If everybody agrees the technology is great, why is nothing being done?
Geo-exchange technology, also known as low-temperature geothermal, provides heating and cooling by taking advantage of constant temperatures two metres or more below the Earth's surface. It's renewable and free of greenhouse gas emissions, and while it requires electricity to operate, it considerably reduces the fossil fuels or power required to operate conventional heating and cooling systems.
"I think we're on to something, and I think it's the way of the future," said Richard Tripodi, vice-president of Remington's high-rise division.
It's one thing to talk. It's another to get a shovel and start digging long 6 feet deep trenches all around your back yard --if you have a backyard at all.
I re-energized my house last year using German subsidies.
Retooling with a heat pump would have been much too expensive.
But I've been thinking a LOT about heat pump (in this case geo-thermaly supported) technology. Why ain't it the silver bullet we've been looking for?
The only answer I have is that you can't bottle it and sell it to your neighbor. If you use it in your own home, you might "save" money in the long run. But you can't "make" money by producing electicity and putting it back in the grid.
Or does anyone have a way of using a heat pump to create electricity or charge a battery? Sort of a refrigerator in reverse??
Excellent. That probably means you have hit the water table. You can use the specific heat properties of water in your water table as a heat sink in the summer and as a heat source in the winter.
My smallish back yard is a 250 million year old coral reef, with about 4 inches of dirt dropped on it by the developer of the neighborhood. Hard to dig in. The HVAC guy I use follows the conventional logic: unless I'm going to live in the house for decades, I should just install oldfashioned air-sink units and leave it to the next owner of the house to fix.
So a geothermal project could go vertical, but I've been told that Austin (and Texas) has some funny environmental rules about withdrawing groundwater. (Edwards Aquifer and all that; apparently San Antonio and the salamanders both have some sort of claim on it) Or even drilling. Also, I don't know anyone with a backhoe, let alone drilling equipment.
So it looks like a little more research will be needed. My own vision for this particular climate was a pile of rocks with a little fountain to keep them wet. Let that be the heat sink for your cooling loop. Looks like I have to move out of the city to build a thing like that, though.
I'm in the midst of getting a geothermal heat pump installed. We're not doing the trench thing. We're going to run the loops vertically.
It's pretty pricey to retrofit an existing home. It is probably going to cost us around 25K USD to do the whole thing. At current energy costs, the payback time is going to be around 15 years. That's a big chunk of change and a long payback time for most people, especially considering that a lot of people don't plan on being in their house in 15 years. For new construction, however, it is a no-brainer.
Of course, "current energy costs" is the operative phrase. I'm actually expecting the thing to pay for itself in 5 years or so.
Three years ago I installed a Florida brand 4 ton geo-thermal heat pump in my log house. It cost me about $2200 or less for the unit.
The only other cost was to run some 1" PVC from the incoming water line in the basement. I ran the output down a line I had set long ago for gray water...it goes down a holler right behind the house and seeps back down into the aquifer, over time...this feed a creek where springs come out further down..
owever that loghouse has not been sold at auction and I have moved into smaller living quarters here on my land and h
lost of springs off this aquifer(or water bearing strata) all over this area..so the water runs out on the ground and I don't feel that I am drawing down the aquifer(or seam).
I could rather have installed another line back to the wellhead and dumped the output there back into my well.
Rather I intended to later borrow a buddies back hoe and lay my own ground loops..probably at a cost of less than $1,000.
The unit is super efficient and has a lot of builtin safeguards. I also had it loaded with heat strips in case of the well going out. The heat strips never ever come on unless someone pushes the thermostat up more than 4 degrees.
It cools and heats my 4500 sq ft log house fine...the basement not needing any cooling or heating as I find it comfortable just as it is.
Note: The 4500 sq ft includes the basement which is not finished living area.
I do agree that in suburbia that a geothermal is not usually going to work. Not enough space and most on city water hookup. If everyone went to using wellwater in a given area then perhaps they might create problems with the supply unless you dump it back in.
