How come you don't have a wood or pellet stove in there Kevin?
It's all a pack of LIES, I tell ya!
- Thread starter selectomatic
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Conversion would not have to be that expensive or involve baptism or a bris. You could go with split system heat pumps and one can do up to three rooms. Was your home built to Gold Medalion standards with the extra insulation in the walls and attic? Has the attic insulation been beefed up as it has settled over the years? Do you use your vented dryer only at the warmest time of the day or warmest day of the week or whatever? A vented dryer pumps a minimum of 150 cubic feet of air outside every minute it is in operation. That nice inside air that you have paid to heat or cool is leaving and is being replaced by outside air that needs heating or cooling. If you have a sunny side of the house, slightly opening a window when the sun has warmed up that area when you use the dryer will allow slightly warmer air to enter as replacement air. Do your double pane windows still have a good seal between the panes or do they show signs of a broken seal? Have you vacuumed the baseboard heaters' fins? Do you have a fan operating that directs air toward the baseboard units to improve the convection? Has anyone installed wall to wall carpet that reduces the clearance between the floor and the bottom of the baseboard heaters? If air can't flow through them, the heat can't circulate into the room. Are your hot water pipes insulated? You have put your water heater on a timer; I'm sure. Is the insulation under the first floor still tight between the joists and against the floor? Have you put storm windows over your double pane windows? Do you have window coverings that provide insulation? Do you take advantage of passive solar heat gain during the day and then close the insulating draperies or shades when the sun is no longer shining on the glass?
I don't understand how you say that modern day innovations are outside the context of the ad. You are the one that posted the ad. It talks about electric heating before the lower electric space heating rates were abolished. At least some utilities still offer a special rate schedule if you have electric water heating. Ceiling fans are not new. I lived with and knew many people who lived with electric heat and it was not a back breaking way of heating, THEN. If today is outside of the ad's context, why do you use it to slam your electric heating, other than anger over the bills? I am sorry for your high bills, but if your house was not built to the standards for electric heating or if you have not upgraded construction shortfalls, it is not electric heat that is at fault and frankly, keeping the baseboard heaters this long after much more efficient methods have come out has been your choice in a trade off. You have not spent the money to upgrade, so you are paying it to your power company. I cannot imagine living at the temperatures you keep inside your house. BRRR
I don't understand how you say that modern day innovations are outside the context of the ad. You are the one that posted the ad. It talks about electric heating before the lower electric space heating rates were abolished. At least some utilities still offer a special rate schedule if you have electric water heating. Ceiling fans are not new. I lived with and knew many people who lived with electric heat and it was not a back breaking way of heating, THEN. If today is outside of the ad's context, why do you use it to slam your electric heating, other than anger over the bills? I am sorry for your high bills, but if your house was not built to the standards for electric heating or if you have not upgraded construction shortfalls, it is not electric heat that is at fault and frankly, keeping the baseboard heaters this long after much more efficient methods have come out has been your choice in a trade off. You have not spent the money to upgrade, so you are paying it to your power company. I cannot imagine living at the temperatures you keep inside your house. BRRR
Powerplants these days are actually in the 50% to 60% range actually. This is what makes an electric automobile actually more efficient than a fossil-fuel automobile (even despite transmission losses), which is in the 25% to 30% range. Heat is the primary energy released when burning a fossil fuel...mechanical motion is merely a side effect, which is the reason why a home gas furnace can be in the 95% efficiency range. In a fossil fuel power plant, heat energy is converted to mechanical motion using a steam boiler and turbines. In an automobile, all that heat is dissipated in a radiator. In order to recover that heat energy, it would make the propulsion system in a car too large, and it would be impractical to operate due to the fact an automobile is asked to perform at different speeds, loads, and temperatures, unlike a power plant.
Electric baseboard heat is basically 100% efficient because it converts all the electrical energy to heat, but in the long run, more fuel is burned. The heat pump is the best way to heat electrically, but it has it's problems. The primary one is the life expectancy of the heat pump. The average life is only around 15 years, where the life of a fossil-fuel system, or even an electric baseboard system can be well over 25 years. The second one is simply in the way it works. Heat pumps produce heated output that while it's higher than the room's ambient temperature, it is below the body's skin temperature (skin is around 91-95 degrees F, heat pump can vary between 78-90 F). In order for a heat pump to be efficient, it must also move lots of air. The result of these two factors makes heat pump heated homes feel cold and drafty. The end result is that the user ends up cranking the thermostat up a few degrees to compensate, and in some cases, this negates the efficiency gains over a fossil-fuel source, especially in cold climates.
Toggle's idea of a ground source heat pump helps this out considerably, because with the much warmer ground, the heated output temperature is higher. I have also heard of setups where a gound souce heat pump "boiler" is even used to heat water for radiant floor heating.
