Propane vs Natural Gas

[Rick Blaine]

No, it isn't. Propane contains approximately 2,500 Btu per cubic foot. Methane has a heating value of about 1012 Btu per cubic foot.

Are/were you an east coast fuel oil dealer? That's one of the classic lines used to keep people converting from oil to gas. Fact is, the odds of you getting killed in a propane accident are less than being struck by a crashing airplane and almost a 1000 times less than in a car accident.

True. The US is a large geographic area and by percentage, most of the country doesn't have the option of street delivered NG.

True - But that's because bottle gas (propane, butane, etc) is more expensive (between 25%-50% by BTU) than NG.

The only reason I can think of for heating a pool with bottle gas when NG is available is because the local service lines don't have the capacity to handle a pool heater on top of the house furnace.

[Paul M. Eldridge]

Hi Edwin,

Wow, that's brutal. Are you some distance from the line? My home in Toronto was set back about 60 feet from the street but Consumer's Gas installed the line and meter at no charge (this was ten years ago and I have no idea if that's still their policy today). I think the whole job took a couple of hours and there was no trenching or back filling required. A very slick and, in this case, painless operation.

Cheers, Paul

[Paul M. Eldridge]

Hi Bob,

I think you're right. A lot has changed over these past few years and any price advantage has diminished greatly. Here in Nova Scotia, natural gas is currently selling for $15.33 per GJ, which works out to be the same as heating oil at $0.595 per litre. A year ago, it was selling for $20.41 per GJ or the equivalent of $0.792 per litre.

See:

As of my last delivery (January 11th), I paid $0.759 per litre and this time last year, the price stood at $0.839/litre.

That said, I still prefer gas to oil and would switch even if oil were cheaper (with the exception of my boiler/indirect hot water tank, all my appliances are propane). I would happily pay a small premium simply to get ride of the oil and propane tanks, especially the latter.

Cheers, Paul

[Edwin Pawlowski]

From street to house is not a big deal, but from the termination on the existing street to the front of my house is the big expense. I guess the gas utility does not see a payback so they don't care about adding just one customer.