House Renovation: Gas vs Electric

Posted on | February 12, 2009 | 7 Comments

By Our New Guest Renovation Blogger, Greg

Gas vs Electric vs Black Silhouette Guy

Choosing the right furnace is difficult. I’m investigating all the options before our furnace kicks the bucket. A quote for 2 conventional gas hot air units to replace what we have now was equal to the price of a mid-sized car. Wow, I really wasn’t expecting that. My research shows that’s the going rate. It’s like parking a new VW in your basement for the next 20 years until you buy a new one. If we are going to spend that much money for a heating system, I want to consider all the options. Here are some alternatives I found:

Gas

The Cadillac of heating systems is the FreeWatt. This is as high tech as you can get. It consists of a Honda generator that runs on Natural Gas to make electricity for the house and uses the generators waste heat to heat your house. Nice, but pricey @ $24k.

Electric

Hallowell makes a heater/air-conditioner combo called Acadia. This is a Heat Pump. It works like a refrigerator but can also work in reverse and make heat. Normal Heat Pumps can’t make heat if it’s real cold outside but the Acadia can suck heat out of -30 F air temperatures. Plus, you get heating and air-conditioning in one unit, that is pretty neat if you only have electricity.

Who Wins?

Electric has multiple advantages, installation is easy with no chimney, safety is increased with circuit breakers so the house won’t burn down if something goes drastically wrong, less wear and tear reduces maintenance, and it has remarkable efficiency. Unfortunately, electricity is more expensive where we live. Our gas bill says we pay $1.63 for every 100,000 BTU and the equivalent of 24 Kwh is $3.69. That’s a big difference. Gas pollutes and is non-renewable and the price can sky rocket from our political environment making electric the better choice. Unfortunately gas wins.

Gas wins :( Why?

To put this into perspective, over the lifetime of any heating system, the heating system cost pales in comparison to the fuel costs. January in Marblehead had an average temp of 20 F, the gas bill was $277, the equivalent in electric is $591. Figure $2000 for electricity per year compared to $1000 for gas. Over 20 years, that can be an Audi or a VW up the chimney.

Passive Heating?

Hmm, this article in the nytimes.com suggests the best heating system is no heating system at all; or at least a very small one. It must be great to have a new construction that was built with all the latest and greatest. I hope homes like
this prove reliable and catch on everywhere soon. I can’t imagine they won’t. But what do the folks in 250 year old homes do? Teardown? It’s hard to net a green teardown. In fact I’d say it’s impossible, so I’ll just stick with what we’ve got and first try to FIX IT.

Category: G, house renovation

House Renovation: Researching HVAC

Posted on | February 8, 2009 | 4 Comments

A shot of the burners in our furnace.

The new Guest Renovation Blogger on Katy Elliott dot com is none other than the best boyfriend in the world, GreG.

Katy asked me to write some about our home projects. This came up recently when the pipes froze over the New Year Holiday. We had no water for almost a week. We’re tough, but even we need a shower once in a while. Our memberships at the YMCA came in extra handy. I must say, she has become more tolerant of my Home Depot shopping sprees since then. We have a few projects going on right now, slowly making progress, we are in no rush. Some of them she cares more about than others.

She suggested I write about a recent visit we had with an hvac consultant. This is who you call when you need a new furnace. HVAC stands for Heating, Venting, & Air Conditioning; it’s a fancy acronym for a plumber except they specialize in heating and cooling the air in your house. It’s probably one of the most technically diverse fields in the industry. They must be a capable electrician, plumber, pipe-fitter, tinner, roofer, and mason all in one. I left carpentry out to warn you, if you see an HVAC tech with a saw in hand, WATCH OUT! Your house is about to make a swiss cheese impression. Aside from a lack of carpentry skills, they also deal with some complex math and engineering problems. I found math equations for calculating the rate of heat loss in a house that require dozens of measurements and other factors. The size of the house matters but so does its insulation, orientation, location, etc, even the color can make a small difference. HVAC is hard and dirty work too, one reason they can charge so much.

Kate’s Mom had her furnace bite the dust a few weeks ago. Her house is heated with baseboard. This is known as a hydronic system in the biz. A crack formed in the boiler plate of the 20 year old furnace and water was leaking all over the basement floor so the whole thing had to be replaced. A simple job but the cost was shocking. The reality is, our currently f*ck up world of finance and interest and monthly payments makes us forget this is 33 bucks a month over the lifetime of the unit. I pay more than that for internet access. This business is recession proof because it always gets cold in the winter and people will need heat in their homes to survive, we won’t need internet access.

btw I will write about the actual visit next time.