Recently in Home Heat/Efficiency Category

Or at least one house is 55 degrees on the second floor.

Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission recently approve a 6% rate increase for Columbia Gas.

I reduced my natural gas bill over 45%. A net profit for me and a reduction in the use of a precious resource.

My estimated gas bill for this month was to be $85.83 based on November 2007 usage. My actual bill for November 2008 is $55.90 and that includes four extra days added to that amount so the usage so the bill is actually lower.

• Lowered my thermostat to 62 degrees from 67


• Shut down my upstairs heating zone. A roommate moved out and I decided that I didn't care if the bath and sleeping were cooler. Totally closed off half of upstairs. The house is stacked two floors so there is no threat of freezing.


• Unplugged the natural gas heated clothes dryer and started using a clothesline Nuclear powered clothes drier (greenmesh 9/30/08)

• I wash only in cold water


• Purchased a super restrictive shower head to replace my restrictive shower heat and lowered the water heater to bare minumum


• Gave my old cat a 40 watt spot light to bask under when I'm home.

The main reason gasoline prices have plunged recently is because a barrel of oil is worth less than half of what it was a few months ago because of a loss of global demand.

My house and almost every house has a heat pump system built in, in fact, the heat pump design built into my house is centuries old.

"Heat pumps" use freon, a compressor and electronics to transfer heat between the inside and outside of your house. In the case of a geothermal system, between the ground and the inside of your home.

I keep my house at about 60 degrees and the upstairs drops into the high 50's (shut off a zone and closed doors). On Fall days like today (67 degrees at the moment), I open all the windows and the basement door during the day and the heat pumps into the house using the natural forces of nature. The stone in the basement absorbs in the heat during the day. The basement, built into a hillside, has a ground floor door.

Likewise in the summer, I use a small attic fan to pull cool air up and through my house at night evacuating the hottest attic air first and then close the windows during the day. The well insulated windows and walls hold temperatures. I like fresh air and hate air conditioning.

Older home designs are usually quite green in their structural design although modern insulating materials weren't available. The least efficient home design is the sprawling single story ranch with massive wall and roof areas (increases water run-off too) that radiate heat. The non-centralized living design doesn't take advantage of concentrating the heat we generate in cooking, appliances and lighting.

My small, 2 1/2 story row house has a shared common brick firewall that allows heat from my neighbor's house and common chimney to radiate three stories into my house. Stacked floors reduce outside wall surface area and concentrate the heat generated by normal living.

In the Summer, corner rooms with tall windows allow air flow and the ability to vent from the top and bottom of the window. Corner rooms with multiple windows allow airflow. The tall narrow nature of the structure allows a natural chimney effect though attic windows channeling heat up and out in summer. Lower floors are far away from the hot attic.

(Paul Kuehnel - York Daily Record / Sunday News)

Supporters of the York Museum of Art made a trip to the GoggleWorks in Reading. A tour of the facility and how it could work in York.

The GoggleWorks, in Reading is a 140,000 square foot space of artist studios, an independent film theater, offices, galleries and a cafe housed in a 19th century factory that made goggles and safety equipment.

The heating system is fascinating hybrid blend of a modern forced air chiller system tempered by a warm water loop through old cast iron radiators that were once heated by steam. The result is a combination of old world charm and modern comfort. However, vast expanses of marginally insulated glass and exposed brick help create a $250,000 yearly utility bill.

Kevin Lenkner, executive director of YorkArts, envisions the York version of the GoggleWorks to be housed in a new facility where the money that might be spent on utility bills would go to programs and people.

Not that this has anything to do with green, but I love hydronic (water) heating systems.

bisque.co.uk

Mini-split heat pumps get more efficient and disappear into walls

Mini-split heat pump systems are a great solution for cooling and (secondary) heating. The LG Art Cool is literally disappearing into the woodwork.

The concept of a heat pump is that heat is transferred from either inside your house to outside or vice versa. You are literally moving energy rather than creating heat by burning fuel. The more efficiently this transfer can take place the cheaper it is to keep heat inside or outside your home.

