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

[eccentrific.livejournal.com]

While I agree that gas > oil, I don't see this as meaning you should reject houses with oil out of hand. (Though I would definitely reject any with an underground oil tank or with a leaky or formerly leaky oil tank). Just pretend the house costs $5K more than it does to cover the cost of converting. As phi said, compared to the cost of a house in MA, it is not a large amount.

[binkbink.livejournal.com]

For a non-smoker who is thinking about the possible problems, the nose knows.
I totally forgot about the underground tank problem, though. Near impossible to assess and more likely to be a remediation problem than one in the basement.