The average monthly variation in heat used for doing the room heating, water heating, cooking, and garbage burning for the house described in the preceding section, in terms of “1,000 cubic feet” of manufactured gas, is as follows:

	1,000 cubic feet.
January	130
February	110
March	80
April	50
May	22
June	10
July	6
August	6
September	6
October	24
November	50
December	66
Annual total	560

The water heating, cooking, and garbage burning during the summer months average 6 “1,000 cubic feet” per month. The maximum monthly gas consumption for house-heating purposes is, therefore, 130 less 6 equals 124 “1,000 cubic feet.” This shows that the maximum monthly heating load is more than 20 times the average summer load.



The actual operating experience gained in the more than 2,000 natural-gas-using towns in complete house-heating service to a limited number of homes shows clearly the folly of attempting to render universal house heating in any town with manufactured gas because of the peak-load characteristics and the small percentage of the total time that the manufacturing and distributing plant equipment would be used.

Where house-heating service is to be developed with manufactured gas in any community on an extensive scale arrangements must be made for the individual consumer to carry the peak load with auxiliary fuels, like oil or coke, since it will not be economical to make the enormous investment in manufactured-gas-plant equipment in order to render this extreme service.



The experience gained in transmitting natural gas through pipe lines indicates clearly the limitations that must be faced in attempting the distribution of manufactured gas from a central plant to a group of towns. No general statement can be made as to the dividing line between feasible distances that will not be feasible since each case must depend on its own economic features. However, enough is known to show clearly that there has been an

 



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