Energy Rates and TV costs

[FDNYLiberty]

Old IronSights: I figured that most folks out there use plastic piping. I presume that this is pretty standrad. Thanks for the info. Always a pleasure.

[Old Ironsights]

Old IronSights: I figured that most folks out there use plastic piping. I presume that this is pretty standrad. Thanks for the info. Always a pleasure.

Only on new construction or new remodels.  Lots of Iron & Copper (and bad PVC) still out there.

[FDNYLiberty]

Good to know Old IronSights. Thanks. Will have to ask about this when I finally find my new place in WY. I don't want any hidden surprizes.

[Crappiewy]

Passive Solar heat never pays for itself. The cost in installing and the design build phase is many times more than you will ever recover from the heat gained. You still need the installed heating system for those cold cloudy weeks.
However I am not against Passive solar heating just be mindfull of the real savings that you will receive.

I like PEX piping too.
 Too bad the Shark bite fittings will put you in the poor house...

I dont think that too many of us watch TV.......

[Crappiewy]

... (natural gas piped in from street WYOMING).

There fixed it for ya 

MANUMIT

Oh! Forgot the best one. Coal..
$40 per ton. Usually free if you work there.

[rhodges]

Passive Solar heat never pays for itself.

Is there not a single exception to that?  The word "never" is really specific and absolute.

My house has very poor natural lighting.  The living room has just a three by four foot South-facing window.  I bought some 4x8 fixed windows and am thinking that two of these would greatly improve the sunlight and warming from the three or four hours we get in the Winter.

Ideally, a square meter of window will let in one kilowatt of sunlight when the sky is clear.  The two windows could let in six kilowatts of sunlight for zero to four hours per day, or in electric terms, from zero to a buck and a quarter per day worth, or maybe an average of twenty bucks a month.  That might be worth over a hundred bucks a year in heating.  The windows cost almost two hundred each, so the payoff might be less than four years if nothing tragic happens.

Setting aside the heating value, increasing the natural light by more than five times is surely worth something.  I won't bother to compare the differences between material survival and a happy life to illustrate the point.

I like PEX piping too.    Too bad the Shark bite fittings will put you in the poor house...

Yes, I am also coming around to PEX.  It has the temperature ratings of CPVC, and can handle some number of freezing events without breaking.  It can bend, and not need all those right angle fittings that PVC and CPVC need.  The tradeoff is that PEX needs expensive compression rings and a hundred-buck crimper tool where CPVC (or simple PVC) just needs a hacksaw and a can of "cement" that you will throw away soon afterwards.  I have plenty of experience with PVC and CPVC.  And I think PEX parts are really expensive, but I think that I am starting to come around to using PEX for some things.

[Crappiewy]

one kilowatt is for the light striking the earth. You need to take into account the emissivity of the glass and the low angle of the sun in winter. In reality you will recieve about 250w per sqmt in crook county using non low e glass dual pane windows, On the other hand you will lose about 2kw of heat in a 24 hour period from conduction thru each window. So by adding the windows you will add about 1.5kw of heat per day as long as the sun is shining. If you average it you will probably have no gain. If you had more hours of sun you might have more gain but then you will need to add thermal mass to store it. That is where the expense comes in. Not the windows.
I like windows and light too. My place has NO south facing windows.. Im going to add an attached greenhouse next spring.

[Old Ironsights]

Passive Solar heat never pays for itself. The cost in installing and the design build phase is many times more than you will ever recover from the heat gained.

Not true.  Thermal Envelope designs are not significantly more expensive than non-efficient construction and ARE significantly less expensive than Active type systems.

You still need the installed heating system for those cold cloudy weeks.

True... ish.  Again, I have data from a house we built in the 80s that, while still in the construction phase was holding interior temperatures of over 55deg F with no heat whatsoever... while it was well below zero and cloudy outside.  So you have to warm the house from the 50s a whole 15-20 deg.  You can almost do that with the heat output of your refrigerator.

However I am not against Passive solar heating just be mindfull of the real savings that you will receive.

For Passive to be cost effective, it must be an integral design element.  But once it is then it works rather well.  I have mounds of Wyoming test data to prove it too. 

