Electric heater question

[JustaDB]

testing is done by third party independent labs. The govt has nothing to do with it

I was being sarcastic about the gov't. I've also read at least a few claims made by heat pump manufacturers re: cold temp performance that failed miserably in real life. I don't trust these guys any further than I could throw them.

 

[TorontoBuilder]

I was being sarcastic about the gov't. I've also read at least a few claims made by heat pump manufacturers re: cold temp performance that failed miserably in real life. I don't trust these guys any further than I could throw them.

The manufacturers are not the ones making claims. Products are tested according to conditions and standards established by industry as a whole to demonstrate that HVAC equipment meets energy efficiency requirements established by various governments, however all testing and claims are made by independent third party laboratories, such as Intertek, UL solutions, The CSA Group and Tüv Süd for example.

 

[Tom Kitta]

The manufacturers are not the ones making claims. Products are tested according to conditions and standards established by industry as a whole to demonstrate that HVAC equipment meets energy efficiency requirements established by various governments, however all testing and claims are made by independent third party laboratories, such as Intertek, UL solutions, The CSA Group and Tüv Süd for example.

Testing can be played with - see range of electric cars - claimed, tested by government and then tested by different people in real life. We can have discrepancies of 20% or more!

Heck some car maker from Germany even had a "test mode" - so their cars look great on tests...

 

[Susquatch]

Testing can be played with - see range of electric cars - claimed, tested by government and then tested by different people in real life. We can have discrepancies of 20% or more!

I agree with @TorontoBuilder on this one. These test results are waaaay better performance indicators than anything we could ever do for ourselves. You have a choice here, trust what bobby found in his anecdotal one-of test without any control of variables, or trust an independent test by people who understand what the variables are. Sure, you can pick any error you want or even a variability, but at least you know which is really better when the smoke clears.

As independent tests go, these are pretty darn good because they were established by a whole group of experts with and without fat in the fire. If there is a better way to do this, I don't know what it would be.

Heck some car maker from Germany even had a "test mode" - so their cars look great on tests...

I know much more about this than I want to know. There is a whole other side to this issue that we were never told. They didn't do it to make their cars look good on the test. A pass is a pass. They did it so the cars could get better fuel economy when not on the test - happy consumers with $ in their pockets.

But no point in a big public debate. So I sent you a PM instead. Anyone wanting to hear my version can message me for a copy.

 

[TorontoBuilder]

Testing can be played with - see range of electric cars - claimed, tested by government and then tested by different people in real life. We can have discrepancies of 20% or more!

Heck some car maker from Germany even had a "test mode" - so their cars look great on tests...

I love when people back-handedly accuse CSA, UL and Intertek of fraud in one area, but totally trust them in other areas where they certify products

 

[Mcgyver]

its repair are far more than a gas furnace or resistance furnace which is next to indestructible.

You might be underestimating those wonderful folks at Carrier. $1700 DC motors, $1200 circuit boards.... it should be criminal.

What irks is we are being dictated to - you can't buy a regular gas furnace, only the uber expensive high efficiency ones. You could buy one in the states and drive it across but then you can't get a licensed gas man to hook it up.

 

[TorontoBuilder]

You might be underestimating those wonderful folks at Carrier. $1700 DC motors, $1200 circuit boards.... it should be criminal.

What irks is we are being dictated to - you can't buy a regular gas furnace, only the uber expensive high efficiency ones. You could buy one in the states and drive it across but then you can't get a licensed gas man to hook it up.

Huh, I can name 1000 vendors who routinely charge $1200 for their proprietary circuit boards... it's called corporate psychopathy and greed. The only way it will be criminalized is if you pick on them all and start a revolution... just sayin

What irks is we are being dictated to - you can't dump arsenic or cyanide leachates, or make a fair buck mining any longer, yah can't just dump your tars sands byproducts onto the ground where ever any more, why it sucks how poorly my oil and gas mutual funds are doing now compared to the past.

 

[Janger]

That is the exact same product, and the same parent company now controls both the aeroseal and aerobarrier product installation lines.

I wanted to licence this product from Carrier. They refused. I had all the industry contacts and the capacity to set up installer network in the late 1990s early 2000s but at the time the licensee lacked vision. It is a real shame because it remains a super niche product and got passed by in new ductwork construction.

