Oh No! I Don't Wanna Go Down There! -------Part Two: Inna Basement

Tours are usually planned out to end right by the gift shop, but we're not doing merchandise (yet), so we left you all by the basement stairs, promising to get back together soon. The condo dwellers had found their condensers out back, located their air handlers, ferreted out and replaced their air filters, and been discouraged from getting involved too deeply beyond that. Most of these links, in case you're skeptical or shy about following them, go to sites or Google searches that will make you smarter. Beware; too much of this specialized information could cost you about $75,000 in tools, equipment and truck, not to mention starting a whole new life (If you feel yourself falling in love, contact me and I'll talk you down).

You electric heat and heat pump people can come if you like, but I want to assure you that basements are overrated as meeting places. Flashlights ready? Taking notes? Watch your step; many thanks to Etta James and Sugar Pie deSanto for mood music.
Our motivated fellow pilgrims are those who found: radiators or grilles upstairs, possibly air handlers, but no heat pump or electric heat. If you found your system upstairs, you're still welcome to come along. If you live in a mobile home or slab house with gas or oil heat, leave a comment and I'll talk to you one-on-one. Ok. All here? We're looking around for a chimney. Could be at the center of the house, could be on either gable end. If you need to go outside and look, we'll wait. That chimney will be penetrated by a flue pipe, a round metal duct of 4 to 8 inch diameter coming out of the chimney and leading to....... gotcha. That thing the flue pipe goes to is your heat source. If you have no chimney, or your heat source is obviously not connected to it, it's probably "direct vented" or "power vented," sending combustion gases outdoors through the basement wall. You'll hear the vent blower turn on first when the equipment starts up. It's like a chimney but cheaper for the installer and builder.

This machine we're looking at, now, is it a large sheet metal box with square and round ducts leading from it across the basement? Say "furnace." Heats air. Furnace. If it's smaller than a televangelist's doghouse and has pipes of any size coming up and out across the basement ceiling, say "boiler." Heats water, in some fashion. Boiler. Among boilers, there are hydronic boilers, which heat water and send it out through piping loops which include the radiators in your living space and possibly some concealed piping in walls and floors, driven by circulating pumps, which push water around the loop endlessly, through the boiler to get hot, out to the radiators to release heat to the house, and back again. And there are "steam boilers," which send steam out through rather large pipes at alarming velocities (the speed with which steam travels through pipes accounts for all that banging and clanging, known as "steam hammer").

How to tell hydronic from steam? Look at the front of the boiler. At the bottom of the whole affair is a burner of some kind; we'll come back to that. Up above that are some control components with adjustable settings. Don't remove any covers, just read labels. Do the controls feature the words "low water cutoff," and "high pressure limit?" Is there a transparent column of water designed to indicate the level of water in the boiler, probably stained with minerals? Say "sight glass." This link provides good illustrations of the front of a home steam boiler, featuring the pressure limit control, sight glass and low water cutoff, a safety device also found on hydronic boilers these days. If your piping network consists mostly of pipes two inches in diameter or more, that's another indicator of steam as a means of heat distribution. If you're satisfied you've got a steam system, what's a concerned homeowner to do? Have the boiler and burner serviced once a year by a professional, maintain proper water level in the sight glass (this can vary from halfway up the glass to an inch from the highest visible point, depending upon many things. Any setting in between will probably be ok) if the water is manually fed into the system (if you periodically hear a clunk and a hiss from the boiler, and you haven't added water all winter, you've probably got an "auto-feed" water solenoid, a black component in the water piping above the boiler with a cable attaching it to the low water cutoff).

Time for a tough question: hmmm... how to put this. What's covering your steam pipes? Do they look nice and clean and white with the covering stapled in place and no bare spots showing? Do they have no covering at all? Or do they have a grainy, whitish, old looking covering, possibly hanging loosely in places, or even falling off? I can't provide you with a litmus test for the presence of asbestos in your basement, but conscience demands that I warn you of the hazards.
If you suspect that you have asbestos pipe covering down there, don't panic. Too many homes still do. Just be careful. Don't try to finish a room in the basement. Don't send the kids down there to play. Don't do any unnecessary sweeping, vacuuming, use of compressed air, or anything that might disturb asbestos particles on walls, floors or framing. DON'T EVEN THINK OF PUTTING YOUR EXERCISE BIKE OR TREADMILL DOWN THERE. I MEAN IT! Just try to stay out of the basement except for necessary chores, like adding water to the boiler or retrieving the Christmas decorations when it's that time of year. You are not allowed to remove the asbestos yourself, for practical purposes. Whatever urban myths you may encounter on the Web, don't go down there with a monkey mask and a garbage bag. There's no loophole left in the law that allows a homeowner to successfully remove and dispose of asbestos pipe covering . And I'm not going to link you to asbestos removal contractors in your area. You can go to the Yellow Pages and Better Business Bureau, and caveat emptor. Caveat emptor with chocolate sprinkles. And don't stand there holding your breath. You have to go to the basement sometime, and this tour is important. Just don't wave your arms around or bump into things if you can help it. Enough said.

