7 ms·

The north east US is the largest heating oil market in the world, we consume 85% of the heating oil in the US. Most of these oil boilers will be 80% efficient

by lsllc 6y ago

The north east US is the largest heating oil market in the world, we consume 85% of the heating oil in the US. Most of these oil boilers will be 80% efficient at best. It does get quite cold here in the winter! The answer is building codes that require energy efficient construction techniques, and 0% loans for retrofitting existing houses with better insulation, windows and heating (actually much of this exists via HEAT loans). Tax breaks would help here ... Previously, the only real choices were some sort of fossil fuels with natural gas being the most efficient and cheapest (although it's only available in urban and most suburban areas). These days, a heat pump is more than capable of both heating and cooling even in the depths of a New England winter (although you still need a heat source for hot water). However, you need the right sized ducting for this which can make it cost-prohibitive for a retrofit (but there's no reason why any _new_ house should NOT have a heat-pump).

baybal2 6y ago
This is always stunned me how USA manages to spend so much more money on heating than Russia. Then, I learned that USA has near no cogeneration, and district heating + detached house living with mostly terrible insulation. Most North American apartments are no better, with most highrises looking like radiators.
- saas_sam 6y ago
  The US generates $65k per capita vs. Russia's $11k. That we spend more on heating probably has more to do with having more money to spend on heating. I doubt very much that Russia's buildings' insulation is much better.
  - kazen44 6y ago
    you would be quite suprised actually. especially in cities. Also, appartment buildings are far easier to heat, not to mention a lot of soviet era appartments only have communical heating available. Which basically means the heating gets turned on in oktober for entire city/appartment blocks, Some of those don't even have the option to change the temperate/flow.
  - zeroonetwothree 6y ago
    Some US apartments have shared heating. It’s pretty annoying because you have no control. I’ve had to keep my windows open in the winter because the heating was set too high.
    - Lammy 6y ago
      I keep my windows cracked in the winter despite having control (and payment responsibility, mind) of our heating. It's worth being able to think clearly all winter: https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2016/07/indoor-co2-dumb-and-dumber/ https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2016/07/indoor-co2-du...
      - baybal2 6y ago
        Another thing that strikes most Russians when they go abroad is how well ventilated the buildings are, and how high is the indoor air quality. In Russia, it's most likely an inverse of venue class. Malls, public venues, indoor markets, govt buildings all like to save on ventilation.
      - harpastum 6y ago
        Depending on your climate and what you mean by "windows cracked", you would be much better off with a heat recovery ventilation (HRV) system. They have the explicit purpose of pulling in outside air while only losing about 20% of the heat difference between indoor and out. With slightly open windows, you're losing a bunch of heat for very little ventilation.
        Lammy 6y ago
        Unfortunately I don't own the building but thanks for the info about HRVs
    - fsckboy 6y ago
      a hundred years ago they thought fresh air was an important part of staying healthy, so building heating systems (those big cast iron radiators) were designed to heat effectively in winter with the windows open.
  - bcatanzaro 6y ago
    Russians take cold seriously. I lived there for two years. Everyone lives in huge apartment buildings which have much less surface area to volume ratio than US single family homes. And heating is done by big centralized plants. It keeps things warm despite the weather. Where I lived it would stay below freezing from September to April.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - Zenbit_UX 6y ago
    Also something interesting to note about Russia is hot water is provided by the municipality and not through a hot water tank in your own apartment like in North America. This would certainly reduce heating costs per person by offsetting them to the state.
    - Matticus_Rex 6y ago
      > This would certainly reduce heating costs per person by offsetting them to the state. Unless municipal hot water is somehow much more efficient than hot water heaters (and I'm skeptical, given the heat lost in transit), then it doesn't offset the costs per person, because those costs still have to be paid.
      - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
        The main reason it can be more efficient is that they use waste heat from power plants. In principle you can do the same thing at a smaller scale. Instead of burning natural gas or diesel/home heating oil in a furnace, burn it in a generator and heat your house with the engine coolant.
        xyzzyz 6y ago
