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  1. - Top - End - #31
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    Default Re: Cost Effectiveness for heating your house. Oven versus Heating oil

    If it weren't for the design where they require an open window, running your air conditioners backwards would be a lot more efficient than using the oven.
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    Default Re: Cost Effectiveness for heating your house. Oven versus Heating oil

    Quote Originally Posted by Bucky View Post
    If it weren't for the design where they require an open window, running your air conditioners backwards would be a lot more efficient than using the oven.
    There are airconditioners that are installed directly into the window rather than being an internal unit with a hose stuck out of an open window. The only problem is that the thermostat is on the "cold" side, for obvious reasons given the normal use case of these machines, so you wouldn't have any way of regulating the internal house temperature if you were to run the aircon backwards. (Not to mention the very real risk of just freezing up the internals of the aircon unit due to it being *much* colder and damper than it was designed for).

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    Default Re: Cost Effectiveness for heating your house. Oven versus Heating oil

    Quote Originally Posted by factotum View Post
    There are airconditioners that are installed directly into the window rather than being an internal unit with a hose stuck out of an open window. The only problem is that the thermostat is on the "cold" side, for obvious reasons given the normal use case of these machines, so you wouldn't have any way of regulating the internal house temperature if you were to run the aircon backwards. (Not to mention the very real risk of just freezing up the internals of the aircon unit due to it being *much* colder and damper than it was designed for).
    A friend of mine has one designed to do both. Obviously not one of those microwaves-you-stick-in-window types. Those are for developing countries.

    They aren't massively expsnsive, or my friend wouldn't have one. He only uses it to supplement the normal heating system though, mostly cooling in summer.

    Seems like something may be worth it on the convenience side, especially if it's infeasable to swap the main heaitng system.

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    Default Re: Cost Effectiveness for heating your house. Oven versus Heating oil

    Quote Originally Posted by Bucky View Post
    If it weren't for the design where they require an open window, running your air conditioners backwards would be a lot more efficient than using the oven.
    Quote Originally Posted by factotum View Post
    There are airconditioners that are installed directly into the window rather than being an internal unit with a hose stuck out of an open window. The only problem is that the thermostat is on the "cold" side, for obvious reasons given the normal use case of these machines, so you wouldn't have any way of regulating the internal house temperature if you were to run the aircon backwards. (Not to mention the very real risk of just freezing up the internals of the aircon unit due to it being *much* colder and damper than it was designed for).
    There's also the fact that the controls will be on the outside (making the thing hard to operate), and they are not usually designed to be exposed to the elements (possibly destroying your ability to control the thing entirely).

    You are probably better off running your central heat and stuffing towels into the ducts that open in the rooms you want left unheated.
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    Default Re: Cost Effectiveness for heating your house. Oven versus Heating oil

    Quote Originally Posted by Lord Torath View Post
    You are probably better off running your central heat and stuffing towels into the ducts that open in the rooms you want left unheated.
    Do US homes ever use radiators? UK ones do all the time, and since those have water flowing round to heat them up, you can close down the ones in the rooms you're not using.

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    Default Re: Cost Effectiveness for heating your house. Oven versus Heating oil

    Quote Originally Posted by factotum View Post
    Do US homes ever use radiators? UK ones do all the time, and since those have water flowing round to heat them up, you can close down the ones in the rooms you're not using.
    Some older ones do. I haven't seen a home built in the last 40 years that had radiators. I haven't seen all homes built in the last 40 years in the US, though.
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    Default Re: Cost Effectiveness for heating your house. Oven versus Heating oil

    There are several different types of systems that use radiators but none of them are very common in the USA, at least for anything new, that I'm aware of. Most of the buildings I've seen with them are like 80+ years old, though that is a very small subset of the country that I have direct experience with. They might be more common in some climates.


