Posted on 01/19/2025 1:28:27 PM PST by DallasBiff
Consider having your drafty chimney taken down and restacked with a Rumford-style firebox and throat. The lintel is higher, and the firebox is shallower, so the coves reflect far more heat out into the room. It’s not a project for the faint-hearted, but you’ll get a not-drafty fireplace that draws well, and yields heat more effectively.
https://www.superiorclay.com/fireplaces/rumford-gallery/
Gas heat with a gas log fireplace for backup. Unfortunately the house is poorly designed for heating - big open living room with 2nd floor balcony and all of the heat outlets downstairs high up in the wall or ceiling - bedroom, kitchen and bathrooms are OK but all of the heat in the living room rises and goes upstairs.
Thank you. There is a key or whatever to turn the gas on in the fireplace - that was on the fireplace mantel when we bought the house - still there! I would guess no electric ignition is necessary.
I’ve had space heaters in one bathroom - outside wall and in the kitchen - outside wall and I leave the bottom cabinet doors open in both bathrooms and the kitchen but I figured heat from the vents would also help under the sinks so maybe the space heaters wouldn’t be necessary? I didn’t turn the space heaters on last night. It’s tough figuring all this out alone - widows learn to do a lot and pray it’s the right thing!
I also let the kitchen and bathroom faucets drip. A friend put hose bib covers on two faucets outside...This morning, the temp is 20 and - knock on wood - everything appears fine. The temp here at the computer says 16 and sunny - it is sunny and apparently still pretty cold.
Inside the house you shouldn’t need any space heaters to protect your pipes in the house because all the temperatures in the house are above freezing, you shouldn’t have to worry at all about under the sinks or opening cabinets, the only time those are discussed are in blackouts where the inside of the house drops down into the teens and 20s for a couple of days because you have zero heat.
The pipes outside should be as wrapped as you can make them, those faucet covers help some but any and all exposed pipe should be wrapped.
If you want to post pictures of your exposed pipes outside or your gas connection in your fireplace, we can all look at them and offer input.
By the way, if you have a well you can go semi geo thermal. Well Connect keep your propane costs down. It does make your electric go up slightly.
Today, for many, electric hating is gas heating.
Coal generators are now turned by gas fires
My heat pumps, beat gas hands down. They run off solar panels that only cost me the value of the electricity they could have sold to ERCOT vs Atmos expensive has monopoly in this area, propane would be twice the MMBTU price for gas at least when delivered by tanker truck. They also put put a factor of 6 times more heat vs the electrons they use as heat pumps via physics have a coefficient of performance greater than one. High end hear pumps are in the 5 to 6 COP range. Even if I had to pay for electricity I don’t but if I did for every 1 MMBTU of electric heat I buy my pumps put 6 MMBTU into the outputs. Gas is 90% at best with condensing heat exchangers for the lower heating value LLV of the fuel again that’s physics.
It’s 18F outside and 72 in my bedroom, I exported power yesterday as well so my heat cost me zero in retail energy. I also heated 100 gallons of water with those ground sourced heat pumps to a toasty 108F in the preheater tank. If could’ve been subzero last night and they would have purred along not even noticing the air temp they get their heat from the ground 300 feet deep come summer time that now cooler ground thermal mass will be keeping my house at 67 all day and night also with a COP of 4 or better. Welcome to the 21st century. Were they cheap no , do they work like a champ. I used to have gas heat it was costing $200+ per month to keep 70F inside in January and February now I make money every month selling power, so yeah electric beats gas it’s not even a question. Not everywhere can have ground sourced but where you can it’s a winning deal, even more so when you make your own power for them. As always capital will enable favorable outcomes vs paying someone else on a recurring basis. That also is an economic axiom.
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