Alternative Heating??

[Meldread]

I am interested in Alternative Heating. Currently my parents use a gas heater and as gas prices have risen they've come to the conclusion that they are going to have serious troubles meeting the heating cost. My Aunt is having the same problem.

Today they looked at outside wood heaters, but I am objecting to them getting those. First of all I don't want them cutting down their trees (they love their trees) for heating. Second, it is going to cost them $7,400 dollars WITH a discount. Third, due to health problems and their age they just can't be lugging chunks of wood around.

I am interested in finding an alternative solution for them. Does anyone have information on solar heating? If they went solar would that also allow them to cut down on their electric bill? Does anyone use alternative methods of heating their home? Are there any other options?

[porphyrian]

1. How well insulated is their house?

A good place to start is to make sure what heat they have inside stays inside. That will help out regardless of what other choices you make.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

2. How much are they willing to

spend on modifying their house? They could use passive solar heating or geothermal heating (one of my neighbors has this, and it helps with cooling during the summer as well), but both could involve major changes in their house.

[cornermouse]

3. With wood there's also the danger of a chimney fire.

[FloridaPat]

4. When I lived in Minnesota, there were a lot of homes heated with

solar heat. Where do they live? A lot depends on that. They get a lot of sunlight in Minnesota in the winter.

To go solar, you would need a well insulated house and a way to get the heat inside. I've seen solar panels made with bear cans used in a house in Rochester MN. The other alternative is wind. You could get enough electricity to run heating elements. It would take a big windmill.

As for wood, it is a real pain. I did that one year. You could get an iron stove for their fireplace, if they have one. A fan and you could probably heat the house with just wood. I had a real big house and it heat it up. But it look 3-4 hours to get it warm enough. I had a small stove, so the fire went out at night.

There are too many factors, so we need info. How big is their homes? Do they have large yards? Live on farms? Have cellers? Need their cellers?

[Meldread]

6. Answers to your questions:

They live in Virginia. It's an older house but they just bought new windows, so the insulation has improved somewhat I would think. The size of the house is roughly 2,000 square feet. There is a good deal of space, they live out in the country and have decently sized yards BUT they do have a lot of trees around. They have a basement but they use it and need it.

[FloridaPat]

26. Insulating the walls would be a good start. Caulking windows.

They might be able to do solar. Wind might work depending on how much they get. They could use the wood burning stove or furnace inside or outside and buy wood and save the trees for emergencies. However, if they get to the emergency stage, use up the trees, then they have a wood furnace without wood.

[bananas]

5. ground source heat pump?

I don't know much about them,
it's basically a heat exchanger that uses ground water instead of the outside air.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&safe=off&q=%22ground+source+heat+pump%22

on edit: this link answers basic questions, and says:
"The U.S. Department of Energy, for instance, estimates that ground-source heat pumps save anywhere from $300 to $1000 per year on typical residential energy bills. The higher first cost — which runs from $2,000 to $4,000 — is paid back in energy savings in three to eight years."
http://www.advancedenergy.org/buildings/knowledge_library/heating_and_cooling/ground_source_heat_pumps.html

[skids]

7. Before looking at alternate heating.

Insulation is obvious. Something less obvious is air circulation.

If the house is more than one floor, a duct to take hot air that has risen to the ceiling on the top floor and return it to the footboard on the lower floor is well worth it. Otherwise more heat escapes out the attic. You use a bit of electricity to run a small fan, but it is worth it.

Another thing to do is make sure the heating system is not cycling too fast -- if they turn on and off too fast, they will be less efficient. Usually that's due to the system being too big in the first place to compensate for bad ducting. Not sure exactly what to do about this -- air circulation, thermometer hysteresis, and adding a thermal mass inside the house might help.

As far as solar heating goes, depending on the weather, you can kill off most of your daytime heating needs with passive air solar heaters. Unfortunately they have to be custom built, becuse noone sells them (not for a reasonable price, anyway. They really should be < $100 each more like $50, judging from the simple construction.)

See my thread on those here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x29052

An oversized solar water heating installation could also be used to provide some nighttime heat, but like everything in the alternative energy sector, good luck finding a product that isn't way more expensive than it should be. Fortunately this is one area where you do get a pretty short payback period even though the equipment is overpriced.

[etherealtruth]

23. Fantastic suggestions and direction ...

I was trying to formulate a response, read yours and it's as good an answer as there is.

[hexola]

8. Natural or Propane? And describe the dwelling...(nt)

[applegrove]

9. That thing with pipes that Buckingham palace is doing. What is that

called?

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

12. it's called a"geo-thermal system" nt.

[hexola]

10. Old House - using propane, hot water baseboard and solar...

Renovating a 100 year old house. We have to blow in more cellulose insulation between the wall studs. Already have decent windows with storms. We looked at everything and quizzed everyone who looked at the job.