    I've seen compact combination heater/AC units before, but only in commercial/industrial settings on small (single room) buildings. I think that is mostly due to residential housing design though, in that a single unit with no ducting has a very hard time heating/cooling more than one room. There are a lot of other minor reasons why I think that happens too but decided it would just become too long and not really add much to say all of them. TLDR It isn't that hard to do but the extra cost in design isn't worth it for most people to consider in the US.

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    Default Re: Cost Effectiveness for heating your house. Oven versus Heating oil

    One of the issues with closing off some of the vents is that furnace systems are "sized" for the house they're put in (assuming the person who installed it knew what they were doing), so they don't work as well if you close off large sections since that's basically asking them to heat a different-sized house than they were designed for. A single vent here and there isn't a big deal, but furnaces aren't designed to run with the vents closed in all but one or two rooms of your house.

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    Default Re: Cost Effectiveness for heating your house. Oven versus Heating oil

    Quote Originally Posted by Traab View Post
    I really really do. We have been renovating room by room but its like one per year as thats expensive. Maybe some day we will remove the asbestos.
    As a slight silver lining, that may be improving your heating efficiency, depending on the usage. Asbestos IS good at insulation. Just, yknow, terrible for lungs.

    I would generally suggest that you won't save money by heating your house via oven instead of via your furnace. That said, if you have baking to do anyways, it's nice that the waste heat is going to help out. And it can, albeit at somewhat increased risk of accidental fire, supplement your furnace if you are suffering an unusually cold time of year. Do be careful, and keep anything that could be flammable well away.

    Some places use wood stoves or furnaces as a supplemental heating system, and they can be nice.

    If you want to save money on heating, one thing I haven't seen mentioned is to have your furnace serviced, and to change the air filter regularly. Proper airflow will help you out some. Also, can decrease dust, etc. You can also often, at least in the US, have an energy audit done free of charge by some company who'll then want to sell you all kinds of stuff. It can be useful to see where the hot air is leaking out.

  10. - Top - End - #40
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    Default Re: Cost Effectiveness for heating your house. Oven versus Heating oil

    Quote Originally Posted by Eternal Dharma View Post
    Dotting this thread as a survival enthusiast.
    Wrong Forum Mate. You what realism, especially for that topic, you're talking very rapidly about transitioning to a sustainable and inexpensive source like wood, or a coal, which beats out everything for cost, and being a rock has absolutely no special storage requirements.

    If cost is the primary factor, unless you're parked next to hydro-electric dam in china where your mining bitcoin and heating with the waste head of your CPUS, coal produces the most BTU per dollar.
    Wood comes close, especially if you cut your own trees, split your own wood, and have time to properly season.


    Alibi: Occasionally natural gas competes with coal, IF the residence being heated on is directly on a pipeline, with the house having a residential hook up. Please understand that I don't mean a municipal natural gas system. I mean your house is literally between the well and the delivery hub, and the discounted rate is usually part of the right of way that allows the pipeline across your property. And depending on the TEotWaWKI situation you expect, dependence on a gas line might not be appealing.



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    OP. Don't use your oven. As others said, get an electric space heater. That said I'd strongly consider replacing an oil furnace. Most were put in when oil was very cheap, which it isn't any more. Some years propane is reasonable, but other years it is as bad as oil. I would strongly recommend a coal stove or coal furnace (can use a power vent). Many feed stores sell & deliver bulk coal, and most big chain stores (Lowes, tractor supply) can order bagged coal.

    For a while wood pellets were okay price wise, but now hardwood pellets are as expensive a ton as coal, for half the BTUs. Softwood pellets are worse, with storage problems as mice like them & moisture ruins them. There are coal stoves (hopper stoves) that operate like a pellet stove, burn rice coal (the size), they too can be power vented.
    Last edited by Mitth'raw'nuruo; 2019-11-14 at 05:40 AM.
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  11. - Top - End - #41
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    Default Re: Cost Effectiveness for heating your house. Oven versus Heating oil

    Quote Originally Posted by factotum View Post
    Do US homes ever use radiators? UK ones do all the time, and since those have water flowing round to heat them up, you can close down the ones in the rooms you're not using.
    As people said, actual radiators are usually seen in older homes. IT has largely been replaced with baseboard heating, which can be hot water or electric. If you have the money radiate heating (usually hot water run underneath the floor) seems to be the preference.