If your boiler has no sight glass, and if the distribution pipes are mostly one inch or less in diameter, probably uninsulated, and if you have circulator pumps in your piping, your boiler is circulating hot water. There's nothing, usually, to lubricate, except on very old systems, and you can't do much to optimize the efficiency of the system except for covering the pipes. If you have two or three hundred dollars and some time to invest in the project, it pays a decent return. You don't have to be an expert. You can go to the home center and follow the directions on the package, and you'll get a good result. Turn off the heat when you tackle the pipes so you don't get burned.

We'll end with a word to the furnace people. You should also be wary of old systems with possible asbestos covering the duct. But you may find your air filter down here, behind a door in the back of the furnace, so it's worth getting dirty and figuring out how the catch on that door works. Don't tear your fingers up: wear gloves, use tools, but get that door off (turn off the power first, please) and expose your blower (either belt-driven or direct drive, with motor inside the blower body. You may find oil ports on either end of the motor. Hopefully your service person has been attending to those ports yearly. If you're in doubt, get some household oil and put half a dozen drops in each end of the blower motor, if you can reach them. And if you found your filter here, check the size and get a good replacement, pleated, not necessarily exotic and expensive. I pay about six bucks a filter in bulk, you'll get pleated filters at the home center for ten or twelve. And I do charge more than retail for bringing them to your house.

I've skipped over burner issues in this post, for good reasons. You won't be tearing into your oil or gas burner and winding up with a basket of spare parts and no heat with my blessing. Leave the burners to guys like me who dream about them at night. If you do what I've advised, carefully and with common sense, you'll know enough to spot obvious problems, keep your heating system running as well as an amateur can, and be able to speak helpfully to the service people when you call them. Good luck, and send me questions through the comments. I'll do my best to answer.

Oh, No! I Don't Wanna Go Down There! Part One, Warm Air

In an earlier post from 1-17-09, we promised to revisit the machinery of heating/cooling and equip you with a dangerously small amount of knowledge concerning your own comfort systems. While you're arming yourself with the necessaries: flashlight, pad and pen, digital camera, possibly rubber boots, let's look around upstairs. This post is Part One, before we go into the basement. Positive attitude music for this post is by Martha and the Vandellas.

Do you even have a basement? No? Don't panic. Do you have thermostats in every room? Breakers marked "Heat" in your electrical panel (see that previous post)? You can kibitz with us as we do this safari, but your search is over. You have baseboard electric heat, and the only things you can do as a concerned amateur are: keep thermostats set as low as you can bear, and vacuum the radiators, preferably with heat off, to remove dust which slows down heat transfer.
Have the electric heat people left the tour? Coming anyway? Fine. Does everyone else have radiators of some sort, either cast iron monsters or baseboard models of cast iron or sheet metal? Is that a hand at the back? You have no radiators, just grilles in your ceiling or floor? No problem. Let's start with you. Radiator people, exclusive of electric heat users, you can bunk off for a smoke or wait for the next post, Part Two. Let's help these people with grilles first.

Those grilles are connected to ducts, which form a distribution system originating somewhere in your house/apartment/condo. Do you have a large noisy sheet metal box outside that runs both summer and winter? That's a heat pump. It ices up sometimes in colder weather, doesn't it? Yes. Not much you can do about that, unless it remains iced up for hours or days. Then you have to call the service person to come and address the "defrost cycle" controls. Actually, you heat pump people in New England can almost turn off your outdoor units (called "condensers" whether they're heating or cooling at the time) since their heating performance at temperatures below 35 degrees is spotty at best. When it's close to freezing, it's very hard to draw heat from the outside air, which is what condensers do in winter. Now come along with the rest of us and let's find your "blower coil" or "air handler," from which the air is propelled out through the ducts.

All those without basements are looking for a closet or ceiling hatchway where the air handler sits. Turn the system on and follow the noise. Look for a large grille in a wall, ceiling or floor that doesn't blow warm air. That's the return, and the air handler is usually close by. The reason you're searching is that the air handler has a filter, either in a slot in the return duct or possibly behind a large return grille in the house. You need to change that filter regularly. That blank look tells me you REALLY need to change your filter, and soon. If you're looking into a closet, look for a narrow slot with a cover and two screws near the bottom of the air handler. If you're in your attic, look among the various screw-secured covers and find the narrowest one, sometimes marked with a sticker indicating filter size, such as "16x25" and so on. If your system is old, you may find the cover missing and just the edge of the filter peeking through the slot. Pull the filter out gently; wear a mask if you sneeze easily, have a vacuum handy if you can't stand the dust, and read along the sides and edges for a size. That filter will likely be available at the home center in several types at varying cost. Avoid the cheapest (spun fiberglass) and the most expensive (activated charcoal with bacteriostatic chemical additives) and get something pleated and non-chemical coated, unless you're all about bells and whistles. The job you want the filter to do is to trap dust and dander (your pets have dander, but your hirsute teenage son does NOT, and don't forget it. Family Services will get you for statements like that), and any other airborne crud you want removed from your house is best confronted at its source. Again, we're not discussing your son's room in any way.

