best heating choice?

[FrankInWI]

ok, I got the garage w/upper up.  Have LP as gas in the area (rural Wisconsin).   Thinking of how to heat, at least in the short term.  I don't have stairway going upstairs closed off so it's kind of heat the whole deal....again, short term.  Thinking of pellet stove too, but not totally knowledgable about that yet.  
Mostly, I'm looking at LP space heater right now....for the garage level and let the heat rise.  I think I will keep my senses and not make it a non-venting one (but am tempted), so I have to look around and see what is out there.  

Could you all help me with some thoughts, advise and experience?  

[MountainDon]

Frank, the first thought I had is that no matter what you use DO NOT USE a NON-Vented heater. Don't be tempted. There are many of those available, but I wouldn't be caught dead with one anymore.  


We would all miss you.  :'(

[glenn kangiser]

Years ago, LP cost us 300 per month to keep the house warm.

One of these running Diesel #2 here - probably #1 or Kerosene in your area, heats our place for about $300 per year at current prices -.  I don't think you will find anything more efficient.  

http://www.alsheating.com/ToyoHeater.htm  We just bought a Toyo  from Al to replace our bad unfixable Monitor.  

We bought this one but Al won't sell it to you if it isn't big enough for your house.  I like Al's attitude -- he tells it like it is, not necessarily how you might like to hear it.

http://www.toyotomiusa.com/products/laserventedheaters/L-60AT.mv



The cheapest way -- to keep you good and warm -- is good dry wood in a good wood stove.

[MountainDon]

I don't recall much about your place there Frank. Do you have grid power? Probably you do, but give some thought as to whether or not you have much potential for power outages. Pellet stoves require power for their blower. Regular wood burner stoves need no power.

There are direct vent propane heaters available that do not require power at all. They use convection circulation. There is an optional blower for better heat distribution; with no power they work fine. Heat distribution more like a wood burning stove, but not as intense as a roaring fire. The direct vent goes out thru the wall. My neighbor has one for when they don't want to bother with the wood burning stove.

I don't know much about liquid fueled kerosene or diesel stoves although I did have a portable non-vented Toyo kerosene wick stove for a season before I installed a vented natural gas furnace in the shop. It worked well, smelled a little after lighting and shutting down. That may have been my fault. Gave me headaches after a full day in there with it. I'm don't know if that was CO or not.


OMMV. Right PEG?  

[glenn kangiser]

Forgot about that -- The Toyos etc do need some power.  They have blowers for purging gasses and circulate air in the room.  I probably wouldn't use it off grid but check the power consumption to be sure.

[glenn kangiser]

Here's specs

Part Number: L-60AT
Type of Heater       Forced Flue Vented Heater (Antique Finish)
Fuel Type       1-K Grade Kerosene or No. 1 Fuel Oil (ASTM D396)
[highlight]Electric Rating       120V AC 60Hz
Preheat 270 Watts
Burning 60 Watts[/highlight]
Heating Efficiency       90%
Heating Rating       30,000 BTU/hr (high)
21,000 BTU/hr (medium)
12,000 BTU/hr (low)
Fuel Consumption       0.230 gal/hr (high)
0.161 gal/hr (medium)
0.095 gal/hr (low)
Size (WxHxD)       30" x 24" x 19"
Weight       77 lbs
Heating Area
(FT2)       1,250 (0°F)
1,500 (20°F)
Vent Hole Pipe       2-3/4" - 3" diameter
Max. Length of
Vent Pipe System       Maximum 10 ft, 3 bends or less
Type of Tank       Exterior Tank (required)

[PEG688]

OMMV. Right PEG  

 Yes indeed !

[glenn kangiser]

Dudes -- OMG --- GMWAS.

Our old Monitor -- the unfixable one - burned very clean when working right.  There was a very slight exhaust smell if you were near the exhaust outside.  They all recover the heat from the exhaust and only have about a 1" or so exhaust vent.  90% or better efficient doesn't leave much.

[peter nap]

Just remember Glenn, oil is going to hit 100.00 a barrel real soon. I'm not sure what Frank us thinking about doing as far as being there but.....he might want to consider a vented gas system that he can use to keep it above freezing and an old fashioned wood stove for the time he's there.

[glenn kangiser]

You can bet that all types of heating energy -- controlled by the oil companies -- will go up accordingly, including oil, NG, LP.
The only one individuals control is plain dry wood and their labor.   The Jean Pain compost method of heating is beyond what most people want to do but will work.  