Another question I have. I had more insulation put in the attic (cellulose up to R50). Now I am learning I should have gone around in the attic and caulked all the holes in the top of walls where wires puncture through, the tops of electrical boxes, tops of interior walls... unfortunately I didn't know about that. Horrible job now. I could take face plates off and caulk plugs, switches, and the light utility boxes from the inside. Is this worth doing or a waste of time? @TorontoBuilder any thoughts on this?

I had a blower door test done, it was 3.8 air changes an hour. The tester couldn't really point out any specific air leakage examples when we toured the house. I did fix a couple places this year where we had obvious holes under the bay window, it has probably improved some.

Sort of related I took this picture of a friends ERV install in his new house. Look at the rigid ducts going to it - the installers have painted on some sort of sealant on the joints.

 

[TorontoBuilder]

Another question I have. I had more insulation put in the attic (cellulose up to R50). Now I am learning I should have gone around in the attic and caulked all the holes in the top of walls where wires puncture through, the tops of electrical boxes, tops of interior walls... unfortunately I didn't know about that. Horrible job now. I could take face plates off and caulk plugs, switches, and the light utility boxes from the inside. Is this worth doing or a waste of time? @TorontoBuilder any thoughts on this?

I had a blower door test done, it was 3.8 air changes an hour. The tester couldn't really point out any specific air leakage examples when we toured the house. I did fix a couple places this year where we had obvious holes under the bay window, it has probably improved some.

Sort of related I took this picture of a friends ERV install in his new house. Look at the rigid ducts going to it - the installers have painted on some sort of sealant on the joints.

View attachment 55357

Not worth the effort. New construction of any sort in Ontario the govt assumes every builder can meet 3.0 ach with a simple exterior air barrier such as tyvek. Many builders dont meet that level, but it is far cry better than before and most come in at the 3.0-4.0 which isn't "bad"

I have a name for the average blower door user, I can't use it here. Most are pretty clueless and only able to conduct a test and generate and understand an ACH number. Aside from the ACH there is another number than tells an informed tech more about nature of the holes making up the total leakage figure. Whether there may be one or two larger bypasses that may be identified and sealed, or if there are just many tiny holes. You need to work in new home construction and air test many homes during construction or in guided air sealing during renovations to see a lot of results before and after the sealing to learn to interpret the air test results fully. Few blower door techs get any practical training on how to locate thermal bypasses in real world beyond using a smoke pencil at the window frame to dazzle a customer.

Good HVAC installers, they used mastic, which is the gold standard. Few do simply because it is messy stuff. I had a helper whose sole job was to seal ducts with mastic.

 

[slow-poke]

I'm would think some of the farmers on here either use or have seen those automatic wood fed central forced air furnaces. I was visiting a family member that has a farm and I was pretty impressed with this monster. Not exactly sure how it works but as the firebox starts to get low on logs, some sort of mechanism probably heat related, tilts and sends more fresh logs into the firebox. This was one of those big old farm houses and it needed a lot of heat. Pretty neat!

House was warm as toast in all rooms. This thing was about 5 the size of a gas furnace you would see in a typical house

 

[TorontoBuilder]

I'm would think some of the farmers on here either use or have seen those automatic wood fed forced air furnaces. I was visiting a family member that has a farm and I was pretty impressed with this monster. Not exactly sure how it works but as the firebox starts to get low on logs, some sort of mechanism probably heat related, tilts and sends more fresh logs into the firebox. This was one of those big old farm houses and it needed a lot of heat. Pretty neat!

I don't know about the wood furnaces, but I've worked on a few off grid in northern ontario projects where the owners purchased european made wood gasification boilers (located remotely from the home) where entire logs could be fed logs up to 6' and would burn for over 24 hours. For the life of me though I can't recall the manufacturer, and they've since gone out of business IIRC.

