How many gallons of propane would it take to heat a 1250 sq. ft. ranch that is well insulated?

Question

My wife and I have a furnace that burns fuel oil and it takes 500 gallons of fuel oil to heat our home in the heating season. We live in the southern tier of New York around Binghamton which means we have a fairly long heating season. Can anyone out there tell me how many gallons of propane it would take to do the same job that the fuel oil does?

Answer 1

Heating oil has 139000 BTU's per gallon. Propane has 91600 BTU's

So oil is hotter than the propane. But what you need to check is the efficiency of your oil unit and what is the efficiency of the propane unit you will install. I am not sure about oil but I know you can get into the 90% range with propane and even higher with non vented units.

Answer 2

It will take more gallons than oil, as much as 50% more because a gallon of propane doesn't have as many BTU as a gallon of fuel oil. If I were you, I would seriously consider sticking with oil, or better yet, geothermal.

Answer 3

the heat capacity of liquid propane is slightly LESS than the same volume of heating oil so I'd expect you to need around 600 gallons of LPG. but remember that each LPG holder will have a fixed size so I'd recommend getting 3 LPG stores  (each are 120 gallons I believe in the US) and refilling them 2 to 3 times during the season