The best solution is to build in a area which has flowing spring creeks which you could dam up and lay coils in that would feed the heat exchanger in the heatpump. Or perhaps a nearby cave. A pond might also work if deep enough. Lay the pipe down in the bottom before you close the dam. The last pond I built only cost me for the dozer work ..about $400 back in the late 80s. If you have the land a box blade and front loader on a good sized tractor could do the job.Say 80 hp diesel or up.
airdale
PS. Note that I did all the install work myself. It was not that hard. I have worked on a/c and heatpumps in the past,replacing compressors,pulling vacumn,etc..but this unit was all selfcontained and far far simpler. Running pvc is simple as well...but copper in 8 ga and heavier has gone up tremendously in price...I put it on two circuit breakers..one is 60a and the heat strips on a 50a...
I use an amp-probe to measure the current and in normal run mode I pull about 15 to 20 on each leg. Once the biomass of the wood logs absorb the heat or cool...the environment remains very very stable and the unit runs very infrequently. Not like in a interior made of drywall. I also used nothing but Andersen windows in the house for high energy efficiency.
Wow. I think I may have made a strategic error in my heating.
I'm currently in the process of replacing my oil-fired boiler with a wood-pellet boiler, which will cut my heating bill in half and pay for itself in 6 to 8 years (even) at current prices.
I eliminated the idea of geothermal, because it seemed ill-adapted to retrofitting an old stone farmhouse (low temperature water not suitable for the existing radiators). But I was concentrating on ground-loop systems... and my property is rotten with springs. Including one which runs right under the house and takes my sewage away (more or less... but that's another, unsavoury story).
I will try to understandd more of what you wrote, Airdale, because there is probably something fairly easy and cheap that I can do with a heat pump...
But it will probably wait a year or two, I suspect the tech will be more widely available then.
It can be hard to find much info on it, but my family built a house in the White Mts in Western Maine around 1980, and included a 'Cool Tube' in the design, whereby the 4" PVC Drainpiping that surrounded the foundation a bit below the frost-line (about 50" around here) had a spur added to it that went a ways off (50'?) and emerged as an Air Intake, (with squirrel-screen on it and a j-turn to keep rain out..) while another spur came into the house and up through the slab near the kitchen plumbing lines, so that air drawn in by the house's natural convection was brought up from the winter temps into the 40-45 degree range by it's long travel through the submerged drains before entering the house.
This provided an oxygen-rich air supply at a decent temp, which is very helpful in a home that relies on any kind of combustion-based heating. It also can balance out the negative pressure that draws excessive COLD winter air in any crack, or anytime a door or window is opened, even momentarily.
A small fan can be added to help create a Positive Pressure from the Cool Tube to further defeat any Infiltration. This system also helps in the Summer, bringing nice cool and fresh air into the home, and keeping leaks from allowing the Hot Ambient Air in.. though some systems and warmer regions need to be more careful about condensation and hence, Mold Issues.
I'm eager to try a "Cool Tube" retrofit in my In-town 1850 bldg Basement, where the Heat Exchange will use the stone walls/foundation perimeter to bring up the temps of the frigid winter air..
I've still got more insulation going on right now.. but I'm hoping I can get a roughed in test for this going this winter, as well as the 'Winter Fridge', which is a simple (!?) Heatexchanger using Antifreeze, Propylene Glycol to grab some Winter Cold and Help my fridge stay cool while it lives absurdly inside a house that I'm paying to keep WARM..
Hopeful in the face of multiple Ironies!
Bob Fiske
Excellent work, Bob. Any performance data or other specifics to share would be useful to others.
IMO, GHPs have evolved to compete with traditional HVAC systems, but are still very costly right now in comparison to air-exchange heat pumps or oil and gas heaters and electric A/C.
Nonetheless, a fundamental resource is the near-constant temperature thermal reservoir below 10 ft or so from the surface. More novel designs and work to use this (renewable) resource would have Hugh benefits during the time when FFs become scarce and grossly expensive and the time when solar/wind (or nuclear, regrettably) become the dominant source of energy supply.
Adaptation. It’s in the genes. Well, for some of us.
They might work depending on your climate. but to say they 'compete' is flat out wrong. come back and claim that when one can get one installed for a couple thousand dollars. 27-30k is way too much.
compete means to do what conventional HVAC systems do. I mentioned they are expensive, but on a life-cycle cost basis GHPs and conventional systems are often within 25%, and price competitive for new construction.
