Home Heating Options

[Freebird]

I'm not sure what you mean by geothermal, but the ground coupled heat pump is starting to make inroads. Here is a link. INstead of using outside air as a source for your heatpump, it uses a heat exchanger and transfers the energy (hot or cold) to the gound. There is an entire community over by Dallas that uses these. They are more efficient in both the summer and winter than a conventional heat pump.

 

Yea, that's what I'm talking about that I called Geothermal. No doubt it's the way to go if you are building a new house or having to install a new system. The payback for upgrading a system is a LONG time though if you already have an energy efficient furnace like I do. The quote that I got was $10,000.00 to install the system. The payback in energy savings would have taken about 12 years. The geothermal system has a life expectancy of 15 years. Just didn't make sense in my case.

[Al Bates]

Don, check this out. If you do, feedback.

 

It uses less energy than it takes to run a coffee maker. Yet, it produces an amazing 5,119 BTU’s

 

http://www.amishfireplaces.com/technology.cfm

 

Code FP2884

[GeorgeS]

Try getting quotes from a few insuation speciliasts.

If anyway possible to upgrade insullation value I still

think this is the best Value for any money spent.

 

Remember, it also helps lower Cooling costs in the summer. So you get a double wammie from money spent.

 

I think Insulation Standards have been upgraded in the last 15 years. And newer and better products are avialable.

 

Also, more insullation in the Attic, is usually Easy to install, and thats where you get the most saveings in Heat Loss. Of course this would depend on how your home was constructed, as to how much could be added to the Attic.

[eagleeye]

Man, what do you think one of them would do to your electric bill?

 

I heat my house with a wood stove, and it is very labor intensive, but I do everything that I can to try and cut my electric bill. This fireplace would't help.

 

Steve

[flb_78]

Don, check this out. If you do, feedback.

 

It uses less energy than it takes to run a coffee maker. Yet, it produces an amazing 5,119 BTU’s

 

http://www.amishfireplaces.com/technology.cfm

 

Code FP2884

 

An ELECTRIC Amish fireplace??? That's like a Jumbo Shrimp or Sensible Government.

[pegscraper]

Why yes, they're from the Electric Amish, don't you know.

 

They take that little energy to run and they put out that much heat??? Not buying it. That ratio is way out of whack. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

[Freebird]

When I click that link, I get a page asking for an access code.

[eagleeye]

There is a spot to click if you don't have a code

 

I don't think my coffee maker takes 1500watts.

 

Steve

[venturejockey]

My wife and I have a geothermal unit. We live in a 123 year old house with original windows, for the most part. The walls and ceiling have been insulated. Our heating/cooling bills here in Arkansas, yes I know its warmer here than Ohio, range from $100 to $200 per month. We have natural gas for the cook range top and gas logs. The gas bill is $10 to $25 per month.

 

I plan on adding storm windows and insulation in the crawl space and would expect the bills to drop a little after that as well.

 

In addition to the heating and cooling the hot water is free since the excess heat is used to heat the water in our hot water heater.

 

As stated before these units are more expensive than conventional heat pumps those.

[pegscraper]

Corn furnaces? Constant attention and fiddling, cleaning, corn storage facilities and keeping the darn mice out of the stuff, and the fact that it won't keep working while you're gone - no thanks. And the price of corn is going up too.

 

Don, in our part of the country, if you don't have natural gas available, propane is about the next best option. I've been told that the best way to do propane is to buy your own tank, and have a very large one, two if necessary. Have enough tank capacity to carry you through the winter, and then you can fill up in the summer when the price is down. Owning your own tank means that you can shop around for price when you need a fill up instead of being tied to one company. I know someone near me who did this. He has two 1000 gallon tanks. And IIRC, he told me that because he saves so much in gas costs, that he got back the cost of the equipment and installation inside of two years. After that, it's all savings. While our current residence does not use propane for heat, our previous residence did. I know how much the propane companies love that winter time fill up. They will clean your clock. When I can see my way to doing it, our current place will also be on propane, but set up to where I don't have to fill up in the winter.

[Freebird]

Why yes, they're from the Electric Amish, don't you know.

