>It is pulsating "oil furnaces" that gives you the same efficiency as >gas, but currently not generally available.
If you purchase your pulsating furnace in the form of a high compression diesel engine they are quite available. If the mechanical work is used to drive a compressor you can exceed the heat available in the fuel. Certainly the exhaust should not be released above ambient temperature outdoor. Kirk -----Original Message----- From: Hakan Falk [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, January 07, 2003 1:56 PM To: biofuel@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: biodiesel vs. propane for heating was Re: [biofuel] bio to grid add co gen /prpane Girl Mark, My first concern in designing the straw bale house would be to maintain the good insulation in the roof construction. The losses through the roof are twice or more than the losses trough the walls. Straw bale is and should be an open construction, but for the roof I would use a closed construction. I would put in a humidity barrier in the roof construction and use loosely packed straw with the same thickness as straw bales. The traditional old farm house had the animals (furnace) in the basement, living space on first floor and hey and straw storage in the attic to use for animals during the winter. I would choose a low temperature heat delivery system, because that sets the stage for flexible choices of heating sources. Heated floor in concrete, without the often prescribed insulation layer in the floor. To control room temperature, I would only use an indoor temperature sensor, with feeding through a three way valve. Gives good radiant based delivery, with large energy storage and a possibility to use passive solar panels or heat pumps for heating. Oil is normally around 30% cheaper than gas, if you look at energy for the price. A difference that becomes much less if you look at the of the furnaces. A very good oil furnace will give you annual efficiency rate between 75 to 80% and gas around 90%. To maintain the efficiency in the oil furnace, you need more maintenance than gas. Explains why they have the premium price on gas. It is pulsating "oil furnaces" that gives you the same efficiency as gas, but currently not generally available. If you have winters that do not goes under freezing temperatures, heat pumps is probably the cheapest. For hot water, the solar panels in combination with the heat pumps, very good. If your peak heating needs are higher and you want to be independent, the combination the combination biodiesel furnace and solar panels provide an optimum and clean solution. It will also be the lower investment of the choices, but not the lowest running cost. Hakan At 09:34 AM 1/7/2003 -0800, you wrote: >Getting way off the original topic,I've got a question I';m too lazy to >google for (and think people might be interested in the answer to): > >Any ideas out in this group on a cost comparison between the costs of >operating home heating oil furnaces (meaning potentially biodiesel heating) >and propane heating? I know that I'm asking a pretty general question >without specifics on particular equipment, however, we're wondering if >there's any easy answers about relative efficiency of burning the two >fuels and the cost differences per gallon or pound or whatever (I'm not >living in an area where home heating oil is common, in fact, I don't >believe we really get winter here anyhow, was running around town wearing >shortsleeves and sandals yesterday). > >A group of us are going into the design phase of the small strawbale >structure we're volunteer-building next summer for a community center in >eastern Montana- the passive solar and superinsulated elements of the >building should make it cheap to heat, but we're still looking for a small >home heating oil furnace to use in it, and looking for some economic >justification for them to go the oil heating (and biodiesel) route for >their heating rather than propane options which of course are readily >available in small heaters (don't know much yet about small oil furnaces)... >thanks in advance, >Mark > > >At 07:11 AM 1/7/2003 -0600, you wrote: > >Propane is getting very expensive, if one uses a generator run on WVO, > >it is much cheaper than paying for propane. Also, it put fewer fumes > >and gasses into the house, which is much healthier. I agree that one > >should capture the waste energy heat from the generator, but rather than > >using it for heating, a more constant need would be domestic hot water, > >with the excess used for heat. > > > >Bright Blessings, > >Kim > > > >Robby Davenport wrote: > > > > > the use of a generator to run electric stoves is very expensive better > > > to use propane same for driers and if you capture the heat from gen set > > > use hydronics or a small heat pump to move the heat , look up > > > polarpowerinc.com they have a bunch of explaining on this sort of thing > > > and they have small packaged co gen units as well. Robert > > > Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! 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