Heat your home with coal

[Ed Pawlowski]

Exactly. Yes they do occur and when the do, it makes the national news. Millions of homes have NG and never have a problem. I grew up with it and I'd go back in a second if it was nearby.

[Pete C.]

They've all been on CNN.com in the last month or two. You can search there for "house explosion" or similar to find them.

[Pete C.]

Just do a search on CNN.com to see all the examples in the last few months.

[ransley]

Some old flex lines used to connect stoves are known now to not last forever and have caused major leaks, Chicago banned that type years ago. People used them for water heaters and who knows. Many houses never see a maintenance man to check anything. CO detectors have saved lives, Ng detectors are a good idea. Not unknown is having a car catch fire when refilling gasolene in winter from static electricity. I just fell on the ice last night, maybe I should never go out again, naw I just found all my sheet metal screws and screwed them into my boots, it worked great.

[Steve Barker]

while you're at it, search for auto fatalities. Gonna quit driving also?

s

[Pete C.]

It's a matter of practical, safer alternatives. There are few alternatives to autos, unless you live in a big city, but there are plenty of safer alternatives to nat gas appliances / heating.

[Nate Nagel]

"safer" is debatable, and none of them work as well. You could make a case for a ground loop heat pump for heating if you live somewhere where that would be practical, but nothing beats a gas water heater or stove.

nate

nate

[Ed Pawlowski]

I did the search on CNN. They were in the Ukraine, a pub in Ireland, etc. I'm not going to bother looking for statistics, but if you look at fatalities by various sources, I think NG is way down on the list. A few years ago we did have a house in my town get leveled though. There was a very small leak and someone probing for it made a big gas leak that seeped into the house. Human error caused a small problem to become a big one.

I'd still switch to gas if I could. We use propane for cooking.

[BobK207]

Pete-

[Pete C.]

It's a "ground source" or "geothermal" heat pump, and they are practical pretty much everywhere. There are several different ground loop configurations (vertical, horizontal, trenched coil) that fit most any site. They can readily do hot water as well. In areas of relatively moderate temperatures, an air source heat pump is more economical.

A key thing to consider here is that high efficiency electric powered HVAC is somewhat "future proof", and "RE friendly" as both gas and oil are only going to get more costly, while most renewable sources like solar PV, wind, hydro, tidal, etc. are electric sources that can power the high efficiency heat pump.

As for the stove, gas being better only applies to cooktop burners, electric ovens are best. On the cooktop end, it seems that induction "burners" are becoming more popular, and they compete well with gas burners, and are once again an electric powered source.

Right now I have a dual fuel stove, electric ovens and LP gas burners up top. I have a combo CO/Gas detector in the vicinity, so should there be a leak I should have enough warning to evacuate.

[Pete C.]

You didn't search very well, all that I were referring to were in the US. I believe one was in MA, another in CA, etc. Not up to the rate of fatal auto accidents, but far above the rate of plane crashes.

I still find it incredible that they have required smoke detectors for years, and now CO detectors, but there are still no requirements for residential gas detectors, even though gas detectors have been standard equipment in RVs for years.

I have LP that fuels my cooktop only (electric ovens), and I have a combo CO/Gas detector in the vicinity. While I like to cook on gas, I can also cook just fine on electric and I only have it here because it came with the house.

[Paul M. Eldridge]

To learn more about the Donora, PA deaths of 1948, see:

See also: With regards to London's "killer fogs" of 1952, see: Cheers, Paul

[Steve Barker]

oh please.

s

[Steve]

I remember this clearly as well. We used to have a small room in our basement where the coal was stored. You didn't want to touch anything in that room or you'd get blackened. The coalman used to come about every month or two and he was blackend from cap to boot! Every morning someone in our house had to go down the basement and stirr the clinkers and fill the stoker hopper. I was only about 9 or 10 when my Dad switched to oil. That coal storage room in the basement never did get cleaned well. I remember that coal furnace was huge and the ducts were at least a foot or more in diameter, it was a gravity system with no blower.

Steve

[Steve Barker]

there's another consideration..... we've only been discussing heat. HOW THE HELL YA GONNA COOK WITHOUT GAS???

steve

[Steve Barker]

yah and they're all junk. Most have to be disconnected because they give false alarms constantly and run batteries down.

s

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[Pete C.]

I've cooked many dinners, both on high end gas stoves and on old POS cal-rod electric stoves, and all have received rave reviews from my guests. In other words, gas is not a requirement for good cooking.

[Steve Barker]

Funny, you won't find an electric burner in a resturant. Maybe an electric grill, but never a skillet burner.

s

[Jim Elbrecht]

-snip-

Ducts? You had ducts!? The up side on the coal furnace we had was there were no ducts. There was a 4x4 grate in the living room floor. There are few pleasures as great as coming in from a frigid winter day and standing on the grate to peel off boots, snowpants, mittens, coats, scarves. . . . and as each layer came off the snow dropped through the grates and sizzled on the furnace below.

It was probably 120 degrees right there-- you couldn't stand it once the winter chill was off you. but oh-h-h-h-h how good it felt. [my room was 2 doors away on the same floor so it was about 50 there]

Jim

[Pete C.]

First off, you are wrong, secondly the reason most commercial cooking equipment is gas is for economy due to the large amount of energy use in a restaurant and the lower cost/BTU for gas, something that isn't a factor in residential cooking.