cold!

Not necessarily. It's -5C or so outside. My place is poorly insulated, with lots of windows of ~R 0.8 (US), and attic and walls insulated to about half today's standards.

By just keeping the house temperature at 9-10C and dressing like an Eskimo, I'm spending about $10 a month on heating right.

Getting the attic and windows alone up to standard would cost about about

In U.S. units, R-30 to R-60 for attics, R-19 for walls is pretty typical.

It's not the house, it's how you use it that makes the most difference.

Cheers, James Arthur

It's always puzzled me why some clever soul hasn't devised a way to run the furnace blower on natural gas. It'd be a life saver back east where so many times the electricity fails because of downed electric lines and people freeze to death. ...Jim Thompson

...are enormous.

looks pretty popular to me...

Hell there have even been several studies on it and other construction/ insulating media make-ups for various standard construction materials.

You lose... again.

They could have a little backup steam engine to push the blower in such a time. That can be gas fired.

It's non-structural, R-value is not good, it's expensive, there is very little engineering data published (probably because it is equally unimpressive).Looks like moisture can be a real problem. It's still experimental, wouldn't touch it.

"Jim Thompson" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

Get a backup generator that runs on natural gas.

Bloggs Blabbed the following:

Quote

End Quote.

Em, "What you talkin about Willis?"

Oh, we have the Snow Belt and the Lake Effect Snow too. We get Alberta Clippers... I do have friends who live in Ontario, and the difference is simply the amount of snow. Unless your up near the Artic Circle, which is QUITE far from here.

I'm lucky enough to live ten miles from the average end of the snow belt, but business does take me there, and to Ontario.

Part of the reason you do not hear much about Ohio winters is we have the infrastructure in place to move snow. Schools get closed now mostly for extreme cold, not for impassable roads.

Steve

I have no complaints about the temps here in Chicago. I'll report back on how it feels here tonight.

It's pretty cozy inside insulated bibs.

sure, a tent is very low energy. but I don't think many people will find that or 10'C indoors to be acceptable

most people will want 20 something C all year round so it is quite well defined how a house will will be used on average.

-Lasse

Havent you heard its the lack of sunspots?!?!?!

We still have snow on the ground from the early Feb snow storm/ unblizzard.

One thing to note is that the snow reflects the suns radiation, so it'll be cool around here for a while.

Cheers

Wish we had some natural gas. Our heat pumps (at these temperatures they're really resistive heat) aren't going to keep up the next two nights. We'll likely add propane logs to the fireplace next summer.

Grin.. sure a small delta T works as long as it's "mild" outside.

It's going to be below -10F here tonight. Keeping the house at 50 or 70 is not that different. (60::80)

I've got an outdoor stove that heats the garage and preheats hot water... It's been a beast lately, I have to fill up the fire box twice a day.

George H.

That's a good idea. Home Depot sells natural gas-powered generators.

Wood is the ultimate fallback, but messy.

Cheers, James Arthur

TEG with a battery to get it started. How much power?

George H.

Wimps. :)

If energy cost a lot more and I used more of it, sure, it would make sense.

Landing here my utopian vision was to make the place nearly 100% passive solar. Then I ran the numbers (and lived through a few sunless winters).

I designed a really nifty passive solar heater, but it would not have helped much so far this winter. Two or three months is a long time to wait for the heat to come on. The good news is it would heat my place very efficiently in the summer. There's lots of sun then, when I don't need it. It could also cool my place every efficiently all winter long--just remove the check valve / damper and let it reverse draft at night. :-)

Grins,

James Arthur

You don't know anything about it.

There are bunch of youtube videos on homemade collectors constructed from junk too.

A house is more than a place where you go to get off the street. Your lifestyle is unhealthy.

district heating here, from the local powerplant, cement factory and incineration plant

~$50/MWh

-Lasse

-Lasse

Sounds like you'd benefit from some global warming. :-)

I was very tempted to make a variation on a rocket mass heater, a slick way to burn wood very cleanly and efficiently, for heating.

I became somewhat less enthusiastic after helping my neighbor split wood.

Grins, James Arthur

On a sunny day (Wed, 18 Feb 2015 09:23:36 -0800) it happened John Larkin wrote in :

It is absolutely essential we bring as much nuculear online as we can, develop Thorium reactors too.

As a real ice age will come: