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How to get even with the electric company

merrylander

merrylander

AK Member
This AM it was 8degrees F at 6:00, the heat pump was still ekeing out warmth but this was rediculous so I lit the fireplace. Now this is a double walled unit with a fan at the bottom that circulates air. Once the fire got going really well I started the fan. After about an hour the heat pump shut down and has not run all day and it never got above 27 degrees all day. Not bad for a two story house. Only drawback was that without the pump running it got sort of cool in the shop.

Rob
 
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merrylander said:
This AM it was 8degrees F at 6:00, the heat pump was still ekeing out warmth but this was rediculous so I lit the fireplace. Now this is a double walled unit with a fan at the bottom that circulates air. Once the fire got going really well I started the fan. After about an hour the heat pump shut down and has not run all day and it never got above 27 degrees all day. Not bad for a two story house. Only drawback was that without the pump running it got sort of cool in the shop.

Rob
Click to expand...

I used to heat my old house entirely with a wood stove I built. (With the exception of when we both got sick, too ill to get wood from outside)

After some experimentation (and getting the walls and ceiling pumped with insulation) I found one fast hot fire in the AM and another in the evening, was all it took for that size house. I added vents and muffing fans to pump the heat from the ceiling area of the “Heated” room, to the two other rooms and that helped balance the heat.
 
merrylander said:
SNIP
Only drawback was that without the pump running it got sort of cool in the shop.

Rob
Click to expand...

Rob, does your heating system have a "Summer fan" option, and is the return vent near the FP room at all? A friend used his summer fan to even the heat in his house.
 
Heat pumps

I've never really cared for heat pumps. 30 yrs ago all of the spec builders were installing them in new homes here in Missouri, they were costing $200 a month to heat a 1,200 SF home back then. Anymore, it's hard to beat a 90+ natural gas furnace for efficiency. Except for a unvented wall heater/fireplace, just get a carbon monoxide detector.

Actually, I like the source of heat to be in the living area, keeps the bedrooms cool.

Charles
 
One of the problems with heat pumps is that once it gets below 40 there isn't a whole lot of heat to extract out of the air.

Rob, doesn't your heat pump have an auxiliary heat source like a electric heating element? It should if was installed where you live. They usually don't in Fl or Az. but in Md they sure should.
 
Mike Gibson

Your Sir, are correct, once it's below 40, there ins't a lot of heat to extract from the outside air.

I am really hesitant to contine to respond to this thread.. I fear that I may be coming across as an "know it all egomanic", which if not the case, as I know very little.

But considering most anyone on AK is a gadget freak, & interested in the theory on how things work, and in hope that perhaps someone will glean a little useful information from my limited knowledge, I shall press on.

Refrigeration does not create "cool", it removes heat. Kind of a moot point, until you come to heat pumps. In the summer, the AC removes heat from the interior of the house and exhausts it to the outside. In the winter, the heat pump reverses cycle, and removes the heat from the outside and exhausts it into the dwelling. We won't go into the sizes of the evaporator/condensor coils, which has an effect.

If there is no "heat" outside, the heat pump can't very well exhaust it into the interior of the house. In other words, they don't work very well in cold climates.

The exception to the rule are the ground source heat pumps. As they are working with a constant temperature of app 55-60F, they only have to move app 15F from one direction to the other. However, they have their own drawbacks.

IMHO, the most miserable device one can own is an electric furnace. If you look inside at the heating coils, they look like an overgrown toaster. And bear in mind, you are buying watts from the power company, don't matter if it's 120V, 220V, three phase, you're still buying watts.

Use one of those cheap assed 3,000 watt portable heaters, and see what it does to your electrical bill. All the heating element is, is a dead short, that's why they create heat. Get one too light, it will burn in half.

And I will be happy to be corrected by others more knowledgeable on this subject.

Charles
 
This is a Trane 1400 high efficiency unit using a scroll type compressor so it is very quiet. As a general rule the lowest temperature you see at the duct when cooling is about 20 degrees F. So reverse the cycle and you usually cannot pull 'heat' from outside air below 20 degrees F yet somehow this unit does. The electric boosters do kick in during defrost cycles and the pump runs steadily throughout the night. When it was first installed I was surprised to feel warm air from the ducts, usually heat pumps blow air at little more than body temperature. Plus it has a three speed fan, starts at about 600 RPM, barely hear it, then kicks up to middle speed as the coil heats up and finally goes into high gear if it gets really hot.

We used to have a Comfortmaker and the compressor on that failed so the HVAC folks replaced the outside unit with a Carrier. About four years ago our heating bills went crazy so I looked around and went with Trane for two reasons, the local dealer and the Trane reputation. Never regretted it, for example, when we get freezing rain the power goes out. All the while the rain is freezing on the blades of the condenser fan. The power comes back and if you did not think (or were in bed asleep) the compressor starts up, the fan spins and throws ice into the condenser coil fins smashing them flat. This reduces the efficiency of the unit. Trane solved this with the top cap that covers the fan, it also solved another problem with a thermostat in the compressor that waits until the oil heater reaches operating temp before it fires up the compressor. With the other two units I had to remember to shut the unit down and wait for 1/2 hour after the power came back.

You had better believe that the fireplace fan is one item on the manual transfer switch I put in for the emergency generator.

Rob
 
Hard to fight the power company and get off the grid in MD -- that is some tough weather. We have friends in NM who have done so with solar and wind power and wood power. Not quite as easy as setting a thermostat though.

TRANE makes great units, even if it is a heat pump, which have seemed cold and clammy to me when we've had them in our first NC house. Give me natural gas like we have now. Used to be a reasonable cost, but has about doubled in price here in NC in the past few years.

At least you don't have a heating oil furnace. Great heat, but nearly blew my eyebrows off "tweeking/cleaning/inspecting" a friend's one time. Like having a fire breathing dragon in the basement. Real entertaining device, that.
 
At least you guys have heat. My heater just about quit working. It takes me over an hour to raise my little place from 55 F when I wake up to 58 or 59.
 
2 kinds of heat pumps, the kind used below the frost line & geothermal. Had our house not been situated on what is mostly solid granite, we would have gone geothermal. Instead we went oil with a high-efficiency burner and differential thermostats. Add new argon-filled windows everywhere, 10" batt attic insulation, & a new roof, and we are using hardly anything oil-wise this winter. Yay global warming!
 
My parents got geothermal and love it. They also bought a solor panel to heat the pool. Their electric bill shows it paied off. Don't forget 50% of the efficiency of doors and windows is in the insulation. Poorly insulated new windows are no better then well insulated old windows. Boy did I love working in that industry. Much better then construction.
 
I used to live in a house that had a heat pump. We called it the "heat suck", because that seemed more like what it really did.
 
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