If you've changed your filter, replaced the filter cover, or perhaps sealed up the filter slot with tape if your cover's gone, you've done all you can. i carry two powerful vacuums on my truck, one exclusively for soot, and i frequently remove the covers from air handlers and vacuum out dust and lint from the coils and blower. That helps to cut mold growth and lets more air pass through the coils (heating and cooling cycles use different coils but share a common blower). Can you do this at home? Who am I to tell someone they don't know how to run a vacuum? The hazard is contained in the live wires and delicate parts behind the covers of that blower cabinet.
I don't advise you to risk breakage or a shock going in there. The fee for a seasonal service should include vacuuming or even washing your coils. Be very specific in requesting this of your service people. If they tell you it's extra, ask how much. Clean coils and blower vanes are worth fussing a bit to maintain.

One group we need to talk to here are the folks with grilles, but no heat pumps. If you have air handlers blowing warm air through ducts, but your big condenser beast outside doesn't run in winter, deal with your filters just like the heat pump people, and rejoin us in Part Two when we go into the basement and find your heat source.

And our last remarks are for people with grilles, but no air handlers, who will be going down those fateful stairs to search for..... Fortunato, that fella Poe bricked up in the cellar with a cask of wine? No, nothing like that. You'll be joining us down there to confront that brooding monster, your warm air furnace. All the people whose systems are "above stairs," so to speak, are back in front of the TV, but they'll miss the adventure when we descend into places of intrigue and cat poo in Part Two.

A Rosetta Stone for Talking to Your Plumber

If you've been reading along you know by now I'm a contractor specializing in mechanical systems, so consider me a class-traitor for crossing the fence. But in this clandestine meeting I hope to spill some secrets about the jargon of my industry and to empower you in using words your contractor will understand. When I emerge from the basement wiping my hands on an already grimy towel and say, "Your cad cell was shot, so the primary was never going to work, since the retention ring was fouled and your ignitor was faulting to ground," you might not follow every turn of phrase, and our conversation turns into a soliloquy. Some of my colleagues take a certain pleasure in confusing lawyers and teachers, among whom we number our paying clients, but it's not right; even when they do it to us, it's not right (I groaned inwardly when my college professor client explained that she hadn't changed her furnace filters in a while because her life had taken a "rather peripatetic turn" lately and so on....). You consumers of contractor services must learn to talk kindly (and without condenscension) to your contractor service providers, at least until the amount of the bill has been finalized.

Let's look under the kitchen sink. Bring a flashlight. I wear mine on my head, miner-style.
If the kitchen sink has two bowls, you will see the drain extensions (black or white plastic, possibly chromed brass mottled with blue-green leaks) coming down from the basket strainers.
By some network of bendy fittings, the two drains join and proceed to a U or S shaped formation called a trap. Briefly, the purpose of a trap is to prevent smelly and potentially explosive methane gas from wafting back up into your house from..... DOWN THERE. A trap which goes down, up and down again has two U-bends and earns the name S trap. A trap having a single U-bend and usually exiting horizontally through the back of the cabinet gets called a P trap. Don't ask me why. This was all worked out in the 19th century when Thomas Crapper and Sir Joseph Bazalgette were changing the face of London's... er, nether regions.

Whatever your plumber charges per hour or per visit, you can expedite the repairs somewhat and earn his/her grudging respect by saying, into the phone, "I got a flashlight and looked under there, and I think the leak is from the bottom of the trap; and by the way, it's chromed brass and it exits through the back of the cabinet." Right away your plumber knows what to bring, how much time the repair will take him, and he knows to wear a long-tailed shirt or extra-rugged suspenders so his bilaterally symmetrical little bum will not peek from his jeans and scare you when he's under there working. You gained points, if not dollars, just for knowing a few words. Well done you.

The rest of the excitement under the kitchen sink has to do with the water supply pipes. Shine the flashlight all the way to the back of the cabinet, and you'll see the copper/plastic water supplies (hot and cold) emerge either from the back wall or from the floor. There will be valves (there should be valves. If there are no valves, your mechanical person will have much trouble turning off the water for a repair, will mutter about the shabby workmanship of low bidders, and, in the language of The Far Side's prehistoric plumber, "This not be cheap..." ) Prepare to pay a bit extra for him/her to install "shutoffs" or "sink stops" so the water can be turned off under the sink. But let's say you're seeing valves, and the two water lines proceed upward through "stop valves" and disappear into the bottom of faucet. There may be some additional flexible lines under there serving the sink spray, or the faucet may use some flexible connectors, and they all can leak. You may also see an additional valve and a line running out the side of the cabinet toward the dishwasher (hot water) or the refrigerator (cold water, to run the icemaker or water dispenser). If you're responding to water on the floor, and the steady stream or drip is not obvious, start as high as you can reach on the faucet and run your bare fingers around each pipe or fitting, working downward until your hand comes back wet. Report to your plumber-person what pipe you think is leaking, where it goes, etc. Even if you're wrong, you get effort points, and very few plumbers are immune to the charm of eager beginners.