I also mentioned they are expensive at the current prices for FFs. The energy savings will tip the cost balance when FF prices double or more.
My point was to suggest with some experimentation, there are likely ways to tap the below-ground thermal reservoir suitable for one's local climate, and bypass the high current costs for closed loop systems. And Bob above was pointing out one.
Why would you expect something that could save you close to $2000 a year (at current energy prices) would have to be "installed for a couple thousand dollars"? Given where energy prices are headed, it is my old electric AC plus heating oil that can't compete with geothermal.
People really need to start taking a longer-range view of things. The days of cheap energy are coming to an end. The cost of doing something about home energy consumption is only going to go up, as is the cost of not doing something.
We're stuck on 'Cheap, Fast, Easy' solutions.. People do keep whining that Alt Energy installations are expensive. Yes, they are, and soon, so will everything be..
My Mom told me about a Music Student with a Russian Teacher, and the student complained that the piece He'd been assigned was hard.. and the teacher excitedly came back with 'Good! Hard is Good!' Words to live by!
Of course, sometimes cheap is good, if you aren't embarrassed by thinking you've been 'cheap'.. Part of the mode of thinking we have to challenge in 'rich-minded' places is that it's not necessarily a form of failure when you economize.. put a patch on your clothes, wear sweaters in a colder house, cook more on Monday and reheat leftovers during the week, grab that half-roll of insulation off the sidewalk trash heap and tighten up your home with it. (you just found $4 on the street!!) Be seen biking where 'normal' people drive.. We have a lot of foolish pride in the way of some of these habit-changes..
good comment - i keep trying to break the STBE-wife out of this mindset.... stil she'd prefer to buy new and throw away so that her friends think we're loaded with money instead of flat broke
Someone had a fancy accountant word for this concept - I said I wanted a wind turbine, they said "not cost effective", I said "very cost effective when its the only source of power". Something [minimum] was the phrase ...
We build datacenters and telco central offices to withstand power outages. I'd like to have a home done to the same standard and I'd like it to be prepped for long periods of standalone time.
Most of you are very wealthy; I can tell because you actually have yards.
The vast majority of Americans are living in barracks-like apartment buildings or rented places and have NO jurisdiction over how things are done.
The result is the energy-saving gadgetry I see in the houses of the wealthy, and the huge energy and water waste I see in the dwellings of the vast majority.
The wealthy will have neato water-shut-off shower heads, the poor will have antiquated tubs with added on showers that are tricky as hell to not get icy-cold or blazing hot, and once set, there's a strong incentive to not mess with the thing - so the water blasts all through the shower. Hell it's even that way here - the owner of this place has a nice easy on/off thing, I just have to blast it. I try to compensate by taking less showers lol.
The wealthy can grow veggies on their lawns, the vast majority of us can't do that, no lawns at all or at best a large shared space, a few pots of veggies may be possible on a patio, but they'll get stolen. So the Safeway or the Supermercado are where we get our veggies, 1000's of transport miles in your salad anyone?
I think it's great that you guys are doing all this neat heat pump stuff, but for the vast majority of Americans, if The Landlord has a heater that runs on whale-oil, that's what you use.
The more cost sensitive are probably corralled in that one third who rent, so the ones most in need are, as always, the ones least capable of making changes for a variety of reasons.
The urban areas really pull the home ownership stats down. In the middle of the country, home ownership is 70%, even 75% or more. I would assume there aren't many condos there.
I thought the banks actually own quite a large proportion of the houses ... and that's the problem, because people can't afford the interest payments let alone the capital repayments? ... No?
Just because it is a detached single family home, does not mean there is enough yard for a heat pump, garden, etc. I was wandering through a subdivision under construction a couple of years back, which were eventually put on the market at $700,000. You could, uh, spit out your window and hit your neighbor's house. There might have been enough room to drive a car between them. Maybe.
That's true. But you could put solar panels on the roof, install insulation, insulated windows, energy-efficient appliances, etc., which apartment dwellers can't do.
Those almost new homes may need an energy retrofit with rapidly rising energy prices, I would think someday soon, utility expenses could rival the mortgage payment on poorly insulated homes, at least in winter months.
