Propane Prices

[Iowa Fox]

A big problem is that WE ONLY heat as high as we can afford BUT we also must pay for the 80 degree heat in the ENTITLED folks places.

I've been complaining about this to my wife for years.

[Love Life]

The brand I use are Delonhgi. Model is Dragon. Pretty sweet name now that I think about it!!

They heat a room very well, and we leave them running pretty much all day. We have had them for about 4 years now, and I think my wife bought them at lowes.

They have a thermostat on them as well as 3 different settings.

[Iowa Fox]

Thanks Love Life. Are they safe running them on carpeted floors?

[Love Life]

They are safe on carpeted floors. I have run them on carpeted floors the whole time I have owned them.

[Iowa Fox]

I have been reading about the Delonghi's and customer reviews. What model number do you have. Thanks!!!

[WilliamDahl]

The brand I use are Delonhgi. Model is Dragon. Pretty sweet name now that I think about it!!

They heat a room very well, and we leave them running pretty much all day. We have had them for about 4 years now, and I think my wife bought them at lowes.

They have a thermostat on them as well as 3 different settings.

All of the electric space heaters are about the same in efficiency. You get one unit of heat out of one unit of electricity. They are for spot heating of areas in your house, not for heating the entire house. If you already have electric heating, you are not going to be saving any money by switching to the space heaters if you plan on keeping the entire house the same temperature. Their main advantage from an energy saving standpoint is keeping the couple of rooms that you are using more comfortable than the parts of the house that you do not use. In that aspect, it's kind of like shutting off the air ducts to rooms that you do not use and closing their doors so that they exchange minimal air with the rest of the house. There are electrically controlled dampers that you can install in your forced air heating system that would allow you to have different controlled heating zones throughout your house also. Electricity is usually the most expensive method that you can use to heat your house, so electric space heaters won't necessarily save you money as compared to natural gas or propane unless you are just warming up the small percentage of the house that you are actually using. Each family's usage pattern and needs will be different.

One of the things that I noticed when I was working up north a few years back, was that each 8-unit apartment complex / building where I was at had a central water heating system that provided hot water to the apartments and to baseboard radiators throughout each apartment. Down south, that sort of thing is not done -- each apartment will likely have its own furnace and hot water heater.

[6bg6ga]

Ever considered adding one of those pellet heaters to your home. People I have talked to have high praise for them.

I feel for you guys with the high cost of propane and I thought I had it bad when I got my natural gas bill of $150 for the month of my 4 year old super insulated home.

[grumman581]

I had thought, hoped or my wishful thinking that propane would be the affordable fuel providing some independence and relief from oil, government and so on. Doesn't look like that's going to be.

If you want independence, then you need enough forested land that you can harvest the trees, burn them for heat, and plant replacement trees that will be ready before you have used up your current trees. And even then, you're going to be using gasoline to run your chain saw and maybe even your wood splitter.

Except during these price spikes, propane tends to be cheaper than electricity. You just need to buy it during the summer when it is cheaper and have a large enough tank that you do not have to refill it during then winter when it is more expensive.

Of course, you could always treat propane as just your emergency backup energy supply and not use it unless the electricity is off.

A friend of mine up in Dallas recently mentioned that his electric bill for last month was $800. His house is fully electric and with a wife and a few daughters, the heat and hot water energy uses just added up.

[Bad Water Bill]

Those females best learn how to take military showers when you have to observe water hours.

[montana_charlie]

Thanks Love Life. Are they safe running them on carpeted floors?

We have two poultry houses that we heat in the winter. Because of feathers and straw, I have to be very careful when choosing heating equipment.

For years we used milk house heaters that are resistance heating coils with a fan that blows air across them.
When mounted up off the floor, they operated safely, but still got clogged up with the fine dust found in chicken houses.
Also, being so high above the floor, the zone below could get cold enough to allow their water to freeze

I switched to the DeLonghi heaters like Love Life uses, and ALL of my problems disappeared.

I suspended a heater from the ceiling so it is only an inch above the floor litter, and it performs very adequately.
Since there is no fan dragging air through it, the dust has also ceased to be a problem.

If it is safe in a firetrap like a chicken house, it's safe almost anywhere inside a home.

CM

[Love Life]

I keep a heater in the den and in the master bedroom. I keep the house thermostat at 65 and we just wear warm clothing inside.

We have a pellet stove, but it is the most worthless heat source I have ever used in my life. Burns through a $5 bag of pellets a day and provides no more heat than a space heater. Just worthless.

[montana_charlie]

We have a pellet stove, but it is the most worthless heat source I have ever used in my life. Burns through a $5 bag of pellets a day and provides no more heat than a space heater. Just worthless.

Our house is 'all electric'. When it's truly cold out, the thermostats in some rooms never shut off. That can make a big bill for the month.

The house was built with two fireplaces which have seperate flues ... but share the same chimney structure.
We no longer try to heat with logs, but we have a pellet 'insert' in the smaller fireplace.

It really does a good job for us.
With it going, thermostats cycle as expected, and the warmth even circulates up to the second floor.

Maybe your stove is poorly designed/built ... or maybe it needs a thorough cleaning.
When it's burning, is the flame 'white and active' or 'lazy and orange'?