Feeling intrepid? Wanna talk toilets? You may not need the flashlight, but bring something to kneel on, and wear gloves if you want. If you are the person in your house who cleans the toilet, you won't feel squeamish about its inward workings. and you probably already have your gloves on. Start on your knees in front of the toilet, in what is called the "distressed frat-boy" position, but leave the lid down for now. Reach around the left side, under the tank, and find the water supply pipe. If it's wet, don't grab a wrench and go tightening that clamp nut just yet. Trace the line downward to a valve, then past the valve to a pipe/tube which disappears through the wall or floor. That valve is your water shutoff, and your first tactical maneuver in scoping a toilet problem is always to find that valve and make sure you can shut off the water supply. If the valve looks moldy and feeble, try it gently and see if it turns to finger pressure. No wrenches, please. That way lies madness and an insurance claim for water damage. Valve works? Good for you. With the valve turned off, flush the toilet and listen for the sound of water refilling the tank. No noise? Wonderful. Nothing horrific can happen now, even if you make a mistake. Turn the water back on, and find the place back up where the tank (holds the water waiting for a flush) joins the bowl (where the rubber meets the road, so to speak). There's a seal there, a rubber ring, donut shaped, held in place with two, three or four bolts that go through the bottom of the tank and bolt to the back of the bowl. Run your hand around the edge of that meeting-place. That's where many leaks begin, often as a result of users getting very comfortable in a seated position and leaning back against the tank, putting stress on the rubber ring and its mounts. I trust I do not need to provide an image link here. If your seat is down, find the two mounts for the seat just in front of the tank, and reach under those mounts to find the (usually plastic) nuts that secure the seat to the bowl. Is the seat loose? Mounts broken? It's an easy repair for a professional, but I've rescued a number of amateurs who came to grief here. Don't be embarrassed to call a plumber to repair/replace your seat. You will want to note the general shape of the front of the seat. It will either be rounded (round bowl toilet) or egg-shaped (elongated bowl) or possibly open at the front. These details can seem trivial to females, but men take a morphological interest in the fronts of toilet seats, for reasons your imagination can supply. And your plumber, irrespective of gender, will want to bring the right seat on the first visit.

Now. You've been very brave, and I'm trusting you more and more as we go. It's time to open King Tut's tomb, so to speak. The top of the tank is covered with a porcelain lid. Carefully lift that lid and set it aside, preferably flat on the floor where nothing bad can happen to it. Seat yourself backwards on the closed seat, knees toward the tank. Take a deep breath. Now look inside. If you're looking at a large black vessel that fills most of the tank's inner volume, put the lid back on and step away from this Flushmate-equipped toilet. No user servceable or easily categorized parts inside. I have two of them (most powerful flush in the modern market, akin to the wall mount water closets in old Belmondo movies) and they're a bit of a headache even for me. If you're seeing a familiar flush handle, linked to a chain or plastic cord, leading down to a hinged flapper, we can proceed. That flapper lifts in response to the flush handle, allows a measured amount of water to enter the bowl under gravity pressure, and causes the flush response of the bowl. Many things can happen to the flapper. The chain linkage can break, the flapper itself can be damaged by aggressive water or tank/bowl sanitizing chemicals, and old age, alas, can also take its toll. The result can be: no flush at all, anemic flush response, or constant leakage into the bowl, wasting water. The links above can help with their photographic views of the tank's innards. The flapper is usually attached to a tall central pipe called an overflow tube, which can be broken but seldom gives trouble. Toward the left side of the tank is the ballcock mechanism, or "flush valve." You are either seeing a tall brass column rising from the left corner of the tank, extending an arm and ball-shaped float across the tank, or a plastic tower with a sliding float ball and a hose extending into the overflow tube. They both do the same job, which is to permit the water supply to feed water into the tank during and after a flush, and to stop the flow of water when it reaches a preset level. The ballcock or flush valve can fail open, causing the water to flow constantly into the overflow tube and down into the bowl, or it can fail closed, causing low water in the tank and no flush response when you need it. So are you looking at a tank with too much water, or not enough? More important information to transmit to your plumber when you call.

Concerning the bowl, where the difficulty is most often related to the reluctance of Elvis to leave the building, if you will. In cases of overflow or extreme malfeasance, wait a few minutes for the water level to subside, line the floor with something washable, and plunge with panache and aplomb. Buy yourself a bellows-style plunger which seals tightly in the toilet U-bend (yes, the toilet has one, too, but you can't see it from where you are, thank God) and plunge with vigor, emphasizing the push rather than the pull part of the motion. If that fails, you can try some of the available products at the home store, but don't get them on you or the floor. And keep the plumber's number handy.

Oh. Critical detail. Wipe down your toilet before the plumber arrives. Just a quick wipe with some cleaner, especially under the seat and around the bottom of the bowl. You will be rewarded at least with respect, if not in a present or future kindness from your plumber-person. Plumbers, contrary to legend, are not immune to offense in matters involving the poops and tinkle of others.

