What's going to happen with Gas prices?

Consider one with near vertical blades. They don't need to turn into the wind.

 

Hey PT, if you have a return grill at the highest point in the room where your stove is located, you can run the furnace fan only to circulate the stove's heat throughout the house. You can run the fan intermittently to save some $$$.

 

Hey Pierce, consider a wood burning insert. I'm puting one in for next winter. It's not a stove it looks just like a regular fireplace. It has positive presure system taking air from outside and runs it through the unit. It pressurizes your house so cold air can't leak in. Plus wood can be free. it has a 2500 sqft heating capacity.

Just a thought

 

We'd have to cut a hole in the floor/ceiling if I'm following you... One of our friends has a wood stove in his basement. He leaves the basement door open with a fan pulling warm air up, and a vent in the floor of the 1st floor to return cold air to the basement. He gets a nice circulation of warm air that way.

Our problem is we have a 2 story house. Two living rooms, small bath, and another room (spare bed room? no closet so....?) under 3 bedrooms and 1 bath. Then the kitchen is off the back of the house with just an attic above, a hallway going further back with a pantry on the side, and another family room in the back. Basically, it's a pain in the ass to get air to circulate. The pellet stove is all the way in the back so I have a window fan hanging from the ceiling to blow warm air down the hall. Kitchen ceiling fan helps circulate the heat. That little pellet stove has to bring the back room up to 80F for it to do any good (it'll get it up above 90 if it's at least 30-40 outside). It's enough to heat half the down stairs, but with all the door ways we have to heat the second living room (kids play room). Upstairs is set to 60 during the day and 65 for a few hours in the morning while we're getting up. So right now the furnace only heats 1 room downstairs, and the upstairs. Most of the time enough heat rises during the day that the thermostat upstairs never kicks on. Same for 2 out of 3 downstairs ones when the pellet stove is on.

Sorry. Kinda long. lol The house is big, and laid out oddly. Almost like it used to be for 2 families. The floors are also double layered (put new hardwood flooring over the old) so they're a pain to cut or drill through. Some places are a foot thick!

We spend $220/month on pellets and were doing $300/month for oil last year. We've cut back on the oil usage with programmable thermostats, and the pellet stove. But that means we spend the $200 on pellets instead of oil. I could just use more oil and pay for 1 fuel, but the furnace doesn't heat up half the downstairs like it should. Two adjacent rooms will differ by at least 5 degrees. I think one room heats up faster and shuts off the thermostat.

I really think we need to get all the windows and doors replaced before I start messing around with the heating anymore. So many drafts just sucking out whatever heat we use.

 

No fireplace. Although that positive pressure thing sounds interesting! I wondering if I could get a pellet stove with something like that. Then again, new windows and doors would stop a lot of the leaks!

Then again if we seal up most of the drafts with new windows and doors it might be a good idea to draw in fresh air somehow.

 

Yeah.. I use to have a pellet stove and ended up getting rid of it because it wasnt' saving me any money. you should be able to pull outside are in and hook it up to the intake blower.

 

Regardless, I've been spending a lot of time on Northern Tool checking out alternative energy products!

Watching the prices climb serious makes me consider investing in something like this: http://www.northerntool.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/product_6970_200338349_200338349


To make fuel to heat the house, and maybe make the next vehicle a diesel. Price will have to come down some. But they will as more companies make processors like that, oil prices go up, and people realize something needs to be done about it.

 

Or maybe just put the pellet stove in the barn to heat that, and put the wood stove sitting in the barn in the house!

Only thing is, I'm not sure what we need to install the wood stove. Don't have another chimney in the house unless we put it in the basement and hook it up to the furnace one. There's a chimney in the kitchen, but it doesn't go through the attic so they must have truncated it between the kitchen ceiling and attic floor. Only thing I can think is they knocked part of it down after the fire in 1980. Like I said, some of the shit in this house is really half-assed to completely retarded (wiring, plumbing, doors, wall paper, paint, contact paper).

