Widespread technical incompetence

[JLM]

Well, that's very interesting, I didn't know that, but I've often wondered about it. You're saying that it takes less fuel to keep the house at a constant temperature than it does to let it cool down 4 degrees at night then reheat it in the morning? That does make sense. The people who market programmable thermostats claim significant fuel savings from setting the temperature back at night, but I've never been able to find any evidence that proves that claim. I've noticed that it takes several hours to get the house up from 17 degrees to 21 degrees in the morning, and the furnace is on high fire most of that time. I have not noticed any drop in the gas bills with the programmable thermostats, and I haven't been impressed with them either. I've had two pretty pricey Honeywell units fail on me in the last four years, and because of that experience the first thing I did when this latest heating failure happened was put the old manual mercury blob thermostat back in the system. Simpler mechanisms are more reliable.

Which raises another problem, I don't know who can sleep in a room at 21C, I feel like a piece of crap, dry throat, nose, slight head ache, sleeping in sweltering heat. 15C is the perfect temperature for a good sleep I find. As far as cost goes, I think it would depend more on what the outside temperature is.

 

[talloola]

Me too, house is very cool all through the night, and very
shivvery in the morning, feels great, just throw on a
sweater in the morning first thing, warm up the kitchen,
and start the day.
We don't heat the whole house, and we turn down temps when
not using a room, and the upstairs where the bedrooms are,
are never heated, only the bathroom while showering,then
off with the heat again.
We bought three of those small oil filled heaters, and use
them when we need them, then turn them off.
We have a natural gas stove in family/kitchen room, and
roar it in the morning, then off, and baseboard stays on
sometimes down a little in kitchen/family room. sometimes up, if I'm sitting at the computer.
We have french doors to the living room, and when we are
in there we run little oil filled heater, with doors closed,
keeps room cozy,and we have a little electric fireplace,
and we turn on heat/fan for quick heat, then off again. baseboard is behind sheers and furniture, so it's useless anyway, don't use it.

 

[VanIsle]

one other thing, if your furnace is a multi-stage furnace (2 stage), I would suggest you don't set back at night. You will use less fuel by letting the computer control in the multi stage furnace "learn" your homes heating requirements. By setting back a multi-stage furnace you garauntee that that funace will HAVE to go to high fire in the A.M. and you are basivcally defeating the "learning" algorithms built into the furnace.

Our son said much the same (he is a builder not a furnace man so he's obviously passing on information) but maybe ours is different. Our house is 13 years old so naturally the furnace is too. I forgot to turn the heat down last night and I can tell you that I bailed out about 4:00 A.M. feeling like I was sleeping on a heating pad. I have to turn my heat down. We have a digital thermostat which appears to be bang on. Had a programmable one in our last house but didn't like it. I don't mind the early morning chill but Talloola and I live in almost identical climates.

 

[JLM]

Me too, house is very cool all through the night, and very
shivvery in the morning, feels great, just throw on a
sweater in the morning first thing, warm up the kitchen,
and start the day.
We don't heat the whole house, and we turn down temps when
not using a room, and the upstairs where the bedrooms are,
are never heated, only the bathroom while showering,then
off with the heat again.
We bought three of those small oil filled heaters, and use
them when we need them, then turn them off.
We have a natural gas stove in family/kitchen room, and
roar it in the morning, then off, and baseboard stays on
sometimes down a little in kitchen/family room. sometimes up, if I'm sitting at the computer.
We have french doors to the living room, and when we are
in there we run little oil filled heater, with doors closed,
keeps room cozy,and we have a little electric fireplace,
and we turn on heat/fan for quick heat, then off again. baseboard is behind sheers and furniture, so it's useless anyway, don't use it.

Yep, if everyone thought like us Talloola, there wouldn't be a need for meetings in Copenhagen. Quite often in winter I wear flannel/wool shirts in the hourse. When we lived on Vancouver Island we burned wood for 14 years & survived well, enough except the wife complained about how dirty it was.

 

[justinmb]

I have worked within the heating industry for about 10 years now and one thing I have noticed is that a lot of service techs are part changers and not very good a diagnostics even when the flash code is on the door.

I have seen people change control boards when the only thing they had to do was shovel the snow away from the exhaust/intake vents of a high efficient furnace.

