Propane lasts the life of the storage container.

I'm in the process of building and the plan is wood as primary, with propane for "quick heat" (coming back to a cold house, wood takes a while to heat up)
Spot heating (need bathroom warmer) and secondary.

I'm off grid, electric is inefficient for solar, it's ok, so long as the grid is ok.....

 

I would think that you'd better better served to put in a ground source heater and back it up with the wood stoves. These ground source setups are VERY efficient and take very little electricity to run and you could run then off grid if needed.

 

In the frigid winters we have I can't see this being a viable back up heat source but seems like it might be a great supplemental cooling system.

I would do one of these, and propane back up, not saying this brand just type. Some will urn pallets ect, can be loaded for a period of time and will not effect insurance rates. http://woodmaster.com/

The propane was my first choice right off the bat but second guessed it when I looked at the propane prices, they have gone through the roof..

How about passive solar and wood? Works for me.

Not sure how well solar would do.. Will be a fairly large home so would need a large setup.


Out of the common 3, propane, oil, electric what would be the most reliable/economical?

Is heating oil really the same as diesel? Could it be used to run a vehicle? Conversely Could vehicle diesel be used to run the furnace?

 

I would do one of these, and propane back up, not saying this brand just type. Some will urn pallets ect, can be loaded for a period of time and will not effect insurance rates. http://woodmaster.com/

 

How about passive solar and wood? Works for me.

 

There are a number of books on solar heating and cooling.
These I would work toward aggressively, and the conventional means secondarily.
There are ways to integrate the two as well ,it take some innovation and creativity, but once you've learned the principles it gets fun.

 

PASSIVE solar does not mean solar panels. It means positioning the house to face the sun, using thermal masses and the design to passively heat/cool the house.

I woud go with a passive solar design and wood.

 

For a rural location in the north, I'd say primary propane with secondary wood.

If you have a lot of wood available, and the will to process it and maintain the equipment, you could get a high efficiency boiler. I hear lots of positive things about them, but they're not for everyone.

 

I am building now. First thing I analyzed the way the wife and I live, and decided as empty nesters we need lots less space than what we have been living in so the house I am building will only have an open living, dinning, kitchen, and a bath and bedroom on the lower floor. Upstairs I am making additional bedrooms for when kids visit that will normally go unheated. I'm even doing an outside staircase to access the upstairs to minimize the heated sq footage.

The main living area is dug into a south facing hillside, cooler in summer and warmer in winter. My main heat will be a wood stove. Propane will back up. I think I can get by with just a stove not a furnace. Furnaces have to have electricity. Many stoves do not. I will also have a solar panel under my south facing windows. Heat generated there will vent into the house, but I will also fit it with a reversible fan. I can speed up the air exchange when the sun is hot, but mostly I want to use the space behind the panel to start seedlings for the garden in the spring. The fan will run air from the house through the space to prevent them from freezing.

 

I would go with a multi-fuel outdoor furnace/hot water heater.

Wood/Coal/Propane/heating oil/waste oil

http://www.outdoorwoodfurnaceboiler.com/Dual Fuel Propane Wood Outdoor Furnace.htm

Wood and coal as primary sources, and Propane, heating oil, waste oil as back ups.

Just my opinion.

 

THIS!! Have a couple customers that have this type of setup, wish I had the setup to accomplish fueling one with mostly wood!

 

THE best house-heating option is to not need heat. Superinsulate the house and the heat from electronics, lights, cooking, showers, bodies will heat the house.

Ventilate it with an air-to-air heat exchange ventilator and there you are.

I've argued for a long time that we don't ask the right kind of question about heating homes. The right question is NOT how to heat the house--the right question is how to keep it comfortable.

My own home is extremely well sealed, such that I ventilate it as above. The humidity is very comfortable in the winter (i.e., it's not so dry that by itself that makes us feel cold). I keep the temp at about 67 and it feels very comfortable.

Anyway, consider not how to get cheap heat in--instead, consider how to keep it from leaving in the first place.

My 2 cents.

PS: The problem for existing homes is different. For new homes, not so.

 

As the electrical administrator for an hvac company I say no to central air. Have wood stove, a couple ductless heads and a few Cadet wall heaters. I'm in the Philippines a lot and the poorest of people have ductless systems.

 

i agree with the super insulation it will save many times the cost ove a few years

 

Just my opinion, but superinsulation and passive solar should be your primary heat choice. Almost all costs are incurred up front.

Wood heating, either active using external boiler or passive using convection will let you control fuel costs as long as you have access to wood. Most other fuels require a functional economy to maintain the supply.

