“A veritable dusting” as Time says of Friday’s snow in San Francisco (“the first snow in 35 years“), but that was at 900 feet (in the Twin Peaks neighborhood). Here’s a picture I just got from some friends on the western edge of the Santa Clara valley (“Silicon Valley”), fifty miles south of San Francisco:
Early Saturday morning, Saratoga CA, exact elevation 630 feet according to Google Earth. Light snow melts in the morning sun.
Overall, we’ve had a balmy winter in California, balmy enough that when my furnace went out, I was able to get by for a month just by leaving all the “heat balls” on:
Heat ball central. 195 watts of up.
I have 15 bulbs I can turn on in my two most occupied rooms for about 1500 watts of warming. Remember, according to the British government, 95% of ot the electricity that powers an incandescent bulb is “wasted” on heat production, making them very efficient heat producers.
Leaving all my lights on yields as much heat as this 1500 watt space-heater, with the added benefits of a lot more light, and a lot less danger:
I didn’t even use the space heater except when company was over. Now I’m using this:
Ahhh. That’s better. New 2-stage furnace, of the standard non-condensing variety.
If warmth is “wasted” energy then so is life, which explains why the greens don’t account the cost of stripping every household of the equivalent of one or two emergency space heaters. “This wasted energy adds to your carbon footprint,” says the Downing Street gang, and if the occasional furnace failure reduces the occasional serf’s carbon footprint to zero, the accounting is even better!
Lunatics. If incandescent bulbs create too much heat in summer, people can turn them off. There is plenty of natural light during the long day and the psyche does not crave more than enough to see by. Those free people who can stomach the sallow dinge of the swirly-cone CFLs can decide for themselves if they want to switch bulbs for the season, but in winter, lots of light and lots of heat are the perfect combination.
Snow in Palo Alto?
Just for the record, I’ve been predicting snow in the flatlands of Palo Alto for the last two years (hence the picture of snow from my friends in Saratoga). My prediction got derailed last year by El Nino (though Texas, Las Vegas, D.C. and the rest of the country still made me look good).
I don’t WANT snow. Unlike warming, cooling is actually dangerous. But with the sun going quiet, history says that cooling is what we are in for.
Make your next furnace a 2-stage
My new 2-stage furnace is great. The old furnace was rated a modest 70,000 btu, but was still on the large side for my small 1300 sq. ft. house, especially since there isn’t a lot of call for heat around here. So the old furnace would blast hot for a couple of minutes, prompting clothing adjustments while failing to circulate warmth evenly before clicking the thermostat off.
The new furnace uses the same two-wire thermostat but has a timed delay before turning the heat on full blast. It comes on at about half-heat (40,000) and half fan-speed. If five or ten minutes of that are not enough to click the thermostat back off (you can set the delay) then the furnace goes into high heat mode (70,000 btu, same as the old furnace) until the job is done.
So far the only time the furnace gets to high heat mode is when I turn the thermostat up in the morning. From there the furnace just keeps topping off the household heat with the low-heat mode, creating much more even heating than the old furnace. Highly recommended. And just in time.
“It’s frickin freezing in here Mr. Bigglesworth”
Had to scrape frost off the windshield this morning, and when I got in the shower, the words just came out. More a matter of California construction than the temperature outside (no heat in the bathroom). Maybe I’ll install a few more heat balls!
When I read “Travels with Charley” by Steinbeck as a high school student I remember him leaving the light bulbs on to generate heat in the morning chill, which I thought then was a little far fetched, but they really do the job in a small room.
We had a warm and dry stretch during January for Lake County, CA. But in the last few weeks we have been walloped by snow on Cobb Mountain. About a foot and half last weekend, with power out for 5 days. This isn’t Sierra’s this is just north of Napa and east of Sonoma.
We switched to all CFLs inside our new house almost 11 years ago. The new house has tons of can lights and light bars in the bathrooms so it saves a ton of money. Most of our lamps are CFL as well, except for small older lamps where they don’t fit.
Outside lights are a different story though. Since CFLs and LEDs don’t get warm, they can’t melt the snow off so we use incandescent bulbs outside.
As for bathrooms, the morons who built our house didn’t put a heating vent in our toilet room (separated from the rest of the bathroom) and it’s on the outside wall. So using it in the winter is like going to the outhouse. the pipes are on the inside wall so we don’t have a freezing problem, but it makes it mighty uncomfortable when the temps are -20 like they were a few weeks ago.
My Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) company sent me a ‘congratulations’ letter. It seems, when my energy consumption is compared to my nearest 100 neighbors having homes of 1350 sq ft or less, I am the lowest user of natural gas and electricity combined! I didn’t have the heart to tell them my home is actually 2100 sq ft, including the heated daylight basement…..
My ‘secret’ is using an entirely bio-renewable and carbon neutral fuel: Firewood! There are few things in life as deeply satisfying as coming indoors, after long hours out in a rainy 36F day, and backing up to the toasty high efficiency wood stove to drive off the damp, numb fingers, and deep body chill!
Most of my firewood is scrounged within a few mile of home, from trees cut down on constructions sites or ‘blow downs’ from storms. I’ve burned +2 full cords so far this winter and have another +3 cords dry stacked and under tarp. Time to start scrounging for next winters wood!
What many people do not realize is cutting, hauling, splitting, stacking, and packing firewood in to burn heats you many times before it hits the wood stove! The wood pile is a physical fitness gym, mental health facility, and renewable energy storehouse just outside your own back door. When my angst over my carbon foot prints assails my conscience, I just remember to wipe my feet on the mat, before I come in the house….
If you want expense, try propane which is not uncommon in Oklahoma in rural areas or acreages too large for the expense of running natural gas lines. In the house we recently bought, I paid for 6 electric ceramic heaters from Wal-Mart with one month of mid-winter propane non-usage. My attic furnace is also rated at only 80% efficiency and that doesn’t include the duct losses and air sucked into the house when the blower kicks in. We can also adjust the heating room by room better with the electric heaters.
I do notice that your furnace could probably do with some outer panel insulation since the interior duct work usually only has 1/2″ to 1″ felt. I just got through insulating my room air inlet/outlet exterior sheet metal (panel area = about 70 sq ft) to an additional R20+ (felt overlay+ non backed fiberglass) and since the unit also has the A/C evaporator in it, that will help the cooling efficiency too. When I get to it, I am thinking of wrapping the R6 duct work to an additional R15 for an R20+ as the total duct surface area is about 500 sq ft. The attic is definitely not a good place to have A/C and furnace although the duct interior does stay cleaner with good filters. Another plus is that I can run the gravity fed drain water from the A/C evaporator to the outside condenser coil for some added efficiency.
The down side is that I have to seasonally clean the heaters as they now become the room air filters. But at least that saves having to replace the air intake filters in the furnace.
For greatly increased comfort, and up to 40% savings in heating (or cooling) costs (regardless of system used) try small fans. Set a fan in the corner of each large room, and point or deflect the air upwards (only fans rated for vertical operation have bearings that will bear being pointed up for long). The mixing of cool floor air and warm ceiling air makes the whole area comfortable, and greatly reduces the energy required to fill the space from the top down (warming) or bottom up (cooling).
The professional installed version of this is a column in the corner with an small internal fan and openings at top and bottom. Direction of airflow (up/down) doesn’t much matter: it’s the mixing that does the trick.
Extreme winter in US is linked to climate change, scientists say.
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/extreme-winter-weather-linked-to-climate-change-20110302-1be8y.html
Thanks for the tip. I like all these stories that begin, “as the planet warms up,” as in:
Only the planet ISN’T warming up. Global temperature has been flat for the past 13 years.