Propane Newbie

[Blue Sky]

Moving to a place with propane stove, water heater and small fireplace. I’ve never used it. Advice?

 

[murphysranch]

Its just like having natural gas appliances. Which I do here, but not where I'm moving to in WA. There it will be propane.

So your range/stove top will be much more sensitive (good) to temperature changes (quicker reactions vs electric). I always feel that I have better control. And when the electricity goes out, you can always lite a match and cook on your range.

Water heater - same. No difference just uses a different method of heating the water in the tank.

Fireplace - quick flick of a switch and you've got fire. Hope there is a fan on there to distribute the heat generated into the room.

Cost - lots more than natural gas and more than electricity. Propane has gone up in price in the last two years. Where I am in So OR, its about $3.25 per gal when you go fill up your BBQ tanks. Where I'm moving to, with a 70 gal tank on the premises, it will be $3.23 per gal delivered and pumped into tank.

 

[Blue Sky]

Do I need to plaster the place with detectors since my sense of smell is poor?At least the phantom gasoline can that used to follow me every where is gone. I’m also looking at a wood stove for emergency heat. My concern is when the electricity goes out, no blowers = no heat?It doesn’t get very cold for very long but between the grand solar minimum, world karma in general and the Book of Rev. I’m expecting an interesting few years. I wasn’t crazy about the propane fueled stuff but there were so many other pluses to the property and just about every place we looked at had it. Wish I had a wood burning fireplace.

 

[murphysranch]

No need to plaster the place. Many CO2 detectors will also detect exploding gas (propane and natural gas). Buy two or three and put them down low throughout the house. Propane is heavier than air, hence the need for down low.

I too, am worried that my new place has no real fireplace. Neither here in So. OR where I live until next month. So I planned/prepped by buying a Mr Buddy indoor (well ventilated) and having a plan in place for indoor tent/plastic living in one room.

Clearly having propane or Natural gas including your electricity, is preferable to an all electric house. So you've got much more flexibility soon!

 

[Blue Sky]

@murphysranch
Somehow I’ve lived my life having never had gas or propane. Hopefully I won’t catch anything on fire, explode the neighborhood or cause interstellar war. For the life of me I don’t understand why someone would not put a wood burning fireplace in a house on treed property. Probably $. Inspector said the fireplace was properly vented but didn’t say exactly how. There is no chimney. I’d hate have that venting dependent upon electric blowers, lose power and wind up at the Pearly Gates wondering who’s going to feed the livestock. I’ll try to find out the make and model of that stuff and download the low down.

 

[murphysranch]

Gas fireplaces are vented out the back of the unit, on the outside wall. Its called Direct Venting. You'll see a flat panel and then a vent with cover. Its where the gas fumes escape when the fireplace is burning. There is no chance of fumes getting into a properly maintained vent as there are safeguards.

 

[Baymule]

I’ve lived with space heaters many times. That’s redneck speak for free standing unvented propane heater that I lit with a match. A moment while the gas came to the grates, then POOF!!! And the gas caught, the flame turned blue and there was heat.

I liked electric water heaters better than gas, because the gas ones were hard for me to light. Sometimes for reasons known only to the Great Gas Goddess, the flame went out. Safety features keep gas from spewing out, but was a real pain to me.

Gas stove. Back when the dinosaurs roamed, gas stoves had pilot lights. In the 1970’s, in the name of saving energy, since those pilot lights used SO MUCH ENERGY, they were outlawed. Electronic strikers were substituted. So if power goes off, reach back to the feeble places in your memory on how to strike a match. Light match, turn knob, wait for POOF!

 

[Blue Sky]

And try not to burn my eyebrows off. I know someone who did that. Notegher education does not guarantee common sense.

 

[Mini Horses]

Is this the place sellers are floundering to sell OR is it the "other under consideration"?

 

[Alaskan]

I’m also looking at a wood stove for emergency heat. My concern is when the electricity goes out, no blowers = no heat?

Some wood stoves come with electric fans on the back that help blow warm air into the room. I find them loud and obnoxious (but then I hate background noise... I wake up when the bathroom fan kicks on).

You can however buy a wonderful fan to help blow the heat out into the room that requires ZERO electricity, and is very quiet.

Here are 2 choices that popped up when I googled. Huge price difference... no idea if the higher price one is better.

Anyway... they sit on the top of the wood stove, and the heat from the stove heats up the fan, and the heat itself powers the fan. So, once it gets hot enough it starts to spin.

We have one, and it works great. We use only wood heat for the living area of the house.

As to a wood stove, so many choices!!!!

Now that I have lived with 3 different wood stoves, I would recommend an EPA certified NON-catalyitic stove that has enough flat space on top to put at least one pot (like for soup). But don't pick a cook stove model... a regular "heat your house" model will still have a plenty hot enough top to cook soup or beans ... as long as there is enough flat space to hold the pot.

Also, the non-catalytic has to have a baffle so that you can bypass the twisty turny/ fully burn up the smoke part. So, you turn the baffle one way, and you get an inefficient fire... a fire in a metal box, with a straight up chimney pipe.

Something like that means an EASY START UP THE FIRE.

THEN, once the fire is roaring, you turn the baffle to "make smoke take twisty turny path" to fully burn up particulates and make it EPA approved/environmentally friendly.

A catalytic stove does the same thing... except instead of a twisty turny path... the smoke goes through this thing that looks like a brick, the "catalytic" part. That brick cleans the smoke, and while doing so gets filled with gunk... so needs to be relaced every so many years... it cost about $300 years back when I last checked. If you burn any "trash", so wood that isn't fully dry, soft wood, letters, cardboard, etc.. it gets gummed up faster.

With the non-catalytic model you can burn whatever.