Anecdotal Evidence
(I doo so love anecdotal - often more real than graphs and charts)
Or
Conversations at the edge of a dying civilisation....
I rang my sister in law tonight while my wife was out (dont read too much into that...) I wanted her opinion of the new CGI film of Beowulf (Crap, but since we had to translate from Anglo Saxon in Eng Lit Classes we both have a dog in the fight.)
Then it went to 'life , the universe and everything' type talk.
They went to Florida for a Holiday at half term. She was excited. LOTS of big properties going cheap, cheaper than last year, and what with the cheap dollar, this was the cheapest holiday they have had for a long time. Cheaper than France, cheaper than Spain.
She said Houses were on the market cheap and the owners even threw in an SUV with the sale.
Let me repeat that:
''and the owners even threw in an SUV with the sale''.
Distress sales.
Big time.
She mentioned the water shortage.
I said dont buy into Florida. (I put her off Spain a couple of years ago).
I said imagine Florida with water rationing and electricity blackouts with no AC.
This girl is no fool. Always on the lookout for the next money maker, she and her husband are an order of magnitude wealthier than me. But she is no fool and a short conversation about Florida turned her from 'buy' to 'walk away from the mess'.
Closer to home: 'how is business?' I asked.
In the space of a two week holiday, she came back to her Northern English , rich, commuter town to find out that 5 of her friend's husbands had been canned. All were in senior positions in Accounting, Marketing and similar.
All within two weeks. All were surprised.
She works as an Estate Agents (Real Estate).
She is good.
She could sell a caveman's cave back to the caveman.
She says ''before I went (to Florida) we were moving a 100 sales a week.''.
Hmmm ... I walk into town most days ( it saves petrol and keeps me fit!) on the way I pass loads of houses that are for sale and nothing seems to sell. Or, if it does sell 'subject to contract' it soon comes back on the market 'cos the 'chain' has broken somewhere.
Oh dear! I hope it's just the time of year and sales will pick up again in the spring!
i like anecdotal too - usually shot down in the short term and born out in the long
i don't know if anyone else is job hunting right now - it is NOT pretty out there - boards are full of junk-jobs (you know the scam job ads) which basically talk more to the distress of the employer not being able to offer real jobs, and to the number of people who must be looking thereby attracting the outright scammers
this economy is in tatters right now - only denial is holding things back
Yes, my experience is that the job situation in natural resources--say forestry-related--has gotten ugly, too. Recently talked with a forester for the Oregon Department of Forestry, and he said that the response to entry-level positions (Technician-level) has been phenomenal in recent months. Not just the huge number of applicants, but also the qualifications of the applicants were unprecedented (qualified for much higher positions). He's been with the ODF for over two decades. I've heard similar comments from people at the Washington Department of Natural Resources, too. Just a couple more anecdotes to add to the rest.
You shouldn't have put her off Spain. It would have been a better investment than anything she's bought in the US since then. Climate change notwithstanding, Spain will be in a better position than most of the US.
Spain housing is a large pile of animal origin NPK fertilizer in terms of valuations. Can't speak to the climate there, but you said "investment" and its all Florida condos in terms of behavior now :-(
The vast majority of Americans are living in barracks-like apartment buildings or rented places and have NO jurisdiction over how things are done.
Any idea how many are living in the barracks-like holding tanks or apartments and condos? Owned or unowned? How about the suburbs -- Zoning and code, I think, tend to be easier the higher up the feeding chain one goes.
For intellectual interest alone I watched Victoria Beckham on TV house buying and after clinically observing the drop in her décolletage for a bit noticed the house she was looking at had a cement patio with no railing and a very dramatic drop over the edge. No code I know would let that pass without a buck to grease those railings away.
Getting the geothermal ball rolling
If everybody agrees the technology is great, why is nothing being done?
It's one thing to talk. It's another to get a shovel and start digging long 6 feet deep trenches all around your back yard --if you have a backyard at all.
Indeed, far better to defer any problem to future generations rather than absorb any inconvenience or cost ourselves.
I re-energized my house last year using German subsidies.
Retooling with a heat pump would have been much too expensive.