This post has put you through your paces, on your knees with a flashlight, "going boldly" where few homeowners/tenants dare to go. You've learned how water travels through your most frequently used household plumbing fixtures, and you have some nomenclature which will help you to converse with your service people clearly and helpfully. Most mechanical contractors appreciate any effort on your part to research the problem and brief them in advance of their visit. I tend to go soft on the bottom line for people I like, and many other contractors do as well, but that's no promise. We usually deserve to get paid the amount on the invoice; your common sense and knowledge of terms scarcely scratches the surface of a plumber's needed storehouse of data and wily techniques, not to mention business overhead. In the next post I will redeem an earlier promise and take you back to the basement to untangle the web of your heating system. For now, bless you for persevering, and speak kindly to your plumber. It's a dirty job, and he/she does it all day long.

I'm Givin' Ye All I Got, Laddie!

Mr. Scott of Star Trek presided over a complex of systems on the Enterprise that covered basic power sourcing ("dilithium crystals"), intelligent distribution throughout the ship ("transferrrrin' all power to tha warp drive, sirr") and a certain amount of storage ("full emergency powerrr at your command, captain") for those special times when you need it. The Enterprise was a little like your house in its basic needs and not a lot like your house in its energy independence ("ye can have full power in a few hours, captain, when i've regenerated the crystals"). You will do well to know a few vital things about your house's systems, particularly those involving life support (no power? the tv's out? oh, no, aren't there batteries for that?).

We may need a few posts to cover the whole picture, but let's start with the heating system.

If you have a thermostat on the wall in every room, radiators with no pipes extending to the basement or through the wall, and a bunch of large breakers in your panel marked "heat," you probably have electric heat. Much like your stove and oven, electricity passes through wonderfully engineered resistance elements ("Calrod" is a good keyword if you're searching) to produce heat, which is distributed by fins around the element over which air is persuaded to pass by convection. Convection is that tendency of temperature differences to stir up currents in a fluid, and air qualifies. Your boiling soup on the stove also qualifies. Gentle currents of warm air rise from the electric heaters and warm your house. All heat is expensive, but electric heat is possibly the most expensive energy source, especially in New England where I live. Even when oil did its spectacular bid to replace gold in the world's heart in 2008, electric heat was still more expensive as a source than oil. But, I admit, oil came close.

You can turn off room thermostats if you have electric heat, but the basic efficiency/inefficiency of the system is designed in. So many kilowatt hours in, so much heat out (to be particular, 3413 btu per kwh). After that, the challenge is keeping your heat indoors where it can't harm the polar icecaps. So, the good news about electric heat is: nothing goes up the chimney, at least not your personal chimney. The bad news, sad to say, is: expensive per btu, and very difficult to back up with emergency power. It takes a very large generator to run electric heat during a power outage, and very few homeowners can afford that.

If your house has radiators, cast iron or sheet metal baseboard in shape, in which copper or steel pipes extend toward walls or basement, you have either steam or hot water heat. If you have one large pipe entering each radiator, and a little silvery dingus on the other end that hisses when the boiler is running, you have steam heat. Somewhere in your basement a boiler burns gas or oil, boils water just like a pot on your stove, and allows it to pass, under five or six pounds of pressure, through pipes to your radiators. The steam has a temperature of just above boiling point, maybe 215 degrees, and it quickly heats the metal radiators, which, like our electric radiators above, encourage convective air flow and warm the room. The steam radiators, because they reach a surface temperature of perhaps 180 degrees at times, also contribute a significant amount of radiant energy to the room. This is why it feels good to snuggle close to a steam radiator on a cold day. The energy is traveling through the air directly to your body; the convection currents of air don't warm you as quickly or as aggressively. Get too close, though, and you can get a first degree burn from a steam radiator, so be careful, and watch the kids. But also enjoy draping your wet socks over the thing and watching them dry, until your kids start asking if Stinkfoot died in your house and what are you going to do about it. Steam can be distributed through baseboard or old-fashioned "bellows" radiators, the tall pretty ones you find in old houses. You can turn individual radiators off, if they have a primary shutoff, so room zoning and balancing are possible with this system as well. The only bad news is that the system operates at the highest temperatures of any system other than the one our last President calls "nucular," and there are inefficiencies and wastes associated with those higher temperatures that mean more energy goes up the chimney, more gets lost in your basement, and you wait longer for your system to respond to the thermostat while it makes steam.

If you have baseboard or "bellows" radiators which show pipes going in one side and out the other, or pipes emerging from floors and going back down again, you have a hot water distribution system. Let's visit the basement for a minute and you'll see the difference.

Your boiler (boilers boil water, furnaces make warm air) may have a maze of large (2 inch or larger) pipes emerging from it and crisscrossing your basement, a vertical glass gauge showing water level in the boiler, and a mysterious druidic device called a low water cutoff, in case the boiler runs short of water. These are the signs of a steam system, and if your house is old, don't touch or whack or kiss or hug or scrape or even look at your pipes; they may have old asbestos insulation on them. If you think you have asbestos, leave a comment and I'll talk to you about it some more, or wait for a later post.

If your boiler has a system of smaller pipes (usually one inch or smaller) pipes going out to various corners of your basement, and if you have one or more motor-driven devices cut into the pipes near the boiler, you have a hot water distribution system, in which water is heated to about 18o degrees and sent swirling through pipes to warm the radiators and heat your house. The advantages of hot water over steam heat have mostly to do with the fact that it operates at lower temperatures. The motor-driven devices are circulator pumps, pushing hot water gently through the pipes and back to the boiler, losing heat to the pipes and fins and housings before coming home to be heated up and sent out again.

