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There's many factors at play when comparing. But First.. No, electric will be a TON of money to warm that house.
What size is your oil tank?
Do you guys like it warm or cool generally?
Do you have programmable T-Stats?
Are you conservative enough to shut off the heat each time you leave the room or house?
Do you take hot baths, use hot water for dishwasher, hot water for laundry, long hot showers?
All this plays a role in oil consumption.
My first year without a wood stove I spent $1600 on oil and I kept the 2500 sq ft house below 68 degrees. Some days it was near 60 inside.
Sister spends $400 a month (Nov,Dec,Jan,Feb) in bad winters on oil for a 1900 sq ft. She likes it hot.
The size of the oil tank is irrelevant when discussing the efficiency of the heat source. A bigger tank will cost more to fill, but you will fill it up less.
Our oil tank is 275 gallons. We have two programmable thermostats one upstairs and one downstairs. This is our first house, and we just moved in, so I am not so sure how well insulated it is. We haven't turned the heat on yet. We are comfortable with a temperature of around 70. The furnace has been recently replaced. We love hot showers, and we use hot water for dishes and laundry.
I am going to keep researching this.
Please share more cases, and maybe suggest a reliable method to do some calculations and see how much it would cost us with oil and with electric.
Thanks
Based on you not needing heat yet I have to assume you are well insulated. Even me with brand new windows, insulation, walls, and doors I needed to take the chill out of the air.
Well, with one tank you'll obviously fill more times than having 2 tanks, so expect to fill about every 5 weeks November-March this year. So budget about $3000 on oil for winter alone.
The thing about electric is, you dont want to walk around the house one room cold, another not.On the other hand, thats the way you can save with electric BUT, the units have to work harder to warm the air for that particular room.
So while numbers might not look far apart on paper, you will be using the electric baseboards more. In other words, they will have to stay on longer to get that heat you want in the room. This is why electric ALWAYS costs more..
Here's a nice comparison calculator, but again...be careful with numbers on paper. Fuel Comparison Calculator
I had a 3 level townhome 1100 sq ft. Electric baseboard. I only used heat in 4 of 7 rooms. Winter bills were over $275/mth. One day I forgot I left the basement heat on and the bill was near $400. Office, basement were about 58 degrees. Kitchen was low 60s. bedroom upper 60s at night, low 60s during day. Living Room Dining Room low 70s when home, low 60s when not. Dont get electric, you'll regret it.
See if Nat Gas is available.
Better yet... Get Solar Panels. Period. FREE ENERGY! And you can sell the energy you dont use back to the grid!
Our oil tank is 275 gallons. We have two programmable thermostats one upstairs and one downstairs. This is our first house, and we just moved in, so I am not so sure how well insulated it is. We haven't turned the heat on yet. We are comfortable with a temperature of around 70. The furnace has been recently replaced. We love hot showers, and we use hot water for dishes and laundry.
I am going to keep researching this.
Please share more cases, and maybe suggest a reliable method to do some calculations and see how much it would cost us with oil and with electric.
Thanks
You should just keep the oil furnace for this year and then make a decision. It doesn't make sense to me to replace an updated oil furnace without first seeing how efficient it is. Do you have oil baseboard right now? If so, would you be ripping them out?
How do you get your hot water? If your hot water is a byproduct of your heat furnace, then you are going to need to run your furnace all winter anyways (or buy a hot water heater too), so you won't save as much money.
If you want to save some money, buy a couple of good space heaters and use them in the rooms that you use most. I have one in the bedroom so that I can get ready in the morning in a comfortable room, but without unnecessarily heating the entire house.
As to ripping out your present system and replacing it, that usually makes sense if there is a big discrepancy on the cost of fuel. You can frequently save 70%-80% on fuel cost by switching from oil to natural gas. That savings justifies getting a loan and changing the boiler. But oil and electric cost about the same. Pulling out your oil boiler to put in heat pumps will probably not work very well.
70-80% is way off. Based on current prices (which fluctuate significantly) it is roughly a 55% savings. This does not factor in the price of conversion which average $4,000 to $8,000 for a single family home (source: WSJ). There are also no assurances that nat gas prices will remain disconnected from oil prices long term. Although there have been large domestic finds of natural gas, the US is rushing to export natural gas globally (via liquefaction plants), where prices are essentially pegged to oil. Right now nat gas is regionally priced, but I do think with exports increasing dramatically we are moving to a global price which will be significantly higher. It also wasn't that long ago that oil was consistently the cheaper heating option (late 2008 and pre-2005 for many years). Short term memory strikes again.
Although there have been large domestic finds of natural gas, the US is rushing to export natural gas globally (via liquefaction plants), where prices are essentially pegged to oil. Right now nat gas is regionally priced, but I do think with exports increasing dramatically we are moving to a global price which will be significantly higher. It also wasn't that long ago that oil was consistently the cheaper heating option (late 2008 and pre-2005 for many years). Short term memory strikes again.
I agree...I've heard the same thing from several people in energy, the price of oil and natural gas always seems to be very close.
They're not stupid these days...the bean counters watch all the numbers very closely.
Using oil to make hot water with today’s extreme oil prices doesn’t seem like a good idea to me – though who really knows.
A new modest sized electric water heater might be a better bet: For one thing the electric water heaters are much easier to replace and service (and break down far less) than the oil fired water heaters. Also, even if the costs of making hot water with oil vs. electric were the same, when you are low on oil (or prices are high and they gouge in winter) you HAVE to buy….with electric that bill won’t be due for another month or even longer depending on your billing cycle.
I have a 60 gallon electric water heater and my whole electric bill is about $140 per month on
All good points here. The other problem with electric is it hurts the resale value of your home. So it would be a terrible idea to retrofit your home with electric. You'll get hit twice, once for the installation costs and again when you go to sell. Your better off taking the money you would have spent on the conversion and spending it on new windows, doors, insulation etc. which will make your home more energy efficient and help with resale down the road.
Electric is ridiculous. My electric bill in a small 2BR condo was up to $500 some months. Now, the most I pay for gas in a given month in a 2150 square foot house is ~$120. My house is new and well insulated too.
Yep, I have a small end unit and the costliest month was January 2011, it was about $450. Last year I got a break because it wasn't so cold, but I don't think my place (built in 1988) is insulated too well and the windows need to be replaced.
Thanks PacoMartin for such a detailed explanation... I have the same feeling, that electric is by far not cheap enough to justify replacing our current system.
GTMO, what is this "energy kinetics system 2000"? Is it like a furnace/boiler? Where did you get it and how much was it ?
Yep, I have a small end unit and the costliest month was January 2011, it was about $450. .
Ironically that was the last time we were really below normal for the month average. 42 inches of snow that month and teens for temps at night. Heat was being used A LOT more that month for sure. Almost 2 years years. It will most likely happen again this winter. Might be December, might be January.(talking about the temps, not the snow for now)
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Last year I got a break because it wasn't so cold, but I don't think my place (built in 1988) is insulated too well and the windows need to be replaced.