Some have said another reason for the unending fake war on terror is to drive oil prices higher for larger profits.  Even if it isn't, they are using it to that advantage.

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

Just my two bits worth, I wouldn't go with a pellet stove.  They heat well and all, but a few years ago when they first started becoming popular, there was a fuel shortage due to the manufacturer not predicting how much demand there would be.  Now I think they've gotten that straightened out, but it seemed to burn a lot of folks.  A lot of people were paying through the nose to get pellets to burn... even more than natural gas/propane.  IMO nothing beats a good old-fashioned wood stove.

[ScottA]

Wood stoves are great but unless you've got the trees and time to cut you might want to think twice. Around here finding cut firewood at a decent price is getting hard to do. No one wants to work all day cutting wood for 50 bucks any more.

Scott

[FrankInWI]

I'm on the grid, and I don't intend to heat the place when we aren't up there.  That Toyo diesel/keroscene heater info at Al's is very interesting, will have to read more.  Will check how prevelant distribution of those fuels are up where I am.  LP seems to rule.

Don't want to go with wood.  Don't want to take the time and bother to find and prepare the free stuff, and I do think prices are just going to go up more and more.  And I don't think my insurance carrier wants me too....oh yeh, and the neighbor there just showed me the picture of his totally burned down home of a couple years back (yep, wood heat fire).

Ok, I quit.... I will NOT buy another un-vented heater.... and I better look at pulling the old one out of my family room downstairs at out city home.

[FrankInWI]

BY THE WAY, IS ELECTRIC HEAT NOT AN REASONABLE EFFICIENT OPTION YET ?

[MountainDon]

The electrical producers will tell you that electric is good, it's 100% efficient for heating. On the surface that is true. However when you look at how the electricity is produced, burning some fossil fuel usually, you can see they don't get into that end of it when talking efficiency.

However, in some parts of the country electrical heating costs to the user are lower than the other usual options, nat. gas, propane and fuel oil. Ya' gotta check locally and then try to huess what's gping to happen in the future.

My home is natural gas, 90% efficient hot air furnace. My cabin will be wood stove with propane backup at some time, but not immediately. But then I don't have to look very far for wood. Too many trees still need to come down. I already have at least a couple years wood cut and stacked with an equivalent amount already felled in the past couple months.
********
I'll get myself into trouble here with some folks, but I'm glad to see that there are plans in the works for building more nukes. France gets something like 79% of it's electrical power from nukes, 12% from hydro,. They are also the world's largest net exporter of electrical power. If they faced a real energy cruch they could probably cut off the exports and be the only brightly lit spot on the globe. The smart thing they did was to standardize on one good design and buld lots of them. 56 of their first series which was an American design. In the US nearly every nuke plant was built to a new design, new costs. Then the French developed a newer design and built a bunch of them. And so on... now on their third series I believe. That said, I still have other problems with the French, but ya' gotta give credit where credits due.

[Redoverfarm]

So Don when are you going to install a reactor at your house. I like the idea like you said if it wasn't for the by product. This is something that our kids and grandkids will have to contend with one of these days.  As for now I use a wood stove, heatpump and gas furnace.  Don't need all at once but last year I used 114 gal of propane all winter and about 3-4 pu trucks of wood.  I live in a snow region and it get pretty cold all winter.  Oh I forgot to mention that I had a outside furnace 1000gal before. Loved the heat and hot water and my elect bill was amost nothing. But as I looked at the tri-axel of logs that I had to cut, split and stack each year I said to my self "self do you want to do this the rest of your life". Well I am back to wood again but just as long as my health permits and if not fall back on the furnace and heatpump.

[peter nap]

Grab some popcorn and let me scoot the soapbox in place.

On the surface, I agree with you about nuclear Don......but the problem goes a lot deeper than producing dependable power.

I was born a long time ago in an area that was 40 years behind the world anyway. The house I was born in had started as a log cabin and had been in the family for generations. It's now a bed and breakfast:
http://www.jacobswartz.com/

We did not have power until long after I started school. Mountain people saved and reused everything. We heated with a potbelly stove using coal and cooked and heated water with a wood cook stove in the kitchen. Bottles were reused, we ate what we grew including hogs that were butchered every November. Butchering day was a big event and people came from miles around to help and for the party after.

We had a cistern and an outhouse. Everything was geared to efficiency and reuse. Those were good times. My father passed the bar and my mother was already teaching so we moved. My grandparents sold the place and moved to a town (KInd of)

Stay with me, there is a point and an end to this rant.

