In 2007 we realized that we were spending way too much money to heat our 4 bedroom house. I live in Juneau Alaska. Now I know what you're thinking, Alaska must be forty below and dark all the time with ten feet of snow piled up. well, juneau is not really like that. Yes, we did get a lot of snow that year, but most of the time it just rains in the winter. Also, the coldest it got was 10 degrees F. In fact, most of the time it was in the 30's. So why so much money on heating? A crappy boiler. There was a time in the past when you could burn as much oil as you wanted to heat your house and it didn't matter, it was so cheap.
I don't remember this time, but aperantly the people who built my house did. the walls are built with 2x4s instead of 2x6's, the ceiling area was only partially insulated, half of it being used to store things or to hide a secret pot growing operation. and my hot water was provided by just running the boiler nonstop when hot water was needed. Long story short, lack of insulation and a boiler that loves to burn oil and pump heat out the chimney was costing me 500 a month in the winter. Also, Boilers have to be serviced by a professional. this cost me over $1000.00 over two years just for cleaning and a few small parts. A rip off.
Time to solve the problem
1. insulate better. I insulated the crawl space and the attic
2. electric hot water heater. It is much more efficient then my on-demand boiler although has a limited supply, it has a higher flow rate when it is working. the boiler couldn't even fill a tub without falling behind and putting out cold water.
3. New heating system.
I looked into all sorts of options from Geothermal heat pumps to wood fired boilers. I had this wild idea to put electric heaters in each room and control it with a computer and motion detectors, cooling the rooms we weren't in down to 60 or so. After researching the cost of each option I decided to go for it and build the computer controlled syetem. The nice thing about this option is that I can fix it myself, it's cheaper to install, has redundancy if one of the heaters breaks there are 10 more, and it should save a bunch of money over the oil not only because of efficiency, but because the price of oil rises much faster then our cheap hydroelectic power.
So here is some pictures and information about my awesome automated heating system. Enjoy.
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