But I've been thinking a LOT about heat pump (in this case geo-thermaly supported) technology. Why ain't it the silver bullet we've been looking for?
The only answer I have is that you can't bottle it and sell it to your neighbor. If you use it in your own home, you might "save" money in the long run. But you can't "make" money by producing electicity and putting it back in the grid.
Or does anyone have a way of using a heat pump to create electricity or charge a battery? Sort of a refrigerator in reverse??
Thanks, Dom
If I dig a 6 foot hole in my back yard, or front yard, I hit water.
Excellent. That probably means you have hit the water table. You can use the specific heat properties of water in your water table as a heat sink in the summer and as a heat source in the winter.
My smallish back yard is a 250 million year old coral reef, with about 4 inches of dirt dropped on it by the developer of the neighborhood. Hard to dig in. The HVAC guy I use follows the conventional logic: unless I'm going to live in the house for decades, I should just install oldfashioned air-sink units and leave it to the next owner of the house to fix.
So a geothermal project could go vertical, but I've been told that Austin (and Texas) has some funny environmental rules about withdrawing groundwater. (Edwards Aquifer and all that; apparently San Antonio and the salamanders both have some sort of claim on it) Or even drilling. Also, I don't know anyone with a backhoe, let alone drilling equipment.
So it looks like a little more research will be needed. My own vision for this particular climate was a pile of rocks with a little fountain to keep them wet. Let that be the heat sink for your cooling loop. Looks like I have to move out of the city to build a thing like that, though.
I'm in the midst of getting a geothermal heat pump installed. We're not doing the trench thing. We're going to run the loops vertically.
It's pretty pricey to retrofit an existing home. It is probably going to cost us around 25K USD to do the whole thing. At current energy costs, the payback time is going to be around 15 years. That's a big chunk of change and a long payback time for most people, especially considering that a lot of people don't plan on being in their house in 15 years. For new construction, however, it is a no-brainer.
Of course, "current energy costs" is the operative phrase. I'm actually expecting the thing to pay for itself in 5 years or so.
These costs are screwed up.
Three years ago I installed a Florida brand 4 ton geo-thermal heat pump in my log house. It cost me about $2200 or less for the unit.
The only other cost was to run some 1" PVC from the incoming water line in the basement. I ran the output down a line I had set long ago for gray water...it goes down a holler right behind the house and seeps back down into the aquifer, over time...this feed a creek where springs come out further down..
owever that loghouse has not been sold at auction and I have moved into smaller living quarters here on my land and h
lost of springs off this aquifer(or water bearing strata) all over this area..so the water runs out on the ground and I don't feel that I am drawing down the aquifer(or seam).
I could rather have installed another line back to the wellhead and dumped the output there back into my well.
Rather I intended to later borrow a buddies back hoe and lay my own ground loops..probably at a cost of less than $1,000.
The unit is super efficient and has a lot of builtin safeguards. I also had it loaded with heat strips in case of the well going out. The heat strips never ever come on unless someone pushes the thermostat up more than 4 degrees.
It cools and heats my 4500 sq ft log house fine...the basement not needing any cooling or heating as I find it comfortable just as it is.
Note: The 4500 sq ft includes the basement which is not finished living area.
I do agree that in suburbia that a geothermal is not usually going to work. Not enough space and most on city water hookup. If everyone went to using wellwater in a given area then perhaps they might create problems with the supply unless you dump it back in.
The best solution is to build in a area which has flowing spring creeks which you could dam up and lay coils in that would feed the heat exchanger in the heatpump. Or perhaps a nearby cave. A pond might also work if deep enough. Lay the pipe down in the bottom before you close the dam. The last pond I built only cost me for the dozer work ..about $400 back in the late 80s. If you have the land a box blade and front loader on a good sized tractor could do the job.Say 80 hp diesel or up.
airdale
PS. Note that I did all the install work myself. It was not that hard. I have worked on a/c and heatpumps in the past,replacing compressors,pulling vacumn,etc..but this unit was all selfcontained and far far simpler. Running pvc is simple as well...but copper in 8 ga and heavier has gone up tremendously in price...I put it on two circuit breakers..one is 60a and the heat strips on a 50a...