Propane as your easy backup. It heats fast and stores well.

 

If you are building your own home, the most efficient home is an underground home. It stays at a constant 50 degrees when you are gone so nothing freezes up. It takes very little heat to get it to 70 degrees and very efficient on burning wood.

You can always build an upstairs area on top with weather proof doors seperating the underground home to keep the heat downstairs during winters and have another wood stove upstairs. More like a sun room that you can lounge in away from the bugs and use as a green house in summer.

There are so many sites its hard to list them. You can look up underground dome homes and just underground homes. They are really cool looking and they save you a ton of money.

I plan to build a small one this summer and use it as a shelter and as a man cave.

 

I have all three options.

I have a wood fire that is also an oven.

I have a gas heater (that I never use, was in the house when I got it)

I have an electric split system for cooling in the summer, but it can also heat (and is used for heat if I am too lazy to light fire)

Getting all 3 is not super cost prohibitive really

 

The problem with propane is that it's not efficient in colder temperatures and the OP is in Ontario Canada. Propane doesn't boil properly in extreme cold. They do make electric blankets for different size tanks.

 

Look into new green building technologies!. I'm a certified Green Builder in PA. Proper house design, spray closed cell insulation, low E windows. I have a business friend that has a 2000sqf house that is heated and cooled on to mitsubishi mini splits. $150 a month in FEB! Once you close up a house that tight you need to have a proper HVAC system to recycle the air.

http://www.nahb.org/reference_list.aspx?sectionID=127

We've done a house with geo-thermal, it sounds cool and all that, and don't get me wrong, it's a cool technology, but then mini splits are actually more efficient! And a lot cheaper to install.

With prepping in mind, its always nice to have a wood burning stove inside for heat and COOKING. I heat primarily with the wood stove. But never build using your stove as your primary heat source. It's a lot of work and dirty. Plus it has to be "feed" at least 3 times a day.

I am currently working around NEPA, we have started a development called The Paddocks at Duck Harbor that we are in the process of trying to get it certified as the first "certified green development in PA. It would actually be a good preppers retreat.

www.duckharborgroup.com

 

I quickly mentioned "Passive Solar" a few posts back on this discussion and I just wanted to elaborate on it a little now that I have a second to sit down. If your building new construction it would be a wonderful thing to incorporate. I'm at a loss to why more homes are not built with this concept in mind.

My home was designed by a Canadian designer to be an off the grid heat solution for people living in remote cold climates. I live in a cold region with particularly cold winters. My home is heated primarily with passive solar. Large south facing windows let in the sun during the day and stone floors and a solid main concrete wall absorb and then radiate the heat once the sun goes down. The house has one "great room" with a balcony and all the other rooms are off that one room or the balcony. On overcast days and very cold nights I use a wood stove to heat the great room and it works quite well. The heat from the stove will keep the entire home comfortable. Even on a cold night without a fire the house doesn't really ever drop bellow 60 degrees and that's with -20 outside.

We do have electric baseboards throughout the home with each room on its own zone so the option is there to use grid tied heat if someone chooses but we really don't use the baseboards.

As spring come in and the leaves fill the trees the direct sunlight is filtered and the home takes in less sunlight keeping it comfortable. large shades can cover the main solar windows. The house was designed to have some of the large windows open and create a cross breeze in the summer and the house stays nice and cool. With the design we have the home maintains a comfortable 74 degrees year round.

The best part is we pay nothing towards heating or cooling unless we choose to not make a fire on overcast days or cold nights and use the electric heat. I used 2 cords of wood last winter for a rather mild winter. This year we went through only 3 chords and this was for a very cold winter. We have quite a bit of land so we are able to harvest our own firewood. If we go out for the night and have a babysitter we will turn on the electric heat just so the babysitter doesn't have to mess with the wood stove.

If the shtf heating my home is one less thing I need to worry about.

OP, send me a pm if you'd like to learn more. I'd be more than happy to discuss the design more in depth.

 

My apologies, I thought you originally meant solar heaters. I had planned to design the house incorporating much of what you describe i just never thought that it would be that effective. I had better look into it a bit more.

As a former plumber and pipefitter I would say that no matter if you choose to go gas, oil, or whatever for your boiler, that you should use radiant heat. Radiant is very efficient as you only have to run the water in your boiler at about 125 deg F. Also, it is the most natural feeling heat because the heating “element” are evenly spaced under the floor, unlike baseboard or old radiators that are along the walls. It is also far superior to forced hot air because 1- heating air is never efficient because air’s low mass, it will quickly lose whatever heat you put into it. 2- even the best forced hot air systems create hot and cold spots. 3- forced hot air over dries the air in your home, and spreads dust and allergens.

