Why Oil Heat?

Heating Over The Years
Up until about the late Victorian period, the late 1800s, most people had to heat their homes and businesses on a room by room basis. They carried in either coal or wood to a stove or furnace in each room. Waking up to put bare feet on a bedroom floor in 1893 was quite an experience!

Sometime around the early 1900s, wealthier people bought coal-fired boilers which they connected to steam pipes and radiators in all of their rooms. Steam heat worked but it was inefficient, often noisy and the pipes and radiators could leak. Plus the coal was dirty and heavy and a mess to store.

Then someone got the idea of trying to send warm air around the house or business using either a duct system or a grille that was installed under the floor. The furnace was called a gravity furnace. It relied on the fact that heat rises but it often did not work and reach the upper floors. Some people used oil heat to push their hot air systems but when WWII happened, a significant amount of American oil was diverted to the tanks and vehicles of the war effort.

After World War II, companies turned their attention to developing better heating systems. They added electric blowers on to boilers as systems were now called "forced-air" systems.

In the 1950s and 1960s, as new suburban communities were developed, builders installed hot water pipes in concrete floor slabs. This was called radiant heat. If you lived in New England, between freezing pipes and pipe leaks, you quickly learned that pick axes and jackhammers had to be put to the concrete to get to those pipes for repair. Ouch and brrr!

By the middle 1960's, everyone thought that the new answer was electric coil heating. It was clean and cheap and didn't take up much room. Then suddenly electricity, which was created by mostly oil-fired plants, saw its prices skyrocket at the end of the 1960s and early 1970s. People then turned to natural gas or oil as the fuel for their furnace.

So today, people generally use either oil or gas or electricity to heat their homes and businesses. Let's look at each one.

Electric Heat
Electric heat generally costs up to four times more than either gas or oil heat. Even if you have a heat pump outdoors to boost the warmth in your home, it only helps when it is cool outside but not when it's a frigid 10 degrees. That's because almost 65% of the heat made is lost in inefficiency, so people with electric heat are always running it very hot to keep warm or very cool to save money. One-third of the energy use of a typical household comes from the use of hot water. So if a house has both hot water heating and an electric water heater, the electric bill can be staggering. The electric company does try to compensate its customers by reducing its rates at off hours but who needs to worry about what time it is when it's time to wash clothes, do the dishes or turn the heat up in the nursery.

Gas Heat
Gas heat is clean, about 80% efficient and very popular in America. Most of the gas heat here in Massachusetts comes from natural gas, from pipes in the streets, not gas in tanks called propane. Gas heat, though very popular, has its problems. Should something go wrong with the furnace settings or if there is a leak, you and/or your family or employees would have to evacuate the premises immediately as there could be danger of explosion or fire, or a small leak might cause carbon monoxide problems.

The other thing about gas heat is that the price, after being pretty reasonable and stable for years, has in the past couple of years soared to record levels. The American Gas Association, which represents gas utility companies, says that while there will be plenty of supply, that prices could go up between 15% to 30% depending on demand and how cold the winter is. Sources of natural gas are not as easily accessible as oil. The gas has to come over long pipelines from remote areas. Canada is one of our biggest suppliers.

Some gas companies charge a minimum "base floor price" before you even use any. Many others charge you in the bill for the cost of delivering the gas to you.

Oil Heat
Oil heat made a comeback after WWII. Heating oil itself has been improved over the years to burn more cleanly, more efficiently, with far less pollution. Today's oil furnaces burn more efficiently than both gas or electricity and they do not pollute the environment.

Oil is a safe fuel. If you took a match and dropped it into a pool of heating oil, it would go out as though you had thrown it into a puddle. Oil is not explosive. Also, the chance of carbon monoxide coming into a home or business from a oil fired burner is very low.

What about the expense of oil heat versus the others? First, you get 20% more heat efficiency for your dollar than other methods. If you compare what has been happening between oil and gas prices, oil has remained fairly stable while gas prices have continued to climb and climb. With oil heat, when you buy a gallon of oil, you buy a gallon of oil. No delivery costs, built-in base fees or additional costs of delivery.

What about oil supply? More than 35 countries produce oil, not just the Middle Eastern ones but also in this hemisphere, such as Venezuela, or Nigeria in Africa. We also produce quite a bit of oil in our own country.

Oil can save you money when it comes to heating water as well. You can have what's called a "tankless" system which means your hot water can be heated by your oil burner without having to buy and maintain separate gas or electric water heaters.

Sources of information include The American Gas Institute; USA Today; the U.S. Department of Energy, the R.W. Beckett Company, Home Design Magazine.

For More information visit www.oilheatamerica.com.