Electricity (Lolo: house, crawl space, water heater)

[Stephan_K]

sounds like you have some bad luck with water .

If there are old mines near by I'm sure the water table is polluted. Mining sure makes a mess of things. We have a few streams near my cabin in PA that are awesome natural trout habitat, won't find a single living thing in them due to the mining that was done on top of the mountain a mile away. Every time it rains, they run orange. Mining pollution from many years ago is still tainting them today. I don't think they will ever be able to sustain fish again. The sad think is, these streams run right into the Allegheny River! A major water source.

Still gathering info on quite a few different large lots in the Kila area. There are quite a few on the market. And even more for sale that just aren't listed. Lots to choose from.............

I am closing the sale of my business in 2 weeks and working on heading for some greener pastures.....or mountains in my case . Gonna do some fishing and finish raising my boys and without being surounded by the "board up the *ss" people we are currently living in between. I just want out of the rat race!

[ElkHunter]

Congratulations. From what I've read, you will do well. Good hunting, good fishing, that's what life is about.

Originally Posted by Stephan_K

sounds like you have some bad luck with water .

If there are old mines near by I'm sure the water table is polluted. Mining sure makes a mess of things. We have a few streams near my cabin in PA that are awesome natural trout habitat, won't find a single living thing in them due to the mining that was done on top of the mountain a mile away. Every time it rains, they run orange. Mining pollution from many years ago is still tainting them today. I don't think they will ever be able to sustain fish again. The sad think is, these streams run right into the Allegheny River! A major water source.

Still gathering info on quite a few different large lots in the Kila area. There are quite a few on the market. And even more for sale that just aren't listed. Lots to choose from.............

I am closing the sale of my business in 2 weeks and working on heading for some greener pastures.....or mountains in my case . Gonna do some fishing and finish raising my boys and without being surounded by the "board up the *ss" people we are currently living in between. I just want out of the rat race!

[jimj]

SK, since you asked about heating and such, most people around Kalispell heat with one of 3 things, the primary still is wood in the older homes, then electric then gas forced air or a combo of the first 2. We heat with electric cadet heaters and a gas fireplace for backup. Our total power bill is $145 a month for a 2500 sqft house,well and pressurized septic. Personally I've found the cadets to be a cheaper way to go, we designed this house 2 years ago and were looking at ROI when we did it and found forced air took many many years to pay itself off, while wood is cheap the down side is dealing with everything that comes with it like soot, ashes, hauling and splitting wood etc not to mention the insided of the house smelling like a fireplace all the time. We looked at radiant heat but the ROI on that was something like 30 years. The total cost of the heat units and install for our house was about $1200 and they are rated 95% efficient only to be beat by floorboard heaters.

[Stephan_K]

Wow, $145 a month is pretty cheap, especially for basically an all elec house. I have a 2300 sq ft house, heated with nat gas. My elec bill every month is ~$150 (lighting and appliances) and my gas bill is ~$300 in the winter months. Summer months it is around $100 a month. Energy is super expensive here I guess......I also have a wife and 3 kids in the house that thing absolutely nothing of waisting energy either. That really pisses me off! I would really like to know what my energy expenses would be if I had an energy conscience family.

I was also going to look into elec baseboard heaters and wood for main heat sources. But if the elec expense for baseboard heaters is the same as that of a geo thermal system then who the hell needs the initial expense of geo and the mess of wood for basically $150 a month?

How well insulated is your house? I'm planning on a super insulated one.

[be_a_light]

We live in the Tobacco Valley, north of the Flathead. We live close to the source of electricity (Libby Dam), so we enjoy some of the lowest electrical rates in the COUNTRY! Our highest bill of the year, which is usually December, for heat and lights is $185. Most of our bills from March-October do not exceed $80. We have new home and run zonal electric heat. We control how warm or cool our rooms are. We like the system a lot and it is quite economical to install in a new construction. No duct work!

[Stephan_K]

Originally Posted by be_a_light

We live in the Tobacco Valley, north of the Flathead. We live close to the source of electricity (Libby Dam), so we enjoy some of the lowest electrical rates in the COUNTRY! Our highest bill of the year, which is usually December, for heat and lights is $185. Most of our bills from March-October do not exceed $80. We have new home and run zonal electric heat. We control how warm or cool our rooms are. We like the system a lot and it is quite economical to install in a new construction. No duct work!