Anyway....the early years were the best of my life. The sky was clear and there was no noise and the land was to grow food in.

I am sitting here now, typing on my laptop, in a county that has a full landfill because we reuse nothing, grow nothing and consume a lot. 20 years ago, it was a farming community. Now it's the burbs.

I was told the other day that I am going to be a Grandfather....again...and I realize that we have almost destroyed this earth in MY LIFETIME, and I wonder what will be left for my grandchildren.

No Don, we don't need nuclear. We need to learn to reuse what we have and to have less.

End of sermon!

[Sassy]

Wellllll, we can just continue making the bunker buster bombs, bullets, missiles etc covered with depleted uranium - you know the waste from the nuclear reactors?  We're getting rid of thousands of tons right now over in Iraq & Afganistan -  what's wrong with that?     :-?

MtnDon, if our "leaders" could ever make any decisions that made sense instead of giving it to the company they owe the most favors to, maybe we could get some decent reactors made that didn't re-invent the wheel everytime they made a new one.... or maybe that money could be spent on more improved technology - seems like I've read about several inventions that were very cost effective - only problem, it cut into some of the big boys profits & either they bought the patent & buried it or somehow the inventor died of unknown causes...

ok, enough of "conspiracy theories" - how dare I accuse our illustrious leaders of any type of duplicity or suspicious deals?  Seems like Bill Clinton just said that to a 9/11 truther...  

[MountainDon]

Good sermon, Peter.

I agree we, the people of the developed world and specifically the people of the USA do not use resources in a truly responsible manner. I get disgusted with it all at times. I will admit I don't go as far as I could in conserving, but I believe I/we do better than most.

I grew up with parents who made things last, used things over (some of my favorite toys were hand me downs from an older cousin), didn't buy their own first car until 1957   if you can believe it. Dad rode a bike to work some 6 miles one way up to then. I walked 2 miles to work for years, until we moved south.

People don't do stuff like that anymore for the most part. Our local Waste Management branch offers curbside recycling for those who want to participate. We have 2 of the recycle carts and one trash cart. A number of neighbors have one of each. A few have only trash carts.  :'(

Back home in the Canadian prairies the highest piece of land in the city called home is the old landfill. It used to be well outside the city. That one hasn't been used in years. Now it's a city park and a great tobogganing / snow sledding site in winter. Here WM has about 8 years left on their present site, and are working on a replacement for down the road. Good old empty desert spaces.

The Sunday paper here had a feature article in the homes and real estate section, entitled something like "Homes Special for Empty Nesters". The featured house was over a thousand square feet bigger than our home! It was nearly 2700 sq.ft! If it wasn't for the garage and workshop space here I'd move into a smaller place like one of our rental condos. Rent this out instead, maybe.  :-/

So yeah, maybe we don't need nukes. Maybe we should let the country plunge into darkness, have power outages... That's about the only way to grab the attention of all those with grossly oversize homes, more cars than home residents, a year or mores salary in credit card debt, etc....

I don't know what the final answer will be. It just seems that when it comes to Nukes, France has done a superlative job. Designs that work, reprocessing fuel for minimum waste products, and they don't depend much on imported oil for producing their electrical energy;fossil fuels account for only 11%.

One of the problems with the USA is also geographic. The country is too big, too spread out. Everything travels vast distances. And so do people. Our geographic spread is one reason the USA is actually behind most of the rest of the world in cellular telephone communication networks. It's better than it was years ago. [I only bought a cell phone this year in order to have phone service up in my mountains. And it's a Tracfone, no contract, no big monthly fee.] But that's another rant... too many people have too many cell phones and spend too much time chatting unnecessarily.

[firefox]

And now for a completely different tack. This depends on how much sun you can get, but
there are a variety of ways you can set up either tanks or coils in an area that gets a lot of sun
and then cover it with clear fiberglass and insulate. Set up a little pump to circulate the heated
(non freezing) fluid into the house via insulated pipes to help preheat a water tank.

It wont solve all your hotwater needs or space heating, but it will help your heating bill,
and depending on how much effort you put into it, can be a real asset. A little research and thought has to go into this, but it isn't rocket science either.
Bruce

[glenn kangiser]

Along this line, Mother Earth News has a window solar heat grabber that might be of use in the right situation.

http://www.motherearthnews.com/Green-Home-Building/1977-09-01/Mothers-Heat-Grabber.aspx