I use an amp-probe to measure the current and in normal run mode I pull about 15 to 20 on each leg. Once the biomass of the wood logs absorb the heat or cool...the environment remains very very stable and the unit runs very infrequently. Not like in a interior made of drywall. I also used nothing but Andersen windows in the house for high energy efficiency.
Wow. I think I may have made a strategic error in my heating.
I'm currently in the process of replacing my oil-fired boiler with a wood-pellet boiler, which will cut my heating bill in half and pay for itself in 6 to 8 years (even) at current prices.
I eliminated the idea of geothermal, because it seemed ill-adapted to retrofitting an old stone farmhouse (low temperature water not suitable for the existing radiators). But I was concentrating on ground-loop systems... and my property is rotten with springs. Including one which runs right under the house and takes my sewage away (more or less... but that's another, unsavoury story).
I will try to understandd more of what you wrote, Airdale, because there is probably something fairly easy and cheap that I can do with a heat pump...
But it will probably wait a year or two, I suspect the tech will be more widely available then.
COOL TUBE - Low-tech Geothermal Option
It can be hard to find much info on it, but my family built a house in the White Mts in Western Maine around 1980, and included a 'Cool Tube' in the design, whereby the 4" PVC Drainpiping that surrounded the foundation a bit below the frost-line (about 50" around here) had a spur added to it that went a ways off (50'?) and emerged as an Air Intake, (with squirrel-screen on it and a j-turn to keep rain out..) while another spur came into the house and up through the slab near the kitchen plumbing lines, so that air drawn in by the house's natural convection was brought up from the winter temps into the 40-45 degree range by it's long travel through the submerged drains before entering the house.
This provided an oxygen-rich air supply at a decent temp, which is very helpful in a home that relies on any kind of combustion-based heating. It also can balance out the negative pressure that draws excessive COLD winter air in any crack, or anytime a door or window is opened, even momentarily.
A small fan can be added to help create a Positive Pressure from the Cool Tube to further defeat any Infiltration. This system also helps in the Summer, bringing nice cool and fresh air into the home, and keeping leaks from allowing the Hot Ambient Air in.. though some systems and warmer regions need to be more careful about condensation and hence, Mold Issues.
I'm eager to try a "Cool Tube" retrofit in my In-town 1850 bldg Basement, where the Heat Exchange will use the stone walls/foundation perimeter to bring up the temps of the frigid winter air..
I've still got more insulation going on right now.. but I'm hoping I can get a roughed in test for this going this winter, as well as the 'Winter Fridge', which is a simple (!?) Heatexchanger using Antifreeze, Propylene Glycol to grab some Winter Cold and Help my fridge stay cool while it lives absurdly inside a house that I'm paying to keep WARM..
Hopeful in the face of multiple Ironies!
Bob Fiske
Excellent work, Bob. Any performance data or other specifics to share would be useful to others.
IMO, GHPs have evolved to compete with traditional HVAC systems, but are still very costly right now in comparison to air-exchange heat pumps or oil and gas heaters and electric A/C.
Nonetheless, a fundamental resource is the near-constant temperature thermal reservoir below 10 ft or so from the surface. More novel designs and work to use this (renewable) resource would have Hugh benefits during the time when FFs become scarce and grossly expensive and the time when solar/wind (or nuclear, regrettably) become the dominant source of energy supply.
Adaptation. It’s in the genes. Well, for some of us.
They might work depending on your climate. but to say they 'compete' is flat out wrong. come back and claim that when one can get one installed for a couple thousand dollars. 27-30k is way too much.
compete means to do what conventional HVAC systems do. I mentioned they are expensive, but on a life-cycle cost basis GHPs and conventional systems are often within 25%, and price competitive for new construction.
I also mentioned they are expensive at the current prices for FFs. The energy savings will tip the cost balance when FF prices double or more.
My point was to suggest with some experimentation, there are likely ways to tap the below-ground thermal reservoir suitable for one's local climate, and bypass the high current costs for closed loop systems. And Bob above was pointing out one.
Why would you expect something that could save you close to $2000 a year (at current energy prices) would have to be "installed for a couple thousand dollars"? Given where energy prices are headed, it is my old electric AC plus heating oil that can't compete with geothermal.
