I had a friend who heated through winter in RI with wood pellets & said it was cheap, but that’s as much as I know, and basic google search doesn’t verify. Anyway, geothermal and passive energy = COOL
Cheap compared to other options maybe. I can get pellets for ~$215 per ton, which is roughly the equivalent of a cord of firewood. If I’m gonna go that far, I’ll suck it up and use trees that I already have.
I swear, as soon as I have this fucking chainsaw running again, I’ma cut SO MUCH WOOD.
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Two of the houses we looked at when we foolishly wanted to buy a house were DEFINITELY meth labs.
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Oh, yeah we’re thinking more along the lines of adding a room or two if needed… but honestly, I have seen what happens when you have a big house with plenty of space as kids age, and I’d rather have things be a little tight for them so they GTFO when it’s time instead of hanging around at home all day playing video games and not paying rent. Motivation.
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Every multifamily home I viewed in the Mid-Hudson valley was just as you describe. The one exception was the one I almost bought, but it was illegally modified to be multi-family, and my first order of business would have been removing the illegal downstairs apartment.
They were basically all shitholes.
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I’ll keep you in the loop with what I learn regarding ASHP’s. They can conceivably be paid off in 6 - 8 years when replacing oil or propane.
But I feel you on the natural gas front.
I keep my heating costs down by having a tiny 1000 sqft house. 
And natural gas…
But I actually want to switch to an electric system of some kind. I’d like to install solar and a Tesla power wall. But as we have hot water baseboard heat, I’ve discovered that electric furnaces for such a system are not a thing.
One of the houses we looked at in Beacon was a legit old manor house. Aside from a livery and servant’s quarters, it had coal-fired heating.
A coal fired boiler.
A COAL FIRED BOILER.
The crazy thing is that this was clearly upgraded in the late 20s, because it was a newer coal-fired boiler. One that had a distinct characteristic…
The whole property was going for ~$400k. The old lady who lived alone in it had sealed off most of the main house and lived in part of one of the wings.
My wood stove is actually a flexible solid fuel stove. Wood or coal. I have been tempted to try firing coal just for the experience, but I think my inner hippie won’t allow it.
@GeorgePatches I would LOVE natural gas. LOVE LOVE LOVE. However, the nearest connection point is like 3 miles away, and National Grid won’t run that far for anything even remotely reasonable.
Hence, the air-source heat pump and solar.
The good thing is that New York has fantastic solar incentives - a 25% state tax credit (max $5k) and the NY Sun program (rebate of $0.40/watt currently) - which along with the 30% federal credit cut the cost of a system by more than 50%.
Just got a quote for a 9 kW system for ~$13k after incentives and tax credits. $1.50 per installed watt is cheap as hell, and once we make a few efficiency upgrades (stupid sill joists), I’m betting it’ll completely remove our electric usage (or come damn close).
We’ll see how the air-source heat pump stacks up as an alternative heat source. Geothermal is really just too far out of my price range to be viable, but an air heat pump at 1/4 the price might still be worth it.
It’s either that or back to the propane co-op.
Do not put coal in there. Trust me on this. The house I grew up in also had a coal/wood stove. There were sacks of coal in a shed out back. We burned coal maybe once when I was very young. The exhaust fan in the den was not enough. Never again. That shed with its sacks of coal out back was ignored and allowed to collapse and fade away over the years. Wood only.
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Gas was a make or break for me when I bought both my houses.
I believe the Northeast is the only place in America where natural gas heating is on the rise. It’s falling everywhere else as most new developments just run electric, telecom, and sewer. Gas infrastructure tends to only exist where it already existed historically.
Electric is the default in much of America.
Then what the fuck are all these pipelines they want to build for?
When I was a kid in the Midwest, it was only old houses in old towns that had gas in my area: all the new suburbs were 100% electric with no gas infrastructure.
Also, notice how electricity is on the rise everywhere. The sole place where natural gas is expanding - the Northeast - is doing so at the expense of OIL, not electric.
Some further reading indicates that almost all of that growth is New York converting oil boilers to gas boilers. New construction seems to be largely electric.
Damn. Even homes that HAVE gas tend to not have all-gas appliances. You’ll have gas heat, but electric stove/dryer.
“Nationally, only 20% of clothes dryers use natural gas, but in homes with natural gas as their main space heating fuel, that percentage increases to 34%.”
Also, the New York increase in natural gas at the expense of oil is almost entirely because of New York City. The city has required buildings to convert away from oil.
I understand an electric dryer, but choosing electric ovens must be because fewer people are cooking.
Natural gas is economically efficient and is a fuel with excellent energy density. Also, many places can convert from oil to natural gas with little change in heating infrastructure and save a shitfuckton of money, so there’s a major economic incentive.
Electric heat has only really become economically viable in the northeast in the last 4 years or so, and it’s because of a combination of improvements in efficient electric heating, declining electric prices, volatile fossil fuel prices, and massive massive incentives to offset your electrical cost via solar.
I see it becoming more and more the norm. Fossil fuel heat is a dying industry.
EDIT: Electric appliances are common because running them off of propane is crazy fucking expensive. It only makes sense where you have natural gas, and even then, the amount of electricity you’ll use is comparatively minimal, so why bother running more gas lines? That’s something else that can leak and make your house go boom.
If a day comes when the gas is turned off, I will find some sort of fuel so that I can always have my food heated by actual flames. If I have to start a fusion reaction and create a miniature star in my oven, so be it.
I can teach you how to build a wood-fired oven.
Here’s a hint: you don’t actually want one.
Many people prefer gas ranges, but actually electric ovens. The latter are much more controllable. That’s why frankenstein monstrosities like those dual-fuel ranges exist.
Also, if you live outside of traditionally gas-fed places, most people are used to electric rangetops. They’re often afraid of gas ranges (because of the danger of fire/explosion/leak).