I imagine one of the reasons why electric baseboard became popular in the late 60's too is simply because of the cost of the equipment and installation. Home-Depot sells electric baseboard strips for around $40 for a 2KW strip (7000BTU) The average amateur electrician could put one in with relative ease. Compare this to the price of even a window-unit heat pump, which runs in the $400 range. Once you factor in the installed cost of each, a builder, even today, could save thousands by installing electric baseboard over a heat pump...the house would just not be air conditioned! (this may work in northern climates!)
Electric baseboard heat is basically 100% efficient because it converts all the electrical energy to heat, but in the long run, more fuel is burned. The heat pump is the best way to heat electrically, but it has it's problems. The primary one is the life expectancy of the heat pump. The average life is only around 15 years, where the life of a fossil-fuel system, or even an electric baseboard system can be well over 25 years. The second one is simply in the way it works. Heat pumps produce heated output that while it's higher than the room's ambient temperature, it is below the body's skin temperature (skin is around 91-95 degrees F, heat pump can vary between 78-90 F). In order for a heat pump to be efficient, it must also move lots of air. The result of these two factors makes heat pump heated homes feel cold and drafty. The end result is that the user ends up cranking the thermostat up a few degrees to compensate, and in some cases, this negates the efficiency gains over a fossil-fuel source, especially in cold climates.
Toggle's idea of a ground source heat pump helps this out considerably, because with the much warmer ground, the heated output temperature is higher. I have also heard of setups where a gound souce heat pump "boiler" is even used to heat water for radiant floor heating.
I imagine one of the reasons why electric baseboard became popular in the late 60's too is simply because of the cost of the equipment and installation. Home-Depot sells electric baseboard strips for around $40 for a 2KW strip (7000BTU) The average amateur electrician could put one in with relative ease. Compare this to the price of even a window-unit heat pump, which runs in the $400 range. Once you factor in the installed cost of each, a builder, even today, could save thousands by installing electric baseboard over a heat pump...the house would just not be air conditioned! (this may work in northern climates!)
toggleswitch
Well-known member
Statistcs can be made to show anything you WANT them to say.
~Powerplants these days are actually in the 50% to 60% range actually.
Yes, but how much is lost in the transmission process? Is this form of loss included in the above figures?
Perhaps it is important to look at total energy input to make elctricity versus what is acutally harvested/avaiailble as output.
"100% efficiency" [at point of use only] of electric heat is misleading to those who are not looking at the bigger picture.
An unvented gas heater is technically nearly "99 44/100%" percent efficient as well, but that is because the 10 to 25% efficiency gain over vented models includes airborne poisons and other by-products of the combustion process that are deletrious to one's health. To me, that is no "efficiency" gain AT ALL!
~Powerplants these days are actually in the 50% to 60% range actually.
Yes, but how much is lost in the transmission process? Is this form of loss included in the above figures?
Perhaps it is important to look at total energy input to make elctricity versus what is acutally harvested/avaiailble as output.
"100% efficiency" [at point of use only] of electric heat is misleading to those who are not looking at the bigger picture.
An unvented gas heater is technically nearly "99 44/100%" percent efficient as well, but that is because the 10 to 25% efficiency gain over vented models includes airborne poisons and other by-products of the combustion process that are deletrious to one's health. To me, that is no "efficiency" gain AT ALL!
selectomatic
Well-known member
- Joined
- Apr 6, 2007
- Messages
- 483
Tom,
When I decided to make fun of an old ad and vent a little about my high power bills, I certainly didn't expect that anyone would get upset or take it personally. I also didn't quite expect to have people insult me.
I'm sure nobody wants me to go into excruciating detail about my house's design and layout, but I'll try to address a few things you mentioned, and then I'll wash my hands of this thread.
I don't honestly know whether my house was built to Gold Medallion standards. I rather doubt it. As I said, many of the problems stem from the original owners' poor decisions.
Yes, I have added insulation to my attic and my water pipes. I vent the dryer indoors in winter to take advantage of the heat and humidity coming out of it.
There are a lot of double-pane windows on the house, but most of them face north. The south windows are mostly single-pane, double-hung units with combination storms. We put 3M plastic over all of them in the winter. And we have insulated curtains and blinds.
Insulation under the first floor? Here again we start running into the bad decisions. The lower level has a concrete floor, poured onto bedrock. It's a big heat-sink. Additionally, the ceilings down there are 7' high. This, in addition to several features of the layout (large central chimney for the fireplaces, the stairway, the upper level overhanging by 2' on two sides, windows and doors that go nearly to the ceiling, a concrete room jutting into the front of the lower level, etc.) makes the installation of ductwork impracticable. Of course ducts could be installed in the attic, but even insulated ducts in a sub-zero space will lose quite a bit of heat, and pumping the heat back down to the floor doesn't work well.