People really need to start taking a longer-range view of things. The days of cheap energy are coming to an end. The cost of doing something about home energy consumption is only going to go up, as is the cost of not doing something.
We're stuck on 'Cheap, Fast, Easy' solutions.. People do keep whining that Alt Energy installations are expensive. Yes, they are, and soon, so will everything be..
My Mom told me about a Music Student with a Russian Teacher, and the student complained that the piece He'd been assigned was hard.. and the teacher excitedly came back with 'Good! Hard is Good!' Words to live by!
Of course, sometimes cheap is good, if you aren't embarrassed by thinking you've been 'cheap'.. Part of the mode of thinking we have to challenge in 'rich-minded' places is that it's not necessarily a form of failure when you economize.. put a patch on your clothes, wear sweaters in a colder house, cook more on Monday and reheat leftovers during the week, grab that half-roll of insulation off the sidewalk trash heap and tighten up your home with it. (you just found $4 on the street!!) Be seen biking where 'normal' people drive.. We have a lot of foolish pride in the way of some of these habit-changes..
Bob
what he said...
Jeff
thirded
good comment - i keep trying to break the STBE-wife out of this mindset.... stil she'd prefer to buy new and throw away so that her friends think we're loaded with money instead of flat broke
STBE-wife (?) Sorry, I'm being slow today..
Space Transportation Booster Engine (NASA). That's some wife! ;o)
Soon To Be Ex
Someone had a fancy accountant word for this concept - I said I wanted a wind turbine, they said "not cost effective", I said "very cost effective when its the only source of power". Something [minimum] was the phrase ...
We build datacenters and telco central offices to withstand power outages. I'd like to have a home done to the same standard and I'd like it to be prepped for long periods of standalone time.
Most of you are very wealthy; I can tell because you actually have yards.
The vast majority of Americans are living in barracks-like apartment buildings or rented places and have NO jurisdiction over how things are done.
The result is the energy-saving gadgetry I see in the houses of the wealthy, and the huge energy and water waste I see in the dwellings of the vast majority.
The wealthy will have neato water-shut-off shower heads, the poor will have antiquated tubs with added on showers that are tricky as hell to not get icy-cold or blazing hot, and once set, there's a strong incentive to not mess with the thing - so the water blasts all through the shower. Hell it's even that way here - the owner of this place has a nice easy on/off thing, I just have to blast it. I try to compensate by taking less showers lol.
The wealthy can grow veggies on their lawns, the vast majority of us can't do that, no lawns at all or at best a large shared space, a few pots of veggies may be possible on a patio, but they'll get stolen. So the Safeway or the Supermercado are where we get our veggies, 1000's of transport miles in your salad anyone?
I think it's great that you guys are doing all this neat heat pump stuff, but for the vast majority of Americans, if The Landlord has a heater that runs on whale-oil, that's what you use.
Two-thirds of Americans own rather than rent.
Though I expect that to be changing, perhaps by a lot.
The more cost sensitive are probably corralled in that one third who rent, so the ones most in need are, as always, the ones least capable of making changes for a variety of reasons.
Own with lots or just own? Are condominiums and owned apartments included in that?
I assume that counts condos. But most are single detached (i.e., single family houses). Some census data here.
Also found this map interesting:
http://www.danter.com/statistics/ho2005.pdf
The urban areas really pull the home ownership stats down. In the middle of the country, home ownership is 70%, even 75% or more. I would assume there aren't many condos there.
I thought the banks actually own quite a large proportion of the houses ... and that's the problem, because people can't afford the interest payments let alone the capital repayments? ... No?
Just because it is a detached single family home, does not mean there is enough yard for a heat pump, garden, etc. I was wandering through a subdivision under construction a couple of years back, which were eventually put on the market at $700,000. You could, uh, spit out your window and hit your neighbor's house. There might have been enough room to drive a car between them. Maybe.
That's true. But you could put solar panels on the roof, install insulation, insulated windows, energy-efficient appliances, etc., which apartment dwellers can't do.
Those almost new homes may need an energy retrofit with rapidly rising energy prices, I would think someday soon, utility expenses could rival the mortgage payment on poorly insulated homes, at least in winter months.