    If I remember correctly, Radiators became common in the US before the UK, and fell out of favor around the time you guys started picking them up. There is a well documented account of Sir Winston Churchill not knowing how to operate the radiators in the White House, and having an uncomfortably warm night.

    Most of the US has switched to electric, or some version of forced hot air from a furnace (wood, coal, oil, propane, natural gas), mostly because boilers are a lot more maintenance. They should be drained yearly, along with all the radiators.

    Likewise, most boiler systems, be they radiators, baseboard or radiant, circulate the water with a pump. This is a real shame, as steam radiators are reliable systems which require no moving parts, and no electric to functions. It is a mechanical mastery of fluid dynamics that was well known a century ago, but is nearly lost today.
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  12. - Top - End - #42
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    Default Re: Cost Effectiveness for heating your house. Oven versus Heating oil

    Quote Originally Posted by Mitth'raw'nuruo View Post
    Likewise, most boiler systems, be they radiators, baseboard or radiant, circulate the water with a pump. This is a real shame, as steam radiators are reliable systems which require no moving parts, and no electric to functions. It is a mechanical mastery of fluid dynamics that was well known a century ago, but is nearly lost today.
    As I understand it the hot water circulates automatically if the source of the heat sits at the lowest point. The reason they no longer do that is that the kettle exploding in your basement pretty much blows up the house. Better to have it sit in the attic and take the roof off.

    I'm genuinely surprised at the staying power of this thread, by the way. I would expect the answer would be "the system designed for heating your house is better, because why else would they have installed it?"
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    Default Re: Cost Effectiveness for heating your house. Oven versus Heating oil

    Steam is very dangerous, especially under pressure. Leaks can do all sorts of damage and the heating and cooling of the pipes wears them out fairly quickly. So high maintenance costs.
    But even under normal operations anything running steam through it dangerously hot. Pumping hot water instead means the system can be used at much safer temperatures. It's not a matter of "not understanding the technology\properties"* it's understanding that a loss in efficiency is worth it to make the system significantly safer.
    *Yes, your average person will have no reason to know how it works now, but steam is still highly used in industrial settings. The technology is in no way "lost" it's just that now there are so many other options that it's benefits don't outweigh it's risks in many situations. Having worked with steam enough in industry I would never want to have it in a house.

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    Default Re: Cost Effectiveness for heating your house. Oven versus Heating oil

    I just learned about steam hammers, which is a failure state in steam pipes. Essentially, there's no feasible way to prevent steam from condensing within the pipe. Steam will move faster than the water that condenses. Steam will also cause waves in the water. If there's too much water (well-designed steam systems have a variety of ways to prevent this) the steam will turn the water into a very fast bullet that will destroy whatever is on the far end of the system.
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    Default Re: Cost Effectiveness for heating your house. Oven versus Heating oil

    Quote Originally Posted by snowblizz View Post
    A friend of mine has one designed to do both. Obviously not one of those microwaves-you-stick-in-window types. Those are for developing countries.

    They aren't massively expsnsive, or my friend wouldn't have one. He only uses it to supplement the normal heating system though, mostly cooling in summer.
    I have a heat pump like that, it's the primary heating device for the house in winter and the only cooling in summer. Keeps half of the house - the downstairs - reasonably pleasant all year round, all for no more than about 5 kWh per day. It cost around NZ$3000 (including installation) 12 years ago, probably the best value I ever got for that sort of money.

    Having said that - a lot depends on what you mean by "cold". You'd pay significantly more for one that works so well at temperatures much below freezing, but round here that's not an issue.
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    Default Re: Cost Effectiveness for heating your house. Oven versus Heating oil

    Just heard on Living on Earth from PRI that they have air-source heat pumps (as opposed to ground-source or geothermal heat pumps) that can heat buildings from an exterior temperature of -15o Fahrenheit.

    Edit: Here's a link to the story: Banning New Natural Gas Hookups
    Last edited by Lord Torath; 2019-12-12 at 11:12 AM.
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  17. - Top - End - #47
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    Default Re: Cost Effectiveness for heating your house. Oven versus Heating oil

    Quote Originally Posted by Rynjin View Post
    "Fun" fact: a significant percentage of house fires in areas with cold weather are caused by people trying to heat their house with their ovens or stoves.

    So...don't do that. Especially if it's just "chilly" and not actually cold.
    Someone else said it first. Go spend $40 on a safe space heater, or up to $100 on a better one. Lots of people burn their houses down leaving an oven open and it’s just a very, very bad idea. Obviously you didn’t know about a cheap space heater that will cost less than the electricity your oven would waste in a month, but yeah generally you can save money with a cold house and just warming a bedroom or two, primarily if the house is old and poorly insulated.

    For the derailed topic;
    Yes, people forget about the costs of generating and transferring electricity all the time when fussing about “fossil fuels” (an antiquated and inaccurate blanket term). More than half of what most people know about the energy industry is propaganda, from the horrible dangers of nuclear power to the golden miracle of electric vehicles. The topics are nuanced and we really just want to have the best solution for each situation. If you have crazy hydroelectric power locally, live it up and skip the alternate heating sources. I think that every house in affluent countries in the right climate above a certain construction cost should be required to use heat pump tech, if my understanding of the efficiencies is correct.

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    Default Re: Cost Effectiveness for heating your house. Oven versus Heating oil

    Quote Originally Posted by MisterMan View Post
    I think that every house in affluent countries in the right climate above a certain construction cost should be required to use heat pump tech, if my understanding of the efficiencies is correct.
    While anything relating to laws about such things is a prohibited topic on these forums, they certainly do beat pretty much everything else for change in air temperature per unit energy spent running them in anything even remotely close to typical home environments. On top of that, you get both heating and air conditioning in the same device almost for free - switching between them is as simple as flipping some part of it around so it runs backwards.

    In fact, I think all air conditioners from the moment the first one was invented are really just heat pumps that don't have a built in way to reverse them. We could have had bidirectional heat pumps from the beginning if the makers of the first AC systems had thought of the idea and decided it was worth doing, though I'll grant they might not have been able to make them efficient enough for really cold climates that early. It wouldn't surprise me if they just didn't think of it for a decade or two, though.
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    Default Re: Cost Effectiveness for heating your house. Oven versus Heating oil

    To play devil's advocate, whenever someone insists there is one solution that is unieqivocally best (say heatpump is the most efficient) then I wonder if that is the case then clearly that's the solution that would already be used in most cases. So even if it is most efficient in "laboratory conditions" it may not be best solution anyway. I get the feeling it is question of scale, never seen one that claims to heat an entire house. Though actually now am thinking I once ran into a quite large machine that I think is hooked up to a waterbased central heating system.

    Heatpumps as noted isn't a new invention. But it's only the last 10-15 years they've really been pushed around here. Duno why that is.

    One claim I've seen mention alot in connection is the durability of the devices themselves. Someone claimed average age is 5 years for the heatpump itself. I believe the argument being made was a big chunk of energy savings was lost in buying new ones every so often.

    I also don't know any building that as standard is given heatpumps to regulate the temperature even now, usually it's supplementing or partly replacing existing sources. That said, even the idea you'd need active cooling, even in large offices is fairly recent here. The biggest problem has always been to heat up buildings during winter here.