The conclusion I have come to is the best system is an electric forced air with a nice wood stove/fireplace for the look and supplemental heat I grew up using only wood so I am a bit partial to it.
The electric is as efficient as you can get.
the life expectancy is far greater than the gas
there are less parts and they are cheaper even with the control board they are now using instead of sequencers
there is the possibility via solar/wind to generate power to offset high hydro in parts where it is expensive.

The fact is the average cost of an electric furnace is a lot less than a high efficient the only issue that one might have is the 200amp panel if your in an older house, even if you have to upgrade it usually works out to be about the same as the H/E install.

It is also the same for the hot water tank electric all the way they are cheaper and last longer with most tanks having either 3000 watt or 4500 watt for 60 gal the recovery is fine and they have virtually no breakdowns and any one who has purchased a gas FVR model in the last few years knows they are notorious for having ignition issues.

The one thing that has alwasy made me laugh is in the last 10 years I have seen the price of a 40gal gas water heater install rise from around $600.00 to $1000.00 now the average life span with gas is 8-10 years there are those that last 15 but it is rare the warranty of tanks will range from 5-12 years depending what you pay that usually only covers the cost of the tank not instalation after 9 years one might have to fork over $400-$500 bucks for installation

the part I find funny is how many people feel slighted by this like they bought a piece of junk when the fact is a hot water heater operates continuosly for those 9 years weather is is heating or just holding the water in.
Nothing else a person ever buys does that much work for so little cost and for that length of time we will not hessitate to drop 2-$5000 on a new TV in 5 years but on something we use and arguably need day to day it seem hard to open the wallet.

if you have a hot water boiler system use an indirect water heater even less parts and more efficient.

This is all just my opinion and I know there is a lot of Geo thermal boosters out there but even those need a condenser, pumps, fans ie. electricity plus the cost of install and the issues they are seeing in Europe with ground instability and with the big plants in Iceland the pollutants ie. the steam is corrosive it is not a perfect solution albeit a better solution than gas/oil and wood also not the most economic solution but sustainable if done properly, pellet stoves are very efficient as well that is why I think a mixture of technologies is a good fit.

 

[Dexter Sinister]

Which raises another problem, I don't know who can sleep in a room at 21C...

Yes, that's an issue alright. I can't sleep well in a room at 21 degrees, it's too warm. I suppose I could close the bedroom door, open a window, and close the furnace vents, leaving the the rest of the house at 21, but then there are cats and children whining at the door. Well, the children are gone now, but they used to do that, and the @$%#@$%@ cats (I don't like cats much, but I didn't get a vote) are still here . If you're not going to do a thermostat setback at night, the only solution is to set the temperature lower all the time and put on another layer of clothing. And I'd bet the furnace would use less fuel keeping the house at 18 or 19 degrees than it would cycling between 17 and 21 every 24 hours.

 

[talloola]

Yep, if everyone thought like us Talloola, there wouldn't be a need for meetings in Copenhagen. Quite often in winter I wear flannel/wool shirts in the hourse. When we lived on Vancouver Island we burned wood for 14 years & survived well, enough except the wife complained about how dirty it was.

Yeah, we burned wood for many years too, one just needs
to be better organized for wood burning, and with todays
wood stoves, it can be very clean.
The last house where we had wood was the best, we built it
ourselves, and had the woodstove in the basement right
near the stairs up, and had vents here and there, and
heat just naturally rose and heated the upstairs, and
our bedroom was on the top floor above the main floor,
so we kept it very very cool, door closed, and no heat
went up there till we wanted it too.
All of the wood was right outside basement door, in covered
carport, so we didn't have to drag it into main living
area.
House before that was a big rancher, and yes, wood stove
caused lots of mess.

 

[globegenius]

Some say technology is making us dumber and not smarter. We rely on computers for everything. One thing about wood. It either burns or it doesn't lol I know all about certified techs that no nothing. I have a few stories of my own. How about all the people that used their blackberry to cheat on their university exams? Lets hope if you are ever "under the knife" you get a surgeon who is actually good and knows what they are doing.

 

[Canaduh]

Some say technology is making us dumber and not smarter.

I don't know about dumber. But whatever happened to technology making our life easier and giving us more free time?.

 

[allchee]

test post

sorry for this post, but i wanna test it, how it works.
thx

 

[Cliffy]

I don't know about dumber. But whatever happened to technology making our life easier and giving us more free time?.

I think we have a lot more free time. We just spend it on our computers.