If a heat (pump) transfer system were 100% efficient then, in theory, it would cost nothing to heat your home because you would not consume energy, only transfer it.

Although a modern heat pump is extremely efficient, various factors rob efficiency. Electricity must be created and sent though wires to power the pump. The conversion of fuel to electricity is inefficient. The motor itself and the freon that carries energy creates heat and friction further eroding efficiency. The colder it gets outside, the harder a heat pump has to work to pull energy from the outside. When the temperature dips into the 20's, most heat pumps will surpass their ability to efficiently suck heat from outside, though a few work down to 0 degrees F.

Mini-splits are perfect for retrofitting older homes, adding some additional innovations that help them become more efficient over centralized systems.

You have an old steam system in an historic home. Though charming and producing some fantastic radiant and convective heat, steam systems are particularly inefficient when it's warm out, but very comfortable when it's very cold out. You don't want ductwork ruining the original architecture and taking up space, cut big holes in walls... mini-splits to the rescue.

A mini-split heat pump allows several separately zoned, usually 2-4 individual room units, to run off one compressor unit. The LG system actually scales the work of the compressor outside to match the current demands of each thermostat. Only a 1 1/2 inch hole is needed through a wall to pass refrigerant lines from inside to out.

A combination of scaled compressor and room zoning, where you can heat and cool only what is needed adds efficiency to a heat pump system. Using a mini-split systems in an older, larger home already served by a primary heat source can really add efficiency and save money.

Interesting payback calculator: heat pump vs. burned fuel
hvacopcost.com

Of note: When electrical deregulation is complete residential electrical rates in Pennsylvania may be about 29% more.
greenmesh (9/1/07)

Free, controlled central heat from the forest, corn, old lumber...

The fireplace isn't anything new and an outside wood burning furnace is hardly a pollution free source of heat. However, cleaver efficient low maintenance and safe ways to extract energy that hasn't been harnessed by assorted profit streams galore that cost you thousands of dollars a year and help separate consumers from dependency on oil and gas is worth noting.

Consider the land owner with ample forest and two strong arms or a farmer with excess feed corn. A stainless steel outdoor furnace makes heat for free.

Wood or other materials are loaded through the front door about twice a day. A thermostat in the outdoor furnace controls the temperature of the water (and the speed of the burn) in the jacket of the furnace by regulating the amount of air forced into the combustion chamber. That water is circulated through the home's radiators or in the case of a hot air system, the hot water is circulated through a heat exchanger in the air handler of the traditional furnace inside your home.

An optional domestic hot water heat exchanger can be installed into the thermostatically controlled water jacket of the outdoor furnace to give you free hot showers from your forest.

Wood is a renewable resource, that is readily available. Pennsylvania is packed with hardwood. The next logical step for these furnaces is to develop the combustion chamber to lower emissions.

heatmor.com: I checked out this system at the Grease, Steam & Rust Association Inc. show in Fulton County this weekend, but it will come to York for the Keystone Farm Show, January 8-10 and the PA Farm Show in Harrisburg, January 6-13

Bioheat is a low sulfur oil blended with biodegradable, organic materials such as soybean oil available locally through Shipley Energy. It can be used without retrofit as a fuel in home oil burning furnaces.

Testing conducted by the National Oilheat Research Alliance (NORA) found that a Bioheat blend of 80% low-sulfur heating oil and 20% biodiesel (B20) reduced sulfur oxide emissions by as much as 80% or more. Nitrogen oxide emissions were lowered by about 20%. In addition, carbon dioxide emissions can be lowered by 20%.

If everyone using heating oil used a B5 blend (5% biodiesel/95% heating oil), 400 million gallons of regular heating oil could be conserved. This would be a big step towards conserving oil, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. oilheatamerica.com

Margie wrote greenmesh responding to
Yellow Pine Energy Storage:

Does using brick, stone or other natural siding effect the insulation value?

Masonry products increase the insulation value of a home over wood frame construction by nature of their thermal mass that can moderate temperature swings.

When we think of insulation, fiberglass and foam with an "R-value" come to mind. The amount of dead air trapped in these closed spaces from spun wool, blown foam, or double glass panes keeps heat from transferring. Just as air moving fast in your heating system transfers heat.

