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Have heated with coal, oil, cord wood, propane and pellets at various times during my 35 years in nh. Nothing comes close to combination of low cost, ease of use and cleanliness of pellets. Keeps my 2000 sq ft house in the mid 70's all winter for ~ $500. Bedrooms are colder than downstairs but nobody minds using a blanket. Key to having success w/ pellets is to not skimp on the stove and purchase a years worth of fuel in august. Total labor is a couple hours of stacking in the summer plus 10 mins of cleaning per week in the winter.
Have heated with coal, oil, cord wood, propane and pellets at various times during my 35 years in nh. Nothing comes close to combination of low cost, ease of use and cleanliness of pellets. Keeps my 2000 sq ft house in the mid 70's all winter for ~ $500. Bedrooms are colder than downstairs but nobody minds using a blanket. Key to having success w/ pellets is to not skimp on the stove and purchase a years worth of fuel in august. Total labor is a couple hours of stacking in the summer plus 10 mins of cleaning per week in the winter.
mid 70s? holy cow that's warm! I'm sweating if it gets above 68 or so in the winter
Ground source heat pumps are the only heat pump options that make sense, there are a couple of companies doing installs in New Hampshire, but of the dozens of houses I looked at, not one had any sort of geothermal solution installed.
OTOH, I was specifically not looking at new construction, so maybe that's why I didn't see any?
Anybody have coal supplemental heat? It's a lot better than wood, somewhat cheaper and a lot cleaner. An automatic stoker stove in a central area could heat a house with ease. There are quite a few coal dealers in upstate New York and some in Vermont and MA but hardly any in NH. See link below.
I installed a big automatic stoker boiler to heat about 2700sqft and supply unlimited domestic hot water. The boiler feeds two heat exchangers installed on top of dilapidated propane hot air furnaces. I turned off the propane and only use the blowers to push hot air into the existing HVAC system.
In my case, the house had two propane furnaces needing replacement (~$8000) and no hot water heater. The boiler solved all that. The hot water really is unlimited. I filled our hot tub with 500 gallons of hot water no problem. Saved a lot of electricity.
We bought one ton of coal from Agway in Milford, and two tons from Pelletsdirect.com. When I bought the coal in September, all the pellets were sold out. Apparently the pellet shortage happened early this year though supply seems to be picking up. Glad I went with coal instead of pellets.
Anthracite. $309/ton plus I paid $100 for delivery but I bought a four pallets of stuff. Here is a comparison to other fuels in cost/BTU. This was back in August so prices have likely changed.
I have propane and bought on contract 900 gallons at 2.05(I own my tanks) which will get me a full year. So $1845....our house is 2500 sq ft(not including 1200sq ft basement), and we keep it 66 day and 60 night.....my wife tends to turn it up to 68 if she is feeling cold which is most of the time. I don't think that is too bad considering. I also have cord wood and it just isn't enough when the temps are 20 and below....so it just helps, but is good to have in power outage. I do have a generator now for heat, water and a few plugs/stove etc. Our house is efficient and built 2005. Not cheap, but not terrible.
Anthracite. $309/ton plus I paid $100 for delivery but I bought a four pallets of stuff. Here is a comparison to other fuels in cost/BTU. This was back in August so prices have likely changed.
WOW! heating oil costs about 3x more than natural gas I knew it was more, but 3 times?? ouch
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Plain ole wood and coal works for me.
I knew it was more, but 3 times?? ouch
