Instead of that maybe you should try Far Cry! Such a reliefits ok sandy.....nothing like a good cry....smack urself around the head abit...WHAM!! BAM!! im over it...................till next time
CHIT CHAT in VOLTVILLE
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Yea, I researched all of that many times in the past. When I had an oil boiler, it heated my water, now I use an "instant" system called Rinnai Hot Water heater which runs on propane, only when you need hot water. Costs about $300 per year of propane.
Since our house faces directly South and gets loads of sun, I have looked at Solar several times. The brick floor in our sun room acts like a big heat sink, absorbing a lot of heat during the day and releasing it at night. I researched larger cement floors but the brick was less expensive and does the job. Solar panels have been getting much better over the years, but passive solar like I have does not take a lot of technical devices to control, it just works.
king kong I don't want to trade feelings of love for feelings of killing.......seeing fake blood dripping everywhere.....no relief for me....I guess its a boy thing.....
sorry im still getting over smacking myself in the head.....
sorry im still getting over smacking myself in the head.....
I lived in an apartment with a sunroom like this. It got hot in there. I kept all my houseplants in there, and they thrived. Also, I had a rack to hang my clothes on and air dried them, saving dryer use. There was a sliding glass door between the sunroom and the bedroom, and I hung heavy curtains over that. They could be pulled open or closed as needed. That apartment also had a woodstove, and later, the landlord took it out and put in a propane gas heater. Buying wood was about half as expensive as the propane. I didn't have to split wood, since I had it delivered by the cord from a local guy. I collected small scraps and branches for kindling. That was a neat apartment, but the people in the neighboring apartments were so annoying and crazy that we finally decided to move to the place we live now.
Good morning - Last of the Sumatran for a few weeks. Drink up
Catlady, Joanne, Kon, Awsum, Wabbit, SandySu - Good discussions on energy types and usage!
We put in the wood stove 2 years ago, I think. Saved $600-$700 a year on heating but spend about $150 on gasoline and wood cutting permits. Still, a huge savings. We got an energy credit on our taxes but it will still take a number of years for the payoff on the cost of the wood stove. We have a toasty warm house instead of a 68 degree house and we love it.
With the price of propane going up, we could be saving even more in the future. The downside is the dust and the dirt but I actually don't mind.
Catlady, Joanne, Kon, Awsum, Wabbit, SandySu - Good discussions on energy types and usage!
We put in the wood stove 2 years ago, I think. Saved $600-$700 a year on heating but spend about $150 on gasoline and wood cutting permits. Still, a huge savings. We got an energy credit on our taxes but it will still take a number of years for the payoff on the cost of the wood stove. We have a toasty warm house instead of a 68 degree house and we love it.
With the price of propane going up, we could be saving even more in the future. The downside is the dust and the dirt but I actually don't mind.
Good morning - Last of the Sumatran for a few weeks. Drink up
Catlady, Joanne, Kon, Awsum, Wabbit, SandySu - Good discussions on energy types and usage!
We put in the wood stove 2 years ago, I think. Saved $600-$700 a year on heating but spend about $150 on gasoline and wood cutting permits. Still, a huge savings. We got an energy credit on our taxes but it will still take a number of years for the payoff on the cost of the wood stove. We have a toasty warm house instead of a 68 degree house and we love it.
With the price of propane going up, we could be saving even more in the future. The downside is the dust and the dirt but I actually don't mind.
I didn't mind cleaning out the woodstove and all the details that go with it, like learning to bank the fire at night so it stayed warm, but I noticed that my breathing was worse when we used the woodstove. I think it polluted the air in the place, though I really liked it otherwise. My friend, who has a woodstove, says there are better ones that don't do this, and also, maybe I didn't know how to adjust the flue and vents properly, which may well be the case, since I learned by doing it, no one showed me how.
Let's see....I've thought about geothermal but we only use about 200 gallons of oil per year as it is right now, and I've added a propane auxiliary heater, actually bought for emergency use, that keeps the house at 70 even when it's in the 20's outside, with two dollars worth of propane per day. I estimate that costs less than half what oil would to keep the house warm. We use the oil at night for a few hours and again in the morning to pre-heat the house before we get up. I'm not sure how low our oil consumption will be using the propane heater. Incidentally, propane and CNG should be dropping as more fracking is done.
The propane heater uses 1.5 pound cylinders, and being cheap, I have rigged up a way to refill them, safely, so the cost of refilling/running the heater is as low as I can make it. I also have a regulator and hose set (25') with a quick connect that fits the heater so I can run off a 20lb tank if I want to. No refilling cylinders that way, but I'd need to keep the tank out on the deck, not in the house LOL, which means a door being open slightly for the hose and then being weather stripped.
I've also been thinking about adding a solar pre-heater for our water heating needs. The back of the house faces almost due south, so building a couple of panels and setting up a storage tank and pump system wouldn't be all that hard or expensive to do. I would also have to add a heat exchange tank, but again, no big deal.
