A lot of us prefer the cost and efficiency of gas-based heating for our homes. Heating with electricity just adds too much usage to your electricity needs for most of us working on getting off grid.

Natural Gas

Natural gas is the most popular kind of gas for home heating, and other things like clothes dryers, ovens, and ranges for cooking. The challenge with natural gas is that it’s generally supplied by plummed pipes which are necessarily connected to the “grid” of the local community.

Here in Idaho, Intermountain Gas Company is the natural gas provider, and most larger communities are served. However, there are locations where Intermountain does not have gas pipes laid. For that or for reasons of wanting to be more off grid, you’ll need to consider another alternative, like propane.

Propane

Propane is the common alternative for most homeowners where natural gas is  either unavailable or undesired. Most appliances such as ovens, stoves, and clothes dryers, can be converted to use propane instead of natural gas. Supply is the  biggest inconvenience, because you’ll need to have a very large propane tank outside your house, and hire a propane supply company to deliver it to you periodically.

Propane is not as inconvenient as it sounds. With a large enough tank, and with moderate control over your usage rate, you can likely get by with only a couple of propane deliveries per year.

Heating Oil

Heating oil, while not as common as natural gas or propane for heating a home, is actually quite cost-effective for heating your space. It is essentially a type of diesel oil, and is generally stored in an underground tank on your lot. It is plummed to the mechanical room where your heating oil driven forced air furnace is installed. Like propane, with reasonable usage rates, you can probably get by with only two or three deliveries to your tank each year.

I personally have a 500 gallon tank, and usuage is very slow. One of the benefits of heating oil is that it puts out a lot of BTUs of heat in proportion to its consumption rate. The equipment is more expensive to buy and to have installed by HVAC pros experienced with this type of fuel.

But it is increaasingly popular with homeowners intetersted in getting off grid. Heating oil is definitely cost effective, and simply requires occasional delivery directly to your house.