 

They take that little energy to run and they put out that much heat??? Not buying it. That ratio is way out of whack. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

 

I did some research on it and yes, it IS a scam. All the Amish make is the mantel and even that may be a lie. They claim it is solid wood but many are reporting that it is a particle board with laminate. Also, it is simply a 1500 watt electric heater with a blower. The BTU claim is probably true. 1500 watts does produce just over 5,000 BTU. That is true of any electric heater. 1500 Watts is 1500 Watts...that also sort of answers my own question and original post in this thread.

[BEER30]

Well in all , time to break out the Buffalo robe and moccassins ! Pack up the Tee-Pee and head south for the winter . If your heating bill is going to be close to the same price as a second mortgage , might as well have the best of both climates , warm and warmer .

 

BEER30

[Marcarl]

Ya them little mantels take 1500 watts to run, lots more than a home coffee pot, but about the same as a commercial coffee pot, they didn't tell you that though, either way 1500 watts, I'd sooner use a micro furnace, works good to but still uses 1500 watts.

An often overlooked area for heat savings is in the basement, ya I know, you don't heat the basement, but it is true. An insulating contractor told me that the last time I needed him when we put on our addition. Do a super job of sealing up the basement, especially the plate area where the foundation meets the walls, so we sprayed ours with foam to seal it tight. What this does is prevents and air coming in to replace the warm air going out the top so to speak and it works. Our new basement is not heated and is not cold either. We also don't supply any heat to the new part, 24x30, and it's not cold either, although there is an open area to the old part and so is not isolated as such. Our heat bills have not gone up much at all even though we almost doubled the size of our house. Just go down into the basement on a cold day and find out where all the cold is coming in and then seal it up, not just insulate, but seal it so no air can get through.

JMT

Carl

[Leland]

BuddyRich's idea of the fireplace insert is a good idea if the fireplace happens to be in an area of the house that the family is in most of the time. If it's not, you can install a free-standing propane stove. This allows you to "zone" your "one zone" (one thermostat) house. The insert or stove keeps the main living area warm. The furnace's thermostat can then be lowered. Most people like the bedrooms cooler anyway. If the furnace's thermostat is located in the area heated by the insert or stove, you should move it. I have a two story house with a gas stove that heats the main living area. I relocated the furnace's thermostat to the upstairs hallway for the bedrooms. Of course, at night you turn the insert or stove off.

[MAINEAC]

Don you need to go oil... either replace your propane furnace for oil or if you have an unfinished cellar you could upgrade to a oil fired boiler and install baseboards... you could save a lot of money by running the pipes (plastic Pex) yourself then have the heating guy install the boiler and baseboards... The oil guy should have a guy that comes in and tells you how much baseboard goes in each room... for kitchens without much outside wall and cabinets they have what are called kickers.. small radiators that fit under cabinets and have a fan and blow warm air through grilles in your kick panels... I used to have a hot air furnace and when I built my new house I went with a boiler... cut my heat bills by a 3rd, House is warmer, and would never go back to hot air.

 

The boiler also heats my hot water so I got rid of the elec. hot water heater. Hope this helps.

[tazmocycle]

i have been working in the hvac field for about 40 yrs. the basic theory of refrigation is the movement of heat from one place to another. when companies talk about how good and efficient their units are you need to know how and where they are at their rated efficientcy. a heat pump is and a/c in a reversed mode. instead of taking heat from inside and putting it outside, it's taking heat from outside to inside.a heat pump is most efficient between 70- 30 degrees( may vary from area to area but not much). when the tempertures drop below the lower temps and ice starts to form on the outside unit, it will go into defrost mode, which is, it goes into a/c mode and brings on the aux. heat form(electric or gas) to counteract the cold air this produces. at this time you are running the a/c and heat at the same time, so your cost are doubled. at this time it's cheaper to use electric or gas heat. it's a electric heat pump if it's got electric heaters to helpout when the temps get colder or a dual fuel heat pump when you use gas or oil heat. a geo thermal system uses water thru a loop of pipes ran in the ground to transfer the heat. it can be buried in the ground in the yard or drill a well and insert the loop into the well usually in water( how deep it's buried is to a point where the temperture remains almost a constant year round. when looking at a gas furnace, you need to look at the afue rating on the unit( etc 80%). this means that for every $ of gas you put into the heater you get 80 cent of heat into the house and 20% goes out the flue. 93% would save you 13 cents more than the 80%. of course the 93% will cost more to install, but you will save the differance in a few yrs. you can also install a water source which uses a water heater(gas or elec.) to heat water and then ran thru a coil in the unit to remove the heat to the house area. fuel oil produces the hottest heat per unit of any other type of heat source( but you do get a oily smell in your house.ventless lods or ventless infrared heater are the best because they are 99.7% efficient. when you use vented logs or wood fireplace you loose a lot of heat up the chimmey. if you are handy and can do the work, you can go on e-bay and buy unit at about the same prices i get them for. or you can pay me to me and put it in for you when i have time!! if you need to talk about what you can do, you can call me and talk about it.

