Replies

1. 
   rez | Aug 24, 2002 07:57am | #1

   New wells usually require you own a certain number of acreage depending on locality. If you have the gas available on your property drillers usually will cover the cost of the well, pay you a percentage and let you tap the well for your home heat.

   Half of good living is staying out of bad situations.

2. 
   DavidThomas | Aug 24, 2002 07:58am | #2

   You mean he is on an old landfill that generates methane? Or that he has an oil-field type well that taps a pocket of decaying dinosaurs?

   Either is possible but extremely unlikely to be done on the scale of a single house. Because landfill gas has to be scrubbed of its carbon dioxide and have the water vapor and nitrogen removed before you can use it in a normal gas appliance or engine. And gas from a petroleum field has higher boiling point compounds (hexane, benzene, etc) in it as well as water vapor, carbon dioxide, etc.

   I could design a system to clean up such a source of gas to a usable point. But it would be much cheaper to install and fill a 10,000 gallon propane tank to last 36 years.

   A few locales havce pretty clean natural gas coming up. If that is the case, you need a qualified gas well driller, at a minimum. Someone who works locally could tell you the likihood hitting gas and at what depth. And how much they charge per foot.

   Could you buy into his well? Just buy a gas meter and lay a bunch of polyethylene line.

   And no, a septic system does not generate enough methane to heat a house. Not even hot water. More in the order a the pilot light only. And a small one at that.

   David Thomas Overlooking Cook Inlet in Kenai, Alaska

   
   

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   Edited 8/24/2002 1:29:25 AM ET by David Thomas

1. 
   rjw | Aug 24, 2002 05:30pm | #3

   There are areas of the country (e.g., parts of W. VA) with small nat gas wells dotted around where people who own the land get "free" gas.  I would be concerned with guality and contaminates, myself

2. 
   Wet_Head | Aug 24, 2002 06:25pm | #4

   It is very common out west here.  I have seen people put in huge units in uninsulated machine sheds and letting them buck because "the gas is free"

1. 
   DavidThomas | Aug 25, 2002 03:24am | #5

   Bob and WHW: Well, maybe I ought to sink my own well. Since I live in area overlaying gas fields. Except I don't own mineral rights to my 13 acres (almost no one does up here). And the hydrogen sulfide (way poisonous) is at a high enough concentration that they make sulphuric acid out of it for use in fertilizers.

   David Thomas   Overlooking Cook Inlet in Kenai, Alaska

1. 
   r_ignacki | Aug 25, 2002 04:36pm | #6

   I heard Taco Bell was gonna put gas collectors at their restaurants.no turn left unstoned