A couple home and garden questions - Corrected

[thatguy]

i got a couple questions that have been on my mind and thought this was the place to ask them..

1) I planted some kentucky 31 grass seed last fall which didnt have time to come up then. Will this seed germinate this spring or does the seed have a 'life span' once planted?

2) I am on a well and the pump is in the well casing - growing up our pump was in the basement so you could hear it cut on and off. How can I tell when the expansion tank goes bad?

3) If I was to spray a fence line with grass/weed killer.. how long before I can safely plant other plants in that area?

4) We moved in Oct from a two story 2,000 sq ft house (8' ceilings) and our average electric bill was about $106 (highest it ever went was $140, both are being adjusted for a recent rate increase to $0.077 kw/hr).. We are now in a one story 2,000 sq ft house (9' ceilings) with another 1,200 sq ft as a walk-up attic (unheated), with the attic floor being insulated as an exterior wall. Our last electric bills were $90 (Dec) $120 (jan) and $190 (feb) ..

The first house was a spec home so the insulation was code minimum at best im guessing - cheap builder.. The new house has above code insulation, not sure of spec exactly.. I realize before we had 1,000 over 1,000 feet before and now its one level for 2,000 ft. We are not leaving more lights on - but we do have a 220 pump now.

The electric bill seems to be WAY higher.. Do you think the it would increase 80% due to being single story and 9' ceilings??

Thoughts? comments?

thanks

Brian

 

[RonMar]

I will take a run at a few of them

2. Where is the pressure switch that controls the pump? It is usually in the vicinity of the pressure tank. You can do three things. A. just listen to the switch to hear when it changes state. B. Install a pressure gauge alongside the switch. This will tell you if that click you just heard was the switch turning the pump on or off. C. Have a small lamp wired in with the switch. Light on= pump on, light off=pump off. My prefered method would be B. as the gauge will also let you know what pressure is being maintained in the tank.

4. Warm air and the heat it carries rises(you knew this). In your old house, you probably used very little heat in the upstairs, certainly less than in the downstairs rooms as the upstairs rooms were being heated, at least partially, from the warm ceiling below(probably thru the uninsulated floor. Now in the new single floor house of the same SQ/FT size, you are having to heat those rooms fully that you didn't have to before. You basically doubled the size of your home as far as heat load is concerned. The taller ceilings also make for a larger heat gradient. IE: The warm air stacks up from top to bottom. You have become accostomed to the room being a certain temp. With a taller ceiling, you need to add a little more heat to get the part of the room that your body is occupying to the same temp you used to have. Probably the only reason why your bill didn't increase by double(or more) is the fact that the newer home is better insulated. You might be able to improve things a bit by looking at outside air intusion around windows and doors. Do you have central heat/heat pump, furnace? If so, are the ducts insulated and well sealed? It really sucks to pump warm air into a crawlspace as this puts the house under a negative pressure and that air gets made up from, you guessed it, the outside thru the aforementioned leaks. If you have an air exchange requirement(newer codes are incorprating this), do you have a heat recovery exchanger installed? It warms the cool incomming fresh air with the heat from the warm stale air that is being expelled. Other than that, if you are not using a room, deny it services to make your heat load smaller.

 

[shaley]

1. I don't think much of that K31 is gong to sprout this spring. It all depends on the amount of seed rot that occured over the winter.

2. When the tank is not functioning properly the water flow from faucets (shower head especially) will surge.

3. Wait 2 weeks after application of Round-up B4 planting new stuff.

4. What kind of heat do you have?

 

[thatguy]

thanks for the feedback...

DUH, sorta forgot one important fact - We have heat pump (heat and AC) and we use unvented gas logs in our family room as needed.. the air ducts are the flexible tubes that are insulated..

We keep the heat on 65 during the day and night.. Turn it up to 68 in the morning for a few hours and at night from 7ish until 1030 via a programmable thermostat.. I have also replaced A LOT of light bulbs with CFL bulbs.. I was wondering about going from heating a one to a two story house, and that makes a lot of sense..

thanks

Brian

 

[Bob_Skurka]

1. Too many variables to know for sure. But it is unlikely that you will have a good germination rate. Plan on reseeding for full coverage.

2. See prior answers

3. Totally depends on the herbicide you use. Round-Up supposedly becomes inert very quickly and can be replanted in about 2 weeks. However, Triox and others others may keep the ground bare for an entire season. Be wary of what you use, consider your choices carefully depending on what you want to grow along the fenceline.

