You may be able to do it, but how about the typical homeowner, who can't? Or how about the vacation house where there is no one ready with another nozzle when it craps out?
And are you suggesting that the typical homeowner should take a class too? Or just use gas and avoid all this?
And you can't have a cracked heat exchanger on an oil furnace? The oil furnace has exactly the same issues, plus more.
I'd say a gas furnace could easily go 3 or 4 years between inspections, while an oil furnace cannot.
You are in dream land. I live in NJ and have neve had a gas interruption. I have had plenty of electric interruptions though. Just last week I was without power for 7 hours. Had gas the whole time. So, why worriy about gas, when electric is already an order of magnitude more prone to outage?
Because it just aint' worth it. Like last week. My power was out from
10pm till 5am. No big deal. And that was one of the longest interruptions in the last 25 years that I've had. And let me see, what's easier? Replacing $150 worth of food in the slim chance that it MIGHT spoil, or putting in a transfer switch, generator, and maintianing a fuel supply for it? BTW, my fuel of choice would be nat gas. But since you don't like that, tell us about how you keep a fresh supply of fuel safely stored? How do you rotate it? Since you're worried about nat gas exploding, how about the gas for a generator?When you look at the pros and cons, a generator doesn;t make sense for most people. Now, there are exceptions, like those in hurricane areas.
BS. Gas outages are very few. If you never had it, how would you even know? By reading the newspaper about the rare occurance where a construction crew hits a line? Even then, it;s likely out for a few hours, not days. Compare that to electric, where a summer storm can put it out.
Yeah, oil just brings things like $100K environmental disasters when the tank rots out. Or the insurance company denying coverage. If nat gas is so unsafe, why do insurance companies that have to pay claims not have any issue writing policies, while it you have oil they want ot know how old the tank is, where it's located, etc?
You can say MONOPOLY all you want, but all the data say nat gas and oil are competitive in price. And they have to be, otherwise people would switch. The utilities are regulated in terms of prices they can charge,. just like the water company.