When I mentioned that .28 to .05 comparison, those figures were based on a system that would supply one half of the average power requirements of a single family home. The base cost of the system was calculated at $45,000.00. Now I know I could get all kinds of subsidies and grants, but the actual cost is still there and it only supplies half of the power demand. If I had unlimited funds, maybe I'd do it, but in terms of an investment and practicality, it just isn't a very good one at all.
I've also though about wind turbines. I fooled around years ago building my own anemometer and it's an easy thing to do. A wind turbine is basically the same thing on a larger scale and the commercially available ones today look quite interesting. There is a newer design that uses a turbine style blade system rather than a propeller style. That should be quieter and simpler, it doesn't need to rotate to stay oriented to the wind direction. The thing putting me off is the relatively low output, a large one is only around 2KW, and given that it is wind dependent, I doubt it would actually achieve 1KW under the conditions here. Of course it still requires a pile of batteries and a real sine wave inverter to be useable.
I also keep thinking about adding a wood/coal fired furnace. In my case I would remote it in a shed away from the house, keeps the homeowners insurance from going up, and either pipe in hot air or hot water for heating purposes. The thing holding me back is a dependable supply of wood. I love cutting and splitting wood, great exercise and a way to get rid of frustration as well, but finding a cheap and dependable supply is a big problem. I may be able to get a cheap permit to cut wood in a State forest a few miles down Route 206, but I haven't looked into that, yet.
All of this is based on me being cheap. I really don't care if I'm on or off the grid. I like to be warm, have lights and AC. As far as climate change goes, I have to question the whole thing. It's based on research by the Hadley group in England looking at tree rings from Siberia. Problem is their whole hypothesis is based on the rings of one particular tree, out of thousands. That was the only one that matched their theory, the balance all denied it. Funny how they never mentioned that until someone started checking.
The propane heater uses 1.5 pound cylinders, and being cheap, I have rigged up a way to refill them, safely, so the cost of refilling/running the heater is as low as I can make it. I also have a regulator and hose set (25') with a quick connect that fits the heater so I can run off a 20lb tank if I want to. No refilling cylinders that way, but I'd need to keep the tank out on the deck, not in the house LOL, which means a door being open slightly for the hose and then being weather stripped.
I've also been thinking about adding a solar pre-heater for our water heating needs. The back of the house faces almost due south, so building a couple of panels and setting up a storage tank and pump system wouldn't be all that hard or expensive to do. I would also have to add a heat exchange tank, but again, no big deal.
When I mentioned that .28 to .05 comparison, those figures were based on a system that would supply one half of the average power requirements of a single family home. The base cost of the system was calculated at $45,000.00. Now I know I could get all kinds of subsidies and grants, but the actual cost is still there and it only supplies half of the power demand. If I had unlimited funds, maybe I'd do it, but in terms of an investment and practicality, it just isn't a very good one at all.
I've also though about wind turbines. I fooled around years ago building my own anemometer and it's an easy thing to do. A wind turbine is basically the same thing on a larger scale and the commercially available ones today look quite interesting. There is a newer design that uses a turbine style blade system rather than a propeller style. That should be quieter and simpler, it doesn't need to rotate to stay oriented to the wind direction. The thing putting me off is the relatively low output, a large one is only around 2KW, and given that it is wind dependent, I doubt it would actually achieve 1KW under the conditions here. Of course it still requires a pile of batteries and a real sine wave inverter to be useable.
I also keep thinking about adding a wood/coal fired furnace. In my case I would remote it in a shed away from the house, keeps the homeowners insurance from going up, and either pipe in hot air or hot water for heating purposes. The thing holding me back is a dependable supply of wood. I love cutting and splitting wood, great exercise and a way to get rid of frustration as well, but finding a cheap and dependable supply is a big problem. I may be able to get a cheap permit to cut wood in a State forest a few miles down Route 206, but I haven't looked into that, yet.
All of this is based on me being cheap. I really don't care if I'm on or off the grid. I like to be warm, have lights and AC. As far as climate change goes, I have to question the whole thing. It's based on research by the Hadley group in England looking at tree rings from Siberia. Problem is their whole hypothesis is based on the rings of one particular tree, out of thousands. That was the only one that matched their theory, the balance all denied it. Funny how they never mentioned that until someone started checking.
The view out my front door this morning -
Notice the highly efficient solar panel, producing a full 200 watts, mounted on the utility pole.
Notice the highly efficient solar panel, producing a full 200 watts, mounted on the utility pole.
I'm no forester, so I bought wood from someone locally who is, and who sells it to people like me who have a woodstove but no ability to cut wood. Still, the woodstove was about half the cost of propane. This was the same place, nothing else changed except that the landlord decided to remove the woodstove and put in a propane heater in the same spot where the woodstove was. This propane was from a big tank outside that the propane gas company came and filled routinely.
