When you are planning to build a new custom home in the country where there is no access to Natural Gas for heating is Propane the only option and is it the best option?
This question I hear a lot these days as more and more people want to build a new place in the country away from natural gas lines.
The question is a good one, most people think that because you can't get natural gas you just switch to propane because their both gases and their probably the same costs to heat homes. Well that is a major misconception.
Propane is far more expensive then natural gas when you are comparing costs of heating your home. What makes natural gas so cheap is that it is delivered underground through lines that are permanently placed in the ground. Propane has to be delivered in a truck to your own personal tank every time that you need to have it filled. Basically the delivery fee of propane is a lot higher then natural gas and because there are so many more users of natural gas it helps keep the cost in check.
Natural gas also has a pretty consistent cost, the average price goes up and down year to year but the change is slow, propane on the other hand can swing wildly from season to season. In the past couple of years we have seen propane costs double during the winter when people need it the most and then come back to normal in the summer when it isn't. Depending on when you fill your propane tank will determine how much you will end up paying for your heating fuel.
Most people don't think that there really is a cost effective alternative but there is and it is heating with electricity.
Now I'm not telling you to build a brand new custom home and then install baseboard heaters in it. Electric heat has actually come along way in the past couple of decades and because of the dramatic increase in the electricity rates in Ontario they have been forced to come up with more efficient options for electricity.
There are two main ways to heat in the country with electricity;
1. Geothermal. Geothermal is a wonderful way to heat your home. Its very consistent and its actually a very simple system. Geothermal is glycol filled lines that are installed deep in the ground. Glycol is basically a fancy name for alcohol. These lines absorb the heat from the ground and then transport that heat to your furnace. The furnace squeezes it through a radiator inside your furnace while air is blow across it. That air is warmed to your desired temperature and transported throughout the house in the duct work. The system works in reverse in the warm summer months to provide the house with air conditioning.
2. Air to Air heat pumps. This is pretty close to the same design as the geothermal heating and cooling, the difference is that it makes the heat and cooling from the outside air beside your home. There are many different types of heat pumps, depending on the efficiency will determine how well the heat pump works in extreme cold temperatures. This system is also less costly to install then geothermal.
Both systems don't just make heat from the air and ground they also make air conditioning for the warm summer months and they do it at a much more efficient rate then a normal air conditioner that you get with a propane furnace.
Geothermal heating has an added benefit that it provides free hotwater into your hotwater tank the more air conditioning that you use. That means that you actually use less energy in the summer running the air conditioning in your home then if you didn't run it at all, that's because it takes more energy to make hotwater then it does to create air conditioning.
There are other ways to help limit the cost of your heating system when using electricity. Adding more insulation into your new home when you are building will make it easier to heat your home and if you add solar panels you can offset the electricity that you use to heat and cool.
So when you talk to your contractor about building your new custom home talk to them about the heating system, talk to them about heating with electricity.
Rob
Village Builders Inc.
Showing posts with label heating in the country. Show all posts
Showing posts with label heating in the country. Show all posts
Monday, April 22, 2019
Thursday, July 28, 2016
Geothermal VS Propane Heating In The Country
For the past 10 years the debate between installing a geothermal furnace compared to a propane furnace has boiled down to a trio of issues;
- The size of the house that you are building,
- The available space to install the geothermal ground loops,
- Your overall house budget.
The larger the house the bigger return on the geothermal and the faster it pays you back for the increased cost. The ground loops are the most efficient energy and cost installation method and they do require a lot of room to install. The budget of the house is greatly effected by the heating system as geothermal is a lot more expensive then a propane based heating system.
Lately there has been a change in the conversation around geothermal vs propane, it's the cost of electricity. Ontario has the highest electricity rates in North America and they are only going to go up. This is driving the cost of heating with geothermal up a lot more then it ever has, compared to the price of propane which goes up and down in price but overall is still not rising as a whole more then the electricity rates.
Even though geothermal furnaces are far more efficient then propane furnaces, the rising cost of electricity is making the savings almost non existent as propane hasn't risen as steeply.
The payback for choosing geothermal is becoming so long that with the rising cost of electricity there is going to come a time when geothermal stops saving you money all together.
The one major advantage that geothermal has over propane is that geothermal has ultra efficient air conditioning where propane cannot produce air conditioning at all and has to use a conventional air conditioner which uses electricity at a much more inefficient way which costs you more on your electricity bill then geothermal.
Because of the constantly changing landscape of the electricity market with its extra fee's and rising rates serious thought most be taken when choosing your heating system. Only you the homeowner can make the final decision on what heating system you want, all your contractor can do is give you the information. The final decision is up to you the homeowner which road to go down.
When you are planing out your new build with your contractor a large amount of time should be spent on what your heating system should end up being.
