4 ms·
Electric stove is also safer around kids and elderly.. I have gas stove, hot water, dryers and heating. The hot water and heating were upgraded to gas fairly
by jhallenworld 5y ago
Electric stove is also safer around kids and elderly..
I have gas stove, hot water, dryers and heating. The hot water and heating were upgraded to gas fairly recently, from oil (I live in New England, there are a lot of legacy heating systems- oil was actually an upgrade in the 1940s from the original coal heat). There is strong incentive to do this because oil was costing me $3800 / year back when oil hit $5 a gallon, whereas gas costs $700 / year. This upgrade costs $14000 (includeing installation of forced air vents, central A/C and gas water heat tank). The previous upgrade from coal to oil was about reducing waste and increasing convenience. With coal, you had to deal with ash waste and stoking.
A dual-stage electric heat pump would in theory work and have comparable operating cost, but the install cost was like $30000, had questionable reliability and few contractors even knew about it. Geothermal would also work, but my land is tiny and the cost would have been something like $60000. There was even a Honda generator home co-generation plant option available, but again, expensive and no contractors.
What would you do? BTW, my largest utility bill now is actually water, because we are paying for the Boston harbor clean-up in my sewage bill. I'm tempted to illegally use rain water for the toilets... A rooftop solar system is popular around here, but it's not worth it based on my tiny electric bill.
We have to get off of fossil fuels, but it's definitely going to take a government mandate backed with financial incentives to get people to switch.
- justaguy88 5y ago> use rain water for the toilets I'm curious about why that's not allowed
- jhallenworld 5y agoThey meter the sewage by the amount of water you use, so using an un-metered water source would short-change them. You do have the option of getting a separate water meter for water you use for gardening, to avoid the sewage bill for water you don't send down the drain.
- meepmorp 5y agoI've never heard of metering sewage before. Everywhere I've ever lived had a flat fee per home, or based it on square footage. Is the water utility owned by the local government?
- reportingsjr 5y agoSewer billing is a thing where I am (Cincinnati, Ohio), and I can tell you exactly why! The sewer system in the urban area was largely built out by about 100 years ago as a combined system, where rain water and sewage were in the same sewer pipes. Many people didn't really care about water quality and disease back then, so the fact that the Ohio river was a big stream of shit and chemicals didn't matter. As other parts of life improved eventually more and more people wanted clean, healthy water and surrounding ecosystems, hence the EPA was created 50 years ago. The EPA got stricter and stricter over the last 50 years, and about 20-30 years ago started cracking down on sewage outflows in to waterways. As a result, the local waste water treatment utility (owned by local government) has been under a legal decree to fix sewage overflows which occur during storms due to these combined systems. This has meant spending billions on tearing out these pipes and replacing them with separate storm water and sewage lines. The utility started charging for separate clean water usage and sewer usage so people understood a bit better why their bill went up so much.
- meepmorp 5y agoThanks for the background, it makes more sense now.
- ip26 5y agoIt seems like induction could happen by itself in the next decade or two - the experience is really good now - but I agree, it seems like government action may be needed to get things like air source heat pumps rolling quickly. As you note, many contractors don't even know anything about them - there's a vicious cycle where they are expensive so they are uncommon & unfamiliar, which makes them expensive.