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It's slow to warm up or cool down but it's always on, anyone that has in floor radiant installed correctly is going to tell you it's the best heat they experienced. Anybody that has had a undersized system installed is going to hate it....
It's expensive to install and I think what happens frequently is many installers under sizing them so they get the job. That or they don't what they are doing.
Where we live we normally see -20F temps for a couple weeks every winter.
We also see it becoming popular for contractors to install heatpump systems in new homes around here. Everything that I have seen / heard is that when temps are mild the heat pump systems work great. But as soon as winter settles in, you still need a source of heat.
Where we live we normally see -20F temps for a couple weeks every winter.
We also see it becoming popular for contractors to install heatpump systems in new homes around here. Everything that I have seen / heard is that when temps are mild the heat pump systems work great. But as soon as winter settles in, you still need a source of heat.
Heat pumps come with auxillary heat. I already had hot water radiators, so when I installed my heat pump I had the radiator system connected as the auxiliary heat. Lots cheaper than resistance strip heat.
Where we live we normally see -20F temps for a couple weeks every winter.
We also see it becoming popular for contractors to install heatpump systems in new homes around here. Everything that I have seen / heard is that when temps are mild the heat pump systems work great. But as soon as winter settles in, you still need a source of heat.
Depends on the model, older are sourced heat pumps are only good to about 40 or so but newer ones are effective into the teens. I would not be looking at air sourced heat pump in temperatures like that but instead look at deep well ground sourced systems. They have constant efficiency of something like 250% over regular electric.
Like any system it needs to be sized right, the expense of building one to meet the most demand can be very expensive and it might be wiser to buy a smaller sytem to meet your need in the shoulder seasons and augment it with something else like coal for those few months when its coldest. That's what a lot of people will do in this area with the ground sourced systems.
Heat pumps are all well and good but I'll take my forced air natural gas and central air here in eastern South Dakota. My heating bills are much cheaper than people who use only electric or propane heat. I also have supplemental baseboard and it doesn't seem to hardly effect the electric bill when I'm only heating my small basement bedroom. Kind of nice. I also have a natural gas water heater which heats the water super fast and never have problems with hot water. Changed the anode rod and flushed the system out.. I don't expect to have problems with it for the foreseeable future.
Heat pumps are all well and good but I'll take my forced air natural gas and central air here in eastern South Dakota. My heating bills are much cheaper than people who use only electric or propane heat. I also have supplemental baseboard and it doesn't seem to hardly effect the electric bill when I'm only heating my small basement bedroom. Kind of nice. I also have a natural gas water heater which heats the water super fast and never have problems with hot water. Changed the anode rod and flushed the system out.. I don't expect to have problems with it for the foreseeable future.
Natural gas is 97% methane and most of the other 3% is propane-- natural gas is a lot cheaper because it's so much more abundant and doesn't need to be "refined," although on a volume basis does not contain as much energy as propane. Propane Vs. Natural Gas - A Comparison
Is your NG piped in or is it trucked in to a tank on your property?
Natural gas is 97% methane and most of the other 3% is propane-- natural gas is a lot cheaper because it's so much more abundant and doesn't need to be "refined," although on a volume basis does not contain as much energy as propane. Propane Vs. Natural Gas - A Comparison
Is your NG piped in or is it trucked in to a tank on your property?
At the end of the day the only thing that matters is the cost per BTU, you can use the calculator I built for this to adjust for both efficiency and local rates.
This is a work in progress. I still need to improve the wood section for species and add a section for air sourced heat pumps which is a little complicated getting the correct input data from the user.
I paid $200/cord of oak this year, my first using a "gasification" wood burner. They claim a 95% efficiency for this type of system (do you believe that?). At that rate, the cost is competitive with coal, according to your calculator. It looks like only 4 cords will get me thru from Dec thru March of a pretty cold winter here-- coldest two weeks (ave temp +0.5*F) since 1884-- for a 2975 sq ft house/garage.
I like your final entry on the calculator. That's how they heat the Capitol, isn't it?
I paid $200/cord of oak this year, my first using a "gasification" wood burner. They claim a 95% efficiency for this type of system (do you believe that?). At that rate, the cost is competitive with coal, according to your calculator.
I guess it's possible but do I believe it? Not really, I'm not all that familiar with how rocket stoves are constructed but with coal stoves and boilers they can achieve high efficiencies because the flue gases typically travel a convoluted path before exiting below the fire. Here is one example, the coal is automtically fed from the hopper onto the silver bed:
The rate for the coal in the calculator is about what it costs for delivery of anthracite locally near where it's mined. Anthracite would be more in the $300+ range if available at all in your area. Bituminous can be purchased for much lower costs but is really not suitable for home heating especially in an automated boiler like the one above.
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I like your final entry on the calculator. That's how they heat the Capitol, isn't it?
At the end of the day the only thing that matters is the cost per BTU, you can use the calculator I built for this to adjust for both efficiency and local rates.
Safety, ease of use, flexibility, availability and environmental impact are all important. That's why electricity and natural gas are the dominant sources of residential energy.
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