[MAINEAC]

With all due respect to your 40 years is the HVAC fieild Taz you're wrong about a couple of things...

 

"fuel oil produces the hottest heat per unit of any other type of heat source( but you do get a oily smell in your house"

 

Not sure where you got that info... I have a 275 gal oil tank in my cellar and it has a fill pipe and a vent pipe coming out of the top and both are run to the outside of the house... My question to you is where does the oily smell come from? I don't have an oily smell in my house.

 

Maybe those Heat pumps work down there in Alabama... but I don't know any one in New England with one.. They probably don't work in Ohio either as Cleveland is pretty close to Boston in climate.

 

Not sure about Ohio but here in Maine the only real choices are Oil, Propane, or wood.. Wood is the cheapest but a PIA and Oil is cheaper than Propane... Then you have the option of a Forced Hot Air Furnace or a Forced Hot Water Boiler which works with baseboards or radiant in floor heat. Furnaces are cheaper than Boilers and cost more to install but don't run as much as a furnace does.

 

FYI I don't own an air conditioner we just open the windows.

[Guest kober]

There's another option called Arizona.

[tazmocycle]

as i said it depends on the area of the country you live in as what heat source you use to get the best heat. as i also said is the heat pump picks up heat from the outside and transfers it to the inside, so if you live in a northern climate with a lot of cold days in the year, you wouldn't want to use a heat pump(70-30 degrees range). but if you watch "this old house" you will see that heat pumps are installed if you have the $s to invest you can put a ground source(buried in ground or a well) heat pump if the yr-round ground temps meets the requirements to do so. a lot depends on if you have enough money to do the start-up, where-as most people can't do it. yes there are many places that don't use a/c either, as cal or az,etc they use swamp cooler or a whole house fan with all the windows open.

[Guest KitCarson]

You will hear a lot of things...about heating and great savings by insulating and adding thermal windows and ground source heat pumps. I like to use common sense about things.

 

I maintain close to 1500 rental properties for realtors....and a lot of the tenants are poor.....some buy and use those little 900 to 1500 watt space heaters(electric) and end up with a $400 dollar heat bill....those things draw a lot of power. Those are not an option..........

 

Ground source heat pumps and similar systems including advanced solar systems....and the new (GREEN) trend.......are extremely expensive...built into a new home and absorbed by the mortgage.....one way of doing it.....but to add one later....way out of any normal persons budget.

 

Take a simple remodel job to install new thermo pane windows in an older home......lets say you spend 8 to 10,000.00 on that and save 30 dollars a month.........be awhile before you get caught up with that one.

 

All in all......in the south a heat pump is the way to go........up north if available gas heat is the way to go.......propane is tough........over natural gas.....if none is available......extra blankets work well..........

[Guest tx2sturgis]

There have been many good points in this discussion, but two things not mentioned are:

 

Catalytic propane heating, and solar thermal heating. (Solar thermal is NOT the same as solar electric or PV)

 

Of course you need to insulate well to use these two technologies, but for the $10,000 they are quoting you Don, I'd be inclined to look into these.

 

You may not be in the best latitude for solar thermal, but you can use catalytic propane anywhere. Catalytic propane heating is around 99.8% efficient...and assuming you can use a large tank and buy propane in the off season, you can heat for much less per month...although there are a few drawbacks. One, there will be an increase in humidity in the house, which some people find pleasant, others do not. You do have to provide a small vent, to allow incoming oxygen...some heaters have oxygen sensors...it all depends on what you will put up with to save money. By the way, there is no toxic fumes with catalytic propane heating...the only by-product is water vapor.

 

Solar thermal is, you probably know, expensive to install, and the payback is not huge, but over time you can save some big bucks, especially in the less severe winters. There are two types, fluid based and air based.