I've also done a few homes and shops with other wood fired boilers, and I like two different ones from the czech republic the best. If you own a decent wood lot you'll never have a heating bill again, but if you dont understand about amortizing purchase prices you wont buy one

 

[slow-poke]

When I was in high school (Winnipeg) I had a part time job installing car stereos. The shop for the cars was large, easily fit 20 cars, and the gas bills were crazy even with the temperature turned way down. Owner purchased two of the biggest Frankilin stoves and ran the uninsulated pipe up to just below the roof line that must have been 15-20' tall. Then put up a vapour barrier type wall because we had more space than we needed.
Warm as toast in there all winter. We would fill both stoves on Saturday at 6pm close the air intake to minimum when we closed and there would be enough embers to start a new fire Monday morning. We filled the entire other unheated half of the shop with free oak.

Everyone loved those Franklin stoves.

 

[mbond]

Huh, I can name 1000 vendors who routinely charge $1200 for their proprietary circuit boards... it's called corporate psychopathy and greed. The only way it will be criminalized is if you pick on them all and start a revolution... just sayin

What irks is we are being dictated to - you can't dump arsenic or cyanide leachates, or make a fair buck mining any longer, yah can't just dump your tars sands byproducts onto the ground where ever any more, why it sucks how poorly my oil and gas mutual funds are doing now compared to the past.

Corporations exist to make money, so it is hard to call anything that they do greed per se. There are different strategies for how to price products, but generally they are all based on getting the most possible money from the consumer. Anything else would not be acting in the interests of the shareholders. You might not like it, but the only thing you can really do is buy from someone else

 

[calgaryguy]

I heat my 800 sq ft shop (10 ft ceilings) with 1 primary 4800w 220v heater. It runs on a 30amp breaker. Its enough to keep the shop around 10-12c on a low setting on its rheostat (dial). I have a second 220v 4800w heater I'll plug in on the other side of the shop for about 45-60 mins before I go out there to work. The two heaters running in tandem will warm the shop to 18c or so when is -10c to -20c outside. They start to struggle when its -30c or colder.

I just looked up SaskPower rates /Kwh. $0.14/kwh! WWOWOWOWOW!!! I thought Alberta rates were 'regarded'. I'm at the tail end of a 5 years fixed rate in Calgary of $0.062/kwh.

I did some math with a HVAC engineer friend of mine not too long ago and we concluded that a high efficiency Natural Gas furnace will be vastly cheaper to heat a space like mine than using electric heaters. I'd look on kijiji or facebook marketplace for someone selling a 90-91% efficient forced air furnace for cheap and install that. I havent done this yet as my 'shop fund' keeps getting drained for other projects.

 

[Martin w]

We have a wood/oil boiler system. No fancy mechanisms to auger wood into the fire box. Just this monkey who goes for wood. That is the nice thing with a boiler, every room is warm and cozy with whatever temperature the thermostat is set at.
Martin

I'm would think some of the farmers on here either use or have seen those automatic wood fed central forced air furnaces. I was visiting a family member that has a farm and I was pretty impressed with this monster. Not exactly sure how it works but as the firebox starts to get low on logs, some sort of mechanism probably heat related, tilts and sends more fresh logs into the firebox. This was one of those big old farm houses and it needed a lot of heat. Pretty neat!

House was warm as toast in all rooms. This thing was about 5 the size of a gas furnace you would see in a typical house

 

[Tom O]

I just have a natural gas furnace that runs all winter the walls are insulated and the ceiling is just drywall, this year I’ll insulate the roof as the icycles are growing.

 

[Darren]

@Janger , a thermal camera is very effective at finding cold spots from penetrations. Even a good bathroom fan in a fairly well sealed house can pull enough air in the winter to make cold spots show up with a good thermal camera. Once you fix the worst leaks, the rest become easier to find the tighter you get the building. It works, and will save on heating costs and improve comfort levels.

 

[Dabbler]

Even checking the exterior with IR, fan or no fan, and looking at snow on the roof gets you hints about what might be stoppered.

 

[Darren]

I have done both on my place, but i find the interior resolution better. I guess I didn't have enough gross leaks to make it show enough on the outside. In our cold winters, when everything is cold on the exterior. You tend to see it better on the warm side with cold in the walls. I found a mouse highway this way. Literally a 5/8" hole through the sheathing, insulation and drywall.

 

[Tom O]

Most of it has melted it was all across just the one mega though WooHoo.