short list of 3 communities DR Horton Burtons Pond Lewes,Capstone Captains Way and Vines of Sand Hill Milton. Maybe Insight Homes. I know technology has come a long way with heating and cooling. Will keep you posted thank you again