[AT] OOOPS - Do as I say not as I do - now rambling off topic

Thu Jul 28 08:46:43 PDT 2005

Roger,  do you recall how much more it cost (percentage wise) than a normal 
air to air heat pump would have been for your house.  We are thinking about 
building a place and I'm trying to absorb every little bit of information I 
can.

Charlie
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Roger Welsch" <captneb at micrord.com>
To: "Antique tractor email discussion group" <at at lists.antique-tractor.com>
Sent: Thursday, July 28, 2005 11:12 AM
Subject: Re: [AT] OOOPS - Do as I say not as I do - now rambling off topic

> One of the few really smart things we did when we moved out here was to
> install a geothermal heat pump for both heating and cooling.  We have a 
> lot
> of subsurface water...we are on sand and about 1000 yards from the Loup
> River...so water is not a problem.  It's one thing to cool with hundred
> degree air in the summer and heat with -20 degree air in the winter, but
> it's quite another, we find, to use 60 degree water for both.  A closed
> coolant subsurface loop does the same thing without pulling up the water 
> but
> we find we use very little water in both heating and cooling our huge old
> house even pumping and dumping (we use it to water the lawn and trees, so 
> it
> gets another use before making a very small wet spot below the yard.  I
> highly recommend the system.
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Larry D. Goss" <rlgoss at evansville.net>
> To: "'Antique tractor email discussion group'"
> <at at lists.antique-tractor.com>
> Sent: Thursday, July 28, 2005 9:44 AM
> Subject: RE: [AT] OOOPS - Do as I say not as I do - now rambling off topic
>
>
>> You're on the right track to eliminate all natural gas in your house,
>> Farmer.  When we moved into this house 16 years ago, I was not looking
>> forward to the utility bills, but I was mildly shocked to find that the
>> all-electric solution for heating, cooling, and cooking saved us money.
>> This house is over twice the size of the one we moved out of, but the
>> utility bills are lower.  The big difference -- no gas.  Since we moved
>> in, we've taken steps to make the use of energy more efficient than it
>> already was.  All windows and doors have been replaced.  The heat pump
>> is now a high-efficiency model.  The water heater is high efficiency.
>> We're replacing all the toilets with pressure flush models, etc.
>>
>> One of the big helps is the windows.  We had double glazed windows with
>> the standard unsealed storms, but now all windows and door lights are
>> triple glazed.  My Dad did triple glazing on the farm house where I was
>> born in northern Indiana.  Before he did it, he did the calculations on
>> the energy savings.  It turned out that the utility bill savings in a
>> single heating season was greater than the total added cost of the
>> triple glazing at all the windows.  Bottom line, IMHO you can't afford
>> not to do it.  One of my colleagues at the university decided he needed
>> to do the same thing to his house, so he's changing out his windows at a
>> rate of one per year.  He's doing it that way because of the limits on
>> energy credits on income taxes.  If he does one window per year, he
>> stays under $1000 per year and can get credits for the whole conversion.
>> I suspect that he's being a bit short-sighted on that deal.  He probably
>> would save more money by getting the whole house converted so his
>> utility bills would be lower immediately.
>>
>> Before the flames begin, you obviously can't have the house sealed as
>> well as it ends up being with triple glazed windows if you're using
>> natural or LP gas for anything inside unless you provide for combustion
>> air.  That's even taken care of in this house.  It has combustion air
>> for the fireplace ducted to the hearth and the fireplace liner provides
>> heat to the house through separate ducting.
>>
>> Larry
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: at-bounces at lists.antique-tractor.com
>> [mailto:at-bounces at lists.antique-tractor.com] On Behalf Of Indiana
>> Robinson
>> Sent: Thursday, July 28, 2005 8:52 AM
>> To: Antique tractor email discussion group
>> Subject: Re: [AT] OOOPS - Do as I say not as I do - now rambling off
>> topic
>>
>> On 28 Jul 2005 at 8:00, George Willer wrote:
>>
>> > What!!!  Turn the compressor off???  You've got to be kidding, Dean.
