Home heating (Ellsworth: for sale, heat pump, cost)

[Shuffler]

Originally Posted by forest beekeeper

I have used spray foam.

Our house has 1.5 inches of spray-on foam on our walls [2400 sq ft], and on our roof [2400 sq ft]. I sprayed it myself.

I am a firm believer in foam, it is great wonderful stuff.

Though it is rather expensive.

Wear mosquito netting when you spray or else the over-spray will settle back down on you and will fully encase your beard. I know.



Tyvek on the outside, followed by foam board and vinyl siding. Then an inch of spray-on-foam on the inside, followed by 9 inches of fiberglass batting, and paneling. Will make for a toasty warm house.

No beard here, but just the same I'll make note of being fully 'contained' when spraying foam!

OK, so to do a 1" spray foam on interior walls between studs, and THEN have 9" of batting....you gotta frame that with 2x10 studs to avoid 'compressing' the fiberglass, right? I don't wanna be ripping and replacing 2x4s with 2x10s...did you build that way, or add additional studs to the existing wall to make it deeper?

[Submariner]

Originally Posted by Shuffler

No beard here, but just the same I'll make note of being fully 'contained' when spraying foam!

OK, so to do a 1" spray foam on interior walls between studs, and THEN have 9" of batting....you gotta frame that with 2x10 studs to avoid 'compressing' the fiberglass, right? I don't wanna be ripping and replacing 2x4s with 2x10s...did you build that way, or add additional studs to the existing wall to make it deeper?

No beard? Well okay then, I guess that it takes all kinds.


If you only insulate between the studs, then the studs make a 'thermal-bridge'. An area in the wall which has less R. Thermal-imaging would show the image or outline of exactly where all thermal-bridges exist in a structure.

If a 100' wall was 10% studs; the spans between the studs could easily be insulated to R-40, but the studs are still only R-6. So 10% of that 100' wall is still R-6. Therefore the wall is only R-6.

You are correct in that you do not want to compress with batting.



My walls have no studs. I have a steel building. Steel buildings are much cheaper than woodstick, per square foot.

My building is held up primarily by four arches. Vertical steel girders 12 foot high that support horizontal beams that reach to the peak at 14' high. From those four arches are a network of rafters for the roof, and two purlins for the walls. One purlin is at seven foot high and the second is at twelve foot high. My walls are a fancy sheet metal and are attached are the foundation, at the 7' purlin and at the 12' eave.

I could have applied up to 18" of insulation onto the interior of my walls without any real form of restriction from the structural supports.

[flower girl]

Originally Posted by Tim Kamys

This summer I will be building a small, well insulated, two story, 1,500 square foot house in the Kezar Falls, Maine region. With an eye to the future, my objective is to purchase as energy efficient heating system as possible.
I would like advice and or recommendations on the type of heating system I should install.
I am also planning to incorporate a solar electric system on my roof and would like advice and or suggestions on that application as well.
Thanks, Tim

Hi Tim,my brother lives in a large 3 story farm house.He's be using a pellet
stove and says it has cut his heating bill in half. flower girl

[island mermaid]

We're having one of these installed this week in a soon to be finished basement. The main floor has Radiant and a fireplace. I think it's pretty nice looking and seems pretty efficient for what we're looking for. I like the look of the firewood storage area below the insert.
The video of "responsible wood burning" made me laugh though. Check it out, I doubt many of us have started our stoves quite this neatly.

Rais

[tcrackly]

We've been thinking about possibly being able to buy property elsewhere (if we survive the downturns this winter) and renting out our current home. We heat our chalet cottage w/loft principally with wood and there are electric baseboard heaters for backup. We wouldn't want the liability of tenants heating with wood so we would have to invest in some kind of modest central heating...we thought maybe a monitor in the basement. Does that sound doable?

[gcberry]

Forest Beekeeper, do you have an air exchange? If the house is nearly airtight, that might not be such a healthy thing...

[Acadianlion]

Originally Posted by tcrackly

We've been thinking about possibly being able to buy property elsewhere (if we survive the downturns this winter) and renting out our current home. We heat our chalet cottage w/loft principally with wood and there are electric baseboard heaters for backup. We wouldn't want the liability of tenants heating with wood so we would have to invest in some kind of modest central heating...we thought maybe a monitor in the basement. Does that sound doable?

If you need to insure your property you will not be able to let tenants use a wood stove. As far as I know there isn't an insurance company in the world that will allow use of a wood stove in non-owned properties.

You indeed can use a direct vent heating system in your house that will be rented. Don't use MPI's Monitor brand heaters though. Use Toyostove Lazer's instead. The burner mat and blower motor bearings are far superior to the Monitors (tm) that have been manufactured since about 1990.

If you use a kerosene burning heating appliance you will need to have the fuel tank located so that the bottom of the tank is at least 16" above the level of the floor that the heater sits on. Otherwise the fuel will not flow to the heater and the heater's fuel pump won't pump fuel into the combustion chamber.

If the fuel tank is below the floor level of the heater, then a kerosene lifter pump will be needed and the fuel pumped up and then disbursed to the heater unit itself. I have used kerosene lifter pumps for the six Monitor (tm) heaters that were in my Blue Hill commercial building. The last pump that I bought worked very well, but before that (for eight years!), if the power blipped just a little (which was a common occurrence in Blue Hill from Bangor Hydro's power service), the pump would lose prime. I can't count the number of times I made the trip from Ellsworth to Blue Hill in the middle of the night to re-prime the pump for my tenants. THAT problem seems to have been solved, but if I were to use a direct vent heating system again, I would NOT use a kerosene unit if it required a lifter pump. The last lifter pump that I bought from Monitor(tm), was around $250. Instead of that, I would use a gas fired system from Rinnai.

The downside to all of these modern computerized direct vent systems is that they ALL require electricity, so when the power goes out, the heat is gone. Tough call for a rental property unless you are willing to run over and hook a generator into the electric system to keep the property going when and if the power goes out.

[Trailmonkey]

Air exchange is recommended for a very tight house, they run about 85-90 percent efficient on heat retention. Energy costs to run? about 150 watts at full speed (about equivalent to two light bulbs). They will typically run on low speed, and the new controls will cut down on energy use even more, only permitting them to run when they will be useful, rather than full time. DM me for more info....

[mommax3plus2]

Originally Posted by Acadianlion

The downside to all of these modern computerized direct vent systems is that they ALL require electricity, so when the power goes out, the heat is gone. .

to respectfully disagree- we have a direct vent propane fireplace- one of the reasons we chose it was because in case of a power outage it will still provide heat. the blower will not work, so it takes a little longer to come up to temp, but it does work. it also looks nice and is very efficient. it was a nice alternative to a 'real' fireplace for us as we have 2 children with wood allergies and asthma.

[RANGER.101ST]

at our old house we had an out door wood stove.and i loved it once a day fill up it was great.with this house we have a nepoliean 1600 wood stove in the liveing room its ok but this spring im putting in a out side wood stove.