Keystone State Thread

All 3 rivers were putting off alot of steam last night as we crossed over from south hills back into the Northside on the Fort Pitt bridges.

 

Morning PA!

Was a nice 3° this morning at 6am here. Truck did not like starting and running in the 5° at work last night. Never lost power, but my TV antenna now has lean to it, so that's gotta come down in the Spring...

 

Deceptively cold right now. You would not guess that it's 13 degrees simply by looking out a window at my house!

 

Sigh. FirstEnergy has gone over to generic outage updates. "We expect to restore power to the majority of affected customers by Dec 26 2022, 11:00 PM."

 

Yup...

 

Well, that's one way to ruin Christmas; I was taking a nap when this happened yesterday and slept right through it, but our power surged twice...

 

Dang Dave . Hope u have whole house generator. Hope all is well soon.

 

She is listing to the side. How many channels does that bring in ? Bet ya alot being up that high.

 

Does anybody have a heat pump with no gas or oil backup or, GOD FORBID, electric baseboard heat?



My house has dual 90% efficient natural gas furnaces (one for the 1st floor and one for the 2nd floor), plus a gas fireplace, so the temperature is perfect!

My best friend lived in an apartment for seven years, and that apartment had cool-only central air with separate electric baseboard heat. The electric baseboard heat was so expensive to run even in mildly cold weather that my friend bought two of those electric fake fireplaces (one for the living room and one for his bedroom), and rarely used the baseboard heat.

 

Where did you get that? I want one!

 

Great question about heat pump, at some point they stop working and goto electric resistive heat. I can't see them squeezing any heat at these temps.

 

Found it! Though is it long sleeve or short sleeve?

 

Thing hasn't been used in years. They switched to cable when over the air went to digital. I was planning on removing it in the Spring, but looks like that got stepped up...

 

My truck turned 70 today. And will be 11yrs old in January

 

Actually, the ductless mini-splits (Mitsubishi, Fujitsu, etc) kick ass in this type of weather and are known for working down to -5F without even having to go through a defrost cycle. However, those are generally one unit per room or one unit zone to do a few rooms, rather than one unit heating up to 3,000 square feet. Newer whole-house systems tend to work a lot better than systems made just a decade or two ago. The mandatory minimum efficiency by the government was 7.7 HSPF (Heating Seasonal Performance Factor), but my friend's parents have a Bryant Evolution heat pump from 2010 with HSPF of like 9, so if you spend the money you can get a heat pump that does work worth a damn.

My friend's parents are both successful attorneys who can battle it out in the courtroom without breaking a sweat, but know squat about HVAC; I picked out the Bryant for them when their 11-year old Trane shit the bed. This Bryant is 16 SEER (the government minimum was 13 SEER starting in January 2006), and it also has a 2-stage compressor, plus a variable speed air handler with 20kw electric backup heat; 20kw is the most powerful electric backup heat you can get in a residential system, and the Bryant is 5 nominal tons (or 60,000 BTUs), which is the largest residential air-conditioner/heat pump you buy. My friend's house is almost 3,000 square feet if the finished basement is not included, and it should really have two separate systems since it is two stories, but installing a second system would have cost another $15,000+ (remember that a second set of ductwork would have to be installed, likely in the attic) on top of the $7,500 it cost to install the Bryant.

 

What year is your truck? I have a 2010 that has been in my family since new (purchased in September 2009 with 20 miles on the clock) and which I have owned since December 2016; I had like 68K on the clock when my dad signed the title over to me, and I am now almost at 161K!

 

With eggnog nowhere to be found you buy the ingredients and make your own, now to let it cool and hopefully it comes out good.

 

The dual straight-cool Goodmans at my parents' house. The house was built in 2015-2016, and these shitboxes are what the house came with. The furnaces are also Goodman and work fine, but the 1st floor A/C was showing signs of needing a refrigerant charge back in August (@ColoradoTJ) and the 2nd floor one has unevenly cooled the upstairs (especially MY BEDROOM)...

 

The 1st floor unit is on the left, and the 2nd floor unit is on the right. They are virtually identical to the untrained eye, but the 1st floor is 2.5 nominal tons (30,000 BTUs) and the 2nd floor is 2 nominal tons (24,000 BTUs). The 1st floor has a beefy Copeland scroll compressor, while I literally just discovered today that 2nd floor unit has a shorty rotary compressor. You can see by the flue pipe above the 1st floor unit that the 1st floor furnace was on when I took the picture...