heat pump or gas pack?

[rossc]

His house is not large. 900sq/ft would be my guess. I think oil is more economical than propane. Oil provides 139,000BTU/gallon and propane provides 92,000BTU/gallon. The propane companies will tell you that a propane furnace is more efficient which overcomes the BTU difference but that's not true. Propane may be slightly more efficient, but not enough to make up for the difference. Coming fro the Northeast, I can tell you that oil is the standard. Propane is much more expensive to heat with in those cold climates.

The pellet stove is great but it does require some attention. It's not like a oil furnace where you can turn it on and forget about it until spring. I'd strongly suggest a thermostat controlled model. Mine is not, which means when it is between 40 and 50 degrees and the stove is idling along on it's lowest setting it can get warm in the house. Anything below 40 degrees is no problem. A thermostatically controlled stove will come on and off automatically like a furnace which will save pellets. A friend heats a 2600 sq/ft ranch with two thermostatically controlled pellet stoves. He uses about 150 bags per winter @ $4 per bag.

[maryCh]

Hey rossc,

The house is log, and we are hoping that will mean its WELL insulated! The electric bills at our current rental haven't been too bad, so far. But then again, our rates in NC weren't the greatest, so to us, DE rates are pretty reasonable. Thanks for the tip about the pellet stove; we'll have to check them out!

Mary

[Summering]

Originally Posted by rossc

His house is not large. 900sq/ft would be my guess. I think oil is more economical than propane. Oil provides 139,000BTU/gallon and propane provides 92,000BTU/gallon. The propane companies will tell you that a propane furnace is more efficient which overcomes the BTU difference but that's not true. Propane may be slightly more efficient, but not enough to make up for the difference. Coming fro the Northeast, I can tell you that oil is the standard. Propane is much more expensive to heat with in those cold climates.

The pellet stove is great but it does require some attention. It's not like a oil furnace where you can turn it on and forget about it until spring. I'd strongly suggest a thermostat controlled model. Mine is not, which means when it is between 40 and 50 degrees and the stove is idling along on it's lowest setting it can get warm in the house. Anything below 40 degrees is no problem. A thermostatically controlled stove will come on and off automatically like a furnace which will save pellets. A friend heats a 2600 sq/ft ranch with two thermostatically controlled pellet stoves. He uses about 150 bags per winter @ $4 per bag.

The main thing we have found with an oil furnace is those darn cloggd nozzles.........If some oil company came along with quite the dirty oil.....the nozzle would clog ,and on the coldest days ,we'd have no heat.
Another bad thing we found with our homes and our daughters home, is the freezing of the outside line. After years, and years of using heat blankets, fences, wraps( on the frozen lines)..........come to find out just lately that one oil company explained they use a different grade for that issue. Well, big surprise because your talking about all together between the families homes at least 25 years of not being told that!!! That better quality seemed to work wonderfully.
If you have an outside tank you do need to block the winter air from it, another savior.
I would worry being away from the home for a long time about the clogging issues. Because of the poor running of my Moms furnace, we found out there was a build up of Carbon Monoxide......quite scarey. She had that furnace looked at many times by people who should have caught that. Many never knew to change the nozzle which was booming, letting too much fuel out into the furnace.
The pellet stove we had in recent years did have a thermostat and that did control the heat nicely. We had one for a 1500 foot area.
We were surprised at the amount of cleaning that had to be done.
But, it was nice not having the creosole build up in the pipe, and the monthly brushing of that from the top of the roof
That has been holding at $4 a bag for a long time now..........hope it continues.