[Paul Bonneau]

Yeah, I think you have to do more than just have a few south-facing windows to make it work.  Lots of factors go into it - which is a problem in a way, since you can't expect a lot of construction companies to cover all the complicated details well. I suppose the remedy is either hire a company that specializes in solar, or be the general contractor yourself and ride herd on the subcontractors. Or build the whole thing yourself!

Of course house siting is very important too. Makes no sense to try to capture smallish heat flows, but site the house out exposed to winter winds. At least, I guess that's true. The house we have outside of Cody is pretty darn exposed. I may have to try adding some trees to cut the wind speed a bit...

"Annualized Geo-Solar" is also worth looking at.

Wyoming should be near ideal for solar:
1) Very little if any permitting needed, so little bureaucrat ass-kissing to get something "experimental" approved.
2) A fair amount of sun in the winter.
3) Usually not much problem with being shaded by trees!
4) Low rainfall means underground works better than in most places.

The one downside of underground designs is having to deal with radon, which is a problem all over the Mountain West.

[MichaelNotMike]

TV..... we pay about 130 a month to Bresnan for a package of high-speed internet, phone (unlimited long distance) and about a zillion channels of hi-def TV.

The internet goes out about 6 hours about once a month (usually when it's windy, rather than snowy), but hey....yay. I dig it.

We're in Casper. You can't get DSL everywhere in Wyoming, if you live somewhere rural you're going to have to either settle for dial up or get satellite (expensive, and about half the speed of DSL.)

Cell phone coverage is spotty....people who travel a lot for business in this state often have two cell phones....different companies cover different areas.

MWD

[jscottdavis04]

We had AT&T as our cell provider, but they have close to 0% coverage in Wyoming. We haven't bothered to get new phones--kind of liberating! We also don't watch TV. I would say our internet here is slower and more expensive and, as Michael points out, often goes out when it's really windy (makes watching the news online an all-day project). BUT utility costs are quite low compared to out East, which makes up for whatever is lacking with the internet.

[HardwareHank]

We have a 4,000sf, three level, log home. It's protected on two sides by hills and has a southern exposure.

The primary heat source is a natural-gas fired boiler with baseboard heating units. We have a (catalytic) equipped wood stove on the lowest level. On a typical winter day, (sunny) the boiler kicks on in the morning to heat things up but after that, the sun provides more than enough heat throughout the day. If it's cloudy or really cold... we fire-up the wood stove. We burn local firewoods during the days, but when we hit the sack, I stoke it up with seasoned oak. (I bought 4 tons of the oak in Wisconsin last year when I came thru there on one of my business trips).

Our pantry is located in a room-within-a-room in an outbuilding. It's insulated to R-30 and has electrical baseboard heating which we set to 45 degrees all winter. There's also a propane 93% efficiency furnace, and a wood-burning stove out there to provide some backup should the utilities fail in the winter. (It's been ten years since we had a power outage that lasted more than 10 minutes).

We also run two electric water tank heaters for the livestock. They turn on at 32 degrees. One is 500 watt. The other 1,100.

Let me say that we're not very careful about conserving power. We  probably could cut back 10% just by flipping a few lights off.

Anyway... our total (Big Horn REA) electrical bill last month was $131.23 and our natural gas ran 65.50.

[manfromnevada]

Going back to energy rates.
Ours is roughly $0.055 per KWhr with PRECorp.

Was just reading this week that the utility in Las Vegas is contracting with a greenie solar electric place in Nye County, where I used to live, to BUY their stinkin' power at $0.135 per KWhr!!! Imagine what the retail will be! Oh, and the smart people or reps in NV made a "law" to require 20% of energy to come from these same fantastic greenie sources!

My all electric house is also cheap to heat, but it won't be if the Obamites get their Tax and Trade bill and other anti-fossil agenda items. Already they are trying to classify "coal ash" (the left over stuff) as "toxic waste".

Mac

[Crappiewy]

Ive burnt coal in my pellet stove and havent seen any ash.......

[Old Ironsights]

Ive burnt coal in my pellet stove and havent seen any ash.......

Yeah, but you get it for Free from Santa every year... bet you're ready for a re-stock too...