Propane vs. heating oil in Ohio

If you're building, buying a house beyond the gas lines, or replacing a dying system, the oil-versus-propane question is real — and most of what's written about it is written by somebody selling one of them. We've delivered both. Here's the comparison we'd give a neighbor.

Heat per gallon: oil wins, and it's not close

A gallon of heating oil carries roughly 138,500 BTU of heat energy. A gallon of propane carries roughly 91,500 BTU. (These are the standard published heat-content figures; treat them as approximate — equipment efficiency varies.) In plain terms, a gallon of oil holds about half again as much heat as a gallon of propane. That's why comparing the two fuels on price per gallon is meaningless — you have to compare price per unit of heat, and then adjust for the efficiency of the furnace or boiler burning it, where modern propane equipment often claws some of the gap back. What never changes: you will buy more gallons of propane to heat the same house.

The tank decides your freedom

• Oil: the tank is yours, almost always. Any company can fill it. You can shop every fill, switch companies with a phone call, and nobody retrieves anything from your yard.
• Propane: the tank is usually the company's, and by industry safety rule only the owning company may fill it — you're tied to that supplier until the tank changes. Buy your own tank and the freedom comes back, at the cost of purchase and maintenance. Full story in tank fees explained.

What else each fuel does

• Propane is a whole-house fuel: furnace, water heater, range, dryer, fireplace, generator — one tank, many appliances, and it burns clean with no soot and no tank corrosion worries. Propane equipment tends to need less annual fiddling than oil equipment.
• Oil is a heat specialist: it heats the house and (with an indirect tank) the water, and that's about it. Oil burners want an annual cleaning and tune-up, chimneys want watching, and an aging steel tank is eventually a replacement bill and a leak risk to manage. In exchange you get a powerful, fast, hot heat that older houses with big radiators were built around — and complete supplier freedom.

Availability across Ohio

Propane is everywhere in Ohio — every rural county has propane dealers, because propane goes anywhere a truck can. Heating oil is regional: it's concentrated in the northeast (the Cleveland–Akron–Canton corridor and the snow belt, where oil heat was built in deep), with pockets around other older metro areas, and it's thin to nonexistent in much of rural southern and western Ohio, where propane won the farm country decades ago. The directory reflects that reality: some regions are mostly propane pages, and that's honest. If you're choosing a fuel for a house in oil country, you have a real choice. Almost everywhere else in the state, propane is the practical default.

The verdict we'd give at the kitchen table

• Choose oil if you're in oil country, the house already has a sound tank and oil equipment, and you value supplier freedom and heat-per-gallon.
• Choose propane if you want one fuel for heat, cooking, hot water, and a generator; if you're outside oil country; or if you're building new — and then give the tank-ownership question the attention it deserves before the tank is set.
• Either way, the equipment and the installing company matter more than the fuel. A well-installed system from a company that answers its phone beats a theoretically perfect fuel from a company that doesn't.