Heating Budget

[3930dave]

The world is starting to wise up to the scale of the LEAKS involved with NG extraction and distribution... Something I can see turning out to be a source of emissions as big or bigger than the actual use of NG. At my old job we bought a building that had been occupied by a company that specialised in gas fitting, initially the place absolutely stunk of gas. We had to get a gasfitter in three times to fix all the leaks we found.

ShoeMaker's Children Eh ! Joking aside, those fitters should have had their licenses lifted.

I'm not big on incompetence, in any industry or trade.....

Rgds, D.

 

[Patrick Herd]

Definitely agree, one of the leaks was well up in the roof space... Takes a lot of effort to be able to smell a lighter than air gas at ground level.

 

[3930dave]

Our stove, when running uses 5A, more if igniter must run. Run a power cord thru wall or floor so a small 1000W generator can run stove. The UPS beeping lets you fire up a generator before the house gets cold.

A beautiful thing.....

Rgds, D.

 

[3930dave]

As regulators start to catch up to this and pass the costs on to well and pipeline owners, that plentiful energy source aint going to be so cheap anymore

Passing Along Higher Costs..... not a Big Deal, if you are a 1%'er, or a Regulator controlling same....

For the peasants, it'll be a different ride.....

An engineer I knew, spent time visiting NZ, then moved his family your way. Said when visiting during your Winter, that he'd never ever been that cold indoors here.

He said that some people basically had no central heat, and got along with space heaters when needed.

While waking up in a house that was 47F down your way, and plugging in a space heater might be uncomfortable, the End Limit up here is way worse..... with frozen pipes only one stop along the way.....

Few places won't still have cheap electricity, for much longer at least.

Electricity is invisible, both literally, and in people's Minds. And that's too bad today, for a few reasons.

Any human activity has Enviro costs, and electric systems are no different.

If you want to know how bad it can get.... buy a guy who maintains underground HV lines a beer or 3, and listen closely.....

Rgds, D.

 

[Patrick Herd]

Yeah our housing situation is pretty dire here, very much a hangover from the UK attitude of "put the pipes on the outside of the house, so they're easier to replace when they freeze"
Our place actually has insulation, double glazing, and heatpump + wood heat. Cozy.

 

[ddbackhoe]

I have a pellet stove coming and am replacing the wood stove. 120-pound hopper and 3 day burn time is a plus. Also at 70, the firewood is getting heavier. I am making a shelf/pallet "quick attack" for the tractor to haul bags of pellets to the porch. That way I can set 20 bags at a time on the porch. I made two 60-pound capacity storage containers on casters to move the pellets into the house. Our heating oil just dropped from $3.48 to $3.25 which is great. Diesel is still up at $3.90. Our hydroelectric plant had to stop in mid-October, and we now generate on diesel. My electric bill doubled from last year.

Something I’ve been noodling through to add-on is a bulk hopper just foe convenience (laziness ?)

Bulk Wood Pellets Storage - Automatic Systems

Did you know you can automate your heating system to pull bulk wood pellets from your storage container directly to your heating unit? Learn more about these creative and cutting-edge automatic conveyance systems here.

www.woodpellets.com

 

[3930dave]

Yeah our housing situation is pretty dire here, very much a hangover from the UK attitude of "put the pipes on the outside of the house, so they're easier to replace when they freeze"
Our place actually has insulation, double glazing, and heatpump + wood heat. Cozy.

A college buddy of mine moved to Oz 25 years or so ago. Caught up with him a while back, via Linked In.

That's one thing he said about Australia too...... typical houses had little/nothing for insulation. I've some across the same lack (vs. Canadian practice) in the American South.

Something about freezing plumbing in the dead of Winter.... tends to focus the mind .

IIRC, you are engineer, so you get thermodynamics, whereas the avg Joe may not...... likely why your house is not "normal" .

Rgds, D.

 

[3930dave]

Something I’ve been noodling through to add-on is a bulk hopper just foe convenience (laziness ?)

Bulk Wood Pellets Storage - Automatic Systems

Did you know you can automate your heating system to pull bulk wood pellets from your storage container directly to your heating unit? Learn more about these creative and cutting-edge automatic conveyance systems here.

www.woodpellets.com

Extra insurance.... going away for the weekend (remember when that was an option, in the PC days ?), or if you have a job that can run into extra OT/days away.....

I know I'd sleep better, when away....

Rgds, D.

 

[3930dave]

We replaced old oil boiler in 2009 with a Buderus 90% eff blue flame boiler for heat and DHW - cut our oil usage from 850 to 500 gal per year, and pre buy oil each year 2020 was $1.99, and this year $2.49 so $1250 a season for oil heat and hot water.

A good HS friend of mine, his Dad was involved with oil-burner research back-when. He's been gone a while now, but he would have spent a week+ going over that Buderus.....

The house I grew up in had an oil furnace. It was OK tech for the day, and later replaced with a (at the time) higher efficiency one.