Looks like we might get this propane boiler - The Munchkin

https://secure.cazbah.net/catalog.asp?prodid=357820

https://secure.cazbah.net/store.asp?pid=3408

We also have good solar exposure and are adding a solar room on one end of the house.

We only have radiators downstairs, registers in the floor let heat upstairs.

This winter should be interesting...

[Bluerthanblue]

11. Actually OUTDOOR wood heaters are a very good

alternative heat source. As long as their house is plumbed for a 'boiler' system, it shouldn't be too difficult. Many units come with dual fuel alternatives like gas/wood or oil/wood, and the wood can be very economical- Around here NH there are countless hardwood pallets that go to our transfer station- mills with lots of slab wood etc. The unit i dream of someday having holds 4' pieces of wood, can be filled once, and last for 12+ hrs on one filling, and have the benefit of being NOT attached to the dwelling, so there is very little fire danger, or CO2 threat.
If there is a Community Action Program in your area, there might be some low-income weatherization aid available. Don't be afraid to ask-
Solar heating is great if you live in an area that gets ALOT of sun, (usually those places don't need much heat tho) And are difficult to adapt an existing home to. I have friends that had built their house to be VERY energy efficient, building it tucked into the earth, and putting solar heat exchangers into the roof, which carried heated water into the floor of their home. It was really a work of art, and took several years, and sadly, they had to sell it and move- i don't know what the new folks have done with it.

One thing about using "oil" rather than LP as an alternative, is that there is a chance that it could be made to run on bio-diesel, which IS a renewable, environmentally friendly fuel. There is often lots of wood available, without having to cut down any trees, but that will probably become scarce now.... we've been living on the 'edge' for a long time- i wish you luck- i'm glad you care, and that they have you to help.

blu

[Vinca]

19. I recently researched the outdoor furnaces and found one

that had a converter gizmo to be used with warm air heating systems. We decided not to go that route, primarily because of bad experiences with our neighbor's outdoor furnace. Even though he's about a quarter mile down the road, when the weather is just right the thing stinks up the air so badly you can't leave a window open at night.

[Vinca]

13. We're buying a pellet stove.

They cost about $2,000 and the pellets are about $200 a ton. An average sized northern home would use about 5 tons. The pellets are made from scrap wood that's compressed to look like rabbit food and come in 20 lb. bags. You dump them into a hopper on the top of the stove and they feed in automatically throughout the day. You don't need a chimney like a woodstove. They can be vented through a wall. Considering current heating oil prices, we should pay for the stove investment in the first season. A newer part of our house had electric heat and we've replaced the units with Hydro-Sil units. They're like regular electrical heating fixtures except they're filled with silicone that holds the heat longer. We found them to be surprisingly economical.

[HereSince1628]

14. some of these types of furnace also burn corn.

Which is pretty cheap in the midwest.

[librechik]

18. my parents have heated with one of these for many years

toasty!and "green" because it uses recycled materials. The corn pellets are fed automatically, so there is no heavy lifting.

Check your local want ads for used pellet stoves, or ebay. There are lots of them around for salvage or at yard sales in my neighborhood (Colorado)

[DanCa]

15. Well we used electric space heaters as kids but be very careful

there nasty fire buggers waitting to happen. Fortunately we had a big family and we had shifts set up to watch so nothing would happen. I would "not advise" using one unless under heavy super vision.

[Snotcicles]

16. On the Solar part Energy Conversion Devices may have

solutions. It's a great company.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

17. brief bit of venting

We have been through oil"crisises" before - specifically in the late 70's, early eighties. Fairly major changes in housing seemed to go into effect quite rapidly - smaller, tighter housing, insulated, 2x6 construction, solar, and or wood, zone heating, etc. There were tax credits for solar. We were very briefly on track for trying to wean the country off oil. Reagan came in and fageddaboutit!!! No more concerns about energy independence.

Our bloated lifestyle of the last twenty years has finally culminated in the oversized McMansions with the Ford Extrusions parked in front. People will not be able to heat their grandiose homes; they will huddle together in the "media room" under goose down coverlets. Or, perhaps they will take in boarders. Everything old is new again.

[B Calm]

20. Back in the 70s people were making window solar heaters.

[B Calm]

21. Here is the text to the above solar heater.

Do you have some south facing windows? (North facing if you are in the Southern Hemisphere), If so you might want to consider some free solar heat. Don't expect this to eliminate all heating costs but it will reduce your expenses. The more windows you can place one of these solar heaters in the more you will see a reduction in your heating costs.

The main components of this solar heater design are sheets of heavy-duty foam insulation, one or more sheets of window glass, a tube of "RTV" (bathtub sealant), a box or two of aluminum foil, and a roll of duct tape. Exact sizes and angles to cut will vary, depending on the height of your window from the ground, it's width, and the winter sun angle at your latitude.