Anecdotal Evidence
(I doo so love anecdotal - often more real than graphs and charts)
Or
Conversations at the edge of a dying civilisation....
I rang my sister in law tonight while my wife was out (dont read too much into that...) I wanted her opinion of the new CGI film of Beowulf (Crap, but since we had to translate from Anglo Saxon in Eng Lit Classes we both have a dog in the fight.)
Then it went to 'life , the universe and everything' type talk.
They went to Florida for a Holiday at half term. She was excited. LOTS of big properties going cheap, cheaper than last year, and what with the cheap dollar, this was the cheapest holiday they have had for a long time. Cheaper than France, cheaper than Spain.
She said Houses were on the market cheap and the owners even threw in an SUV with the sale.
Let me repeat that:
''and the owners even threw in an SUV with the sale''.
Distress sales.
Big time.
She mentioned the water shortage.
I said dont buy into Florida. (I put her off Spain a couple of years ago).
I said imagine Florida with water rationing and electricity blackouts with no AC.
This girl is no fool. Always on the lookout for the next money maker, she and her husband are an order of magnitude wealthier than me. But she is no fool and a short conversation about Florida turned her from 'buy' to 'walk away from the mess'.
Closer to home: 'how is business?' I asked.
In the space of a two week holiday, she came back to her Northern English , rich, commuter town to find out that 5 of her friend's husbands had been canned. All were in senior positions in Accounting, Marketing and similar.
All within two weeks. All were surprised.
She works as an Estate Agents (Real Estate).
She is good.
She could sell a caveman's cave back to the caveman.
She says ''before I went (to Florida) we were moving a 100 sales a week.''.
''Last week we moved 29''.
Take your partners for the ELP Square-dance.
Hmmm ... I walk into town most days ( it saves petrol and keeps me fit!) on the way I pass loads of houses that are for sale and nothing seems to sell. Or, if it does sell 'subject to contract' it soon comes back on the market 'cos the 'chain' has broken somewhere.
Oh dear! I hope it's just the time of year and sales will pick up again in the spring!
'Best hopes' ... as Alan would say.
'Don't hold your breath' ... as I would say.
i like anecdotal too - usually shot down in the short term and born out in the long
i don't know if anyone else is job hunting right now - it is NOT pretty out there - boards are full of junk-jobs (you know the scam job ads) which basically talk more to the distress of the employer not being able to offer real jobs, and to the number of people who must be looking thereby attracting the outright scammers
this economy is in tatters right now - only denial is holding things back
the old adage about if you are still employed (knock on wood) it's just a recession whereas if you're looking, it's a depression.
FYI, I have a family member in the finance/accounting business that's looking and dittos your observation that it's gotten brutal out there.
Hope you find something soon.
Citigroup looking to layoff 45,000 staffers.
Getting to be time to find a port, maybe any port.
Do you have any evidence to support that? ;-)
Yes, my experience is that the job situation in natural resources--say forestry-related--has gotten ugly, too. Recently talked with a forester for the Oregon Department of Forestry, and he said that the response to entry-level positions (Technician-level) has been phenomenal in recent months. Not just the huge number of applicants, but also the qualifications of the applicants were unprecedented (qualified for much higher positions). He's been with the ODF for over two decades. I've heard similar comments from people at the Washington Department of Natural Resources, too. Just a couple more anecdotes to add to the rest.
-best,
graywulffe in CVO, OR
You shouldn't have put her off Spain. It would have been a better investment than anything she's bought in the US since then. Climate change notwithstanding, Spain will be in a better position than most of the US.
Spain housing is a large pile of animal origin NPK fertilizer in terms of valuations. Can't speak to the climate there, but you said "investment" and its all Florida condos in terms of behavior now :-(
Any idea how many are living in the barracks-like holding tanks or apartments and condos? Owned or unowned? How about the suburbs -- Zoning and code, I think, tend to be easier the higher up the feeding chain one goes.
For intellectual interest alone I watched Victoria Beckham on TV house buying and after clinically observing the drop in her décolletage for a bit noticed the house she was looking at had a cement patio with no railing and a very dramatic drop over the edge. No code I know would let that pass without a buck to grease those railings away.
I think fleam has some valid points.