Kitchen range-switching from gas to electric 240v ?

[HeyBub]

Good point.

I live in a duplex - one side is my office. The gas company charges, as I recall, about $11.00/month just to be connected. I don't begrudge them that - they have to read the meter, send out a bill, keep records - as overhead.

With about two hours work and a bit of pipe, I connected both halves of the duplex to the same meter. It wasn't hard; the two water heaters sat on opposite sides of a common wall. Simply poking a hole in the wall and joining the gas supply lines together was relatively easy.

A call to the gas company to drop service one one side of the duplex resulted in a savings of over $100/year.

Wait, there's more!

The remaining meter is the one servicing the "office" side of the duplex and the bill is paid by a company check.

Deductible.

[HeyBub]

Still, you can't singe off the pin-feathers of a freshly-plucked chicken on an electric range. Or toast either a weiner or a marshmallow.

Bummer.

[The Daring Dufas]

You're using the law to save money but the tax weasels will claim your use of company utilities is compensation. The thought of how much money and government resources to go after you for that would boggle the mind.

TDD

[aemeijers]

Where did you say you lived again, Bub? IRS only pays the reward money if I give them an address....

[h]

We don't have NG here in upstate NY, about 20 minutes from Albany, 5 minutes outside of town. I'm in the boonies, but certainly not WAY out. They sent out a survey (supposedly 25,000 copies) about 10 years ago and they said only 5 people (myself included) wanted NG. They didn't say how many bothered to return the survey, however.

[Bob F]

You are right about heat pumps. The capital costs are considerable, and depending on your situation, the outdoor noise may be a problem with neighbors, but they certain will compete with gas for energy cost if it's not too cold where you live.

[Douglas Johnson]

I cooked on electric for forty years. I switched to gas about 5 years ago. It took me about two days to start wondering why the hell I didn't do it forty years earlier. -- Doug

[krw]

Agreed. Wouldn't have one.

Yep, I didn't know a gas oven would get hot enough (venting lost too much heat). I'll have to look again, though see no disadvantage to "dual fuel". We're still thinking about whether plumbing in LP is worthwhile (we just had the tank put in at the other end of the house).

[krw]

About ten years ago Vermont Gas went around and asked how many on our street (maybe 20 houses) wanted gas. As it worked out, the only money out of my pocket was $50 to have a clean-out installed in the chimney (should have been there) and $12/mo for the burner rental. I hate oil heat, so sure! The gas company paid for all installation costs, and even came back that spring and re-seeded the lawn. Only one family on the street refused.

[krw]

You've just defined the cause differently. No one dies from jumping out of tall buildings, either, but dead is still dead.

[Pete C.]

Nope, I didn't define the cause of death differently, I defined it accurately. Cause of death - "Electrocution due to failure to test and ground the conductor before handling it" - that's it, period. It makes no difference the source of the electricity.

[Pete C.]

C."

Funny, I've never had any difficulty making real (not blender) hollandaise sauce on any of the electric stoves I've used, nor custard ice cream base, nor creme brulee, etc.

[Pete C.]

Nope, a gas water heater and dryer will still use very little gas here, and the electric ones I have use very little electricity. The monthly service charge for gas service would still eclipse the gas useage. Electricity use is predominantly A/C and refrigerator during the warm weather months, the water heater and clothes dryer hardly have any effect.

[Pete C.]

Well, noise isn't a consideration since there is an A/C condenser outside anyway since much of the year is cooling season. The A/C or heatpump condenser also faces my shop which is some 80' away from the house. The next neighbor is another 100' or so and that side of their house has no windows.

As for capital costs, I just installed this new 4T heat pump along with matching air handler for a total cost of $3,750 which qualifies as pretty damned cheap in my book. As for efficiency, my monitoring indicates that it works well down to about 28F outdoor temp, and north TX doesn't get a lot of days below 28F. It was also a good jump in efficiency vs. the old A/C, so there is savings in the cooling months as well.

[Pete C.]

I love oil heat, or at least I did when I was in the northeast. No reliance on any outside utility during nasty storms, 300 gal of heat and generator fuel on site and ready at all times. That works out to the ability to operate for at least two full weeks (more if the tank is near full at the start) without any issues during one of the northeast's killer ice storms.

Granted nat gas service doesn't have an outage very often, but it does have outages, where oil never has outages. Nat gas also blows up at least one home a month, while oil has never blown up a home.

[Bob F]

So does it cook really fast?

[Bob F]

If you don't want to store gasoline, siphon it out of your car when you need it.

[Bob F]

28F is really warm winter weather in much of the USA.

Where I live in Seattle, A/C is unnecessary for a well insulated house. Yes, it gets warm inside several days a year but not bad if I vent it good in the morning, and then close it up to keep out the heat.

[aemeijers]

Best hope your tank is always near-full then. If there is a massive sustained electric outage for the region, you won't be getting any refills, once your local supplier empties his tanks, assuming HE has a backup generator.

As to NG blowups- simple housekeeping reduces the accidental explosion risk to near-zero. Compare that to the massive cleanup costs from even a minor tank leak (assuming the local authorities find out.) I think the odds favor NG by a wide margin.

[aemeijers]

No, but it comes with a skinny model in a sparkly dress leaning on it.