Fuel oil furnace. pros & cons???

[burntmuch]

Looked at a house today.  Met all the requirement fo me & my family. 5 acres, house suits the wife, couple fireplaces. beautiful , enough space for a family of 5. It had a year old fuel oil forced air furnace. Im gonna do some research tomarow. dont know anything about fuel oil. What are the pros & cons.

 P.S   I may be able to squeeze a 200 yard range in   150 for sure

[DalesCarpentry]

They work well. The only bad thing is it is going to cost you an arm and a leg to pay for the fuel. You should consider using the fire places as much as you can to off set the high cost of heating oil. Dale

[gypsyman]

The house I live in, my dad built in '59-'60. There were no natural gas lines in around us back then, so he had a fuel oil/boiler system installed. (natural gas came by us in about '64 or '65) Every fall needed a good scrubbing out in the water jackets just above the flames. Seems I remember once in a while,not to often, water in the fuel, so had to pour in dry gas when that happened. When the flame would get a funny color, furnace repair man would put a new jet in. The transformer went out once, and always had clean filters for the in-line water seperator. I know I'm making it sound bad, but you have to remember this was over a 28 years period.(Had a natural gas furnace installed in '88 or '89, couple years before my mother died) Natural gas, is around here anyway, much cheaper than NO.2 fuel oil, for heating. The house your looking at, has a much newer furnace, so I'm suspecting that it is much more efficient, and probably more dependable also. Having that 150 to 200 yd. range in the back end, would outway a whole lot of furnace thought. I'ld find out what the heat bill was for last year, coralate(?) what the new price would be with the increased cost. AND, find out if they used the wood burners. I save AT LEAST, $1,000 a winter with my 2 fireplace inserts.(I've got around 3.5-4 acres of woods on my property, so wood cost is just gas for the chain saws, log splitter, and asprins and Alieve for my back)  Kinda long, hope I helped.  gypsyman

[Tencubed]

It depends a lot on what the efficiency rating of the furnace is and how well it has been maintained.  Most of the manufacturers recommend an annual tune up in the northern states due to the run hours involved.  These tune ups can be done by the home owner if they are reasonably handy and willing to purchase about a hundred dollars in tools.  It's best to have a friendly furnace professional walk you thru the process the first time and will give you a place to purchase the nozzles you will need over the years.  Most oil furnaces are pretty bullet proof and, if your ducting and fan are adequate, can be used as second stage heat for an add on heat pump.  Usually a heat pump is way less costly to operate than an oil unit.  You may want to consider doing this upgrade and tie it in with the house purchase if possible.  Nice thing about a heat pump is you also get AC.

We ran an HVAC/R business for years and had a number of customers that would do their own annual one year and call us the next.  We sold them the proper oil filter elements, nozzles, ignition rods and such they needed.

With the rising cost of oil the option of having wood heat to supplement the furnace is a good bet IF the chimney(s) and fireplaces are in good shape.  Your way better off to have a quality insert in the fireplace as the open flu of a regular fireplace will usually draw more heat from the home than the fireplace puts back in.  There should never be any other heating device vented into the same chimney as the oil furnace, creates problems with the draft and ends up reducing the furnaces efficiency.

I haven't looked at there web sites for a few years but both Beckett Burners and Blue Angle used to have very good information for folks interested in oil burners.

Mike

[burntmuch]

Thanks for the input guys. Gypsyman the fireplaces will be used. How much not sure yet. Tencubud all I can tell you is the furnace is brand new & the duct work looks brand new as well. There are 3 flus in the chimmney one for each fireplace then one for the furnace.
Ive heard of heat pumps, what exactly are they. Youre talking to a dumb fireman so keep it simple My other option is propane, but thats pretty pricey right now, Gonna make some calls on monday & get oil pricesOnce again thanks for the
input. Kinda exciting looking at new houses

[Sourdough]

Check and see if natural gas is in the area.  If it is there would not be a big problem converting the burner to gas.  Much less expensive than oil.

[Will_C]

Oil furnances are a good way to heat, but as others have said, the oil is expensive. For many of us in a rural area, oil is the only option (besides wood, coal, etc.) An oil furnance also works well with supplement heat (wood,caol, pellets.) good luck.