You may have an oil tank in your basement. If you do, your number two heating oil delivers about 140,000 btu per gallon, minus inefficiency losses like what goes up the chimney and what stays in the basement. A gallon of heating oil is roughly equivalent to 41 kilowatt hours of electric power. What do you pay for a kwh? What do you pay for a gallon of heating oil? There. I told you. At fifteen cents a kilowatt hour, a gallon of oil, minus its engineering losses (i estimate 20%), will have to cost almost five dollars to be as expensive as electric heat. There are other small factors to be considered, like easy zoning of rooms, but rough math is good enough to put you on the right road.

If you have a large alien internal organ mounted high in one corner of your basement, and a steel or bright yellow flexible line running to the boiler, your energy source is probably natural gas, or possibly LP gas, a synthetic fuel like natural gas but derived from crude oil just like heating oil. Natural gas yields about 1000 btu per cubic foot, so 140 cubic feet of natural gas is equal to one gallon of heating oil. You can consult your gas bill and do the math. Natural gas, depending upon where you live and how it's taxed, can be very near the same price as oil, and certainly less than electric power. LP gas is usually a bit more expensive than oil, but still less than electric power. Unless those huge whirligig thingies in your backyard are out there working for you and no one mentioned it when you moved in.

If your house has no radiators of any kind, but rather flat louvers from which warm or hot air blows into the rooms to warm you, you have either a furnace or a heat pump. The furnace will be powered by one of the energy sources mentioned above: electric, oil or gas. The heart of the distribution system will be a rather noisy blower somewhere in the house, either in the basement, attic or in a closet. Some condo owners will find them behind small ceiling hatches. You can usually adjust the louver/grilles to increase or decrease or shut off air flow to a room, so there's good news. But the snuggle factor just isn't there. you can pull up a chair and sit over a floor grille, but it's not as nice as a radiator. Sorry. The good news? Your furnace and distribution system operate at the lowest temperatures of any system i know, so those efficiencies are yours to keep.

If you have no furnace, no boiler, just a big contraption outside that runs summer and winter and sometimes ices up, you have a heat pump. I can't go deeply into the physics just now, but I will wax scientific in a future post if you request it. Freon gas is compressed, heated (forgive me, engineers, but this myth is a useful one), sent though pipes into the house, and allowed to release its heat into a coil, over which air is blown (Willis Carrier, pray for me) to produce warm air for the house. Steel and plastic pipes called ducts carry the warm air through the house and release it through grilles. If you have a heat pump, bear in mind that it is only able to function when outdoor temperatures are above about 35 degrees. When the weather is cold, you rely on electric heating elements in your equipment which warm the air and get the same job done, but at electric heat prices.

If you're still reading, thanks for pushing through a large body of details, not all of which apply to you. And here's the payoff. In each of the systems we've discussed, the design inefficiencies and energy costs are fixed, but the distribution system is not. You can find a way, even with hot water radiators, to reduce the output of the system in a particular room when you don't require higher temperatures in that space. Now don't go freezing your water pipes and telling the plumber I sent you. But within reason, you can take some control. Adjust that air grille, turn the valve on that big radiator, lower that room thermostat if it controls only that room. If you have hot water baseboard radiators, with no valves available. you can use painter's tape to partially close the convection slot in the top of the housing. You're not working magic, you're just reducing the energy available to a certain space if it's not needed. Make your kitchen the warmest room. Heat your bath up only when everyone's using it, morning or night. Allow your bedrooms to cool off a bit during the daytime. Use the thermostat(s) to lower the temperature of a room that isn't in use. Again, beware of practicalities like water pipes. But small moves can add up, and, here at the bottom of the page, with no one else around, let's be straight: small moves are the only ones available to most of us. We can't all afford to install solar panels, or wind turbines, or sexy stainless boilers; but we can all afford to do the small things, and they add up---- especially if we all do them together.

Where's It All Go?

Energy, like money, runs right through my fingers. Except it's my house, really, that's the problem. It runs right through my house. Money, too. So the first statement can only be taken metaphorically. Or something. The subject of where all the money goes is terribly painful, I know; but let's follow the money a little, and also the energy.

I invest roughly two thousand dollars a year on electric power to run my house. It goes, roughly, like this: five hundred dollars for lights, tv and computers. Five hundred dollars to operate heating and central air conditioning in their respective seasons. Five hundred dollars to make hot water. Three hundred dollars to operate the laundry, i.e. washer and dryer. And about two hundred dollars to operate the kitchen, range, microwaves, fridge and toaster.

I spend about another two thousand dollars to buy heating oil, depending upon the per-gallon price and the severity of the winter. My boiler is a good one but twenty years old, my distribution system (warm air from the hot water boiler through a blower coil) is newer and very good, my ductwork is insulated and pretty tight. My house is old but improving as an energy envelope (see previous post Starting Close to Home); my thermostat is programmed to set back all night and all day while we're gone.