        Correct. Here for example you can see a pipeline running superheated water at ~120 C (250 F) 8 miles from the fourth-largest coal power plant in the world (5 GW) to a medium size city: https://goo.gl/maps/VmaFQrrX5VvRKFdu6 https://goo.gl/maps/VmaFQrrX5VvRKFdu6 The plant generates so much waste heat (around 10 GW) while generating electricity that the heat loss in transport is pretty much irrelevant, as the heat is free anyway from the power plant's point of view.
        Thlom 6y ago
        You can use heat from burning garbage as well. My town has an incinerator which burns garbage at high temperatures, the heat is used to warm water which is used to heat buildings (as far as I know not as hot water directly).
- elliekelly 6y ago
  My very first apartment in Boston was on the fourth floor of an old building and management controlled (and paid for) the heat. The building was so inefficient that in order to heat the lower floors to a temperature just barely above freezing my unit would regularly be 85 degrees or more with the windows wide open. I’ll never forget my first big winter storm thinking I was going to die of heat stroke because I had to shut the windows to keep the snow from blowing in. Some people on my floor would leave their window unit air conditioners in year-round to counteract the heat. It was so wasteful and almost no one in the building had a comfortable temperature in their apartment all because it was cheaper/easier for management to just keep burning a ton of oil instead of investing in a bit of insulation.
  - nhf 6y ago
    A lot of the winter overheating comes from poorly insulated pipes, unmaintained steam valves, and broken radiator controls. I lived in Boston for a few years and had the same issue in my first spot - old apartment complex, big boiler in the basement, and way too hot in the winter. Afterwards, I moved to a nicer but even older building where the landlord had bothered to retrofit a modern boiler with separate heating zones for the different apartments. Crucially, the radiators had new control valves the lines had modern insulation. It was like night and day. I think the retrofit cost over $10k, so like you said, the path of least resistance is often crappy heat.
    - milesvp 6y ago
      This. There was a great video posted on HN a couple years ago, by one of the few guys around who tunes up these old radiator systems. Apparently a lot of them were quite genius in design, but years of neglect make them not work very well. Was a fascinating video to hear him talk about common problems, and the amount of troubleshooting and problem solving involved with making these radiator systems work as designed again. Dan Holohan, for those interested. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18430512 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18430512
      - elliekelly 6y ago
gruez 6y ago
>but there's no reason why any _new_ house should NOT have a heat-pump Are heatpumps always more economical than gas/oil? I know that natural gas almost always beats electrical resistive heaters in terms of cost, even though resistive heaters are more efficient than natural gas. Heatpumps are supposed to be more efficient than resistive heaters, but in areas with expensive electricity it still might be more expensive.
- csours 6y ago
  >"even though resistive heaters are more efficient than natural gas." You have to be careful about what you measure. Resistive heaters are 100% efficient by definition, but you have to look at the whole chain. The energy has to be converted from X (coal, natural gas, isotopes decay) to electricity and transmitted to your home. Only the last step is 100% efficient. You lose a lot of energy in generation and transmission of electricity.
- cmurphycode 6y ago
  I was curious about this a while ago and did some napkin math. Natural gas is roughly $15 for 1 million BTU. There are 3412 BTU in a kwhr, so if you heated resistively, you'd need 293 kwhr to get 1 million BTU. In my area, which I feel has pretty high electricity cost, we pay $.24 per kwhr, so that'd be $70. Therefore, you need a 70/15 (4.666) COP for your heat pump to match natural gas by price. My understanding is that that would be an unusually high number for cold weather conditions.
  - lsllc 6y ago
    The State of NH Office of Strategic Initiatives has a nice Fuel Price comparison page that they keep up to date (and are adjusted according to cost per MMBTU): https://www.nh.gov/osi/energy/energy-nh/fuel-prices/index.htm https://www.nh.gov/osi/energy/energy-nh/fuel-prices/index.ht... You can see that as of June 2, measured at $ per MMBTU (million BTU): Natural Gas $8.31 Oil $17.62 Propane $32.93 Wood pellets $21.92 Resistive electric $48.84 Air src heat pump $18.74 The fossil fuels are all measured assuming 80% heating efficiency, whereas for propane or natural gas you might well have a high efficiency unit up to 97% which gains you a bit more savings. These prices may vary depending on location and also I think natural gas isn't that common in NH as it's a mostly rural state.
saeranv 6y ago
The effectiviness of heat pumps is insane. I worked in an architectural firm, and had an epiphany one day that every single one of our highest energy performing projects used some sort of (air/ground/water) source heat pump. We had a 100% glass building that was better performing then buildings designed to PassiveHouse standards because the former incorporated a GSHP.
