Anyone convert from oil to natural gas heat?

[David Larsen]

I switched from a fuel oil furnace to lp gas furnace with and Off peak electric plenum heater in it a few years ago. I ran the numbers and calculated that it would take 3 to 5 years to pay for itself depending on the price of fuel oil. Fuel oil did go down a bit so the payback ended up closer to the 5 year mark, but was worth it.

[Jeffrey Makiel]

Natural gas has some other benefits...

• Very low maintenance...actually, almost no maintenance.
• More reliable...less moving parts.
• Burns very clean so soot and odor from an old unit goes away.
• It maintains its efficiency throughout the season.
• No issues with delivery, never runs out.
• No oil tank, especially important if it is underground.

-Jeff

[Mike Cutler]

Kinda veering off topic, but can anyone explain why much of the northeast uses fuel oil and much of the midwest uses natural gas? Was it because oil was first discovered in the northeast and fuel oil/diesel used to be dirt cheap? I perhaps incorrectly assumed there aren't natural gas lines in the street/boulevard so people can't get natural gas at all. I know that locally the gas utility doesn't charge to hook up to natural gas because they want to sell you the gas naturally.

I couldn't imagine spending $1,200 a month on heat. I probably spend right around $1,200 a YEAR to heat my 2,700 square foot home here in Minneapolis. It helps that my house was built in 2001 and is heavily insulated and sealed against air leaks.

Brian
Infrastructure.
The Northeast just doesn't have the infrastructure in place to distribute Natural Gas to anyplace other than larger metropolitan areas.
The people that do have Natural Gas are pretty happy right now.
I heat with a Quadra-Fire 5700 Wood stove, and my heating bill from October to April will be <$1000.00 in cordwood. My installed heating system is electric, and there is no way that is an economically viable source in Connecticut.
If I could switch to Natural Gas I would without hesitation. Propane is an option, but in Connecticut it's not much better than electric, and could be worse.

[Mike Archambeau]

Kinda veering off topic, but can anyone explain why much of the northeast uses fuel oil and much of the midwest uses natural gas? Was it because oil was first discovered in the northeast and fuel oil/diesel used to be dirt cheap? I perhaps incorrectly assumed there aren't natural gas lines in the street/boulevard so people can't get natural gas at all. I know that locally the gas utility doesn't charge to hook up to natural gas because they want to sell you the gas naturally.

I couldn't imagine spending $1,200 a month on heat. I probably spend right around $1,200 a YEAR to heat my 2,700 square foot home here in Minneapolis. It helps that my house was built in 2001 and is heavily insulated and sealed against air leaks.

Where I live in CT the soil is very thin and then you run into solid rock. It would be very difficult to run gas lines in the ground. I believe that this is the reason folks use fuel oil. Our winters are mild here, and I think that caused people to be less interested in energy costs. But now that fuel oil costs have quadrupled in the last 10 years, I think they are or will be paying more attention to not only what fuel they use, but how to use less of it.