My Dad would work on just about anything (mtce or repair) but the one thing he paid for every year was to get the furnace burner etc cleaned, being the job that it is....

I'm really curious now about this Buderus - what is the recommended cleaning process and interval ?

Rgds, D.

 

[Carl_NH]

I'm really curious now about this Buderus - what is the recommended cleaning process and interval ?

Rgds, D.

A few details - this boiler was mandated in Germany/Europe in the 90's to meet lower emissions, and it has a number of differences to the normal oil boiler. We have a GB125 BE - 87K BTU, three pass boiler with outdoor temp offset control same that is on many newer oil furnaces.

- High Pressure Fuel Pump - 265 PSI
- Heater in fuel line preheats oil before nozzle
- .45 GPH Nozzle atomizes fuel very fine particles
- Air recirculation in burner and outside air intake

The result is a blue flame, virtually no soot buildup, and I clean it spring and fall with a wire brush and vacuum it out. We have 10,500 hours on the boiler now almost 12 years old.

 

[Oaktree]

13,000 acres of farm ground going out of commission.

Work starting on 13,000-acre solar farm in northern Indiana

An Israeli company has started work to build a solar energy farm that’s planned to cover some 13,000 acres (5,261 hectares) across two northern Indiana counties when completed.

www.tribstar.com

Wife and I did a road trip thru the midwest this summer, I was surprised to see the huge wind farms in Illinois & Indiana. Around here you might see a dozen windmills on a mountain top, they were in the hundreds there.
Don't recall seeing any large scale solar farms though.

 

[3930dave]

A few details - this boiler was mandated in Germany/Europe in the 90's to meet lower emissions, and it has a number of differences to the normal oil boiler. We have a GB125 BE - 87K BTU, three pass boiler with outdoor temp offset control same that is on many newer oil furnaces.

View attachment 725607

Thanks for posting that Carl !

I've sent this page link to my Sister. They might have already updated their's, but a few years back, they were still running an older oil boiler.

Your boiler sounds relatively easy to clean.... what I'd hope for in a modern design, but hadn't spent the time chasing down the info....

..... then, it drifted into my view on TBN .

Rgds, D.

 

[Oaktree]

I agree the Hydro QC power thru the NE would be a "good thing" but there are so many competing and politically motivated energy projects in New England these days.

Clearly, you haven't spoken with many people in my part of the state (north country). Northern Pass was hugely unpopular here...more blight so people in Mass. could power their Teslas, no tears shed by much of anyone when the application was turned down. Hopefully, they won't try to revive it in the aftermath of the vote in Maine.

Natural gas is going to rapidly become an energy source in its twilight. At least here in NZ, connection charges are rapidly rising. Friends recently replaced their NG boiler with a heatpump system and their overall energy bill is now lower.

It does seem to be the demon du jour, funny how once upon a time NG was touted as being clean burning.
Seems short sighted, as it is the electric grid/generation capacity is barely adequate, with yet another way of generating power off the table things could go dire quite easily, especially as we become more dependent on electricity. Wind & solar will never make up the difference, even hydro power is pretty much maxed out (and extended droughts would reduce that capacity even more, as has been the case in much of the U.S. west).

 

[3930dave]

Wife and I did a road trip thru the midwest this summer, I was surprised to see the huge wind farms in Illinois & Indiana. Around here you might see a dozen windmills on a mountain top, they were in the hundreds there.
Don't recall seeing any large scale solar farms though.

While rooftops are usually obvious, sometimes solar gets tucked into spots that are harder to notice.

I changed jobs this year. I'd spent about 2.5 years driving down a rural line-road to my last job, when I finally noticed one PV site, not long before I left there.

A big field well off the main line-road, notched into (from my driving viewpoint) taller trees had a large solar installation.

It does vary widely though, by geography..... here, there was a time when there were huge incentives in-place, to do ground-mount solar PV.

Rgds, D.

 

[Rustyiron]

Would a single windmill or solar panel (in a "farm" setting) be built without a government subsidies and tax credits? I'm doubtful.

 

[LouNY]

^^^^^
Does that get the point across that they are not economically effective on their own

 

[DieselBound]

Would a single windmill or solar panel (in a "farm" setting) be built without a government subsidies and tax credits? I'm doubtful.

It's all insane. The fossil fuel industry is subsidized to high-heaven also (factor in military activities in this equation as well). I'd always figured that cutting back on subsidies to the fossil fuel sector would have been the better way to go. There is critical mass to consider, that the existing infrastructure was built up over many decades. I have no "answers." I take no sides in any of this because in the long run nothing is going to be able to support infinite growth... For now I will continue on with firewood...

 

[Larry Caldwell]

Likewise. Severe cold snap predicted. I have a wood shed full of 2-year dry firewood, and more food on hand than I can eat in 3 months. Power goes out? I have gravity feed water, a Kindle Fire HD-10 and a car charger. I downloaded some movies for entertainment, and have a DX-440 for SWL. Let it snow.