sethammons 6y ago
I lived in the Southern California mountains. For those who are unaware, yes, that means snow. Winter temps down to the low 20s(f). In summer, it seldom got over 90s. It was the house I grew up in, and I purchased it from my dad. Because it was an FHA loan, we had to have a heating/cooling unit installed, so we had a heat pump added. Aside from being absolutely hideous, the unit was utter shit. The "heat" was mostly cold air in winter. The pump would turn on, and ducts' air was cold (being outside and all), cooling off the house MORE when it was already freezing. Eventually some lukewarm air would come in until the unit got too hot and would turn off, again pushing colder air back into the house. And in summer, the cool air was nowhere sufficient to cool the house. Your only bet would be to keep it on all day with all drapes closed, lights off, do not cook, and don't move around too much. To contrast this, we generally used a wood stove to heat the house. A few logs would keep the house nearly uncomfortably warm for hours. In the summer, we ran an evaporative/swamp cooler. As long as there were no thunderstorms, the house was very pleasant. I cannot be convinced that heat pumps are the way to go.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  It sounds like you had some kind of compliance system that was low-quality or not big enough for your needs. Heat pumps and air conditioners are the same technology, you just make the hot side the inside instead of the outside. They're how your freezer works, but in reverse. Their main limitation is that they aren't effective in extreme cold. To pump heat there needs to be some to begin with. But most populated areas don't get that cold too often and they can be backed up by resistive heaters for the couple of nights a year when it is.
  - rudedogg 6y ago
    > Their main limitation is that they aren't effective in extreme cold. I've researched this a lot since I want to install one and live in a cold climate. The new ones can put out a lot of heat at low temperatures. As an example, see the linked "AHRI Certificate" for the product below. It states: - 11,800 BTU/h at 47 degrees fahrenheit - 7,800 BTU/h at 17 degrees fahrenheit I feel like I've even seen some that say they put out 100% of the rated heat at like 5 degrees fahrenheit. You have to make sure you get a cold weather one, with a base pan heater. They're usually more expensive. Here's one I've looked at for reference. It costs $300 more than the less extreme temperatures one. I don't think it comes with a base pan heater, but I'm not sure: https://senville.com/12000-btu-mini-split-air-conditioner-sena-12hf/ https://senville.com/12000-btu-mini-split-air-conditioner-se...
perl4ever 6y ago
>These days, a heat pump is more than capable of both heating and cooling even in the depths of a New England winter Are you talking about air source or ground source? And by "the depths of a New England winter" do you mean temperatures below 50 F? I lived in an apartment for a while that had some sort of heat pump, but there was a switch for "emergency" (i.e. resistive) heat that was necessary for any warmth in the winter.
- stan_rogers 6y ago
  It would be ground source, and a day of 50°F would feel like shorts and sandals weather that time of the year.
  - perl4ever 6y ago
    You don't have to tell me. I was looking for sources of misunderstanding. In a multifamily structure, at 50 F, in my experience, heat through shared walls probably keeps you reasonably warm without any heat of your own.
- fyfy18 6y ago
  Modern air source heat pumps can be effective down to -25C (-13F) in heat pump mode, and will automatically switch to resistance heating if needed. I'm building a house where it can get to -35C at times (but usually above -20C in winter) and we will have an air source heat pump for hot water, heating and cooling [0]. Combined with good insulation and 10kW of solar on the roof, we should generate more electricity than we use over the year, and no need to burn any fossil fuels. My wife has insisted we have a wood burning stove for atmosphere, so that will function as a backup heat source if needed, but most likely it will generate too much heat to be used regularly. [0] https://www.daikin.eu/en_us/product-group/air-to-water-heat-pump-low-temperature/daikin_altherma_3_r.html https://www.daikin.eu/en_us/product-group/air-to-water-heat-...
  - perl4ever 6y ago
    I tend to take a dim view of the phrase "can be" because it's so weak. It's logically equivalent to "may not be" and is entirely consistent with "essentially never is". But sure, the heat pump in your future home may well be much better than whatever they were doing decades ago. I don't know if my apartment used ground heat, but I doubt it.
Dork1234 6y ago
Heat Pump Domestic Water Heaters are becoming very popular, plus you can combine them with a Drain Waste Heat Recovery system that would provide you with a very efficient system, that you could take long showers. This system would be a good for the environment but a hard sell compared to 90+ efficient natural gas boiler systems.