4. A single story house has more exposed surface area than a 2 story house. Consider a 2000 sq.ft. ranch home has 2000 square feet of exposed exterior ceiling, but a 2000 sq.ft 2 story house has only 1000 square feet of exposed celing for heat to rise through. Most heat loss is lost through windows and the ceiling. Presume you have the same amount of window square footage on both houses, the ranch home will still have more exposed ceiing surface area. A ranch home, depending on design, may also have significantly more exposed exterior wall area.

One simple thing you can do is replace your light bulbs. Throw out all the traditional bulbs and replace them with energy efficient compact flourescent bulbs. The upfront cost is higher, but the running cost is dramatically lower. For example I have 12 recessed lights in my living room. A typical recessed reflector bulb draws about 150 watts, so 150 watts x 12 bulbs = 1800 watts per hour of electrical draw. The bulbs I use are 22 watt flourescent reflector bulbs, they have been in use for nearly 11 years (not one has needed changing) and the total draw is 12 x 22 = 264 watts per hour. The savings is over 1500 watts per hour. I'm just guessing, but we probably have 40 or 50 recessed lights in the house, each uses a compact flourescent fixutre. Many of our other light fixtures also use compact flouresecent fixtures as well. They are most cost effective when used in the most often used lamps and fixtures.

 

[dmccarty]

I think those 9 foot ceilings are going to "cost" you in the winter. We have 10 foot ceilings and there is quite a bit of heat up there. Its not just the square footage but the volume of the house. We have 20% more volume to heat than the same size house with 8 foot ceilings.

We heat with wood so its not so much of a money issue to heat the house. We can kick the temperature up to 80 degrees in the living room with the stove. the rooms farthest from the stove will be about 10 degrees cooler on the coldest days. I'm sure it would be at least a couple of degrees warmer if we had 8 foot ceilings.

In the winter we "pay" for the 10 foot ceilings but in the summer they really help pull the heat away from us. We run the AC as little as possible. If its not real humid we will open up the house if its under 80-82 degrees outside. Our power bill starts to climb in July as we start using AC($131), peaks in August ($159)and then decreases in September($129). During the rest of the year the bill sits around $100 for a 30ish day billing period. With shorter ceilings we would be paying more during the summer.

The old buildings in our town must have close to 16 foot tall ceilings. The court house has double hung windows that are at least 6-8 feet tall. Those tall ceilings are just to pull that hot, humid southern air from people during the summer.

Later,
Dan

 

[shaley]

Hey, wait a minute guys. We might be missing the obvious here

thanks for the feedback...
We keep the heat on 65 during the day and night.. Turn it up to 68 in the morning for a few hours and at night from 7ish until 1030 via a programmable thermostat...

If your t-stat is not designed for heat pumps or is programmed to turn on the electric heat strips for at a 2 deg difference from setpoint then the electric strips may be coming on and causing the high cost. If this is not the case the unit could be low on freon. I'd measure the power consumed with a clamp on amp meter and measure the difference in air handler temp in the house and see what the efficiency is.

 

[Harvster]

Lots of variables in the electric question. Start with the appliances that use the most. Heat pump-Same size and efficiency as previous place? Water heater- same size and efficiency? Clothes dryer- Same one? Refrigerator- same one? or same size and efficiency? Any outdoor lighting differences? Numbers of windows and doors? Proper weather stripping? Many of these will affect the situation more than smaller things such as light bulbs.

 

[thatguy]

Hey, wait a minute guys. We might be missing the obvious here

If your t-stat is not designed for heat pumps or is programmed to turn on the electric heat strips for at a 2 deg difference from setpoint then the electric strips may be coming on and causing the high cost. If this is not the case the unit could be low on freon. I'd measure the power consumed with a clamp on amp meter and measure the difference in air handler temp in the house and see what the efficiency is.

The HVAC installers are the ones the put in the programmable thermostat, and the manual says it for heat pumps.. it is a 'carrier' model that starts to raise the temp gradually over several hours so the heat strips wont kick in.. OR that is what the instruction manual says its suppose to do..

The unit was new in Oct 06 - could it be low on freon this soon?

Brian

 

[shaley]

Brian, Freon is something that could be checked without too much effort. I have seen new units leak more than units with several years of run time. I think the main point is that your extra energy use can be found with some measurements of various appliances and maybe get a handle on what is causing it.