Exactly what I am seeing. Geothermal and any forced air heating system for that matter is a complete waist of money initially with such low elec rates. Elec radiant is the only way to go with wood for a secondary in NW MT. Radient heat is the best one can have to begin with and it also has a very low initial cost. I guess Geothermal is only good where energy costs are high. Other than that you will never recover the initial cost of the system.

[rickers]

If you insulate the walls between rooms then it's easy to just heat a room or two rather than heating the whole house all the time. Individually controlled baseboard heaters are perfect for this. I look at how much longer My wife and I will be around and it just doesn't make sense to put a lot of money into our place fixing it up for the folks who will end up with it when we're gone ! I know people here who don't heat their house at all even in the freaking winter. They are hard core po-folk and they sit in their house all bundled up in jackets ! They also can't read or write worth a darn. My next door neighbor is in a wheelchair and he works on cars, grows a garden, chops wood, does all his own cooking and laundry. He has many jackets that people have given him and he always wears a filthy torn up ratty one he has had for 30 years ! This place is a trip !

[Stephan_K]

Wow no heat. I have been known to be pretty hard core but I couldn't do that. But if you ain't got a dime to your name I guess you don't have a choice. But hell.....spend a few minutes and find something to burn! It sure sounds like a trip there.

Before I got married and started the whole family thing years ago, I tried that one winter. I wanted more party money and I thought I was tough enough to leave the furnace off and just burn wood to heat the house in the burner in the basement. Gravity fed the 2 story house with what little heat was generated by it. I could get a burn to last about 3 - 4 hours (home made burner) and at the time was getting the temp up to ~65 degrees as long as I loaded it every 2 hours and didn't let it cool down any. If not the temps just dropped like a rock.......I never got up in the middle of the night to load it either so the mornings were chilly when it was really cold out.

Old house, no insulation, leaky windows and everything. I made it to the first day of gun season, the first week of Dec. that year. Woke up that morning and it was 30 something in the house, single digits outside! We had an exceptionally cold early winter that year. Needless to say that screwed up my whole first day of deer season as I was literally frozen before even leaving the house to go sit out in the even colder conditions. I think I was experiencing hypothermia that day because I was falling asleep in the woods. I never got warmed up at all. My buddy woke me up just after pushing a nice buck past me. Tracks were 10 feet from me. That really chapped my ass!

After that I came to my senses, turned the furnace on and never attempted that trick again. I guess I wasn't that tough after all!

[jimj]

Originally Posted by Stephan_K

Wow, $145 a month is pretty cheap, especially for basically an all elec house. I have a 2300 sq ft house, heated with nat gas. My elec bill every month is ~$150 (lighting and appliances) and my gas bill is ~$300 in the winter months. Summer months it is around $100 a month. Energy is super expensive here I guess......I also have a wife and 3 kids in the house that thing absolutely nothing of waisting energy either. That really pisses me off! I would really like to know what my energy expenses would be if I had an energy conscience family.

I was also going to look into elec baseboard heaters and wood for main heat sources. But if the elec expense for baseboard heaters is the same as that of a geo thermal system then who the hell needs the initial expense of geo and the mess of wood for basically $150 a month?

How well insulated is your house? I'm planning on a super insulated one.

We have 53 in the cap and I think 21 or so in the walls, double pane windows, may go triple next time though..... I love that I can turn down/off rooms we aren't in and don't just send heat everywhere. We do have a 45000 BTU fireplace with blower that will heat most of the house and an emergency power panel to hook a generator to that runs the fireplace and essentials in case of prolonged power failure (that has never happened btw).

[rickers]

We used to let our house go down to about 50 or 55 at night by turning down the thermostat. In the morning we would turn it back up to about 65 then we would commence to build a fire in the fireplace. Now we don't let it get lower than about 60 because we have a parrot now. She rides on my shoulder while I am riding my motorcycle and when I am kayaking. She will sit on her perch and look at me, then she says "Ricky, I love you" Hey baby, snik snik snik " then she'll say "Peekaboo baby" ! She is a green cheek conure and they need it to be fairly warm or they'll get sick. She is famous with the kids in our town, they get a kick out of seeing her wizz by them on my moto with her head out there in the breeze ! Yep this town is a trip alright, there is a one legged guy (has a simple peg-leg), who rides around town in the snow on a bicycle ! The oldest man in town rides a quad pulling a fancy "snake oil medicine wagon" around and the wagon has painted all over it "Carl loves everyone" ! Yep this place is a trip !

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