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#Post#: 174--------------------------------------------------
Electricfication
By: Nearings fault Date: April 30, 2021, 6:41 pm
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I've been pondering quite a bit lately on the electrification of
just about every aspect of the western world's energy profile.
It's been front of mind as I wrestle with building and equipping
the new house. This one will be an all electric home with a net
metered solar array and battery backup for any outages that
might happen. The cooling and the majority of the heating will
be driven by an electric heat pump. There will be some secondary
heat with in floor heating. The garage will have the code
required electric connection for a possible electric vehicle.
There is not one planned but who knows. Mostly I'm curious what
other people have noticed in their world about the drive for
electrification...
#Post#: 176--------------------------------------------------
Re: Electricfication
By: Phil Potts Date: May 1, 2021, 2:36 am
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What you're doing makes sense because u have the panels. Without
them gas heating might be cheaper. They're not driving electric
heating at night or on overcast days though. What about hot
water?
#Post#: 267--------------------------------------------------
Re: Electricfication
By: Eddie Date: May 11, 2021, 9:09 am
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I’ve lived in an all electric house with a huge carbon footprint
for nearly 30 years. The fireplace (not a good one) has saved
our bacon more than once now. I still average over 100kWh/day.
In this part of the country, natural gas service is only part of
the older urban infrastructure. I’d have to use propane if I
wanted to have any kind of gas appliance.....which has it’s own
set of problems around price and delivery.
It’s not the dependance on electricity that bothers me so
much.....just the waste, and the dependance on the existing
infrastructure. If I had a well-built house and adequate
generation, I wouldn’t worry about it. But wood heat is so easy,
I’d still want it for back-up, even in a house like the one
you’re building.
I thought about having a 1000 gallon propane tank put out on the
stead, but I haven’t done it. In a grid-down scenario out there
it’s pumping water that would be the real problem. I always
envisioned a solar-power pump jack....I actually bought a nice
one.....but it’s a big deal money-wise to convert. Wells are not
a DIY thing at 350-500 ft down. You need special equipment to
make it easy.
These days I think about selling the house in the canyon....the
RE market is crazy hot here. But I have kids moving back to town
from Chicago, so that will put it off for another year, I
expect. My goal now is to finally build on the stead after all
these years of back-and-forth about it. I think it makes sense
from a financial POV....I will not build another energy hog.
#Post#: 271--------------------------------------------------
Re: Electricfication
By: Nearings fault Date: May 11, 2021, 11:16 am
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Hmm... well the first thing would be build for energy
efficiency. Triple pane windows and insulated walls are cheaper
then a propane tank or a larger ac and way more resilient. There
was a good series of twitter posts about owners of passive
houses around the world who turned off their heat pumps during
the texas blackout and posted their temp results. All of them
even in some extreme climates were livable 3 days later... here
is an article about a retrofitted austin passive house :
HTML https://www.buildwithrise.com/stories/texas-passive-house-weathered-the-2021-storm<br
/>
Passive house is just a name brand for a well insulated house
but the design elements are all licensed. If it was just me here
l would have heated and cooled with independent mini split heat
pumps. The nice thing is you can plug one of them into a
generator or smaller solar system and gain some heating or
cooling and not be knocked out by one central unit going down or
watch it sit dead during an outage. In your climate even at its
freakish coldest you would get a 3 to one advantage over just
using electricity using the cold weather heat pumps. Considering
most propane stoves are at best 80 percent efficient and bleed
heat and cold when not in use your fossil fuel count would be
virtually identical running a genny to run the small mini split.
A dual fuel portable genny can start that well pump as well. I'd
want to choose a better pump with soft start but it would
work...
Hope all is well your way. Main floor walls get poured tomorrow,
trusses next week.
Cheers, NF
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