Alternatives to Oil Heating that aren't Natural Gas.

opiate82_sl said:

He just bought a new house and could have designed the system then gotten all the equipment and installation done at cost and he said he mathed it out and it still would end up costing way more over the lifetime of the system than just using natural gas (at today's prices obviously). Right now the technology is a neat option for the rich, but to pricey for your average pleb.

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Yeah, that's pretty much the case. My bro when he bought, gutted, and rebuilt his house looked at geothermal but ended up deciding against it, again, because the savings on utilities wouldn't justify the cost of the bore holes. Instead he went with a condensing boiler to supply both heating and domestic water. If in the future gas gets more expensive, then he can rip the boiler out and install a water to water groundsource heat pump. But it doesn't look like natural gas will be getting significantly more expensive in the next decade or two.

propane or heat pump or both.

If you only have access to electric i would just do heat pump with sufficient aux resistance and be done with it.

I have a relative that had a similar situation with no nat gas access and one of his neighbors got a huge propane cylinder installed so he tapped off that. He was very happy with the cost and getting to cook with gas for little trouble. I think the companies handle all the shit for you as far as the tanks and refills go. He uses it to run a vent free fireplace and a cooktop. You can read a lot of bad shit about vent free gas logs but 100% efficiency along with humidification sounds pretty good to me. If you spend a majority of your time in the room with a fireplace it may be comfortable and save you in an outage.