As to not spending money to upgrade, the fact is that I don't have the money to upgrade. You claim that upgrading or converting wouldn't cost as much as I said, but you're quite wrong about that. I've had several heating contractors in to look at the situation over the years, and all of them have come up with estimates of at least $10,000. They were only able to come up with something that cheap by deciding not to install heat in certain areas of the house. This would obviously reduce the energy savings.
There was also a $15,000 estimate for baseboard water heat in all rooms on on both floors, but that didn't include closing up the walls and ceilings after everything was installed. That was also 18 years ago.
I'm able to do a lot of work myself, so I considered in-floor water heat, which would only heat the upper level, but some radiant heat would come out of the ceiling downstairs. The cost of materials for the heating system alone came to just under $10,000. This would require removing all of the ceilings on the lower level, so the repair work would be extensive.
Given prices like those, the savings in energy would take something like 10-20 years to pay off the cost of a new system, much longer in fact since I'd have to take out a loan to pay for it all.
On a limited budget, any upgrade would have to have a fairly short payback period.
Again, I'm well aware that my house isn't average. In many ways that makes me love it more, but in one particular way it causes problems. Obviously I could move someplace cheaper to heat, but complaining a little and laughing about it is a much easier option. Sometimes that doesn't quite work out.
-kevin
When I decided to make fun of an old ad and vent a little about my high power bills, I certainly didn't expect that anyone would get upset or take it personally. I also didn't quite expect to have people insult me.
I'm sure nobody wants me to go into excruciating detail about my house's design and layout, but I'll try to address a few things you mentioned, and then I'll wash my hands of this thread.
I don't honestly know whether my house was built to Gold Medallion standards. I rather doubt it. As I said, many of the problems stem from the original owners' poor decisions.
Yes, I have added insulation to my attic and my water pipes. I vent the dryer indoors in winter to take advantage of the heat and humidity coming out of it.
There are a lot of double-pane windows on the house, but most of them face north. The south windows are mostly single-pane, double-hung units with combination storms. We put 3M plastic over all of them in the winter. And we have insulated curtains and blinds.
Insulation under the first floor? Here again we start running into the bad decisions. The lower level has a concrete floor, poured onto bedrock. It's a big heat-sink. Additionally, the ceilings down there are 7' high. This, in addition to several features of the layout (large central chimney for the fireplaces, the stairway, the upper level overhanging by 2' on two sides, windows and doors that go nearly to the ceiling, a concrete room jutting into the front of the lower level, etc.) makes the installation of ductwork impracticable. Of course ducts could be installed in the attic, but even insulated ducts in a sub-zero space will lose quite a bit of heat, and pumping the heat back down to the floor doesn't work well.
As to not spending money to upgrade, the fact is that I don't have the money to upgrade. You claim that upgrading or converting wouldn't cost as much as I said, but you're quite wrong about that. I've had several heating contractors in to look at the situation over the years, and all of them have come up with estimates of at least $10,000. They were only able to come up with something that cheap by deciding not to install heat in certain areas of the house. This would obviously reduce the energy savings.
There was also a $15,000 estimate for baseboard water heat in all rooms on on both floors, but that didn't include closing up the walls and ceilings after everything was installed. That was also 18 years ago.
I'm able to do a lot of work myself, so I considered in-floor water heat, which would only heat the upper level, but some radiant heat would come out of the ceiling downstairs. The cost of materials for the heating system alone came to just under $10,000. This would require removing all of the ceilings on the lower level, so the repair work would be extensive.
Given prices like those, the savings in energy would take something like 10-20 years to pay off the cost of a new system, much longer in fact since I'd have to take out a loan to pay for it all.
On a limited budget, any upgrade would have to have a fairly short payback period.
Again, I'm well aware that my house isn't average. In many ways that makes me love it more, but in one particular way it causes problems. Obviously I could move someplace cheaper to heat, but complaining a little and laughing about it is a much easier option. Sometimes that doesn't quite work out.
-kevin
selectomatic
Well-known member
- Joined
- Apr 6, 2007
- Messages
- 483
Pete,
I do have a supplemental wood furnace that can help in three rooms, but it was always difficult to keep it lit and keeping wood in it cost nearly as much as it saved. I need to look into a more modern, efficient unit, I guess.
I haven't researched pellet stoves much. Time to look into that.
-kevin
I do have a supplemental wood furnace that can help in three rooms, but it was always difficult to keep it lit and keeping wood in it cost nearly as much as it saved. I need to look into a more modern, efficient unit, I guess.
I haven't researched pellet stoves much. Time to look into that.
-kevin
