That is a great idea. I heat with fuel oil at my current home. My contract for this winter heating season is $3.49/gallon. This equalts to about $2800 to heat my 2400 sq. ft house.
However, NG requires a pipeline to be bulit in front of my house in its current form. This will not happen anytime soon. They are more likely to build a pipeline to a new subdivison because they will then get 100% of the houses as new customers. If they build a pipeline along my road, they may only get 50% of the houses to connect. Therefore, unless NG can be liquified , so that it can be tranported by tanker truck and then stored in a tank on my property, it will not be a potential fuel for people like me anytime soon.
So I am stick with oil and the wood stove. That is why pellet stoves are good sellers around here. They are about a 5-6 year payoff. They have drawbacks too. Such as , where do you store the the 4-5 pallets of pellets in a dry place that you will need this winter. They are also noisy and need electricity to operate.
Coal is actually making a comeback because it is even cheaper than NG. I looked at a new hot water boiler/furnace at last winters homeshow. It was a duel fuel unit. It burned anthracite pellitized washed coal or heating oil. It had a hooper that could hold about 3-4 days of coal. With the flick of a switch you could change it over to fuel oil. The sales point was you could store the coal outside. It is a mineral. It doesn’t matter if it gets wet. It is actually wet in the bag to reduce the dust.
Obviously, I have been contemplating all these alternative methods of home heating ever since the spike in heating oil prices in the last 10 years. I have already added as much insulation, new doors and windows, etc. to make my house as efficint as possible. The crazy thing is that heating oil used to always run about a $1/gallon less than gasoline. Keep in mind there is no state or federal tax of $.40-.70/gallon on heating oil like there is on gasoline or diesel. In the last 5 years it has been has been the same price as unleaded gas or higher in the winter. The other fact is it costs a lot less to make heating oil. It is junk. It is basically like kerosine. It should be lot less.
No pipeline required for LPG (propane) it is delivered by truck just like your fuel oil. Burns as clean as NG, and is in fact made from waste products of NG and gasoline refining.
Current retail price in my area is $1.60 a gal.
IMO, fuel oil for home heating is an insane option.