Well winter is around the corner and this is good time to discuss auxillary heat. Although statistics aren't kept, it's not hard to visualize the number one reason for people to have to leave their homes in winter is lack of heat. With the increase in fuel costs this year, this promises to be worse of problem than usual as the average American has no idea what his fuel costs are going to be this winter. With the increase in oil prices and natural gas auxillary heating devices are being sold at record levels this fall.

There are two basic reasons to have auxillary heat.

The first and most important is weather related issues that take your home off the grid temporarily. Ice storms or heavy snows can often take trees down knocking the power off to your home. The second is economics. Supplimenting your main heat source during extreme conditions with a low cost alternative can save you major dollars.

The biggest issue people face in selecting which auxillary heat is best for them is knowing how many continuous as compared to intermittent BTU's it takes to warm their home in a given weather condition. Typically it takes less continuous BTU's than intermittent but the only way to really know is by trying it. This can be a quite expensive trial and error process not mention comfort. A rule of thumb is you can always crack a window to regulate heat.

There are three very popular options that I would like the opportunity to show you and discuss.

The first is the tower kerosene heater.

This a low initial cost option at about $120. As pictured this stove is called tower or conventional kerosene heater. The heat output is adjustable from about 15K BTU to 23K BTU. Modern kerosene heaters use a catylic reburner which eliminates fume smells. The other type of kerosene heater is radiant which is typically only about 10K BTUs and not adjustable. I can't recommend this type for the wick will have to be replaced regularly or face fumes due to uneven burning. Having an adjustable wick is plus.

This is the auxillary I use. The fuel consumptin is on low about one week per 20 gallons and heats a well insulated home of around 3,000 sq/ft or an older not so well insulated home of about half that size. With Kerosen prices around $3 now, this isn't a viable economic main heating source any longer but still is an excellent auxillary for utility outages. It's major advantage is how clean it is and no modifications are needed to your home.

By far the most popular auxillary heating system is wood burning stoves. The modern stoves are very efficient compared to fireplaces and many models are offered that are both decorative and free standing reducing the installation cost and hassle plus reducing the amount of heat lost up the chimney.

Modern wood burner.


Typically rated for BTU's up to 30K, they are quite popular, however the space needed for wood, ash removal, and aging wood are drawbacks. This also requires modification to your home via a stack through the roof.

Still for all it's drawbacks depending on where you live wood is abundant and low cost. Inner city or even some states such as CA, this becomes less of a viable option.

Another option requireling slightly less modifciaton to your home and more fitting into the supplimental or emergency catagory is ventless propane. I don't recommend portables for homes for they typically only do one room and I have issues with having 20 gallon tanks in your home, however they are worth noting and something many of us who do outdoor sports have. The modern ventless heater is both decorative and functional. Installation is typically a simple hole through the outside wall to allow feed tubing and either double uprights outside against the wall or a single large tank which can be leased from your local propane supplier.

Decorative propane stove:


Although an old technology probably the fastest growing stove type in popularity is the pellet/corn stove. This stove uses a hopper to feed small pellets or corn into the fire. It is very cost effective putting out up to 30,00 btus with very efficient fuel consumption and low ash. The fuel is either wood pellets available at your local coop or Tractor Supply run between $175 a ton and $225 and corn right now is about $175 a ton. A ton in typical use is about two months heating. Unlike wood which has to be chopped, split, and cured, corn or pellets come in bags and can be stored easilty. The typical pellet stove runs about a day on a hopper feed.

Typical Pellet Stove

Though the stove pictured is about $2,000. They can be had for as little as around $1,600. You will have to shop this one.

The downside to this type stove is it requires power that means a backup generator in case of a utility outage is necessary. The upside to that is it is thermostatically controlled. I mention this for it's popularity due to economics is really growing and availability getting scarce.

I would like to thank Northenrtool for the use of their pictures on this thread and can highly recommend them for great values on stoves with the exception of the pellet stove.

I hope you found this interesting and look forward to your comments on what you do for auxiallary heat.

Tj

Heavy clothing...

Our place doens't have a fire place, and given my aparent propensity for spontaneously combusting stuff, I don't think a portable stove would be a good idea for me :dry:

Our place seems decently insulated. But yeah, my main plan for keeping warm this winter is wearing extra layers with warm clothes.

Decorative propane stove

That is the route I went. I already heat with propane anyway, so it seemed like a natural choice as a backup to my forced air furnace. I can keep downstairs as hot as I want and at least knock part of the chill off of upstairs with it. I consider that a victory in crisis.

Jay

I need to come up with something. No fireplace here, and I heat with natural gas. kerosene heater doesn't look like the right option for me. I may have to look into something else.

Nice approach.

