If all you know about propane, you learned from watching “King of the Hill,” then devour this primer on using this versatile fuel in your home. Most people know about using this handy gas because they’ve cooked on a grill that uses it as fuel. Those grills use disposable propane cylinders with a few gallons of fuel in them. If you want to heat your home and cook with propane, you’ll need a much larger propane tank and to have a furnace expert tie it into your home.
Choosing a Propane Tank Size
When buying a propane tank, consider the size of your home, the number of cold days in the climate where you live, and how often you want to refill the tank. Buying a larger tank lets you buy in bulk when prices drop. Propane keeps well, so buying more than you need for a single winter simply locks in the price and lets you avoid needing an emergency propane refill during cold weather.
Propane Delivery in an Emergency
If you’ve never heard of emergency propane delivery, that’s because you don’t yet have a home that runs on the fuel. Just as in the northeast of the U.S., many heating oil companies offer emergency delivery; in the southern states, many propane sales companies offer emergency delivery. This service comes with a surcharge, but having on-the-spot delivery beats going without heat on a cold night.
Propane: Agriculture’s First Choice in Fuel
Most people use propane fuel and propane services in their everyday life. In the agricultural industry, more than 660 farmers use propane for things like irrigation pumps, grain dryers, and standby generators.
The versatile, cost efficient fuel is used by more than 9 million families in the United States in heating their home. In fact, 4.6% of the 98.1 million households that use propane, use it as their main heating source.
For homeowners and renters considering heating your home with propane, here are a few tips to do so safely, saving you money in the process.
Take advantage of the equal payment plans gas utility companies offer. This allows propane customers to have a consistent bill each month without fluctuation. It even covers the months in which bills are usually higher, like in the winter, and lower in the summer.
Have a qualified, professional contractor perform annual maintenance on all your gas products and furnace. Doing so makes sure your appliances are running at full energy efficiency. You may also want to consider having that same contractor or a different one check your entire home’s energy efficiency. This will help save money in the long run.
If your home does not already have one, as it should, install a carbon monoxide detector. Although you won’t be saving any money, it is important to have at least one in the house to protect you and your family from unsafe levels of carbon monoxide in the home.
Change and/or clean the filters on the furnace routinely to remove any harmful elements that might potentially circulate throughout your home.
Set you thermostat to a level that is comfortable for everyone in the household and try to maintain it at that temperature. Frequent changes in temperature can result in increased energy bills because of the effort needed to increase and decrease temperatures. An even better solution is to have a programmable thermostat.
Now that you have an idea of what heating your home with propane will be like and how to save money doing so, you can now be on your way to enjoying your home the way you want. While heating your home with propane has many precautions, the cost-efficient fuel has more pros than cons to ensure your home is safe and warm when you need it to be.
