| suasi678 | Date: Monday, 17-03-2025, 12:37 | Message # 1 |
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Group: Young Dragon
Messages: 19
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The pellet stove, which was pretty old when I bought it, finally broke down when the firebox burned through. It was still early fall so i ordered a couple of heat pumps from a local firm. I'd been shopping for them for a couple of years now and knew that I could get them discounted through my local shoppers Co-operative. The installer came a week early and we decided on the locations and I got the power and siting requirements from him. He didn't like that I would be doing some of the prep work myself but understood the cost savings to me. I made a bed for each one with a large concrete slab and I ran the wiring from my circuit breaker panel. The installs went smoothly and the three of us (me, my wife, and my elderly cat) LOVE them. I figured out that it's about 11% more expensive than firewood but that drops to 7% when I subtract the house insurance that dropped when I got rid of the stoves.
I LOVE that the only maintenance is to clean the air filters once a year and that they also provide air conditioning in the summer. My house stays pretty comfortable unless it gets over 30C outside. I have a fan and vent system that brings cooler air from the basement upstairs. The one in the finished basement (where my computers are) blows onto a large easy chair. We have an old comforter on it and the cat spends her days there.
The efficiency drops (of course) as the temperature falls, and has to switch to a resistive heater below -26C. This rarely happens and we have a few forced air wall heaters as backups if needed. The only downside is that my small generator won't run the pumps if the power goes out. For that we use one of the forced air wall heaters. We didn't lose power over the winter for two years now so I guess that all the weak or diseased trees have been culled by previous storms.
Heat pumps are selling like mad here in North America, I guess in part because power is fairly reasonably priced. In Canada we have pretty cheap electricity because we have lots of hydroelectric dams. I live 37 kms from Mactaquac dam in New Brunswick.
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