My mom's has a simliar setup. They have free natural gas from a well however the well dries up sometimes usually in the worst times due to consumption by others on the line. We switched the main heat to propane and then use the ventless for the natural gas. When away, they set the thermostat for the propane 20 degrees below the natural gas so if it goes off the propane takes over and the pipes don't freeze.

The biggest mistake many make in planning alternative heat systems is forgetting their water pipes. It's the main reason even though I have individual room propane heaters like the Heater Buddy, I prefer a whole house system.

Not much pipe freezing here in the south but five winters on the Great Lakes taught me a few things for sure.

My personal definition of a good backup system isn't one that keeps the whole house toasty since like hkriflenut posted you can always put on more clothes. It's one that allows both you and your house to survive.

Tj

Um, how many share that free natural gas well? Has anybody thought of setting up 500 gallon tanks at their house as a place to compress it and store it during the season you don't burn much?

EXCELLENT post, TJ!

For those of you who don't know, I work in the heating business. I install and repair furnaces and boilers, among other things.

1st, my personal solutions. The primary heat in my home has been oil fired scorched air for 20+ years. I have a 1000 gallon tank that will run me about two years with care. Historically, oil has cost about the same as Natural gas and some 25% less than LP. Lately the prices have been unstable and you need to check almost daily it seems! (I will not hijack Tom's thread by posting the price comparrison formulas here.)

I have also had a wood burning stove for about 25 years (same one!). I can heat my entire house (1600') quite comfortably on about 3 dump truck loads per year. I'm too lazy to stack it so would have trouble converting to cords. The stove has a fan and works better with it but heats the place pretty well without. A wood stove requires some knowledge to use safely and effectively. More on that later if anyone is interested.

For double whammys (furnace & woodstove failure for whatever reason) I have "tower type" kerosene heaters. I also loan these out from time to time when a customer needs it. Purchased FOUR of these at the local flea market for a TOTAL of $75 - and that INCLUDED 5 gallons of K1!!!!

My air-conditioner was 30 + years old and in bad need of replacement (leaky A coil, mostly). Shopping my suppliers I was able to pick up a new heat pump for $200!! Had been installed, leaked, removed under warranty. Took me all of 15 min to repair the leak! Just got the thing installed and operating this week. At 35 degrees or more it will heat my house cheaper than oil or wood and is a great asset. At those mild temperatures with daytime highs in the 60's the woodstove is harder to regulate and you waste some wood as well as accumulate more cresote due to slow fires. My custom controls run the HP down to 35 then transfer to oil. 2nd stage of the thermostat brings on oil above 35 and acts as failure protection on the HP. Below 35, the roles are reversed. 2nd stage then calls for the HP to run as the system assumes oil has failed for some reason.

With four sources, I consider myself well prepared! My generator will run the oil furnace or woodstove fan but not the heatpump.

***********************************************

It never ceases to amaze me the folks who have ZERO alternative heat!!!!! I live in an area (Central Ohio) where it can get DAMN cold! A heating failure will drive folks out of their home in a few hours. The idiots will leave and not drain the plumbing or the boiler..........

Why, you ask, does their heat fail?? Several reasons, really. Failure of electric service due to storms is tops on the list. I had customers without power for over two weeks after last winter's storm. A few are unable to get fuel deliveries either because the y don't pay or because their storage is way too small and the truck can't get there in time due to road conditions.

2nd cause is folks absolute REFUSE to spend money in the basement when there are campers to buy, vacations to take and cigarettes to smoke!! They have a 60 year old boiler in poor condition, 40 years past design life, and yet they ignore my pleas to replace the POS before it fails. In winter, availablity on one of these is often 3 weeks plus a hefty special freight charge. Ends up costing them an extra $500 for emergency replacement and $2000 in frozen pipes!

3rd cause is buying some exotic high efficiency POS that uses all proprietary parts. Years past furnace parts were mostly the same among brands. Not anymore!! Most parts are unique to a specific brand and model. Nobody stocks anything anymore either. (I hope the originator of JIT theory burns in hell - right next to the furnace!!) High eff. furnaces require a lot more maintenance than older units and have very definite reliability short comings. If you own one of these, keep a spare ignitor at least. Develope a good relationship with a company that can and will service it. Have it looked at EVERY YEAR by those folks!

FOLKS KEEP SOME AUXILLARY HEAT SOURCE IN YOUR HOME!!! I don't care if the smell of kerosene offends you. I'm not interested in the excuses about cost of a heater or two and a stock of fuel - when I had to thread my way past 4 vehicles in the driveway, fight off a 120LB dog (purebred, of course), paw through decorations on the door to find the bell then choke on the cigarette smoke in your house to get to the furnace. Around that 50 year old furnace is a 7' pile of toys and Christmas decorations. Get the picture?

