A family in the historic Eddington section of Bensalem turned a problem into an opportunity when their old heating system failed. By replacing their old oil-fired furnace with a gas heater, they streamlined their energy usage.
For ECI, it meant losing an oil customer. But still, we were happy to help this family get an HVAC system that met their needs.
In this post, we’ll unpack the challenges this family faced with their old heater, and we’ll see how converting from oil to propane gas helped make things more convenient for them.
Problem: A family in the historic Eddington neighborhood of Bensalem needed to replace their 25-year-old oil-fired furnace. It had a cracked heat exchanger. However, they also had propane for some of their newer appliances.
Solution: The family took the opportunity to streamline their heating sources. By switching to a gas furnace, they could use propane for their home heating and appliances.
Cracked Heat Exchanger on an Oil-Fired Heater
First, we’ll start with what went wrong in the first place: The 25-year-old oil-fired furnace in this home had a cracked heat exchanger.
The bad news was there’s no coming back from a problem like this. The heat exchanger is the part of the system that adds warmth to the air that circulates through your house.
It’s located deep within the furnace. That makes it tough to access — and we’ll get to why that’s important in a little bit.
But here’s the problem: If it cracks, it can leak carbon monoxide into your home. That could be deadly if you leave it unchecked.
Any combustion furnace produces this poisonous gas. But, when things are working correctly, the system expels carbon monoxide safely outside.
If the heat exchanger cracks, nothing is stopping that colorless, odorless gas from filling up inside. If you don’t have a CO monitor in the house, you can pass out before you even realize something’s wrong.
That’s why we take no chances with a cracked heat exchanger. But the other problem is that it’s nearly impossible to replace.
First of all, we’d never risk fixing one. If the repair didn’t take, you’d be in a dangerous situation. And, we’d have to take apart the entire unit to replace it.
With a system this old, especially, it wouldn’t be worth the cost of a new piece and all that labor.
It’s not great news for a homeowner. But there were other factors to consider in this home. That’s where the family found a solution that would make things more convenient for them.
Propane for Appliances in a Home with Oil Heat
Today, a lot of houses in Bucks County get natural gas heat through PGW. But not every neighborhood has a gas line. That’s why, in part, you still see a lot of oil heat here in the suburbs.
So, this older home in Eddington still used heating oil. There were no gas lines in their area yet.
Of course, oil has some advantages over gas. It burns hotter for one. That means your house gets warmer and heats up faster in the winter.
Oil does the trick for home heating. But you can’t use it for appliances such as stoves or driers.
As a result, you see a lot of electric appliances in these homes. But they’re not always as efficient. It takes more electric than gas to do the job. So, people pay more on their utility bills.
Electric also takes longer to heat up. That means more time cooking while the oven heats up and longer laundry cycles with the dryer.
So, over time, this family switched over to gas-powered appliances.
But they didn't have access to gas lines. So, they used propane instead.
It made things more convenient — inside, at least. But now they were dealing with two tanks: one for propane and another for oil.
That meant two bills and two sets of deliveries. Plus, two systems mean more things that can go wrong — like a cracked heat exchanger, for instance.
So, the family decided it was time for a change.
Converting a Gas-Fired Furnace for Propane
Once the family was sure they wanted to make the switch, ECI helped make the transition as easy as possible.
For them, it was just a question of choosing a new heater. We helped the homeowners look through some options, and they learned what they needed to know about performance and energy efficiency.
What those boil down to is knowing what sort of heating and comfort you’d get from the model you choose. And how much gas — and how much money — it will use to use to deliver it.
After that, all we had to do was install their new unit.
The process was a little different than a regular replacement. After all, the home had lines running from the oil for the home heating. Then, other lines connected the propane to the appliances.
So, we reconfigured those lines to all run through the one furnace. Then, we used a different orifice, so it used propane instead of a natural gas line.
Now, the customer uses propane for all their heating needs. And, with a new system, they’re using less energy than before — the older a heater gets, the more resources it uses to do the job.
And, with a new warranty and proper maintenance, it will be a long, long time before they buy another one.
Is your home ready for a new heater? Are you considering switching to a different energy source for your home heat and appliances? If so, ECI can help you decide on the best new HVAC equipment for your home and your needs.