The dead air space in your walls provided by insulation is only part of the equation that cuts heating/cooling costs.

The most efficient building material in the desert Southwest is a couple feet of Adobe which has a very low R-value. However, in places where temperature can vary 50 degrees day/night, the Adobe provides a great deal of thermal lag and dampening of the extremes. The dense surface heats up slowly by day and takes time to cool down at night.

The masons that built my 100+ year old brick row house in Emigsville, built an airspace between two courses of brick as a method of dead air space insulation. The brick walls are structural and thick. The modern layer of insulation, I put on the inside between the studding, doesn't have to work as hard during days of temperature extremes as the same insulation does in the wood frame house next door.

High mass walls work best to enhance insulation factors in temperature climates that are moderate with extreme temperature swings within 24 hours in places like New Mexico and Colorado.

The amount of insulation in a home doesn't paint an accurate picture of total home efficiency. You have to take in the whole picture of construction and how it relates to exposure in the context of a particular climate to maximize efficiency.

Old school pine has the property of "thermal inertia," a phenomenon where the solid wood stored energy during the day, and released it during the night.

Southern Yellow Pine was extensively used for building throughout the United States (Colonies) during the 1700’s and 1800’s. It is one of the hardest of the pines, so it was good for flooring when pine forests were extensive before hardwoods became popular.

The material is also a good high-tech (natural-tech) insulator. According to Apple Computer co-founder Steve Wozniak, who is focusing himself on super energy-efficient housing,

The Southern Yellow Pine has a resin inside that melts and freezes at 71 degrees F., a very comfortable temperature for humans. The chemical actions of melting and freezing work to balance the temperature. If it’s a hot day, some small amount of the resin melts (it takes a huge amount of energy to melt a tiny amount) and the melting process pulls heat from the surroundings, from the home. When it gets colder at night, the resin-wood emits heat as it freezes. ecorazzi.com

Yellow Pine is a renewable resource. More pines are planted than harvested each year. Unlike foams and plastics, it degrades and doesn't emit chemicals that are as toxic when burned.

Enertia® Building System, solid wood walls replace siding, framing, insulation, and paneling. An air flow and access channel, or Envelope, runs around the building, just inside the walls - creating a miniature biosphere. Here solar heated air circulates, pumping and boosting geothermal energy from beneath the house, storing it in the massive wood walls. Thermal inertia causes the house to "float" between the cycles of night and day, and even between the seasons.

Early experiments with steam heating sometimes ended with disastrous results. However, by the late 19th century, steam heat was quite commonplace and had great acceptance. Between fear and function came the fascinating world of gravity flow hot water systems which continued on during the age of steam.

This example of a gravity flow hot water system found at www.oldhouseweb.com

The electric water circulator hadn’t been invented yet, actually electricity wasn’t very reliable, if it existed at all and heating controls were very crude, so the dead men decided to harness the basics.

In 1749, Benjamin Franklin heated a row of ten townhouses in Philadelphia from a single apparatus, replacing ten fires with one. The device was probably adapted from Roman hypocausts, a method of supplying heat to a stone building with a system of flues in the walls that channeled the fire’s exhaust gasses beneath the floor. rochester.edu

In 1810, Daniel Pettibone invented a central furnace using hot air to heat six rooms at Philadelphia's Pennsylvania Hospital. The device called a ‘rarifying air stove� was used to heat the government halls of our nation’s capital for decades until it was replaced by steam heat.

Beneath this lump under the drywall of my bedroom wall is a secret passage to the heavens. It was covered with an old pie plate when I found the 6 inch diameter hole.

Enclosing the fire pit.

About 9 years ago, I rented a cabin in the Adirondacks with a friend to go skiing. The gas lit, rustic cabin had two potbelly stoves. It was about 0 degrees outside the night we arrived. We built two huge fires, which made the place really cozy, until about 2 am when everything went wrong.

In the beginning there was fire and humans liked warmth.

Once upon a time, before multinational corporations figured out that they could profit by owning all the trees in the forest and control the simple needs of mankind, fuel was free.