Want a house...but also want gas heat, hard to come by?

[Elke Mariotti]

Originally Posted by HomeFinder15

If a gas line exists in the cross street and enough home owners are interested in converting, Keyspan will work with you to get that line brought down the block.

For an individual homeowner, National Grid will pay for the first 100 ft; the cost for each additional foot is currently $75 (as per National Grid).

However, if five or more homeowners on the same block elect to switch to gas, they are more "generous" with regard to what cost they will absorb - it all depends on how close the nearest Main is.

A call to National Grid's Sales Dept. will give you the details for any given address!

[LongIslandCitizen]

Many newer homes have gas heat. I have gas heat and central air and prefer it over oil. In my opinion oil is messy and a headache. I put them in the same catagory as cesspools. It's time Long Island caught up to the 21st century and started burying their utility lines, used city sewage and went to central heat and air.

[ocabrera7]

gas is cheaper because the US has ample supplies of natural gas and does not import the bulk of it. Oil on the other hand is in short supply (most of the time) and has to be importated from far away places that harbor terrorists. Oil is much more subject to speculation in the commodity market and is a dirtier fuel than natural has. I believe oil has a higher BTU output per comparable unit of natural gas but oil is more expensive anyway. Counter that with the fact that cooking with gas is the best and you never have to worry about your oil company 'owning you' or the prices sky rocketing like they did 2 yrs ago on pure speculation, not to mention having to have scheduled deliveries that sometimes do not materialize is way better in my opinion. Not to mention that oil tanks and lines rupture and cause severe environmental damage at the mitigational cost of the homeowner....Give me natural gas all day long. Yes, the disadvantage is the 'potential' for explosions with gas but that is usually error of the gas companies or user error (i.e. leaving the gas on) etc.....plus even so, the chance of that happening is very, very slim.

[ocabrera7]

and good point, no one is ever switched to oil from gas as far as I can tell...

[Lancet71]

You can do searches on mlsli.com and realtor.com I think one of them has an option for doing an advanced search(gas/oil).As far as cooking you can get the natural bottled gas that is delivered but you're probably only referring to gas on the same system.