What you burn, and what burns it

Pick your fuel and the kind of system it feeds. This says how it should be serviced, what can realistically replace it, and what is actually worth worrying about. No price, no email field.

(631) 387-4947

What that means

Heating oil

Still one of the commonest fuels on this island, and the one with the most moving parts. Oil appliances need a proper annual service, not a look — the nozzle, oil filter, strainer and electrodes are consumables and a burner that has not been touched in three years will be sooting up and costing you money before it ever fails.

The tank is a separate question from the appliance. Indoor, outdoor and underground tanks have different lifespans and different risks, and an underground tank is an environmental and insurance matter as much as a heating one. Find out which you have and roughly how old it is.
Soot is information. A burner producing soot is producing less heat per gallon than it should, and the fix is usually a service rather than a replacement.
Flue condition matters. Older oil appliances usually vent into a masonry chimney; the liner and the base of that chimney are worth looking at every year.
Running out is not a fault. It does, however, usually mean a restart and a bleed, so it is worth knowing where your tank gauge is.

Natural gas

Piped in, so nothing is stored and nothing is delivered. The service is about combustion and safety rather than about fuel handling: burners, the heat exchanger, the flue, and the safety devices that are supposed to stop the appliance in specific conditions.

The heat exchanger decides the appliance’s future. If it is compromised, the appliance is shut off rather than repaired. That is not a negotiation.
Safeties get tested, never bypassed. Limit switches, the pressure switch and the flame sensor all exist to stop the thing in particular circumstances.
Flue integrity is checked every visit. Blocked, corroded or disconnected flues are a genuine hazard and are not obvious from the room.
If you smell rotten eggs, leave the building and call 911 and your gas utility from outside. Do not call us first, and do not touch a light switch on the way out.

Propane

Burns much like natural gas at the appliance, with one commercial difference that catches people out: the tank. It is either owned by you or leased from the supplier, and which it is decides whether you can shop around for fuel.

Find out who owns your tank before you assume you can change supplier. A leased tank ties you to whoever owns it.
The tank, regulator and the line up to the appliance are generally the supplier’s side; the appliance is ours. We will tell you clearly which side of that line a fault sits on.
Combustion, heat exchanger, flue and safeties are checked exactly as they are on natural gas.
Propane is heavier than air, so a leak behaves differently from a natural gas leak. The same rule applies: leave, then call from outside.

Electric resistance

The simplest heat there is. Nothing burns, there is no flue, no combustion products and essentially nothing to service. That simplicity is genuine and it is the reason it gets fitted.

It is also the most expensive common way to heat a house, because every unit of heat costs a unit of electricity. We are not going to pretend otherwise.
A heat pump does the same job with less electricity in most conditions, which is why it is the usual upgrade from resistance heat rather than a fashion.
What it costs you to change depends on the building, the electrical supply and how the heat is distributed now. That is a survey, not a website calculation.
There is nothing unsafe about it. If it works and the sums work for you, leaving it alone is a legitimate decision.

Heat pump

An air conditioner that can run in reverse: in winter it moves heat from the outside air into the house. Because it moves heat rather than making it, it delivers more heat than the electricity it uses would produce directly.

The air will not feel hot. A heat pump delivers a large volume of warm air rather than a small volume of hot air, and long run times are normal. Both get reported as faults constantly.
Back-up heat is the thing to watch. Electric resistance strips run silently and expensively, and a system running on them more than it should shows up on a bill rather than as a noise.
Defrost cycles look alarming and are not. Steam, a change of note and a few minutes of cool air in cold damp weather is the system working correctly.
It is your cooling as well, so a fault in summer and a fault in winter can be the same fault.

Warm air through ducts

The filter is the single most consequential thing you control. Write the size on the cabinet.
Static pressure should be measured against the blower’s own rating, not assumed. It is the number that explains most disappointing systems.
Duct leakage into an attic or crawlspace is paid for twice — once to condition the air and once to replace it.
The same ducts can usually carry cooling, which is what makes this the cheapest system to add air conditioning to.

Boiler with radiators or baseboard

Circulators, zone valves and the expansion vessel are where most faults live, not in the boiler itself.
A cold radiator at the top with a warm bottom is usually air; a cold one throughout is usually a valve or a circulator.
Water quality and pressure are worth checking annually. A system that needs topping up regularly is losing water somewhere.
There are no ducts, so cooling has to come from a separate system — usually ductless heads.

Ductless wall heads

Indoor filters and blower wheels need cleaning. A ductless system that has never been touched performs like any other system that has never been touched.
Condensate has to drain, by gravity where it can and by a small pump where it cannot. Drainage is the commonest fault we attend on these.
Each head is sized for its area. Sizing them all the same defeats the point and leaves rooms humid.
The outdoor unit should be clear of standing water and mounted so it can drain in winter.

Electric baseboard or wall units

Essentially nothing to service beyond the units and their thermostats.
Per-room control is genuine, and turning rooms down is the only real lever on cost.
Keep furniture and curtains clear of the units — blocked convection is both wasteful and a fire risk.
There is no ductwork, so any cooling and any future change of heat source has to be planned as new distribution.

Worth asking about: the age and type of your oil tank, and whether the chimney serving the appliance has been inspected. Both are frequently older than the appliance and neither gets looked at by accident.

Worth asking about: when the heat exchanger and the flue were last properly inspected, and whether the safety devices were tested rather than just observed.

Worth asking about: who owns the tank. It decides whether you can change fuel supplier, and a surprising number of people find out at the wrong moment.

Worth asking about: what your electrical supply and panel can actually carry. It is the thing that decides whether a heat pump is a straightforward change or a much larger job.

Worth asking about: whether the back-up heat is coming on when it should not, and how the thermostat is configured. Both are invisible and both are expensive.

Worth asking about: whether the ductwork suits a heat pump. Ducts sized for a furnace are often too small for the larger air volume a heat pump moves, which is why a well-chosen heat pump can still disappoint. Static pressure answers it in one measurement.

Worth asking about: how the heat actually reaches the rooms. A heat pump feeding radiators or baseboard designed for boiler temperatures is a genuine engineering question, not a swap — in most houses here it means ductless heads instead, or different emitters.

This describes how these systems generally behave, not your system. It cannot see your appliance, your tank, your electrical supply or your building, and it deliberately produces no price. Use it to know what to ask about.

Have somebody look at it

Changing fuel

The honest position on switching

People ask us regularly whether they should come off oil, or off electric resistance, or whether a heat pump is worth it. There is no answer to that which does not involve your building.

What decides it is the load calculation, what the distribution can carry, what your electrical supply can take, what is available at the street, and what you pay for each fuel. Every one of those is specific to your address, and a website that produces a payback figure without them has invented four of the five inputs.

What we will do is measure those things and set the options out with real numbers, including the option of keeping what you have. That last one is on the list more often than people expect.