HVAC. Polar Vortex. Hows your system handling it?

[westcliffe01]

Im renovating a house in town. Furnace is removed, all interior plumbing removed, about 50% of outer wall lath and plaster removed. No insulation anywhere. Heat from a 30 000 btu gas stove on first level. The stove had been holding the house at about 50F with outdoor temperatures at 20F. Yesterday I went to check on the house at 10:30pm since local temps were down to -26F with wind chill to -40F due to gusting wind. House interior temp was down to 30F. Water main from outside into basement was frozen. Incoming line is a steel pipe going into a gate valve, then into the water meter then followed by a ball valve.

Since I could tell that the line was frozen, I set up an electric heater and a big cardboard box to thaw it out, making sure both valves were closed. By the time I got it thawed, the gate valve was not shutting off the water flow 100% and the ball valve had freeze damage that was allowing water to drip out. I was able to add a second ball valve after midnight as a temporary fix with a drip from the damaged ball valve. Left the electric heater and cardboard box to keep that spot thawed.

Today I replaced all the line downstream of the meter with new copper line and a new ball valve and added a heating wire to the whole thing, then foam insulation. So at least I know the incoming line is now protected from frost since it is not feasible to heat the basement under the kind of conditions we had yesterday. I will be doing all new pex plumbing in the house, but Im just not at the point where I can start it yet. This is not "ordinary" weather around here. Once I have insulation in the walls and new exterior doors, things will be looking a lot better. 1920s home renovation is a trip...

 

[check]

Heading to the college this afternoon, where it has been nasty nasty nasty cold. We have four steer propane, and a very good furnace. Hope everything is OK when we arrive! (we have a freeze alarm up there, but I tried calling it yesterday and it did not answer.)

 

[HillStreet]

It has been cold and windy here in southern Maine for a few days. Zero degrees plus the wind so it is cold but certainly no MI WI or ND (this time). I started the coal stove in the basement so I could do some projects. Too cold to be outside now that I’m retired, but I did work outside for 40+ years.

 

[TheMan419]

Our boiler is from the 60痴. We were able to maintain 71 deg but it was running flat out. I think next time we will reduce heat in the upstairs zone since bedroom is on first floor and we can live completely on first floor if needed.

I did order a nice Berne insulated coverall suit for myself since we still had to tend to horses. Can稚 wait for that to arrive.

 

[BrokeFarmerJohn]

I have a all electric heat pump for primary heat, electric air handler.

I believe my system is 2.5 tons and had no probs keeping up, it really only ran a few times an hour. On the -8 to -10 windy day.

I turned the temp down to 64 degrees in the house to save on some money. I usually keep it 66-68 degrees. That might feel “cold” to some but I find I can’t sleep at night with covers if it’s in the 70s, feels too hot. At 66 I sleep with a ceiling fan running on medium which is perfect, ceiling fan off and I wake up to throw covers off which then I’m cold before I fall back asleep. The struggle .

I did have two no heat calls from friends of the fam. One was because this guy had a furnace in his garage, natural gas fire place and furnance in his house running off the same supply which I believe was 3/4, his issue was the gas pressure was dropping too much with the demand of heating the garage and house around 70 degrees. He turned the garage furnance down to 45 and solved that prob after I re-primed/ re-lit pilot lights on everything lol.

Second guy was a air flow issue where the furnance was starving for air making the furnance overheat and kill the furnance on limit, it would automatically reset but only get his place to 64 which was too low for them. I found a 12in flex duct someone cut in the side of the return trunk as a bipass for a issue where they didn’t transition the return trunk to the plenum, they just cut a smaller whole, blocked of the part that didn’t line up then put in a 12in flex duct to the side of the plenum to make up for the loss of air volume. Guess it was sucking out of the 12in flex too much and collapsed it. I opened up the 12in hole to suck partially finished attic air until I get materials to hard pipe it. It’s kinda crazy because he has two filters to change lol. It’s worked since 02 I guess.

Other than that, I haven’t heard of any other problems.