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    Default Re: Cost Effectiveness for heating your house. Oven versus Heating oil

    Quote Originally Posted by snowblizz View Post
    To play devil's advocate, whenever someone insists there is one solution that is unieqivocally best (say heatpump is the most efficient) then I wonder if that is the case then clearly that's the solution that would already be used in most cases.
    Not necessarily. Not only is there a significant inertia to overcome when you're talking about systems that are built into houses, since they'll often stay in there without much alteration for decades, but there are also cost considerations to take into account. If a system is 20% more efficient (figure taken from air, I don't know the real numbers) but costs 50% more to implement, people will often go for the option that's cheaper in the short term, even if it will cost more over time.

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    Default Re: Cost Effectiveness for heating your house. Oven versus Heating oil

    I have to say the real answer here has to be: Go out and buy a cheap electric radiator.

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    Default Re: Cost Effectiveness for heating your house. Oven versus Heating oil

    Quote Originally Posted by snowblizz View Post
    To play devil's advocate, whenever someone insists there is one solution that is unieqivocally best (say heatpump is the most efficient) then I wonder if that is the case then clearly that's the solution that would already be used in most cases. So even if it is most efficient in "laboratory conditions" it may not be best solution anyway. I get the feeling it is question of scale, never seen one that claims to heat an entire house.
    It's a device that pumps heat. My one pumps out hot or cold air. How many you need to treat a whole house would depend on how big the house is, and how well air circulates within it. If you have smallish rooms whose doors are often closed, then you would need practically one per room. My house is quite open plan, which means the heat reaches pretty much the whole of the downstairs.

    It's also possible to get a heat pump powered boiler, to replace conventional fuel or electric heating at a central level. This would be no use for cooling, obviously, and also less efficient than the air version because it would have to work over a steeper temperature gradient. (Instead of heating air to, say, 22°C, you'd want the water heated to 50° or more.)

    On efficiency grounds it's hard to argue with "300%", which is what a common air heat pump delivers in heating. There is simply no comparison.

    I believe the reason they have been so neglected in the UK is because there was a tremendous marketing push for British Gas - and before that, for oil, and before that for coal - before anyone had heard of the greenhouse effect. And when every house has central heating, it would be expensive and of marginal benefit to change.

    They do make a bit of noise - not huge, roughly comparable with an electric fan, or a tower computer. As for durability, the guy who fitted mine said there was no reason to expect it wouldn't last the lifetime of the house. That was over 12 years ago now, and I've never had to spend a dime on maintenance. (Touch wood.)
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    Default Re: Cost Effectiveness for heating your house. Oven versus Heating oil

    Quote Originally Posted by snowblizz View Post
    To play devil's advocate, whenever someone insists there is one solution that is unieqivocally best (say heatpump is the most efficient) then I wonder if that is the case then clearly that's the solution that would already be used in most cases. So even if it is most efficient in "laboratory conditions" it may not be best solution anyway. I get the feeling it is question of scale, never seen one that claims to heat an entire house. Though actually now am thinking I once ran into a quite large machine that I think is hooked up to a waterbased central heating system.

    Heatpumps as noted isn't a new invention. But it's only the last 10-15 years they've really been pushed around here. Duno why that is.

    One claim I've seen mention alot in connection is the durability of the devices themselves. Someone claimed average age is 5 years for the heatpump itself. I believe the argument being made was a big chunk of energy savings was lost in buying new ones every so often.

    I also don't know any building that as standard is given heatpumps to regulate the temperature even now, usually it's supplementing or partly replacing existing sources. That said, even the idea you'd need active cooling, even in large offices is fairly recent here. The biggest problem has always been to heat up buildings during winter here.
    My previous residence was a town house, about 1800 square feet of indoor space if I recall correctly, that had a heat pump as its only air temperature control system. No separate air conditioning, and no furnace or other heat source that wasn't for water or cooking. The outside temperature could be below freezing, complete with snow on the ground, and the only reason I'd be able to tell from inside was that I could look out the window and see the snow. It was equally effective at cooling in the summer, too.

