New York Oil is cheaper

If you are on oil, the average consumption per household is about 1,000 gallons/year in the northeast of you are on heating oil.
If you are driving a 20 gpm car for 12000 miles a year, you are using about 600 gallons.

The rule of thumb is that each geo system is the equivalent of taking 2 cars off the road compared to heating oil. Not really insignificant.

I get it that you are only interested in $$$. Everyone obviously has its own priorities.

So what is the deal here. Stick with oil until the middle east decides to tighten the screws, and shoots up the oil price again. Then be concerned about your money. Get a geo system then.

The question is whether you are proactive or reactive. Your call. I just don't get your point of your discussion here.

 

Doc
Thanks for your clear and concise explanation. Of course I failed to account for oxygen in the combustion process.

 

Yep, the oxygen is added, and much heavier than the hydrogen. I had forgotten that part too from my school years. I just remembered that without the oxygen, the fire did not burn. So energy is released, but mass is added from the oxygen in the air.

 

I have been going through these same calculations. I have a Waterfurnace Series 7 and have my oil backup. I wish there was a way to disable the compressor in the WF and run the oil.

I cannot currently find a way to do this without using the E.HEAT option on the stat which opens all of the dampers (pointless). When the AUX kicks in and my oil furnace fires up the dampers continue to operate how they should, but AUX only lasts a few minutes at most for me.

 

Graham C:

Hello and welcome.

It is all in the control logic. To know what happens there one needs to see electricity. The like water, electricity takes the easy road.

 

This week's snowstorm brought to mind another advantage of the geo. Unlike in many previous years, I didn't have to shovel out 150 feet of driveway for an oil delivery.

 

Decentralized distribution! The energy source is right next to your house. Forever. But no, we run all the way to the middle east to get it. Forget the 150ft of your driveway. That is is the last 150ft of a 6000 mile journey, at least for 40% of the oil. It makes one wonder why we do that.

 

The most important reason I'm running oil this winter. The oil burner residual heat warms up my basement. With GEO, my basement is ice cold. So cold, I will need to add basement heat. That is my biggest disappointment with GEO.

 

Not a fault of geo. What you are describing is an almost none existing parasitic loss of heat energy with the geo system, versus a lot of loss of heat energy with the oil burner.

Trust me, you can also heat your basement with geo if you want, all you have to do is to also distribute your heat to the basement.

 

It would be near impossible to distribute heat to my basement. My units are in a 2nd floor closet, and blow downwards. I would need another geo unit just for the basement.

 

I don't see the point of this thread. I have geo and am happy with it. If you are happier with oil then that is your prerogative. Maybe there is an oilexchange forum where there are people posting about how much they hate their oil heat...lol .

Can we talk trucks? I own a Dodge Hemi...Ford Diesels stink!

 

ROFLMAO!
I put in geo and to install another heat source for Mrs. pirates green house. Before geo it was heated with waste heat from the high efficiency oil boilers exhaust. I hate Lasers and am currently racing Snipes. A thinking mans boat.
Eric

 

Ditto.
My 5t Waterfurnance E-series has been purring along for 12 years conditioning an all electric 3850 sq ft. home.
After at least 5 or 6 rate hikes over the past 6 years my current budget billing was just lowered to $104/month.
When the E series gives up the ghost it will be replaced with a series 7.
You will not find me on the (temporary) cheap gas/oil bandwagon.

 

I go off for ten days to rescue a system, get a re-infection or still infection in my foot and bail to come home and to Doctor, and find Doc typed what I would have said.

Well done.

One of the reasons I like water two water stuff is that to get heat from the attic to the basement takes two pipes.

No pain just re-infected. Fever broke at about 5 pm tonight. I run a degree low of what they teach in Med school , so 1.050*F is Hot for Me.

TY, Doc.

Mark

 

I hear what the blur is saying, and can relate to the difficulty in retrofitting additional supply from the attic to a basement that was one benefitting from the indirect warmth of a controlled inferno. He, like me, have recent installs that came with the promise of being the best thing since sliced bread. 3 years into geo for me now, and all I can say to blur is I've gotten a much better understanding of how and why my system works like it does, and I too am happy with it. It's different for sure, but adaptation is nearly complete for all us home dwellers.

 

The bottom line to this is BTUH/$.

 

Amen.

 

I too lost the benefit of parasitic oil heat in basement. Last year I added a daikin minisplit to basement and am much more comfortable.

 

Location, location, location. In your neck of the woods heating with natural gas may be better. In a lot of other necks, mine included natural gas is expensive and involves infrastructure that is not in place.
Eric

 

I don't want to hijack jimmyjon's thread so I will comment here.

"Believe me, there is at least R49 in the attic. Ducts are sealed with mastic. There is not much more I can do, except tear down out side walls, and put a 4mil vapor barrier over the R13 in the walls. Next step is to heat the basement, so there is a little buffer from below..."

"15 degrees out, my geo runs continually. If I run the oil burner for aux heat, the burner cycles not too often. 180 degree water temperature. There is so much residual heat in the boiler, it just keeps pumping out heat."

"It's been 10 degrees for the past few days. My system can NOT maintain temperature. Even with the hot water coil from the AUX boiler.... the house sits at 63 degrees."

With Geo and an AUX oil boiler the house sits at 63*?