This post has been edited by MickeyMouse: November 1st 2005 4:13 PM

Dang buddy, you make me fell almost naked.

My current system is a heat pump with central electrical strip heat backup. The central strip heat is very expensive to operate. I use the kerosene towers for of course utlity outages but also when temps drop below 10 degrees when the heat pump doesn't work. I suppliment that with room size electric heaters and room size propane catalytic heaters (only when power is out). I don't have a fireplace. A bad month for me is winter with two weeks in the 10 degree range where my utilities run about $250 a month. (We have about the best electric rates in the US, hydro).

I would really like to have another heat source thus the reason for this thread. I like hearing what you guys use and also the benifits you see.

Any input is appreaciated.

Tj

When I build my place in Idaho, it'll have a Radiantec heating system in the floor that will be heated by an outside wood furnace.

The concept is that you heat the floor and the walls of your house. As the heat rises and heats the thermal mass of your house, fuel consumption will go down and maintain a comfortable level.



Bob

This post has been edited by Pacific Nomad: November 1st 2005 11:12 PM

Thanks, will give it a research if anything for referance.

Some of the neatest systems I've seen are steam. Though never out of style in Europe due to high utilitiy costs, they are making a major comback in the US.

Tj

Yea, TJ, resistance electric is expensive. About 3 times the cost of the heatpump!! That multiplier is "C.O.P." or "Coefficent Of Performance". Higher is better. 2 is poor, very old technology. 4 is great but not real common. It is a variable number represented by a curve. The curve is priimarily related to outdoor temperature and declines more steeply as OD temp drops. At 10 degrees it is between 1 and 2 so from an operating cost standpoint still better than resistance. ALso, as indoor temp drops, C.O.P. improves slightly. Clean OD coil, clean ID coil, clean filters and blower wheel all help. Greater indoor airflow, such as all registers wide open, helps too.

DOWNSIDE to running a heatpump at low OD temps is related to discharge gas temperature. As the mass flow of R-22 declines, disch temp goes up and approaches the oil breakdown point. Closer you get to that, and the more time spent at high disch temps the shorter compressor life becomes. R-22 is a lousy low temp gas, which is why we stopped using it 20 + years ago in Supermarket Freezers!! During the hysteria over "ozone depletion" junk science R-22 was once again put to low temp use but with a twist - liquid injection also known as demand cooling. Worked OK but stole a little capacity. Heatpumps are, in fact, low temperature coolers. A Supermarket freezer needs to maintain 10 degrees F or below; same as your 10 degree ambient cutoff you mentioned. Some brands of HP actually have a thermostat that does just that - turn it off. Going to a "fossil fuel" add on scheme can extend compressor life by stopping the HP at moderate OD temps. Tom, you really should consider that. Works well with oil or gas (either type). I personally despise LP gas but that would be, of course, up to you. The fossil furnace replaces your current air handler and resistance heat strips. Expect to pay $1500 or so depending on fuel type selected, brand and installer.

This post has been edited by MickeyMouse: November 2nd 2005 1:34 AM

Now to address the radiant & steam comments!

Almost no new steam heat is installed in the USA except for a few special commercial/industrial projects. Almost all new work is HOT WATER, don't confuse the two! Steam really puts out the heat and has the advantage of most or all of the water draining back to the boiler at shut down. Avoids freeze issues! Steam heat is based on the energy it takes to turn water to steam and then liberated when it returns to water. The round number is 1000 BTUH per pound of water from and at 212 degrees F at sea level pressure. Radiators will normally be at 212 degrees which WILL burn you.

Hot water heat, OTOH, transfers heat at a lower temperature. Radiant systems on the order of 100 degrees, standing cast iron radiators around 140 degrees and baseboard fin tube at 190 or so. (Fintube sucks, actually!!) The formula is, 1 BTUH per one degree drop in water temp per pound of water. Most are engineered for 20 degree drop and 4 GPM (33.3 LB, min, 1998 LB per hour) flow rate, yielding a max heating effect of just under 40,000 BTUH per "loop" of fin-tube. Anti-freeze, if used, decreases that a little. Standing cast iron radiators heat quite well. They have a lot of square feet of surface which heats a lot of room air by convection. In addition, they provide a lot of radiant (IR) energy which heats other objects, including your bod, making you feel warm. Downside is cost - the things cost roughly a dollar per pound and they start out around 300 pounds!! A decent substuitute that the wife may accept appearance wise is known as Burnham Base Ray. It is a cast iron baseboard unit about 8" high. Provides decent amount of surface and some radiant output. Much better than fin tube (did I mention fin tube sucks?) but still costs an arm and a leg!! It is less than standing iron, however. The eurotrash use some radiant panel heating. Most are fragile and WAY expensive - but they do work well. Towel warmers and the like ARE neat! I assume those do not sell well in France as they never bathe as best I can tell.