My wife and I drive an aggregate 50,000 miles per year, being self-employed and having no regular daily commute. The fuel bill for my Sprinter van and her Volkswagen Passat comes to around eight thousand dollars, again depending upon oil futures and the Middle East. Don't get me started. We maintain our vehicles well, so they get the mileage they're designed to get.

Our whole house energy bill is an acceptable fraction of our net income. The national average is about 14%. Our automobile expenses qualify as the reasonable cost of enterprise. We drive to our clients' locations, mostly within our county.

So what to do? Contractors and realtors can't car pool the way corporate employees do. The client frowns when you get out of your vehicle and it drives away again. They begin to feel stuck with you. And you can't carry half a ton of business equipment and inventory in a Prius. Or two realty clients, unless they're small.

Where does the heat go in my house? Can we shave a gallon of oil there? Well, we're working on it. Engineers maintain that up to 30% of heat losses in the average house comes from air leaks. Infiltration, it's called. Doors and windows, electrical penetrations, light fixtures, exhaust fans, range hoods and just plain cracks and crannies are the usual suspects. Fireplaces, wood stoves, and air ducts are also repeat offenders. My house has six inch walls, and two sides are resheathed and resided; well-installed fiberglass batts give us R19 walls at least. Doors and windows are up to date energy star stuff. No fireplace. I do ventilate my basement to discourage mold growth. Since few of us can wave a wand over our houses, the big variable, and you'll hate me for this, is the thermostat. Here's some unavoidable math.
If the temperature outside is 20 degrees, and you want your house at 70, you are establishing a temperature difference (differential, actually) of 50 degrees. Heat escapes your house to the outside at a rate driven roughly by that difference. Lower your thermostat ten degrees, and you've reduced your inside/outside temperature differential by......... let's see, power of three, carry the one........ 20%. No, that doesn't quite translate into a 20% drop in energy bills, since it discounts infiltration and radiant losses and other things engineers talk about at parties. But it's the biggest number you can rack up for savings without spending lots of money on contractors like me and tiny little cars and appliances made on another planet by alien compulsives. But you hate being cold, I know; and now you hate me for telling you the bad news. I can stand it.
There's real money to be saved, also, in weatherstripping doors, plastic-sealing windows for the winter, and caulking/foaming visible gaps in outside walls. Small dollars for reasonable gains.

Can you save a bundle by replacing windows? The link, and two other articles I consulted, give payback formulas for replacement windows ranging from 2.5% per year to 20%. Some range. You either save enough energy to recoup your invesment in 40 years or something close to 5 years. Consider that the 20% figure was the calculation of a company selling windows. Nudge, Nudge, Wink, Wink.

We discussed the consumption of power in the kitchen in an earlier post. Apart from that, your biggest savings is to be had from more small moves: turn off that light, refrain from using air conditioning until you can't move, don't leave the tv on unless you're watching it, and here's the big one: dry your clothes on a rack somewhere in the house. Preferably in a natural air path. Or use a small fan. More than two thirds of the estimate I ventured above for laundry is gobbled up by the dryer. Your house is dry and warm during winter; you can dry the clothes while increasing humidity, and Bob's your uncle, as they say. But here's one caution: if you wash in cold water, using mild soaps, you may not be able to remove "natural odors" from your clothes as well without the dryer. Hard to shed that manly funk without the high temperatures or anti-bacterial soaps. Just a thought.

I may touch on automobiles and energy savings in another post, but for now, just this: if you google "45 mpg car," you get two models, Prius and Audi. When you google "30-40 mpg car," you get 20 models. If you're ready to buy a new car, don't set the bar impossibly high. You'll still save a nice wad of cash driving available technology, and the futuristic spit-fueled miracle buggies will be there by the time you've worn this one out.

At 4:03 in the following Youtube clip from the movie Contact (1997, Jodie Foster) Dad advises his brilliant but impatient daughter, " small moves, Ellie, small moves." I hope you get a little hooked and wind up watching the film. Let's act out small, reachable visions in our homes, and take on grander, bolder ones together. No one of us can save the planet alone. All of us together? Ah, that's another story.

My Kitchen is Soooo Green!

