If you were getting a new furnace

[Shygal]

Would you get oil or gas (propane)?
This furnace badly needs replacing, its an oil furnace right now, the tank is here and everything.
Would you go with another oil furnace or get a gas one?

Dont say wood, because I would dearly love a wood stove, but I dont have a good place for one....yet anyway

[Helena]

"Someday" we will need to get a furnace as we aren't getting any younger in age. We heat entirely by wood..no furnace in this old farm house. But..we were thinking of natural gas because it is always there and no delivery worries. Nothing is cheap and with oil I don't think we know where it will be coming from in years to come and don't want to depend on another country to heat my home. So natural gas would be my choice..propane is another delivery worry. Now..will it be hot air or baseboard heat ?? Such decisions ??

[geo in mi]

Shygal,
For me, it was gas, hands down. Fuel cost was lower(at that time, and now it is natural gas, so, much cheaper than oil) Gas has a much lower maintenance cost because it doesn't foul up the burning chamber so much. No soot--which was a real problem in a boiler type with tubes to clean each year--service call. Old furnace had to be vented to a chimney, by use of a pusher fan system, long run exhaust pipes burnt out several times because of the caustic soot mixed with moisture--luckily it set off the CO detector. Had a couple of soot conditions in the burner section that coated all the walls and curtains with oil soot..... Gas--90% effecient intake and exhaust runs via plastic piping straight out the side. I wouldn't go back to oil. And since the gas is piped in, my next major purchase will be a gas stove to get rid of an older electric one.

geo

[Backfourty,MI.]

I would get gas, we have propane furnace but heat our home with a pellet stove but before the pellet stove propane was still cheaper than oil.

My mom bought a house with a new oil furnace & it still cost's her a small fortune when she needs to have it filled. I think oil will always cost more than other sorces of heat.

[SGFarm]

I personally would avoid propane like the plague, more expensive, less efficient and if you get a leak propane is heavier than air and will fill your basement and displace oxygen and create a dangerous situation.

Oil is the most efficent fuel in terms of heat BTU's per unit.

My ideal would to install a ground source heat pump with an electric topup.

But at least with oil you can burn soybean oil in your furnace or used cooking oil (filtered) instead of being completely without heat.

Just my $0.02

Mike

[GREENCOUNTYPETE]

OIL has its benifits ,modern gas run a long time making a little heat , oil fires up give you a bunch of heat quick and shutts down. if the price was the same all around i would take oil , being that it is not you need a calcaltor there are many calcualtors that figure cost based on btu and let you enter your choice for price on unit of oil and gas and current efficency of your furnace and expected new efficency

have you looked into a new burn pot for your oil furnace ours an old wisconsin burners has had the burn pot replaced they tend to last 10-15 years about the same as heat exchangers , the differance is they can be replaced , heat exchangers usualy mean a new furnace , besides the burn pot there is a set of thermostatic controls and a blower motor in my furnace

we do heat with wood for 2/3 of our heat a wood /oil would be ideal won'y take much if any more space than before

i hope to some day beable to run veg oil in my furnace or bio deisel

it also helps i have a freind that is a very good heat and air tech works for himself and is 5 blocks away who belives in ficxing and not replacing everything.

and if i need more oil at any time there are 1 self service off road deisel pumps in town
that i can go to for more oil any time.

[ronbre]

my new furnace was an outdoor wood boiler, but we have propane as a back up furnace..the blower from it circulates air from the wood boilers heat exchangers as well

[Wendy]

We had an oil furncae & replaced it with another oil furnace. It gives a much hotter heat than gas in my opinion. Doesn't take as long to heat up the house like gas would.

[Shygal]

The problem here for gas, is there is no pipeline, no piping in anything, I would have to have the truck come out for deliveries of propane.
This winter, oil here was 2.69 a gallon, and propane was 2.79. That can switch around at any given moment though.

I know gas is cleaner than oil is. Greencountypete, the heat exchanger is what is iffy on this furnace, its pretty old.

Are there big differences in price of the furnace itself?

[Wolf mom]

If you do decide to stay with oil, since it's an old tank, I'd recommend you have it checked while the guys are installing your new furnace. I have no idea how to go about doing that, but someone should know

My Mom had her underground oil tank leak into her well. What a traumatic, expensive experience. She ended having to be hooked up to city water and got electric heat.

[marvella]

i put a propane furnace in a MH i lived in for a while. boy was i sorry!! it was the same year propane prices doubled. go for a heat pump. they are far more efficient and less pricey. i now have gas logs backed up by the heat pump. i use th gas logs when i am home and leave the heat pump set on low to keep stuff from freezing when i am not home. my house is small but i use less than one tank of gas in a year and my electric bill rarely goes over $50 even in the dead of winter.

[foxtrapper]

Oil furnaces require maintenance, while propane basically does not. Score one for propane.

Propane price and availability leaps around, while oil tends to stay more steady. Score one for oil.

Propane makes neat explosions when it leaks. Score one for oil.

Oil makes a neat mess when it leaks. Score one for propane.

Neither one really stands out compared to the other.

With the tax incentives and such, I'd be inclined to check on the cost of installing a ground coil heat pump. The price is more competitive than you'd expect.

[michiganfarmer]

I probably would get one of those 90+ efficiency gas furnaces

[Stephen in SOKY]

If you go with Propane, you might consider having the installers stub up a valve in a central location and buy a vent free heater on a floor stand for times when the power is out. I can hook up 2 vent free heaters in a matter of minutes if I need them, but not have to look at them if I don't.

[Joshie]

We just got a new one. It's a Trane two stage propane furnace with a 2 stage heat pump.

Everything else being equal I'd probably install a high efficiency gas furnace & like Stephen said provisions could easily be made for backup heaters .

[LFmenagerie]

We have a dual source forced air furnace. It is off-peak electric and propane. Off-peak electric is very reasonable and reliable in our area and we go through less than 100 gallons of propane per year. If off-peak electric is available in your area, I would recommend checking it out.
Tom

[Shygal]

I have never heard of the dual source furnace, that sounds interesting.

Can a heat pump take care of heating in upstate NY?

[bja105]

Cost per BTU, oil is significantly cheaper than propane to operate. You already have the tanks, no conversion needed.

I just converted a friend to propane/heat pump (dual fuel.) She needed new tanks, which made the propane conversion cheaper up front. A 95% furnace with a 16 SEER heat pump, at her electric rates, operation costs were similar to oil. She also got a $1500 tax credit.

Oil is usually preferred over propane. Natural gas over oil.

[HermitJohn]

Corn or wood pellet heater? Between LPG and oil, guess bit prejudiced in favor of oil. I grew up at a time in Iowa where nearly every old farm house was heated with one of those old carbureted oil heaters. Not that efficient, but then fuel oil was very cheap. My parents had oil central heat furnace. After Dad died and Mom moved to town, she had natural gas, wasnt as warm. In older houses its wood, oil, gas, and electric in that order far as comfortable heat. Now if I had super insulated living space, electric is way to go. So just depends.