Tired of being cold

[Superfishal]

folks,
Looking for advice. I have a 3000sg ft home currently heated by 2 Heat pumps, a 2 ton and a 1 ton...grew up in Pa and my dad always heated our home with a buck stove. Want to get back to real heat and get rid of $800 electric bills. Have an air handler in the basement and one in the attic..Any suggestions? I have plenty of seasoned wood that I burn in a fireplace..please advise...

 

[Bob Rohr]

First off, perform a heat loss calculation for your home, see where all the heat energy is escaping. If possible have a blower door test done to identify air leakage. The infiltration (air leakage) can be huge on an older home, and fairly inexpensive to correct.

With those results tighten up the home as much as $$ possible. The lower the heatload, the less energy and equipment it will take, for the life of the building.

Then start looking at options for a new or supplemental heat source. Sounds like you have a ducted system or two now, maybe adding an air coil to one or both would be an option.

If you are upper some number crunching, here is a fairly simple, free ap.

http://www.slantfin.com/homeowners-page/ipadapp.html

 

[Superfishal]

First off, perform a heat loss calculation for your home, see where all the heat energy is escaping. If possible have a blower door test done to identify air leakage. The infiltration (air leakage) can be huge on an older home, and fairly inexpensive to correct.

With those results tighten up the home as much as $$ possible. The lower the heatload, the less energy and equipment it will take, for the life of the building.

Then start looking at options for a new or supplemental heat source. Sounds like you have a ducted system or two now, maybe adding an air coil to one or both would be an option.

If you are upper some number crunching, here is a fairly simple, free ap.

http://www.slantfin.com/homeowners-page/ipadapp.html

Thanks for the input....that's a start..just scheduled a home energy audit...

 

[GENECOP]

Install a nice insert into that fireplace.....doing a heat loss is a great step in getting an overall picture..There are many of us here who have spent thousands of dollars on systems to heat our homes. Starting off with a nice insert , maybe with a blower, you can even find some good used stoves out there, well under a $1000 and you can be heating with wood this winter...If you want to get more into it after that, spend time here reading, and start to get yourself setup for next winter...

 

[Kristen]

Insulate! Take care of all the easy-options-first.

We had a blower test done as @Bob Rohr described. Enabled us to block up some air leakage, and also gave us a benchmark for how leaky the house was (actually ours was quite good, which was encouraging) and for improvements we have made since. We insulated all we could, but it was difficult, and expensive, to improve beyond the easy options so we have built a Passive House extension instead - which we hibernate in for the Winter! and now heat the main part of the house several degrees colder than we used to.

We also had a visit from a guy with a thermal camera on a really cold night, after we had left the heating on flat-out for 24 hours. That revealed some hot-spots that we then insulated.

 

[maple1]

There are all kinds of ways you can go. You will have to do a lot of reading up to get a handle on options - and most of the major decisions to make end up being centered on personal preference & situational priority type things.

Two fundamental questions to start with:

Do you want to heat air or water with the wood?

Do you want the fire in the house or out?

 

[brenndatomu]

Install a nice insert into that fireplace.....doing a heat loss is a great step in getting an overall picture..There are many of us here who have spent thousands of dollars on systems to heat our homes. Starting off with a nice insert , maybe with a blower, you can even find some good used stoves out there, well under a $1000 and you can be heating with wood this winter...If you want to get more into it after that, spend time here reading, and start to get yourself setup for next winter...

Good advise ^^^. Get that fireplace plugged up with a good insert...fireplaces are seldom more than single digit efficiency...some are actually negative efficiency!

 

[StihlKicking]

folks,
Looking for advice. I have a 3000sg ft home currently heated by 2 Heat pumps, a 2 ton and a 1 ton...grew up in Pa and my dad always heated our home with a buck stove. Want to get back to real heat and get rid of $800 electric bills. Have an air handler in the basement and one in the attic..Any suggestions? I have plenty of seasoned wood that I burn in a fireplace..please advise...

Hardy Heater Hardy Heater Hardy Heater! Thank me later [emoji1]

 

[Fred61]

Or shoot me later

 

[jrod770]

Or shoot me later

That's not necessarily the case now. I need to put up an install thread of my own about my new Hardy KB 125 outdoor gassifier. Short story, since Sept. 1 it's been providing all heat and hot water for 2500 sq ft home, about 3 1/2 cord so far. Pretty good in my mind and much better than the old Clayton in the basement

 

[StihlKicking]

I toured the KB units a couple weeks ago when I went to the factory to pick up my new boiler. They are really nice and heat on about half the wood I'm told. My family has been using the old H units for over two decades to provide heat and Hot water to our homes. As a matter of fact the unit I bought is a brand new held over pre EPA H2. I hope to get thirty years out of it.

 

[laynes69]

I'm not heating my hot water, but I'm in Ohio with a 2500 sqft victorian home and I've used under a cord and a half since September with my indoor wood furnace. It's been an extremely mild Winter till recently.

 

[Fred61]

I toured the KB units a couple weeks ago when I went to the factory to pick up my new boiler. They are really nice and heat on about half the wood I'm told. My family has been using the old H units for over two decades to provide heat and Hot water to our homes. As a matter of fact the unit I bought is a brand new held over pre EPA H2. I hope to get thirty years out of it.

So you're making a recommendation while having no experience with the boiler. Going by what the salesman said.
I have no experience with the brand but I don't believe that one should be shouting a recommendation in that way. Your experiences, both good and bad, with the unit should be displayed here along with others' hopefully and let the OP decide for him or herself.

 

[StihlKicking]

So you're making a recommendation while having no experience with the boiler. Going by what the salesman said.
I have no experience with the brand but I don't believe that one should be shouting a recommendation in that way. Your experiences, both good and bad, with the unit should be displayed here along with others' hopefully and let the OP decide for him or herself.

I have 30 plus years experience with the H units. Maybe you missed that in my post you quoted. My old H4, my fathers H4, my father in laws H4, my cousins H2 and two neighbors H2s. I have a new house so I bought a new H2 to go with it. I have nothing bad to say about Hardys except they are a little heavy on wood use. The LC units that are currently manufactured are identical to the old H's minus the domestic copper loop, they use plate exchangers. That's the unit I would recommend. I have no experience with gassers and did not mean to imply a recommendation based on anything the salesman said.

 

[StihlKicking]

I believe I just stated what the salesman told me. Maybe I should have used quotation marks [emoji1]

 

[jb6l6gc]

That's not necessarily the case now. I need to put up an install thread of my own about my new Hardy KB 125 outdoor gassifier. Short story, since Sept. 1 it's been providing all heat and hot water for 2500 sq ft home, about 3 1/2 cord so far. Pretty good in my mind and much better than the old Clayton in the basement

thats not bad, last year...mind you it way colder I went through 6-7 cords in my hotblast.
Just because of the ease I'll be upgrading to the tundra this year. Any particular reason you opted for an outdoor install, considering you had everything already setup for a furnace inside?

 

[jrod770]

I'm not heating my hot water, but I'm in Ohio with a 2500 sqft victorian home and I've used under a cord and a half since September with my indoor wood furnace. It's been an extremely mild Winter till recently.

thats not bad, last year...mind you it way colder I went through 6-7 cords in my hotblast.
Just because of the ease I'll be upgrading to the tundra this year. Any particular reason you opted for an outdoor install, considering you had everything already setup for a furnace inside?

I had 2 things make me take things outside, 1. A daughter with allergy problems not helped by a fire and firewood in the house, and 2. A chimney fire last year that scared the ____ out of me. Sold the Clayton for the same price I bought it for 6 years earlier, so I didn't lose much.