by lsllc 6y ago

baybal2 6y ago

This is always stunned me how USA manages to spend so much more money on heating than Russia. Then, I learned that USA has near no cogeneration, and district heating + detached house living with mostly terrible insulation. Most North American apartments are no better, with most highrises looking like radiators.

saas_sam 6y ago
The US generates $65k per capita vs. Russia's $11k. That we spend more on heating probably has more to do with having more money to spend on heating. I doubt very much that Russia's buildings' insulation is much better.
- kazen44 6y ago
  you would be quite suprised actually. especially in cities. Also, appartment buildings are far easier to heat, not to mention a lot of soviet era appartments only have communical heating available. Which basically means the heating gets turned on in oktober for entire city/appartment blocks, Some of those don't even have the option to change the temperate/flow.
- zeroonetwothree 6y ago
  Some US apartments have shared heating. It’s pretty annoying because you have no control. I’ve had to keep my windows open in the winter because the heating was set too high.
  - Lammy 6y ago
    I keep my windows cracked in the winter despite having control (and payment responsibility, mind) of our heating. It's worth being able to think clearly all winter: https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2016/07/indoor-co2-dumb-and-dumber/ https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2016/07/indoor-co2-du...
    - baybal2 6y ago
      Another thing that strikes most Russians when they go abroad is how well ventilated the buildings are, and how high is the indoor air quality. In Russia, it's most likely an inverse of venue class. Malls, public venues, indoor markets, govt buildings all like to save on ventilation.
    - harpastum 6y ago
      Depending on your climate and what you mean by "windows cracked", you would be much better off with a heat recovery ventilation (HRV) system. They have the explicit purpose of pulling in outside air while only losing about 20% of the heat difference between indoor and out. With slightly open windows, you're losing a bunch of heat for very little ventilation.
      - Lammy 6y ago
        Unfortunately I don't own the building but thanks for the info about HRVs
  - fsckboy 6y ago
    a hundred years ago they thought fresh air was an important part of staying healthy, so building heating systems (those big cast iron radiators) were designed to heat effectively in winter with the windows open.
- bcatanzaro 6y ago
  Russians take cold seriously. I lived there for two years. Everyone lives in huge apartment buildings which have much less surface area to volume ratio than US single family homes. And heating is done by big centralized plants. It keeps things warm despite the weather. Where I lived it would stay below freezing from September to April.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Zenbit_UX 6y ago
  Also something interesting to note about Russia is hot water is provided by the municipality and not through a hot water tank in your own apartment like in North America. This would certainly reduce heating costs per person by offsetting them to the state.
  - Matticus_Rex 6y ago
    > This would certainly reduce heating costs per person by offsetting them to the state. Unless municipal hot water is somehow much more efficient than hot water heaters (and I'm skeptical, given the heat lost in transit), then it doesn't offset the costs per person, because those costs still have to be paid.
    - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
      The main reason it can be more efficient is that they use waste heat from power plants. In principle you can do the same thing at a smaller scale. Instead of burning natural gas or diesel/home heating oil in a furnace, burn it in a generator and heat your house with the engine coolant.
      - xyzzyz 6y ago
        Correct. Here for example you can see a pipeline running superheated water at ~120 C (250 F) 8 miles from the fourth-largest coal power plant in the world (5 GW) to a medium size city: https://goo.gl/maps/VmaFQrrX5VvRKFdu6 https://goo.gl/maps/VmaFQrrX5VvRKFdu6 The plant generates so much waste heat (around 10 GW) while generating electricity that the heat loss in transport is pretty much irrelevant, as the heat is free anyway from the power plant's point of view.
      - Thlom 6y ago
        You can use heat from burning garbage as well. My town has an incinerator which burns garbage at high temperatures, the heat is used to warm water which is used to heat buildings (as far as I know not as hot water directly).
elliekelly 6y ago
My very first apartment in Boston was on the fourth floor of an old building and management controlled (and paid for) the heat. The building was so inefficient that in order to heat the lower floors to a temperature just barely above freezing my unit would regularly be 85 degrees or more with the windows wide open. I’ll never forget my first big winter storm thinking I was going to die of heat stroke because I had to shut the windows to keep the snow from blowing in. Some people on my floor would leave their window unit air conditioners in year-round to counteract the heat. It was so wasteful and almost no one in the building had a comfortable temperature in their apartment all because it was cheaper/easier for management to just keep burning a ton of oil instead of investing in a bit of insulation.
- nhf 6y ago
  A lot of the winter overheating comes from poorly insulated pipes, unmaintained steam valves, and broken radiator controls. I lived in Boston for a few years and had the same issue in my first spot - old apartment complex, big boiler in the basement, and way too hot in the winter. Afterwards, I moved to a nicer but even older building where the landlord had bothered to retrofit a modern boiler with separate heating zones for the different apartments. Crucially, the radiators had new control valves the lines had modern insulation. It was like night and day. I think the retrofit cost over $10k, so like you said, the path of least resistance is often crappy heat.
  - milesvp 6y ago
    This. There was a great video posted on HN a couple years ago, by one of the few guys around who tunes up these old radiator systems. Apparently a lot of them were quite genius in design, but years of neglect make them not work very well. Was a fascinating video to hear him talk about common problems, and the amount of troubleshooting and problem solving involved with making these radiator systems work as designed again. Dan Holohan, for those interested. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18430512 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18430512
    - elliekelly 6y ago