I've questioned humans' role in global warming, too. After all, once upon a time, this earth had an ice age, and then for some reason, there was global warming, and the ice melted. No humans had a part in that. Could we be going through something similar now? I'm no scientist, though, so I can't really do more than wonder if we are totally responsible for such a change now. Certainly, it is a good thing to figure out better ways to use energy, so no harm done, but that may not actually make much difference, if the global warming is from something in nature like the end of the ice age was. Maybe we should spend some energy on trying to adjust to global warming and what it might mean down the road to agriculture, etc.
Forgot about that, Awsum. Our yearly insurance bill went up by $80. Like I say, the payoff will take a number of years. We are warmer, we have heat even if the electricity goes out, we can cook on the top if need be and it does cost less than propane for heating. Bonus, a great excuse to go out on a weekend and cut wood. Good times!
The view out my front door this morning -
Notice the highly efficient solar panel, producing a full 200 watts, mounted on the utility pole.
That's not a very big one. Some places around here have huge ones. One place, it seems it covers the whole roof of their house, and another place, they have a huge arrangement, about 2 stories high, out in their yard. Maybe if these neighbors of yours had bigger solar panels, they'd collect more power from the sun.
Hey, who is TheOnlyCindy? Do we know you or should we be saying Howdy? Forgive a woman with a bad memory
Gotta go clean a house, hit the grocery store and be back in plenty of time for the farrier. Cute little guy needs his teensey weensy feet trimmed already.
Have a great day, Volties!
Gotta go clean a house, hit the grocery store and be back in plenty of time for the farrier. Cute little guy needs his teensey weensy feet trimmed already.
Have a great day, Volties!
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That solar panel is part of a $280 million dollar, State/Federally funded, alternative energy project that boasts it generates a whole 80MW of solar power for pennies. Problem is it's pennies from everyone. For $280 million, even at todays costs, I'd guess a 500MW gas fired turbine plant could have been built, but that doesn't fit into the current political climate at all. There are similar panels mounted on poles all over New Jersey. They seem to pick poles that have a higher public visibility and ignore poles that have really good exposure to the sunlight. I guess they want us to see our tax dollar uselessly being spent.
There are a total of three solar farms near me. A small one, maybe an acre, right on the corner of Route 206 and Route 38. There's a bigger one, maybe two or three acres, about a mile up Route 206, and a huge one, probably between five and ten acres, about five miles away off County route 541. All of them were built under the "stimulus" using Federal funds, a German based contractor and all Chinese equipment. Given that solar power costs at least five times what coal/gas power does, it really frosts my cookies to see that money getting spent, effectively, outside the country and then we get stuck paying a much higher price for the power. Some stimulus!
There are a total of three solar farms near me. A small one, maybe an acre, right on the corner of Route 206 and Route 38. There's a bigger one, maybe two or three acres, about a mile up Route 206, and a huge one, probably between five and ten acres, about five miles away off County route 541. All of them were built under the "stimulus" using Federal funds, a German based contractor and all Chinese equipment. Given that solar power costs at least five times what coal/gas power does, it really frosts my cookies to see that money getting spent, effectively, outside the country and then we get stuck paying a much higher price for the power. Some stimulus!
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Yes, our sunroom gets very hot whenever the sun is out, especially in the summer. However if you look at the picture, it has solar curtians installed which reflect a lot of the sun and heat back out. The brick floor absorbs a lot of heat, and the fans on the roof as well as inside of te house move the air around quite a bit. As far as our old wood stove was concerned, our insurance bill did not go up or down when we installed and removed it. Also, I got most of my wood for free by clearing my lot of oak trees myself. I just cut two large ones down per year in the spring and let them season over the summer. A lot of farmers allowed me to clear their ditch banks and harvest hardwoods from their farms. I think I only bought one super truck load of oak over a 10 to 15 year period. We do have a propane fireplace which I do not use that often, mainly because propane is $4.50 a gallon here. Now using geothermal, utilitiy bills are not the major problem, the property taxes, state income taxes and sales taxes are HIGH in Maryland. If I ever decide to move to Delaware (only 10 miles away) I could save over $10,000 a year in taxes.
Hi everyone! I got tired of lurking...
Hi, back, and welcome.
Hi everyone! I got tired of lurking...
Jump in the pool, the water's fine!
Welcome Cindy!
Good morning everyone! Been busy with my new little toy - a Chromebook. Trying to get it to sync up with my desktop version of chrome and it's been a pesky little problem. But, it takes my mind off my other two house guests for now! Which by the way, are leaving Sunday afternoon. Yea!
Good morning everyone! Been busy with my new little toy - a Chromebook. Trying to get it to sync up with my desktop version of chrome and it's been a pesky little problem. But, it takes my mind off my other two house guests for now! Which by the way, are leaving Sunday afternoon. Yea!
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