CM

[smokesahoy]

It's the time of year I envy guys in PA again. Coal is the best thing to heat with short of having your own nuclear power plant. Ask the power companies, they seem to agree.

[Iowa Fox]

Montana Charlie, Thanks for your input on the Delonghi's in the chicken house. When I was a kid on the farm we had over 1100 in two chicken houses. The stove is doing a good job for the conditions this year, this is the 34th season for use using it. It has a steel jacket with a squirrel cage blower to move the air and seasoned Red elm is what I have been burning on the cold windy nights & days. I have a thermometer on the stack and adjust the screws by stack temp. I purchased 300 gallons of LP the third week in Sept for 1.59 a gal. and best guess looks like we used about 220 gallons to date. Thats for domestic hot water, cooking, baking, and the boiler for heat. My wife did a lot of baking and cooking with the oven this year, almost every day. Plus we were gone a lot as her mother is 98, still lives on the farm and needed some help this fall and early winter so I wasn't home to feed the stove. On the cold nights the stove can't pull the stairs and down the hall to the bedrooms. Even with the thermostats dialed back to 60 on the cold nights they will trip the boiler a few times. I'm thinking a good space heater would stop that. After hearing about the Delonghi's here and reading customer reviews on the net I'm going to try one.

My wife and I built the house. After the concrete basement walls were poured we took over with hammer & nails. That was pretty common around here back in those days for folks to built their own. Now in most of the counties here they will not let you do that.

Thanks guys for the tip on the Delonghi heaters.

[dragon813gt]

It's the time of year I envy guys in PA again. Coal is the best thing to heat with short of having your own nuclear power plant. Ask the power companies, they seem to agree.

Very very few heat w/ it anymore. Absolutely no one outside of coal country uses it. Nothing heats like a coal fired steam boiler. But both coal and steam boilers have gone the way of the dodo in residential applications.

[Love Life]

Our house is 'all electric'. When it's truly cold out, the thermostats in some rooms never shut off. That can make a big bill for the month.

The house was built with two fireplaces which have seperate flues ... but share the same chimney structure.
We no longer try to heat with logs, but we have a pellet 'insert' in the smaller fireplace.

It really does a good job for us.
With it going, thermostats cycle as expected, and the warmth even circulates up to the second floor.

Maybe your stove is poorly designed/built ... or maybe it needs a thorough cleaning.
When it's burning, is the flame 'white and active' or 'lazy and orange'?

CM

We pay to have it cleaned and serviced before every winter. We haven't even turned it on this winter, and haven't even noticed it's lack of use. I have noticed the several hundred dollars I have saved not using it.

My house is 980 SF, and the pellet stove only warms the living room...sort of.

[montana_charlie]

We pay to have it cleaned and serviced before every winter.

When we first moved in, there was a Blaze Queen (insert) wood burner in the small fireplace.
We used it for the first few years, but my wife couldn't handle firewood very well, so she convinced me to look at 'pellets'.

We had this Whitfield installed, and I carefully watched them make the electronic adjustments in the book.
The following year, I readjusted those settings a little bit ... based upon how well the stove had performed during it's first season.
Since it was new, I have been doing all of the annual cleaning and lubricating, and I wouldn't trust anybody to do it for me.
Then, if it's running all day - every day, I will redo the complete cleaning routine (which involves some internal disassembly) about once a week

The guys who installed it knew what they were doing, and it 'breathes' properly.
Breathing and clean interior surfaces ... that is the biggest part (I believe) in getting heating efficiency.

It makes me mad (on your behalf) that you have a pellet stove that won't perform the way it is supposed to.

CM

[smokesahoy]

Very very few heat w/ it anymore. Absolutely no one outside of coal country uses it. Nothing heats like a coal fired steam boiler. But both coal and steam boilers have gone the way of the dodo in residential applications.

I'm researching a hitzer 82 furnace right now. I can get coal for about 300 a ton or wood for about 250 a cord. Once adjusted to btus the coal is cheaper, but if you adjust it for the wood never being quite dry enough and having to store it in a special place to keep it dry coal comes out way ahead. No bugs, no snakes, no mice, can store 6 pallets in a room in my basement.. it just makes sense.

I wish I could get the bit coal, it would burn in the furnace I have now, but that is one thing you don't find outside coal country in stove size.

I was thinking it might even be worth it to have a tt deliver at dealer price, they say 22-26 tons. It would wipe me out but I wouldn't have to worry about heat again for years. Then I read stories about people scoring pickup loads for $20 from the employees of the mine that pick up the stuff that falls.

Well, it's cheaper than oil

[redneckdan]

All true.

BTW, natural gas prices climbed a big chunk under Al Gore's Polar Vortex. I spent a bad couple of days trying to get another 3000 horsepower of compression going at one of my stations because we're shoving gas north to you Yankees as fast as we can.

dale in Louisiana

From one mineral extraction worker to another, thank you for what you do. Seriously. It's comforting to know that the boots on the ground understand our situation up here and are working hard to help.

[grumman581]

Those females best learn how to take military showers when you have to observe water hours.

Well, I *have* been knows to go to the hot water heater and turn off the hot water to the house when my daughter was taking one of these really long "Hollywood Showers". I did give her a warning beforehand though and told her that she should be taking a "Navy Shower".