How Safe is Propane as a Fuel for Heating a Home?

It's quite common to be concerned over the safety of a household heating appliance especially one that uses a highly combustible fuel such as propane. While it's quite true that a canister of this compressed gas can explode under extreme circumstances, the chances of that happening in a domestic situation are highly remote at best.

If you want to put things into a real life perspective, here's a comparison that will make you think about it in the cold light of day:

How Combustible Do You Want to Get?

I can probably safely assume that you are quite happy to get into your car or truck and drive to wherever you want to drive to and back again, right? Do you ever stop to think about what you're carrying around with you inside your automobile?

That tank of gas is safely tucked away out of sight so you don't have to even think about it. Because if you did think about it, my guess is that you would probably never set foot within a hundred feet of any car. Why?

Gasoline (petroleum spirit) is not only highly combustible, but it's one of the most volatile fuels in common everyday use. That tank of gas will explode if the vapors come into contact with the merest spark, let alone a naked flame.

That's why there are signs up all around gas stations telling you not to smoke. The spark from a cigarette lighter could potentially ignite the whole place!

So Now How Worried Are You Over Propane?

With that example as our perspective, consider that canister of compressed propane (in liquid form under pressure) that's providing you with cheap and efficient indoor heat. Here is a gaseous substance that comes from the same place as the gasoline in your car, since it's a by-product of refined crude oil.

Yet propane, whether in liquid or gaseous form, is considerable less volatile than gasoline. It's true!

You would literally have to open the valve on the can and hold a lighted flame to the escaping gas to ignite it and even then, all you'd end up with would be a gushing plume of burning gas. To cause the canister to explode, you'd have to get that burning fuel to invert and enter the canister, which is pretty difficult since the pressure in inside it forcing the gas out.

Either way, it's a whole lot tougher to ignite a canister of household propane than it is to ignite a tank of gasoline. Hopefully, there are your safety concerns taken care of.

So if you're cool about driving your car, then you should be totally unconcerned about firing up your little heater to keep you cozy and warm  in your home because it is much safer and many times less likely to explode than is your car. How's that for a nice slice of food for thought for the day?

Cozy and Warm in Winter

Everyone loves being cozy and warm indoors when the weather turns cold outside, so what better way to do that than to huddle up in front of a nice open fire!

Of course, while a real open fire is a great way to snuggle up in front of, and it can make a good heat source when the power grid goes down, there are some considerations that lower its appeal for many people. Here are some of them that you need to think over when contemplating this option.

Indoor Open Log Fire Considerations

For starters, there is the cost of fuel for the fire. If you live near a wooded area where logs are cheap, then the cost is no real problem. But if you live in the city, the price of logs can get pretty high. Another thing is storage.

You need a lot of wood to keep a fire going through the winter and that can take up a lot of space. That's fine if you have the space and somewhere dry and sheltered to store the wood year round as it also needs to dry out before you can use it!

Then there is the daily cleaning out of yesterday's ashes in the fireplace, which is a messy job at the best of times. And don't forget the chimney needs to be swept regularly to avoid potential chimney fires. They can happen when un-swept chimneys build up soot deposits on the chimney walls which can ignite and cause a lot of damage.

On top of these is the economics of this type of heating solution. Open fires tend to lose most of the heat they generate straight up the chimney, while sucking warm air from inside the room to combust the fuel. In some cases, a log fire can actually result in a negative heating effect!

This problem can be overcome to some extent with better design, using external cold air to burn the fuel and incorporating a back boiler. This is to use the heat that would otherwise be wasted up the chimney to heat a tank of water that can be pumped to an external radiator to heat the room.

Alternatives to a Traditional Log Fire

There are some alternatives to having a log fueled real fire in your home. However, none of them will be able to match the authenticity of the smell of burning wood in a hearth and the almost hypnotic dance of real flames this type of fuel produces.

A close second to wood as a fuel is coal, but there are similar problems associated with it, such as the cost, storage, cleaning out and the potential problem of chimney fires. And coal doesn't seem to produce the same flame effect as logs and there isn't the gorgeous smell of burning wood!

Further down the scale comes natural gas and propane fueled fires that are designed to look like natural log or coal fires. These fireplaces don't actually burn any other fuel except gas, but the coal or log effect can look reasonably close to the real thing. But even so, you'd know the difference!


You can also get some pretty good small portable propane heaters that emit a "real" flame that can be somewhat cozier than some electric fires, but they don't have the same effect as a real fire.

Electricity

After these, there really isn't any other kind of replacement that comes close to looking like a real fire. Electric fires that use special lighting effects to emulate flames simply don't look authentic enough and end up looking contrived and synthetic.

Of course there are plenty of options that can keep you feeling warm indoors during those chilly winter months. But few of them have that special "cozy" extra characteristic that a real log fire can give you. A lot depends on what you can afford to have in terms of cost, storage and cleaning up time and effort, but if you can manage on all those fronts, then how can you not want to cuddle up in front of a totally amazing log fire indoors?