Any thoughts on converting from oil heat to gas heat? Also is there anyway to hook a pellet stove to forced hot air? If not should a wood burning stove be considered ?

Right now if you have service available natural gas is the most cost efficient way to heat.

Years ago my ex-BIL installed a boiler that could use wood, coal or oil. Not sure if there is a natural gas version of that available.

If your pellet stove has the ability to connect a duct to the blower output you could pump this into the duct work and then run the furnace fan to circulate the hot air throughout your house. In my first house I had a wood stove in the basement and I just installed an air return duct above my wood stove to pull the air into the HVAC ducts. In reality, once I fired up the wood stove the first floor and second floor were quite warm without running the fan. This was a 1800 square foot townhouse and the heat naturally rose to the other floors. A more spread out house might need the assistance of the furnace fan to move it around the entire house.

Thanks. I'll have to do the research of course , but hopefully in a perfect world I can hookup gas to the house, also a pellet stove. Though with no power, the pellet stove would not dispense the pellets from the hopper. So ideally I think with research we should look into gas. It's cheaper and more reliable. Plus cleaner. A wood burning stove like you mentioned. Then if we loose power at least some heat is readily available . The oil is too expensive. Plus sometimes a pain. The furnace feed line gets clogged. Or the filters. Or air in the line. Plus after shoveling out the walkways and driveway for ten hours. I had to then shovel another three hours a path to the fill for the tank. Wouldn't have to do that with gas.

Keep in mind that your typical gas furnace will still need power to operate. No electric = no fans and no ignition = no heat.

A small generator is normally enough to run a gas furnace, they typically only use one 15 amp circuit to power the blower and the controls.

I found with my wood stove radiant heat would be enough to keep the house warm. The wood stove's blower improved it somewhat, running the fan on the air handler for the furnace generally wasn't needed.

If long power outages are typical in your area getting a 2000-3000 watt portable generator might not be a bad idea. You can set it OUTSIDE and run an extension cord into the house and cycle between various electrical appliances in your house. Hook it up to the refrigerator until it gets back down to temperature, hook it up to your gas furnace or feeder for your pellet stove to get it refilled, etc. A whole house generator is nice but it will set you back $10K or more. Nice to have but I certainly can't justify the expense since in the 14 years we've been in this house we've had a couple of outages that lasted more than an hour. Underground utilities certainly help in that regard. Our entire time in Cary we had one outage that lasted a day after Hurricane Fran. The area has had some long outages but so far we've been fortunate.

Travis, although you didn't raise the issue of gas stoves, this is just a reminder, in terms of surviving power failures. The newer gas stoves also require electricity to operate as they have electronic ignition. Years ago gas stoves could be operated during power failures and allow for cooking, but that's changed too. So they're no help during a power failure, any more than a gas furnace is.

You must have been right in the heart of Nemo if you shoveled 10 hours (and didn't have a heart attack!) Hope you and your family are safe and recovering.

quote:

Originally posted by GardenSprite:
Travis, although you didn't raise the issue of gas stoves, this is just a reminder, in terms of surviving power failures. The newer gas stoves also require electricity to operate as they have electronic ignition. Years ago gas stoves could be operated during power failures and allow for cooking, but that's changed too. So they're no help during a power failure, any more than a gas furnace is.

You must have been right in the heart of Nemo if you shoveled 10 hours (and didn't have a heart attack!) Hope you and your family are safe and recovering.

For at least the burners you can usually manually light them with a match or a lighter if you're without power. The oven will be dead without power.

Sparky, good point, about which I had forgotten. My power failures are always in the summer when I don't need to use the oven, so this option escaped my attention when I wrote my response.

Thanks for the reminder.

a modern gas stove during power outage wil work.the oven will not work but the burners do if you use a match to light the burner.a few years back i manages that way for 9 days and we did not have to order a pizza.