EnergyLogic Pulled Three Heaters. The 75H Waste Oil Heater Stayed.

Verdict $4,299 against $2.16 an hour of displaced propane: break-even at 1,988 burner hours. The warranty ends at 1,500.

Prices are US list prices at the time of publication. Shipping, duties and local taxes vary by country — check with the manufacturer before ordering.

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EnergyLogic still lists its 140H, 200H and 350H furnaces. It will not sell you one. All fifteen listings now answer "is_purchasable": false from the store’s own API, the price paragraph on the 140H page renders empty, and a box sits where the cart was: “This unit is sold through EnergyLogic dealers.”

The EL 75H is what is left. It is $4,299.00, with a live Add to cart button and "availability": "http://schema.org/InStock" in the page’s own JSON-LD.

EIA prices U.S. residential propane at $2.638 a gallon for the week ending October 12, and puts 91,452 BTU in it. Matching this furnace with propane takes 0.82 gallons an hour — $2.16. Break-even is 1,988 of those hours.

The Machine

A 75,000 BTU/hr furnace, 210 pounds, 75 inches tall, on its own frame over a 10-gallon tank. EnergyLogic’s spec sheet gives 0.54 gallons an hour, 500 cfm at a 100°F rise, a 6-inch Class A flue, 1,750 square feet of coverage and 115 VAC at 8 amps. Approved fuels: used crankcase oil, ATF and No. 2 fuel oil.

Those two figures credit the used oil with 138,889 BTU a gallon. EIA puts heating oil at 138,500. By the company’s own arithmetic, the fuel is a drain pan’s worth of No. 2.

The model page sells that same furnace four ways, each with a Buy Now button: $4,299.00 with a 10-gallon tank through the roof, $5,099.00 with 80 gallons through the roof, $5,199.00 with 10 gallons through the wall, $5,999.00 with 80 gallons through the wall. The steps are additive — the bigger tank is $800.00 both times, the wall route $900.00 both times — so across the ladder sits $1,700.00, or 39.54%, that buys not one additional BTU, at $11.43 a gallon of tank. That is the question the laser cutter’s watts could at least answer; here the answer is a tank and a length of pipe.

The Numbers

Heat bought as propane costs $28.85 per million BTU. Every hour this burner runs, $2.16 goes unbought: $4,299.00 divided by that is 1,988 hours, and also 1,074 gallons of oil the shop drained itself.

Per thousand BTU of capacity that is $57.32, against $84.28 for the 140H priced here in September. The small machine is the cheaper heat, on the one page still selling.

What Breaks

The warranty ends 488 hours before the machine pays for itself. The spec sheet reads “1 year or 1500 hours,” whichever lands first, with a second year if the unit is registered within 30 days. Break-even is 1,988 burner hours. Whether registration also extends the hour count is DATA NOT AVAILABLE FROM SOURCE: the footnote grants a year and says nothing about hours. The shop crosses the line out of cover.

Two of the four kits are warranted for thirty days, not a year. The returns page gives 30 days on all parts “with the exception of Heater part numbers 11075104 and 11075105.” Those two are the 10-gallon kits — $4,299.00 and $5,199.00. The 80-gallon kits are 11075107 and 11075108, and are not named. Why a bigger tank changes the parts cover is DATA NOT AVAILABLE FROM SOURCE. The same page accepts no returns on anything.

The fuel has to be your own, and that is federal law. 40 CFR 279.23 exempts on-site burning only where “the heater burns only used oil that the owner or operator generates,” under a 0.5 million BTU/hr ceiling, vented to ambient air. At 75,000 BTU the 75H sits far inside it. The neighbour’s drum sits outside the rule, so 1,074 gallons is a collection schedule, not a purchase.

It heats the room it stands in. The warm air outlet is 10 by 12.5 inches and the spec sheet says “no ductwork allowed.” It bolts to non-combustible flooring instead of hanging, and 1,750 square feet is exactly 0.5 of the 140H’s coverage.

1,988 hours is a floor. EnergyLogic rates input and never output, so the arithmetic above is fuel energy against fuel energy. The blower and compressor pull 115 VAC at 8 amps the whole time and are not subtracted; a shop’s kWh rate is DATA NOT AVAILABLE FROM SOURCE. And EIA’s $2.638 is the residential series, above what a bulk contract pays.

Service lands every 500 to 1,000 hours — a range, not a date. At the short end, three $127.00 kits fall before break-even: $381.00 no price page shows. At the long end, one does.

Freight is not in the $4,299.00, and the listing is no help. All four product pages publish a shipping weight of 6,441,383,556 lbs; the spec sheet for the same crate says 340 lbs. What delivery costs is DATA NOT AVAILABLE FROM SOURCE, as is flue installation.

Who Should Buy This

The one- or two-bay shop that already fills a drain pan and already pays to heat. Both halves are required: the oil has to arrive on its own, and there has to be a propane bill for $2.16 an hour to come off. A cold barn has nothing to displace.

The buyer sizing the step between four kits, who knows which one the money is for. $800.00 buys 70 gallons of standing storage. $900.00 buys a wall route when the roof is not an option. Neither buys heat, and one appears to cost eleven months of parts cover.

The shop that was going to buy a 140H. That machine is now a phone call to a dealer, at a price only its meta tags still carry. This one is $7,500.00 cheaper and in a cart today.

Not for the shop collecting 200 gallons a year: 370 burner hours annually, so the 1,500-hour warranty expires in year 5 and break-even in year 6. Not for a space needing ducted heat, nor for anyone who would buy oil to feed it: the exemption forbids that purchase.

The Stack

No affiliate links in this issue. When a link earns us a commission, we always say so. Verdicts are never for sale.

One bay, a roof and a drain pan that fills: the EL 75H at $4,299.00 — furnace, tank and flue for a 16-foot ceiling. No roof penetration: the through-the-wall kit at $5,199.00, same warranty, same furnace. Drums by the door: the 80-gallon roof kit at $5,099.00 — read the parts cover first.

Budget the ash: the maintenance kit is $127.00, due between 500 and 1,000 hours.

EnergyLogic published the price, the fuel flow and the warranty hours. The three disagree about when this machine wins, and the drain pan settles it.

Produced under the editorial standards of editor Nicolás Galindez. Spotted an error? [email protected] — the editor reads every reply.