    I think the primary reason heat pumps aren't everywhere is simply inertia. Residential heating systems of some kind or another have been everywhere since the invention of fireplaces with chimneys, pretty much, so anywhere that isn't new construction already has a heating system. When there's a heating system already in place, a heat pump has to compete with it while handicapped by the cost of replacement, in both money and nuisance. That's a much harder thing to win than selection of heating system for a new building that's going to have to install something regardless.
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    Default Re: Cost Effectiveness for heating your house. Oven versus Heating oil

    Quote Originally Posted by Douglas View Post
    My previous residence was a town house, about 1800 square feet of indoor space if I recall correctly, that had a heat pump as its only air temperature control system. No separate air conditioning, and no furnace or other heat source that wasn't for water or cooking. The outside temperature could be below freezing, complete with snow on the ground, and the only reason I'd be able to tell from inside was that I could look out the window and see the snow. It was equally effective at cooling in the summer, too.

    I think the primary reason heat pumps aren't everywhere is simply inertia. Residential heating systems of some kind or another have been everywhere since the invention of fireplaces with chimneys, pretty much, so anywhere that isn't new construction already has a heating system. When there's a heating system already in place, a heat pump has to compete with it while handicapped by the cost of replacement, in both money and nuisance. That's a much harder thing to win than selection of heating system for a new building that's going to have to install something regardless.
    "Below freezing" isn't really cold though. Living in an apartment right now near Seattle I don't even run my heater during the winter, even when we had a foot of snow on the ground last year.
    Growing up in Wyoming, and I've done 5ks in February when its like 15F outside and don't even wear a coat. Low 30s temperatures are short shirt weather for a lot of people. It's an area where the frost line is like 6' underground. And high wind combined with -20f weather is a lot different thing to manage than calm in the mid 20s. We usually average at least one week a year where our highs are sub-zero.

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    Default Re: Cost Effectiveness for heating your house. Oven versus Heating oil

    Quote Originally Posted by Erloas View Post
    "Below freezing" isn't really cold though.
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    "Cold", or "hot" for that matter, is very much a matter of what you're used to. If you were brought up on the tundra, then winter in temperate climes won't bother you at all. On the other hand, if you were raised in the tropics, anything much below 20°C may be uncomfortably cold.

    That's why thermostats are set by the people affected by them, not hardwired to a single ideal temperature.
    Last edited by veti; 2019-12-13 at 07:25 PM.

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    Default Re: Cost Effectiveness for heating your house. Oven versus Heating oil

    Quote Originally Posted by Erloas View Post
    "Below freezing" isn't really cold though.
    Where I grew up (Georgia), and where I live now (San Francisco area), it very much is. As in after bundling up in a heavy (by the area's standards) jacket, putting on a warm knit cap and thick gloves, and pulling up my jacket's collar to cover my neck and chin, I'd still be uncomfortably cold no more than a few minutes after stepping outside. Covering up like that would generally make it tolerable, and it might not take much to make it worth enduring, but it still definitely would not be comfortable.

    In many parts of the world, "below freezing" isn't just "cold", but "extremely cold".
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    Default Re: Cost Effectiveness for heating your house. Oven versus Heating oil

    Quote Originally Posted by veti View Post
    That's why thermostats are set by the people affected by them, not hardwired to a single ideal temperature.
    Eh, most thermostats have a fairly small range of settable temperatures, and the "ideal" temperature for people is not that large of a range.
    You might find some people that are more comfortable at 65 and others that like 78. And of course you'll find people surviving in a very large range of temperatures. But I don't think I've even seen a temperature control designed for people (as opposed to storage, etc.) that goes below 60 or above 80.