The Heat Collector can be as simple as painting the sun side of the thin foam panel flat black, or for a more efficient collector use a sheet of ten-thousandths aluminum (available as scrap from most newspaper or "offset" presses). Paint the aluminum sheet(s) flat black on both sides then mount it ?inch from the surface of the foam sheet using a couple of dozen ?inch cubes cut from foam and cemented down with RTV. This allows the air to pass by both sides of the solar heated aluminum, greatly increasing the efficiency.

Cover all inside foam surfaces with aluminum foil and glue it down with RTV. Paint or otherwise cover ALL external foam surfaces. Foam is sensitive to ultraviolet light and will decompose if left, unprotected, in direct sunlight.

Be sure and seal the glass top and all other exposed seams with RTV to insure the assembly is watertight. Moisture in the collector will reduce its efficiency, and may promote mold.

Use RTV to glue the sides to the bottom panel and end cap. Duct tape can be used to hold everything in place while the RTV sets up, if applied along all edges the duct tape can be left in place to add strength. You may want to consider pushing a few nails through the side panels and into the thinner inner foam panel to hold it in place as the RTV sets up.

Cut two foam covers to close the hot and cold air ducts at night or in the summer. Duct tape makes pretty good hinges and clasps for these covers. If you live in wind a prone area you may want to drive two stakes in the ground and attach them at each side of the lower end of the solar heater to prevent wind lift. Remember to keep the glass clean for optimal performance.

Notice: The intent of this web page is not to be step-by-step instructions, but as a source for general information and rough design ideas. If you are not handy building small projects I would suggest you find someone who is to help you with this project.



http://www.i4at.org/surv/solheatr.htm

[skids]

27. Yeah, that's the sort of thing I mentioned above.

Mother Earth mag also built a smaller one suitable for hanging out of an apartment building window.

Now take a look at that design. If someone in the packing materials industry were to mold a nice thick styrofoam angled slab with a slot down the center, and then someone in the plastics business were to mold a thick UV-hardened polycarbonate frontplate for it (overlapping the edges of the styrofoam to protect it from UV), plus one black corrugated metal plate, how much do you think such a unit would cost?

Well let's see -- styrofoam packing material is dirt cheap. Let's say max $2. Polycarbonate greenhouse flashing is about $1 per square foot retail at home depot. So let's say $20 to be generous. A corrugated metal sheet I don't have a price on but let's say $10 ... again real generous since you can get a PC case for $40.

Mass production, these could be on the shelves for under $50 (or, to put it another way, the same price as 15 to 25 gallons of heating oil.) $50 is a conservative estimate. If they were on shelves, in a cardboard box that said "save on heating costs" in big letters, don't you think the department stores could sell them?

What's the cheapest unit like unto this to be found? Try $245 here:

http://www.metaefficient.com/metaefficient/archives/heating/cleardome-2x4-cleardome-solar-indoor-and-outdoor-forced-air.html

This gives you an idea of why home power conservation and generation is so expensive. No serious large company will step up to bat with a product that delivers a good "bang for the buck." Big companies only tweak their existing designs... and only do so to save energy when the government offers to help them slash prices with a rebate. If their product isn't singled out by EnergyStar, they will gladly make it use more power if it reduces manufacturing costs. They don't pay for what it sucks out of the wall socket, you do.

Those small companies that try to get into the business overoptimize their designs and then produce small batches at prices that just aren't worth it.

Can I get a hardy "What the heck?" people? What is wrong with "free market capitalism" that we don't have good product selection in such a large potential market? What the heck is going on in his country? What the heck?

[B Calm]

29. The first place I seen this solar heater was Mother Earth mag.

back in the 70s. My brother made one and it worked pretty good.

[zalinda]

22. I think since they are using natural gas

their heating costs may not go up at a huge rate. It's those who heat with oil that is going to be hit with a double rate hike. Now, I could be wrong.

But, it wouldn't hurt to look into helping their heating costs.

zalinda

[madokie]

24. I switched to a wood pellet stove

in '93 and haven't looked back. Our heating bill for last year was a little over 300 bucks. They make them that also burn corn. I suspect that the pellets will go up this year and if they do it will be the first time since we bought our stove. Last year we paid 145.00 a ton.
a couple years ago we spent the winter where we had to use propane. Propane cost us that winter over 1200 bucks. Our stove has paid for itself many times over. I saved the best part for the last, very little maintaince no mess and they look good.

[buddysmellgood]

28. What kind did you buy? I have a high efficiency fireplace with a catalytic

combustor. It's very clean and is a beautiful scene. I love heating with wood. I'm weird, but I love everything about it.
I'd like to get a pellet stove or corn pellet stove to heat another part of the house.

[madokie]

25. I forgot to mention

if their present furnace is 15 years old or older they would save a lot by upgrading to a new one. Efficiency is so much better now. just a thought