City hopes to ban heating oil
Montreal hopes to have a ban on heating oil by 2021. It’s damaging stuff, far worse than natural gas.
(“Mazout” is a weird word. It’s from Arabic via Russian but how it then got into French I do not know. This wiktionary entry also says it’s the name of two different mixed drinks in France and Belgium.)
Ephraim 11:11 on 2018-12-26 Permalink
Just to be clear… a ban on heating oil in the city’s buildings, not citywide. They want to encourage people to move from home heating oil too, but that will take longer and will need money.. because you can’t remove the oil tanks as easily and it’s much more difficult to heat with electricity than with oil or natural gaz.
For example a 60 gallon tank on natural gaz may be sufficient to provide hot water for 10 people…. with electricity you would likely need 2 60 gallon tanks to do that. Heating large homes on electricity would require rewiring a home not only inside, but at the central connection as a 200 AMP connection might not be sufficient. And Hydro needs to build backup systems… you can’t have heating go down for too long in the winter without creating a disaster… frozen pipes and all.
dwgs 11:35 on 2018-12-26 Permalink
Gaz Met (or whatever they’re calling themselves these days) often offers an incentive program to switch from oil, we did it almost 20 years ago. They offer reasonable financing and their contractors handle the whole thing, I was impressed with the program. Removing the 2 huge oil tanks from the basement was quite the process, involving several large dirty men, a Sawzall, and more kitty litter than you can imagine.
A. 12:11 on 2018-12-26 Permalink
I switched from oil to electricity this summer (radiator heat, semi-detached two story house). It took half a day to make the change. It probably won’t be cheaper, but I feel much better being off oil. I wish I’d done it years ago. And oil heating goes off when the electricity is off, unless you have a backup generator. It’s good to see the city moving towards cleaner energy.