Home appliances are moving with the times, and the times are increasingly energy conscious. My "water saving" Whirlpool washer is five years old and already obsolete. My Bosch dishwasher is eight years old and has been left standing by more recent, more energy efficient models. Yet both appliances were at the top of their markets when purchased, both much touted for their "greenness." If I want to stay green, we'll need new appliances. This greeness thing can be a bit of a trap.
The microwave oven hasn't evolved rapidly at all since appearing in the mid-20th century. The two (!) microwaves that sit in our kitchen are not technologically superior to their predecessors, a variety of Sharps and Littons and Magic Chefs. The heart of a microwave cooker is the Radio Frequency Emitter, a high voltage transformer and frequency emitter with a serious attitude that consumes from 600 to 1500 watts depending upon the model, bombarding the food with radiation safely below radioactive levels but still hazardous to one's health if exposed. So how green can a microwave be if it hasn't changed much in 50 years? Not so much. The emitters are a little less heavy, the clocks and timers are considerably more friendly, and for my money they've gotten quieter. But not much more energy efficient. When you shop for a microwave, what you're buying, roughly, is a device that operates much more efficiently than your electric range, toaster, toaster oven, or other resistance-based heating/cooking appliance. Here's a nice blog post from last year about microwave efficiency vs. the old stove. There may not be lots of energy to be saved from trading in your old microwave on a new one, but there is a real potential for savings in choosing your microwave for heating/cooking over the other devices. Try this link to an old article citing a University of Florida study comparing microwave cooking to resistance cooking, per task.
Will your Cuisinart save you energy? Noooo, not really. You could say chopping food into finer bits makes it cook faster. How's that? A bit lame? Yeah, you're right. How about your refrigerator? The link will show you that the best of the new Energy Star fridges will do the job for 40% less energy than the 2001 model sitting in my kitchen right now. And they do it mostly with better cabinet insulation; but they do it. That's a pretty good bump in efficiency, but bear in mind that those are the BEST new refrigerators. You can still buy lower priced models that operate at efficiencies about the same as my seven year old box. In fact, my Kenmore refrigerator was billed as "improved and more energy efficient" when it was first trotted out at Brand Central. But you have to spend more than the most cost-conscious shoppers if you want the nifty boxes that save energy.
How about my blender? How many minutes a day do you run it? Hard to get an advantage there, unless you're a bar owner specializing in daiquiris and such. Then, of course, you want a quiet one.
Toaster? It's just a smaller version of your electric oven, so you're better off letting it toast your bagel. And the microwave won't brown or toast. And just plain hot bread isn't a reasonable subsitute for the crispy manna upon which I spread my guilty pleasures in the morning. Convection ovens? Radiant ovens? They both have small advantages over the traditional resistance cooker. But how many hours a day do you use it? Energy savings, like most savings, are small but cumulative. A delicatessen can save serious energy (and serious loot) on a more efficient device that's used ten hours a day. Forward, then, the radiant cooker and the microwave to heat sandwiches and pastry. But at my house we spend an hour or so in the kitchen per day, and not all of it involves the big energy spenders. My refrigerator runs more efficiently when i don't open it. That technology isn't quite ready yet, though. My stove operates less than an hour a day on average. The microwaves do the heavy lifting for heating, thawing, and cooking those dishes on which they excel: chicken, steamed veggies, pork, potatoes. Click the link if you want recipes featuring those foods; if you don't believe microwaves will do all that, get your Google on and prepare to be surprised. My lovely missus hasn't ovened a turkey or chicken for a long time unless it was too large to fit in the Big Nuke.
To sum up: garbage disposal, food processors, mixers, blenders, all are objects used too little to justify a strongly energy-driven purchase. Concerning ranges, ovens, microwaves, it's difficult to gain a large energy advantage when buying. Refrigerators, now, that's another matter. If you were going to splurge on one sexy upscale appliance, and if you can afford one with the Energy Star rating, that one will pay you back. And the neighbor kids will gather 'round that ice dispenser until the floor is soaking wet. You'll notice that it runs less, and that, finally, is the best energy savings. It just doesn't run. Oh. And save up the money first. Financing is stressful and not at all energy efficient. Good luck.

Am I Green Enough Yet?

The sage of puppetry, Kermit the Frog, first sang It Ain't Easy Being Green in 1970. He referred to struggles of identity against social definition, among other things. Kermit has been singing the song at a very different level since "green" became a magic word, signifying a friendly and responsive approach to the earth and its environment. This discussion touches on greenness as it relates to environmental godliness in our marketplace.

What's green today? Oh, anything, and almost everything. If your packaging is made from a proportion of recycled materials, you qualify for an honorable mention. If your product uses less energy than other products used for the same purpose, you're our guy. A manual egg beater qualifies handsomely by that standard (now that one mentions it, not a bad idea). Made from recycled materials? Come on down. Prescient to the end, Jennifer Saunders and her Absolutely Fabulous mob had it right years ago. Here's a youtube link to the episode Morocco from series 1.
The opening five minutes are a wonderful rebuttal to all marketing tactics based on greenness.

It takes more than a sticker on the package to make a product environmentally responsible, is the point here. And it takes a bit of thought on the consumer's part to weigh one's motives in purchasing a "green" product. Will it be worth its weight in energy savings? Or do I want one anyway and look, it's green, so wrap it up! There are real standards formulated by real environmentalists to help you choose wisely on important purchases, and they seldom get it wrong. Consider this site, the U.S. Dept. of Energy guide to Energy Star products. Note that the site limits itself to actual energy consumption, and also limits itself to products that consume a considerable portion of your total energy bill. And, if you're not yawning yet, here's a site that helps you calculate on your own how green a product really is.

We dare not expose our necks so far as to rate "environmentally friendly" furniture, cleaning products, electric space heaters, and so on. Caveat emptor, enough said. When claims exceed common sense, and when the ads urge you to support the green movement by making a certain purchase, clamp your purse/wallet firmly under your arm and lie down until the feeling passes. If we take some great advice from Pete Townshend and "smile and grin at the change all around" us, we won't get fooled again.