Take your time and way the options, because this will affect you in the future.
Rob Abbott
Village Builders Inc.
The payback for choosing geothermal is becoming so long that with the rising cost of electricity there is going to come a time when geothermal stops saving you money all together.
The one major advantage that geothermal has over propane is that geothermal has ultra efficient air conditioning where propane cannot produce air conditioning at all and has to use a conventional air conditioner which uses electricity at a much more inefficient way which costs you more on your electricity bill then geothermal.
Because of the constantly changing landscape of the electricity market with its extra fee's and rising rates serious thought most be taken when choosing your heating system. Only you the homeowner can make the final decision on what heating system you want, all your contractor can do is give you the information. The final decision is up to you the homeowner which road to go down.
When you are planing out your new build with your contractor a large amount of time should be spent on what your heating system should end up being.
Take your time and way the options, because this will affect you in the future.
Rob Abbott
Village Builders Inc.
Sunday, October 20, 2013
Cold weather heat pumps
Cold weather heat pumps
The new generation of cold weather heat pumps are producing phenomenal cost savings even compared to natural gas heating.
Tests comparing the efficiency of new cold weather air to air heat pumps show that the new generation of heat pumps result in 49% energy savings over heating with natural gas. These results don’t even take into consideration the savings of a heat pump compared to a conventional air conditioning unit that run on electricity. Heat pumps convert to air conditioners in the summer and do it more efficiently than normal air conditioning units.
The thinking on heat pumps in the past is that they do not perform below zero very well because the old theory was that there wasn’t enough heat in the air to remove to create significant amount of heat. When a heat pump cannot remove heat from the air outside it is unable to produce heat and must rely on the homes furnace to produce the necessary heat. These furnaces can be oil, propane or natural gas. The new science on new heat pumps tells us that even air at -18C contains 85% of the heat of air at 21C. That means that when it is cold outside the heat pump still can remove enough heat from the air to heat your home, thus putting an end to the thinking that below zero heat pumps do not work very well.
If you’re wondering how a heat pump does this I will explain;
A heat pump transfers heat by circulating a refrigerant through an evaporation and condensation cycle. The refrigerant flows through an outdoor coil where it absorbs heat from the air as it is evaporated. It is then compressed at high pressure at a second coil where it condenses, this releases the heat absorbed earlier in the cycle, this then has accomplished bringing the heat from the air outside to the inside. Once the indoor coil has this heat it circulates it through your duct work to your entire home.
With this new technology it makes more sense to have a heat pump added to your heating system, this will allow you to save money on heating and cooling and depending on how little or how often you use it will tell you how fast it pays for itself in energy conservation. On average a heat pump pays for itself in under 5 years, which is a very quick turn around when we are talking about heating and cooling units.
Rob Abbott
Operations Manager
Village Builders Inc.
Information for this blog came in part from the solplan review NO. 170 May 2013
The new generation of cold weather heat pumps are producing phenomenal cost savings even compared to natural gas heating.
Tests comparing the efficiency of new cold weather air to air heat pumps show that the new generation of heat pumps result in 49% energy savings over heating with natural gas. These results don’t even take into consideration the savings of a heat pump compared to a conventional air conditioning unit that run on electricity. Heat pumps convert to air conditioners in the summer and do it more efficiently than normal air conditioning units.
The thinking on heat pumps in the past is that they do not perform below zero very well because the old theory was that there wasn’t enough heat in the air to remove to create significant amount of heat. When a heat pump cannot remove heat from the air outside it is unable to produce heat and must rely on the homes furnace to produce the necessary heat. These furnaces can be oil, propane or natural gas. The new science on new heat pumps tells us that even air at -18C contains 85% of the heat of air at 21C. That means that when it is cold outside the heat pump still can remove enough heat from the air to heat your home, thus putting an end to the thinking that below zero heat pumps do not work very well.
If you’re wondering how a heat pump does this I will explain;
A heat pump transfers heat by circulating a refrigerant through an evaporation and condensation cycle. The refrigerant flows through an outdoor coil where it absorbs heat from the air as it is evaporated. It is then compressed at high pressure at a second coil where it condenses, this releases the heat absorbed earlier in the cycle, this then has accomplished bringing the heat from the air outside to the inside. Once the indoor coil has this heat it circulates it through your duct work to your entire home.
With this new technology it makes more sense to have a heat pump added to your heating system, this will allow you to save money on heating and cooling and depending on how little or how often you use it will tell you how fast it pays for itself in energy conservation. On average a heat pump pays for itself in under 5 years, which is a very quick turn around when we are talking about heating and cooling units.
Rob Abbott
Operations Manager
Village Builders Inc.
Information for this blog came in part from the solplan review NO. 170 May 2013
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