gruez 6y ago

>but there's no reason why any _new_ house should NOT have a heat-pump Are heatpumps always more economical than gas/oil? I know that natural gas almost always beats electrical resistive heaters in terms of cost, even though resistive heaters are more efficient than natural gas. Heatpumps are supposed to be more efficient than resistive heaters, but in areas with expensive electricity it still might be more expensive.

csours 6y ago
>"even though resistive heaters are more efficient than natural gas." You have to be careful about what you measure. Resistive heaters are 100% efficient by definition, but you have to look at the whole chain. The energy has to be converted from X (coal, natural gas, isotopes decay) to electricity and transmitted to your home. Only the last step is 100% efficient. You lose a lot of energy in generation and transmission of electricity.
cmurphycode 6y ago
I was curious about this a while ago and did some napkin math. Natural gas is roughly $15 for 1 million BTU. There are 3412 BTU in a kwhr, so if you heated resistively, you'd need 293 kwhr to get 1 million BTU. In my area, which I feel has pretty high electricity cost, we pay $.24 per kwhr, so that'd be $70. Therefore, you need a 70/15 (4.666) COP for your heat pump to match natural gas by price. My understanding is that that would be an unusually high number for cold weather conditions.
- lsllc 6y ago
  The State of NH Office of Strategic Initiatives has a nice Fuel Price comparison page that they keep up to date (and are adjusted according to cost per MMBTU): https://www.nh.gov/osi/energy/energy-nh/fuel-prices/index.htm https://www.nh.gov/osi/energy/energy-nh/fuel-prices/index.ht... You can see that as of June 2, measured at $ per MMBTU (million BTU): Natural Gas $8.31 Oil $17.62 Propane $32.93 Wood pellets $21.92 Resistive electric $48.84 Air src heat pump $18.74 The fossil fuels are all measured assuming 80% heating efficiency, whereas for propane or natural gas you might well have a high efficiency unit up to 97% which gains you a bit more savings. These prices may vary depending on location and also I think natural gas isn't that common in NH as it's a mostly rural state.

saeranv 6y ago

The effectiviness of heat pumps is insane. I worked in an architectural firm, and had an epiphany one day that every single one of our highest energy performing projects used some sort of (air/ground/water) source heat pump. We had a 100% glass building that was better performing then buildings designed to PassiveHouse standards because the former incorporated a GSHP.

