Manhattan42 - sometimes you say the craziest things. In my neck of the woods, every crawlspace is vented and unconditioned. Sealing crawlspace is a new thing but even then you don't purposely heat the space. There is R-19 under the floor - that does a pretty good job at keeping the heat in the house. Are you in NY? - if so it is possible that your codes are more like the OPs. But around here in crawlspace land - we vent and don't condition. Sealing costs some $ but does help some wuth heating costs. To the OP - you probably have a basement - so all this doesn't apply. Yes - you could heat the basement. This helps but tile is still cold and it is nice for the bathroom to be the warmest room in the house when you shower. We use supplemental heat on our 2nd floor bathroom. It really sounds like heat lamps or fan heaters are what you want. They both cost the same to put out the same heat. You can only beat that if you have a hot water heating system and can tap into that. Having had both - I prefer the fan because of the "baked" feeling of heat lamps. The lamps can be directed better for heat in one particular spot but the fan heats the room better. My father is a PhD engineer who wrote some pretty landmark papers on energy efficiency in the 70s - he agrees that using electric resistance heating in a bathroom for occassional heat is the way to go. If you use it for 5% of the time, it doesn't really matter that it isn't the cheapest way to make heat.

Thank you both garymunson-2008 and brickeyee for your replies. You both gave me a lot to think about and I'll try to answer your specific questions where I can. After reading your posts I began to wonder about whether I would be getting oil savings, but trading it off for a broken furnace in a few years, thus mitigating all the savings. So I called my HVAC control company (Aprilaire) and spoke to a technical rep there to find out what their view was on this device. While the guy I spoke to hadn't heard of the Intellicon device, he agreed with my understanding of how the basic thermostat/control unit worked (and you're right garymunson-2008 - I said that the whole system stops when the Intellicon kicks in, but in fact the main blower continues to run for a few minutes afterward). The Aprilaire rep didn't think this was really a control panel issue since it just cuts into the furnace firing circuit, but rather that it was more of a furnace question. So I opened up my furnace, and noted that it was manufactured by Beckett. I called them today, and spoke to a technical rep there named Dan. He also wasn't really familiar with the Intellicon, but he continually asserted that the furnace was "built like a tank" and would not have undue wear from repeated cycling (the aptly named "pulse" functionality). I asked him point blank whether there would be any problem with driving off water from the oil combustion, but he said that the oil furnaces run so hot that it wasn't an issue. He felt that a gas furnace would have a lot more problems with this technology, but the oil furnace wouldn't have any problems with it. Furthermore, he asserted that Intellidyne LLC (the makers of the Intellicon) also make furnaces, and wouldn't put a product into the marketplace that would damage their reputation (as this would if it broke furnaces regularly). I didn't realize Intellidyne LLC made furnaces, and I don't see anything about that on their website, but I'm not in the business and I know they do sell their hot water heater device rebranded as Beckett, so it's entirely possible that they make furnaces too. When I spoke to my oil company rep about the effectiveness of running the furnace at a lower temperature to save money, he agreed that if I could manually set it lower in the controller then that would drive savings (though my particular controller doesn't actually have that flexibility), but the problem with that approach is that on really cold days the system wouldn't generate enough heat because it would have a hard limit at my manual lower temperature setting, rather than being able to run at full throttle. I could go down to the basement and increase the limit temperature on the furnace whenever it got too cold, but that turns thermostat maintenance into a manual chore, and I'd be guessing at an optimal set point, whereas the Intellicon is supposed to do it automatically. By making the effective furnace outflow lower temperature whenever possible, I believe (assume?) this results in lower temp furnace exhaust, which would drive some probably small but real savings. Regarding the oil buildup in the system: I will have it inspected and cleaned yearly anyway, which I think should eliminate this risk. So I guess I'm still leaning towards getting the Intellicon-FA. (1) My oil guy says it worked in his empirical tests to save oil, and I'm mostly convinced that the process described by Intellidyne would do that, (2) my thermostat/furnace-control guy reaffirmed my general understanding of the mechanism but didn't espouse an overall opinion one way or another, and (3) the Beckett rep thought that this wouldn't do any damage to the furnace itself and was (to use his words) "an investment in the system". I realize that there is a different dynamic for hydronic systems, or for gas-powered forced air systems, but given my oil furnace FA system, I think this probably does work as advertised. The tricky issue now is how to accurately measure whether it's providing savings. The LED display gives a reading of the savings it has provided, but that's a bit like asking the fox to guard the henhouse. I don't have a very accurate way of measuring oil use short of asking how many gallons were provided in the last refueling, and even so that doesn't account for changes in thermostat settings over the period, nor hotter/colder days requiring less/more oil to maintain the same temperature. That's primarily why I'm trying so hard to convince myself that this is a good investment on the merits - because I won't be able to conclusively prove it after the fact from what I can tell (unless anyone has a recommendation). Thank you all for your time and advice, I do find this truly helpful. Regards, -Chris

I just recently posted this on another thread. It was about new houses but the same might apply to new furnaces... No one should use propane to heat a home. Unless you are looking to flip the house I guess. If you have no NG (and I'm sure you don't), then geothermal or straight air source heat pump with wither electric back up or propane back up. Now I guess you might be using wood which changes the situation altogether. What do you do with old oil tank? Is it buried? Do you mind having a propane tank or are you going to pay to have it buried? Neither propane or oil can compare to geothermal. Get a quote and I'm sure they'll remind you of the 30% tax credit. I'll bet your contractor has never done geothermal....

As long as you use the same rating 10W30 and it is marked as meeting the SAE standard, it would be acceptable for use in your John Deere. (no fudging, like similar to the standard, we know about the SAE standard etc.) The large oil companies make a batch of oil to meet the SAE standard and then it is packaged out in to the retail containers, as is required by their sales. They make a batch of 10W30 oil to SAE standards for that grade of oil. They will fill and label the retail containers as needed. Fill for Shell, then filling from the tank for Walmart, the next for John Deere, and so on. When the tank is empty they make the next batch and continue filling as required by their sales on that day. You may see some difference between the manufacturers in the little things. One manufacture may add blue color to the the oil. The next wants it natural. Bottom line is they are all the same regardless of the vendor if they meet the SAE Standard. Same goes for gasoline. There is a large gasoline terminal near us, a couple of dozen 500,000+ gal tanks. The gas from these tanks go to all of the gas stations in the area, regardless of brand. This works the same for many items. One of my favorite memories when working through college, was listening to a customer explain for 15 minutes that the store brand milk was so much better, than that from the local dairy. If she had only known the difference between the store brand milk and the local dairy was the container into which they were filled. The milk came from the same tank and the dairy filled to meet the demands of the customer. She was so sure of her facts, and I knew the customer was always right.