Radiant may be a more expensive form of heat to install (depending on your finished flooring choices) but its super efficient and will for its self quickly; not to mention the comfort factor… nothing like steeping out of bead or the shower on a frigid morning and you feet hitting a nice warm floor.

Radiant floor heating is already on the wife's "MUST HAVE" list. I get to have a house in the country with my 50 acres and a barn she gets to have the design keys to the homes interior..

 

As a former plumber and pipefitter I would say that no matter if you choose to go gas, oil, or whatever for your boiler, that you should use radiant heat. Radiant is very efficient as you only have to run the water in your boiler at about 125 deg F. Also, it is the most natural feeling heat because the heating “element” are evenly spaced under the floor, unlike baseboard or old radiators that are along the walls. It is also far superior to forced hot air because 1- heating air is never efficient because air’s low mass, it will quickly lose whatever heat you put into it. 2- even the best forced hot air systems create hot and cold spots. 3- forced hot air over dries the air in your home, and spreads dust and allergens.

Radiant may be a more expensive form of heat to install (depending on your finished flooring choices) but its super efficient and will for its self quickly; not to mention the comfort factor… nothing like steeping out of bead or the shower on a frigid morning and you feet hitting a nice warm floor.

 

I love the idea of passive solar heating. My only concern is how safe would all those huge windows be?

In a SHTF can they be defended? Or do you- anyone that has a house like this- have a back up bunker etc planned? I would love to know your ideas, as I want to build one as well.

 

A problem I see with excessive south windows is that at night they also radiate a lot of heat OUT. That can be mitigated with good insulated drapes.

I will have insulated shutters over my smaller south windows. Shutters will also improve security.

With a solar panel below my windows I can easily shut it off at night. They can move a lot of heat on a sunny day just by convection. My dad made one years ago and it was almost like a furnace heat register running all the time the sun was on the panel, FOR FREE.

 

Dual glase windows have little loss and serve both to keep temperatures from exchanging and sound to some degree as well. In severe conditions I might choose to build shutters ,in the event of extraordinary conditions ,one never knows.
Big windows to the south are always a pay off.
BTW, thermal electric solar panels you can put behind glass ,they are designed to work from the heat generated by the sun, Photovoltaic are not ,they work on light only, excessive heat will break them down eventually so they are not put behind glass.
Thermal Electric panels can be placed where you are already running heat source as well, so during the cold over cast winter months those panels can be making power for you as well.

 

OK, this is North of the border, so I'm going to say that geothermal is out of the question, unless you have two water wells that you can pump and dump.

I am near the Southern border and I have a ground source geothermal, i.e. 1/4" copper tubing running R-22 about 8 feet underground, and it works, but poorly for heat... the problem is you get an iceberg effect, the ground freezes and you can no longer pull heat from it (heat pump).

I also use active solar, with drain down, I'm not sure if that's a viable option up North, but mine heats 1,300 gallons of water, and heats hydronically thru the floor piping, trust me if you like warm floors that's the way to go, but put Styrofoam under the slab, but again up North you probably don't do slab construction.

I also have a pellet stove heater PAH-25, except for going thru an igniter about once a year it is the cats meow, it is our main source of heat, our fireplace is secondary, our solar is third, our heat pump is forth. I go thru maybe $100 in pellets/winter.

YMMV

Rancher

 

OK, this is North of the border, so I'm going to say that geothermal is out of the question, unless you have two water wells that you can pump and dump.

I am near the Southern border and I have a ground source geothermal, i.e. 1/4" copper tubing running R-22 about 8 feet underground, and it works, but poorly for heat... the problem is you get an iceberg effect, the ground freezes and you can no longer pull heat from it (heat pump).


Rancher

It depends on the ground temps. Even just 40 degrees ground temp is better than -20 air temps and therefore more efficient than an air transfer heat pump.

I knew a guy back in college that had a vertical loop geo heat pump and he had no problems with anything freezing up. It sounds like you don't have enough capacity.

 

Any hole in the envelope of your house will leak air. The average home leaks the same amount of air through just there electrical outlets as leaving a window open. By me, code requires R21 in the walls, but at every stud there is no insulation. A 2x4 stud R value is 7. Has anyone ever seen how much wood surrounds a window and/or doors. HUGE heat loss! Not to mention good low-e windows R value is about (4). And it's about the same for a solid wood door.

 

Has anyone looked into combining passive solar with earth sheltered/ earth bermed?

I would love to get your feedback.