>> I
>> > leave my system on 24/7/358, and have for many years.  I do switch it
>> off
>> > when we go to Portland for the week.  Having air instantly available
>> at any
>> > of the 8 outlets is just too handy to mess with turning it off
>> anywhere.
>> >
>> > For Portland week only I also turn the power off to the water system.
>> Do
>> > you turn your water off when you aren't using it also?
>> >
>> > George Willer
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> I also leave mine on 24-7 but I have to shut it off in cold
>> weather since my shop is
>> cold. It has trouble starting in cold weather. When we leave for more
>> than a day trip I
>> do shut the water (and water heater) off at the breaker box.
>>
>> In a similar vein, 2 years ago my mother had a small leak
>> develop in an unused natural
>> gas wall furnace. it apparently started at the beginning of the billing
>> cycle and when
>> the bill came it was $1800 high for the month. With the help of an old
>> school friend (I
>> say "old" because he is a year older than I am) with the gas company I
>> traced it to a
>> constant small leak to that extra furnace and shut down that line. This
>> was not in the
>> heating season. The next bill had another $400 in "leak" cost on it.
>> Since it was on our
>> side of the meter they would forgive none of it. I never bothered to
>> look for the actual
>> leak but since all of that line was in the basement and a closed crawl
>> space I am
>> assuming that it was leaking at the furnace electric control valve and
>> venting to the
>> outside up on the roof. Otherwise we would have smelled it (or blown
>> up). I plan to
>> remove that area furnace and replace it with an electric baseboard
>> heater. It was an
>> expensive Warm Morning wall unit installed to heat 2 added rooms but it
>> is quite noisy by
>> design. It sounds like a wind tunnel.  I might even convert the whole
>> house to all
>> electric. One less bill each month. My present house is all electric
>> (except my pellet
>> stove heat {was wood}) and has been since we put it up 29 years ago this
>> month. I have
>> been satisfied with the all electric. At times we thought about other
>> fuels when electric
>> got a bit high but then the other fuels would jump up and down, mostly
>> up   ;-)  in
>> price. My electric heat has a thermostat in each room and is completely
>> quiet. I have
>> been in houses where the furnace fan was so loud that you could hardly
>> hear a TV above it
>> when it kicked on. My pellet stove is a tiny bit louder than I like
>> since it sits in a
>> nook very near my lazyboy but at least it is constant. When I move to
>> the other house,
>> probably next summer, I plan to put a large capacity corn / pellet stove
>> in the basement
>> to provide most of the heat for the house and the regular basement
>> furnace (with a quiet
>> blower system) will be used to distribute the heat to the main floor.
>> The furnace burner
>> will come on only in very cold weather if I use it at all. I might even
>> install electric
>> baseboard heat in the rest of the house to take up any possible slack in
>> very cold
>> weather or I may use radiant hot water heat under the floors heated by
>> the corn stove. I
>> would still like to get the gas out of the house altogether. Every
>> couple of years there
>> is a house destroyed by a gas explosion around here... House go boom,
>> fall down...  :-)
>> There are 5 gas lines in that house. One for the furnace, one
>> for the second furnace,
>> one for the water heater, one for the dryer and another for an unused
>> gas heater that was
>> installed in the basement when the house was built on to years ago.
>> There is a large line
>> to the shop and another to the old milk house. Most of those lines are
>> about 40 years old
>> now and the potential for leaks is getting higher. It does not take many
>> $2200 leaks to
>> eat up any possible savings...   :-)
>>
>>
>> -- 
>> "farmer", Esquire
>> At Hewick Midwest
>>       Wealth beyond belief, just no money...
>>
>> Paternal Robinson's here by way of Norway (Clan Gunn), Scottish
>> Highlands,
>> Cleasby Yorkshire England, Virginia, Kentucky then Indiana. In America
>> 100
>> years
>> before the revolution.
>>
>>
>> Francis Robinson
>> Central Indiana USA
>> robinson at svs.net
>>
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