 

PT, have you looked into geothermal heating/cooling. The initial investment is big (around $10K and over) but the operating cost is very economical or similar to operating a 5 amp water pump. Also, do some research before you put money into solar panels. Apparently solar panel technology has not been perfected hence they are too expensive and its efficiency is below 50%. A new product is about to hit the market. Its called solar pads. These pads are chemical filled and the heat causes a chemical reaction that generates electricity. This is much more efficient than solar panels is the claim . I heard about it in a news briefing hence dont have detailed info.

 

ever consider geo thermal? helps in both winter and summer and you get a tax credit for it

 

Damn!!! you beat me to it.. but then you are a fellow Northern member

 

Thanks! Hadn't really looked into that! When I hear geothermal I think of places with hot springs (which we don't have).

I know what you mean about solar. Most of the panels big enough to do more than charge my cell are ungodly expensive! Then you need to stack up batteries to store the electricity, convert 12v to 110v... What a pain in the ass! If I was going to do solar it would be more like solar heating (water pumped through black hose under glass or something).

I've seen windmills that supposedly can provide 30% of your electric with low wind speeds. They have all the parts inside the housing. Just put the pole up and wire into the grid. Does all the regulating, voltage conversion, etc. But they are about $10k too. You get credits and what not, but who has $10k laying around to drop on it before it makes money?

I too heard something new about solar panels. Something about a new product that many not be as efficient, but a fraction of the cost to make. I forget. It was probably in Pop-Sci magazine a few months back.

 

Dont pellet stoves operate at a higher temperature? If so, they're more efficient and they dont burn the pellets as fast as a wood stove.

 

yeah. with geothermal, once you get a few feet underground it is always around 55 deg so you are only heating from 55deg up rather than outside temp. A buddy of mine has it and it is working out great for him plus the tax benefit

 

Cool! So what does he do to bring it the rest of the way? We keep it around 68 via the furnace, but the pellet stove gets it up around 70-72 in the living room and 70-79 in the kitchen. It only has high/low/off. So if the back room is 90+, and the kitchen is above 75 I'll turn it down. If it's above 50 out I might turn it off to save some pellets and keep the kitchen below 80, but often I just let it go because it drops so much at night.

 

PT, try to get rid of all ceramic, porcelain, marble and stone floors. They are energy killers in the winter. They remain very cold during the winter and keep the mean radiant temperature lower than in houses without. Wood and carpet floors are much warmer or cover them with 2x2 carpet tiles just for the winter. If you know anybody working in office towers, you might be able to get them for free prior to an reno project.

Also, consider the new compact fluorescents. There's a new one out there that is 5 watts but emits 40 watts of light. I cannot remember the lumen's but its over 1K. The LED MR16's are a major energy saver too but the bulb is $47 vs $3 for the regular. I bought one for testing purposes but the light does not compare. If you dont like the white light from the fluorescent, ask for warm white. I think its classified as a "27,000" and it mimics the light of an incandescent.

 

Great minds think alike. We both posted at the same minute.

 

Done and done! All hardwood floors, and I've swapped most of the lights to CF ones. Most are 5w usage, 65w comparable output. I'm not too worried about the electric bill (until I run my welder for 3 days straight and blow the usage to hell).

The floors are usually warm except for the drafts around doors. We plan on replacing those anyway with insulated metal ones. It seems the current hard wood was laid down over an older hardwood floor so it's 2" thick downstairs. Upstairs there's at least 12" of dead space under the floor (same 2 layer hardwood). So our floors are surprisingly warm.

 

I guess my concern is that we wouldn't have been able to afford to heat the house this winter if it wasn't for a public assistance program called HEAP. It cost $770+ for 175 gallons last month! And before that it cost over $800 to fill the tank (250gal) in Oct/Nov. (Luckily HEAP paid the bill on both accounts.) We used to get 100gal deliveries for $300/month. Now we're looking at $400 for the same thing. Afraid to think what it'll cost by next winter.

 

Damper down or close the diffuser partly in the room that warms up sooner or you can install a in-line duct fan for the cooler room. If all your dampers are in place, you should be able to balance your HVAC system.

Dont just caulk the window leaks. Try to use a low expansion foam to seal all the openings. A good quality foam will give you an R value of about 7-10. If you need a name, let me know. I'll get you a name this weekend.