Now to your radiant floor scheme. This is the newest kid on the block, although I remember some 40 years ago too! Until you have done under car work in a shop with a heated floor you ain't lived!! Melts the snow, evaporates the water and feels oh so good on your back. Open that 20' garage door and cold air rushes in. In just a few min that 500 tons of concrete has it warmed up again! Until then, the IR on your back or feet keeps you comfortable.

Radiant is based on that IR heating. There are low mass systems that use plates and tubing under or in a wood floor. (Start slowly to dry the wood, watch max temp so as not to damage it.) High mass systems are in concrete. Medium mass are in gypcrete on top of a wood subfloor. All work if properly designed. WATCH OUT WITH CARPET! Other than poor design, floor covering different than the system was designed for can make for a cold room!

Old systems used steel or copper pipe in concrete. Floor settled a little and big problems obviously came about!! Current systems use a plastic (PEX) or rubber hose (big disaster that bankrupted HeatWay a few years back; now promoted by Watts.) Two kinds of PEX, oxygen barrier and no ox barrier. Avoid non barrier like a social disease!!!!!! If using one of the outrdoor boilers that the cheapskates sell as non inspected bombs that run at zero pressure, you will need a heatexchanger for good operation. PROPERLY designed and installed they can provide great comfort at a low operating cost. First cost is generally high, however.

This post has been edited by MickeyMouse: November 2nd 2005 2:09 AM

Our main source of heat is our woodburner. Electric base-board is our back-up...Kinda sounds backwards but I put in the b-boards in case I am not home and the fire goes out!...If the power goes out, well I'll just have to stay home!

At least you have TWO heat sources!! You would have to stay home with oil or gas to mind the generator so not really much different.

I am also interested in this. I am going to have another kid in Jan and I want to make sure the house is warm enough for a newborn. What would be my best method considering I only have electricity in my house.

If you only have electric, another source is a necessity if it gets real cold there. If you are in S Carolina, just how cold does it get?

Surely it ain't as bad as OH!! Tower kerosene heater would certainly do. Catalytic propane would work but they are somewhat dangerous. No odor, though. A wall mounted gas heater with non-electric controls might suit you. Heating costs down there may not be high enough to justify the expense of a pellet/corn/wood stove.

Radiantec beats steam all to Hell. Pressurized steam also isnt the safest thing in the world. A radiantec system is encased in your slab foundation. It may leak over several years, but its easy to fix if need be.


Just my 2 cents worth


Bob

This post has been edited by Pacific Nomad: November 2nd 2005 9:09 AM

Yea Bob, I stand corrected it is hot water over steam which is the same in Europe in fact Eastern Europe they use the hot water from power plants to heat apartment buildings.

Funny I actually sell components that go into the controls. I must have had a brain fart.

Thanks Mickey. I'll add maintence of my strip heat to my to do list.

Guys,

Keep in mind there are numerous ways to skin this cat. Ultimately it comes down to having a secondary method for about anything is better than leaving your home due to extreme cold and a power outage to come back to find it flooded due to burst pipes.

Tj

Deleted

This post has been edited by MickeyMouse: November 2nd 2005 1:26 PM

TJ wrote:
[QUOTE]they use the hot water from power plants to heat apartment buildings.[/quote]

Had that scheme in this town until 1948!! Core city all was heated by waste heat.
[/QUOTE]
Funny I actually sell components that go into the controls. I must have had a brain . [QUOTE]
What co. or parts?

[/QUOTE]
Thanks Mickey. I'll add maintence of my strip heat to my to do list.
[QUOTE]

That is a really easy one but it does often get overlooked!!

Bob wrote:

[/QUOTE]Radiantec beats steam all to Hell. Pressurized steam also isnt the safest thing in the world. A radiantec system is encased in your slab foundation. It may leak over several years, but its easy to fix if need be.
[QUOTE]

Hot water IS much easier to control making it, generally, much more economical to operate than hot water. Radiant has many benefits as well. If you can afford the first cost adn can live with the carpet restrictions you'll love it! SOme installation methods are easy to repair, some are not. If done correctly, leaks are unlikely.

As far as the safety issue, you are not exactly correct. High pressure steam IS dangerous but heating systems typically run at 1 psi or less!! The relief is set at 15 psi. Hot water, including radiant, is set to 30 psi. Water systems typically operate at 20 - 25 psi with an intial fill pressure of 12 psi.

The real danger of any boiler is dry firing followed by water inflow. That ALWAYS causes an explosion! Most important control on ANY boiler, steam, hot water or even the non-pressurized crap is a Low Water Cutoff. Commercial everywhere and many residential jurisdictions require them on steam and larger hot water. Even a small boiler needs one. I refuse to install any size or type boiler without a LWCO control, period.