the little joys of homeownership

[thanate]

So, Thursday morning the aged gas heater died its last shuddering death, and for reasons that no longer seem quite as clear and compelling as I'm sure they were at the time neither of us did much of anything about it until everyone started shutting down for the weekend. We have in the last day and a half managed to determine that:

*indeed, the heater is not worth fixing
*people who install the systems that would effectively climate control our house (it being next to impossible to run decent cooling ductwork through a tiny 1930s vintage building) mark them up by at least 300% with installation fees, based on the unit pricing numbers available online
*we are done with gas furnaces, but the big box stores are done with stocking pellet stoves (and the places that do have them are not open on Sundays, or refuse to tell us when they are open)
*and it is a very good thing that we have insulation in the attic, and brand new classy windows.

We have set up the radiator-style space heater in the bedroom and stapled a spare sheet to hang over the door. The cat thinks this is fantastic, and dashes in and out around it any time we go through the doorway. We are subsisting on tea and fudgie brownies, and I have knitted myself a cute vaguely germanic cap, which is warm and makes me wish for clothing to impersonate someone out of a Holbein sketch. Given that the rest of the house is rather cold (although it's been holding at around ten degrees above the outside temperature, and a little more in the depths of the cold night, so not too shabby) a surprising amount of cleaning up has been done, since it's not warm enough to hold still. Odd, that. Unfortunately, all this is not particularly helping grauwulf get over his cold.

Comments

[thanate.livejournal.com]

Largely frustration, I think, although the logical reasons have more to do with the gas bill (which would have been improved by a new furnace as well, I'm sure) and the fact that something with a real burning fire that we can sit in front of, even if it's in the basement, seems far more glamorous as a back-up solution to whatever ductless sort of heat & a/c system we end up with. If there were space for a fireplace or a proper wood stove in the main floor, we would have gone with that instead.

Our existing ducts are ok for heating now that we're not losing most of the heat we pipe up through the windows & attic, but if we want to add a/c there's no way to get an appropriate volume of air either up to or down from the second floor without massive expansion of the duct system. What we're currently thinking of doing in the long term is getting a high velocity heat pump system, which works for both heat & cool, sits in the attic and blows downwards through about 3" diameter flexible lines, which allow you just to drop them down the exterior walls and fish them out through the holes you drill for the little round vents. Unfortunately, the units appear to cost somewhere in the $5-7k range, while the quote we got for installation was $15k and three to four days to do it, which seemed a bit steep. Also, being electric only, they keep the place warm without the boost of very warm every time the heat kicks on, so various people have been telling us we'll feel like we're freezing. (I grew up in a house with electric heat, so I'm not too worried.) The other option we were looking at was a ductless mini-split, which we're told is great for a/c, but won't handle the heat when it gets particularly cold, so it needs a back-up unit either way.

In your case, if you're happy with your current furnace and don't care about running a/c, then there's no reason I know of not to get it replaced with more of the same when it goes; depending on how cold your winters get and how good your insulation is, it might even be worth your looking into one of the high efficiency models; they're much more expensive, but can be vented through PVC, and are kind of glamorous but rather overkill for how much cold we actually get.