    So when you're looking at a heating or cooling system designed for living spaces you have to consider the outside extremes. The cooling requirements for my house in Wyoming, which we've never seen over about 98, and even then it is at most a few hours a day for maybe a week out of the year, is a lot different than a house in Phoenix where the highs are 115-120 and you're lucky to get below 90 during the middle of the night. So a heat pump to cover both of those cases are going to be a lot different. You've also got to consider the extremes, as any system that might get water in it won't be an issue at all in Phoenix where you might see one or two days below freezing and you could keep a line from freezing with a blanket, but that same system in Wyoming would have to be buried 8' deep to keep it from freezing during the winter, which also greatly increases the cost of construction.

    And of course heating a house from 30 to 70 is not that hard, but heating to that same house to 60 when you're at -20 is twice as much of a temperature change, so again the same sized system isn't going to work. Throw in increase heat loss from high winds and it gets even worse. And that doesn't matter if you think 30 is cold or not.

    Maybe the system is a lot more efficient at cooling than a regular AC system, but it is worse at heating than a furnace. You will clearly come out ahead if you use cooling more. You might come out ahead if you use them similar amount of each, but you're going to be coming out far behind if you're heating a lot more than you're cooling.

    It is also very much a matter of cost. If my gas bill averages $50 a month over the course of a year (a lot more during the winter, less during the summer) and I can put in some new system that brings that average down to $40 a month that is a very real 20% decrease in price. But if a new furnace costs me $5000 and retrofitting the entire house to a new system costs me $10000 then that would take me 42 years to pay for.

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    Default Re: Cost Effectiveness for heating your house. Oven versus Heating oil

    Quote Originally Posted by factotum View Post
    there are also cost considerations to take into account. If a system is 20% more efficient (figure taken from air, I don't know the real numbers) but costs 50% more to implement, people will often go for the option that's cheaper in the short term, even if it will cost more over time.
    And for good reason. A cheap option you can't afford is in practice not actually cheap. Even with options to loan money, that still cuts into your spending for the near future while increasing the amount of years it takes for you to start saving on your decision.

    Also taking into consideration that a lot of people plan to have a career and get more money over time being cheap now can be a great bet. You're borrowing money from a richer future you. They pay more so you can pay less.

    Hence subsidy programs and sich exist for all sorts of clean and efficient technologies. Because it often makes sense not to buy them.
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    Default Re: Cost Effectiveness for heating your house. Oven versus Heating oil

    Quote Originally Posted by Erloas View Post
    Eh, most thermostats have a fairly small range of settable temperatures, and the "ideal" temperature for people is not that large of a range.
    You might find some people that are more comfortable at 65 and others that like 78. And of course you'll find people surviving in a very large range of temperatures. But I don't think I've even seen a temperature control designed for people (as opposed to storage, etc.) that goes below 60 or above 80.
    Hmm, that seems unusual. Where do you live? Every thermostat in my and my friends homes can TECHNICALLY* be programmed from 40 - 90.

    *Realistically you'd never use the extremes unless the home was going to be empty for an extended time, so setting heat at 40 and cooling at 90. You could try the reverse but the cost is probably prohibitive.

    But I just checked my Nest thermostat and even on it I can program the 40 - 90 range. And I did check it both ways, so I could tell it in the summer to go for 40.... (I suspect the air would just never turn off).
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    Default Re: Cost Effectiveness for heating your house. Oven versus Heating oil

    Quote Originally Posted by tomandtish View Post
    Hmm, that seems unusual. Where do you live? Every thermostat in my and my friends homes can TECHNICALLY* be programmed from 40 - 90.

    *Realistically you'd never use the extremes unless the home was going to be empty for an extended time, so setting heat at 40 and cooling at 90. You could try the reverse but the cost is probably prohibitive.

    But I just checked my Nest thermostat and even on it I can program the 40 - 90 range. And I did check it both ways, so I could tell it in the summer to go for 40.... (I suspect the air would just never turn off).
    I suspect he's talking about those old thermostats with a physical slide to adjust the temperature. From what I remember, they didn't go much below 60, or much above 100.
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