why I think I don't want an oil heated house

[forgotten_aria]

Please tell me if there are other reasons or if I'm wrong on the ones here.

• Further dependance on foriegn oil: the US has natural gas reserves itself. I can only imagine our oil and gas issues will get worse as the decades advance
  
• Dependance on oil delivery guy: while gas lines fail and service might be intruppted, I've heard more stories about late deliveries or problems occuring because the delivery person was having a bad day
  
• fear of the failing oil tank: I've heard stories of the cost of a failed oil tank form the clean up of all the oil. Gas leaks happen, but you can usually clean those up by opening the windows, with the exceptions of an explotion, but things are getting better and better about preventing those.
  
• less basement space: those tanks are huge
  

Right now oil heat is a complete strike from the list, which is sad, since it is about 50% of the homes around here, even the new ones.

Comments

[nathanjw]

I think the political/import aspect isn't very important. I suspect we'll run out of both fuels at about the same rate, and I don't place much value on where it comes from; it all shakes out into the price.

The distribution infrastructure is a real issue, though. My mom's house has a gas-fired furnace and hot water heater, but they're way out in the sticks, so they have to get deliveries of gas, just like they would of oil. The tank is outside instead of in the basement. If you're looking at relatively far-out places you may find that there isn't natural gas infrastructure, so switching from oil to gas just means a different set of people to call to deliver fuel.

But I think this should be about the 20th-most-important thing on your list. I'd consider the way the heat is distributed within the house (hot water baseboard, hot water radiator, steam radiator, forced hot air) to be more important than the heat source.