Home Electrification - Part 1!
Added 2023-03-03 04:25:22 +0000 UTCHello all! It's been a while. Too while.
That's... that's not a phrase. Oh well!
So, hi! I didn't mean to disappear for so long but I ended up coming down with a dreadful cold or something right as I neared the completion of the script. This is the first time I've really been sick since the y'know and it was quite odd - I basically only *felt* sick for two days but my voice was all wrong for a solid week. Ah, the joys of being a human.
Anywho, so I have this video for you now! I spent a lot of time on this script and kept revising it again and again. I was burying the lede, waffling back and forth on how silly to make this or not, giving too much backstory, and overall just not satisfied with where it was headed. Splitting this in two solved a lot of problems, and with any luck part two will happen pretty quickly.
I honestly have no idea how to sell this video. So that'll be fun to think of over the next coupla days. The main message (for both of these) is "this doesn't have to be hard!" but how do you get people excited about that? It's like letting people know a shortcut to the dentist. Oh well, I'll burn that bridge when I get there.
Thanks for your patience, everybody!
Comments
BTW: did you know there's a renewable burnable thingy? Corn. Corn can be burnt in pellet burners. So when we've all given up on red meat, farmers can still raise overly-GMO'd maize.
Mike Bird
2023-04-01 15:22:27 +0000 UTCOk. That's a lot of water vapor. I've also seen just white smoke if it's oak or some hardwood burning.
Mike Bird
2023-04-01 15:20:31 +0000 UTCThe term you'll probably have the best luck with is "dual fuel" - that's what a heat pump combined with a furnace is generally called. It's the same basic thing as a central air handler with heat strips, but instead of heat strips it's a furnace and heat exchanger. Adding it after-the-fact may change what people call it, though. A dual fuel system is generally tightly integrated between furnace and heat pump, but all you really want is a reversible air conditioner and a thermostat which knows that the furnace is your auxiliary heat. That's a very easy thing to do and any HVAC professional should be able to set that up, but I don't know the magic words to get you there, unfortunately. Probably best to say "I have a furnace and would like to make it a dual-fuel system with heat pump" when you're shopping for AC
Technology Connections
2023-03-23 15:21:42 +0000 UTCI am curious, what is the name of a heat pump that you can have installed in your forced air gas furnace, instead of just the A/C? Who currently makes them? I am interested because we have a new house that is supposed to be ready by September, and being in the Toronto area, it of course has a gas furnace standard as part of the construction, but the A/C we have to add ourselves, and I figure a heat pump would make more sense, but they are tricky to find information about. Split systems sure, but that doesn't seem like what you would want when you have a forced air system already available. We of course made sure to get 200A service as part of the build (it was a pretty cheap upgrade) along with a 50A outlet in the garage for future EV charging, so power should definitely not be an issue.
Lennart Sorensen
2023-03-23 15:07:05 +0000 UTCSo, just started watching the connextras video, and... I guess that's an answer. But if the issue is reimagining the way we all use electricity, then we'd need serious buy-in from the utility anyway, which will necessitate upgrading distribution. Especially if we're going to widespread replace gas vehicles with electric.
James Hamilton
2023-03-07 03:46:26 +0000 UTCI'm a little confused about the point being made in this video. I recently considered a Span system to replace my existing 200A panel to use in conjunction with a solar panel system with battery backup. The cost of the Span looks like its nearly the cost of a 200A service upgrade. At around $4k (when I looked) to get a Span installed, vs $5k-ish for a 200A service upgrade (including 200A load center -- based on a quick Google search), I would have thought the bandaid of load manager would be less desirable than a slightly higher cost to have the full 200A available. Maybe I've grossly misunderstood the cost of the service upgrade, but I don't recall that being mentioned in the video.
James Hamilton
2023-03-07 03:40:01 +0000 UTC