 

Fluid based use an antifreeze solution that is pumped thru large collector panels on your roof, thru a water filled storage tank in your house, this can even be your normal water heater. That heated water is then circulated by another pump thru baseboard radiators or an underfloor hydronic system to heat the house.

 

The air type just have a large duct that carries the fan-forced heated air from the roof mounted collectors into your house, and these are very low maintenence, although their heat out put drops off markedly on cloudy days and during the shortest days of the year, especially at higher latitudes.

 

These options are to supplement what you already have, not replace them. You will still need your large (ineffecient) heat plant to provide heating during those cold dark winter nights.

 

Or...you could move to Southern Arizona, be all comfy in the winter, but bake your brain in the summer...talk about energy costs...those folks think its NORMAL to have a $500 A/C bill in the summer....sheesh...

 

 

By the way...selling the bike to pay your heating bill is NOT an option!

 

[big_mike]

don any home heating furnace is only as good as the person that installs it every manufacture make furnaces that 93 to 95% eff and are vented out the side wall of the house in pvc. but if they aren't set up right from the start they aren't worth a hill of beans even on l.p. the first thing you do is make sure you have the right size {bigger is not better} then make sure you have a single stage 93% eff or higher that is adjusted right and set up right then just bite the bullet on the opperating cost because to change to geothermal is a waist of money over a 12 year period that 10,000 can buy a lot of l.p. even without figuring in the interest on the money that you won't get.

[Guest tx2sturgis]

One of the problems with the 'central heating' concept is the fact that you have many losses, even if the unit (heat pump or just a furnace) itself is rated at 93% or 95%...most of these systems have to heat or cool a large duct system, before they can heat or cool your house. Some of them do have management of this heated or cooled air, but like big mike said, it can be installed improperly and not be anywhere near its rated effieciency after installation.

 

Part of your heating and cooling bill is simply wasted, heating or cooling those ducts. It adds up, especially since they usually are installed in unheated or superheated attics, or in some cases, cold crawlspaces.

 

Even some of the best insulated ductwork will tend to deteriorate and leak after a few years, and then there is the problem of duct cleaning.

 

Also, you have the problems of accumulating crud on the interior coils (and or heat exchanger) and this all leads up to a slowly decreasing efficiency of the unit.

 

Thats why many foreign countries never adopted the whole 'central heating and cooling' systems that we did in this country. Most builders here almost worship the units, and most consumers simply dont know there are alternatives out there. One of those is a ductless multi-zone split system heat pump, another is a 'package' unit, and still the best...in my humble opinion, is a decentralized, zone system, of catalytic propane heating, and simple thru-wall or window mount AC units, with a good woodstove for winter use, possibly suplemented by roof solar thermal, depending on the users tolerance for the big collectors on the roof.

 

In my ideal situation, I'd be off the grid anyway, and using catalytic propane heaters, roof collectors, solar photovoltaics, solar fridge, a woodstove, and a wind turbine for generating lots of power when the sun aint shinin. And some good old evaporative cooling using a DC motor and well water.

 

'Course...all this takes money...lots of it. Maybe if I win the lottery...but then, if I win the lottery, why would I need to save on heating, anyway?

 

Im so confused.

 

 

[Freebird]

They system that I have is decent. Not as good as some of the new ones but was a good system when it was installed years ago. It is a York Stellar Plus rated 12 SEER and 91+. It is a split system heat pump with propane backup. The windows in the house are good quality and all the doors are insulated. Maybe I am just wishing for too much. I complain about the heating cost here but when I lived in Texas, I probably made more annually due to the cooling costs and the water bill in the summer due to a large yard that my wife really liked to keep green through the summer. We had an automatic sprinkler system and she put it to heavy use.

[WilCruise]

We have a similar problem where the gas stops 2 damned houses up the street from us. We have oil which is sill the standard up here, but getting expensive. We insulated and re-windowed over the last few years and that helped a lot. What we did this year was to get a fireplace insert that runs on propane. We're loving it! It not only plugged the heat escape of the fireplace, but now we can supplement with more or less as heat / price requires. Granted it's not the perfect solution, but it's been a great compromise and the fireplace ambiance is a nice side benefit. We still run the fan on the furnace to circulate the heat throughout the house. It's been a great compromise for us.