sethammons 6y ago

I lived in the Southern California mountains. For those who are unaware, yes, that means snow. Winter temps down to the low 20s(f). In summer, it seldom got over 90s. It was the house I grew up in, and I purchased it from my dad. Because it was an FHA loan, we had to have a heating/cooling unit installed, so we had a heat pump added. Aside from being absolutely hideous, the unit was utter shit. The "heat" was mostly cold air in winter. The pump would turn on, and ducts' air was cold (being outside and all), cooling off the house MORE when it was already freezing. Eventually some lukewarm air would come in until the unit got too hot and would turn off, again pushing colder air back into the house. And in summer, the cool air was nowhere sufficient to cool the house. Your only bet would be to keep it on all day with all drapes closed, lights off, do not cook, and don't move around too much. To contrast this, we generally used a wood stove to heat the house. A few logs would keep the house nearly uncomfortably warm for hours. In the summer, we ran an evaporative/swamp cooler. As long as there were no thunderstorms, the house was very pleasant. I cannot be convinced that heat pumps are the way to go.

AnthonyMouse 6y ago
It sounds like you had some kind of compliance system that was low-quality or not big enough for your needs. Heat pumps and air conditioners are the same technology, you just make the hot side the inside instead of the outside. They're how your freezer works, but in reverse. Their main limitation is that they aren't effective in extreme cold. To pump heat there needs to be some to begin with. But most populated areas don't get that cold too often and they can be backed up by resistive heaters for the couple of nights a year when it is.
- rudedogg 6y ago
  > Their main limitation is that they aren't effective in extreme cold. I've researched this a lot since I want to install one and live in a cold climate. The new ones can put out a lot of heat at low temperatures. As an example, see the linked "AHRI Certificate" for the product below. It states: - 11,800 BTU/h at 47 degrees fahrenheit - 7,800 BTU/h at 17 degrees fahrenheit I feel like I've even seen some that say they put out 100% of the rated heat at like 5 degrees fahrenheit. You have to make sure you get a cold weather one, with a base pan heater. They're usually more expensive. Here's one I've looked at for reference. It costs $300 more than the less extreme temperatures one. I don't think it comes with a base pan heater, but I'm not sure: https://senville.com/12000-btu-mini-split-air-conditioner-sena-12hf/ https://senville.com/12000-btu-mini-split-air-conditioner-se...

perl4ever 6y ago

>These days, a heat pump is more than capable of both heating and cooling even in the depths of a New England winter Are you talking about air source or ground source? And by "the depths of a New England winter" do you mean temperatures below 50 F? I lived in an apartment for a while that had some sort of heat pump, but there was a switch for "emergency" (i.e. resistive) heat that was necessary for any warmth in the winter.

stan_rogers 6y ago
It would be ground source, and a day of 50°F would feel like shorts and sandals weather that time of the year.
- perl4ever 6y ago
  You don't have to tell me. I was looking for sources of misunderstanding. In a multifamily structure, at 50 F, in my experience, heat through shared walls probably keeps you reasonably warm without any heat of your own.
fyfy18 6y ago
Modern air source heat pumps can be effective down to -25C (-13F) in heat pump mode, and will automatically switch to resistance heating if needed. I'm building a house where it can get to -35C at times (but usually above -20C in winter) and we will have an air source heat pump for hot water, heating and cooling [0]. Combined with good insulation and 10kW of solar on the roof, we should generate more electricity than we use over the year, and no need to burn any fossil fuels. My wife has insisted we have a wood burning stove for atmosphere, so that will function as a backup heat source if needed, but most likely it will generate too much heat to be used regularly. [0] https://www.daikin.eu/en_us/product-group/air-to-water-heat-pump-low-temperature/daikin_altherma_3_r.html https://www.daikin.eu/en_us/product-group/air-to-water-heat-...
- perl4ever 6y ago
  I tend to take a dim view of the phrase "can be" because it's so weak. It's logically equivalent to "may not be" and is entirely consistent with "essentially never is". But sure, the heat pump in your future home may well be much better than whatever they were doing decades ago. I don't know if my apartment used ground heat, but I doubt it.

Dork1234 6y ago

Heat Pump Domestic Water Heaters are becoming very popular, plus you can combine them with a Drain Waste Heat Recovery system that would provide you with a very efficient system, that you could take long showers. This system would be a good for the environment but a hard sell compared to 90+ efficient natural gas boiler systems.