Natural Gas - Household 'De-Gassing' Plans
Taking existing homes off of natural gas, or modifying them to be livable for extended periods without gas, is an interesting -- and urgent -- challenge for Londoners concerned about impending natural gas depletion. Post your scenarios for conversion of existing homes to this thread, for discussion and sharing of techniques.
See ‘A Tale of Two Houses’, below, for the first post in this thread, which discusses two quite different adaptation strategies.
Post Carbon London (Ontario)
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June 14th, 2007
De-gassing the ‘Frank Lloyd Lite’ house
Well, we finally sold the ‘Red Brick Beauty’ house (See: A Tale of Two Houses, below), and have moved in to the smaller ‘Frank Lloyd Lite’ house in North London.
After talking with Shane, Post-Carbon London’s architectural efficiency guru, getting an Energuide assessment done, and doing a fair bit of additional reading and research, we settled on a de-gassing strategy that is a bit different from any of the ones discussed in the thread below. Here is the synopsis:
Insulation: R50 blown in to the attic, full window replacement with double-glazed argon-filled windows, and R11 foam board insulation added to interior walls. Attic and windows are being done this summer, and walls on a room-by-room basis over the next year, as we can afford to do them.
Furnace: An air-source heat pump replaces the elderly gas furnace. Air-source used to be marginal in this environment, but with the combination of technology improvements and global warming, it is emerging as a viable alternative to geothermal, at a much lower cost. back-up heat is via the woodstove in the kitchen.
Hot water: An electric water tank replaces the gas water tank.
Notes: Financial limits -- up-front cost DOES matter, even if the return on investment is good down the road -- tempered our thoughts of adding a solar hot water tank and solar-air space heater to the project this year... maybe, some day...
The water tank and heat pump are now installed, and yesterday the Union Gas guy capped the gas line into the house and removed the meter, so.... one London home is now officially de-gassed -- that leaves only, say, 50,000 left to do!
Please share your own de-gassing plans, or the reasons you are not de-gassing, below...
January 31st, 2007
superinsulation?
Just wondering if the requirements for geothermal (ie depth or length of piping) and/or pellet stoves (ie, amount of fuel needed) could be relaxed a bit if one went a bit overboard on the insulation end. According to some source I found on the web, superinsulation (ie, R-40 in the walls and R-60 in the attic) produces a situation where a house could be heated via the internal appliances and body heat. I'm guessing you could get fairly close to this by doing both external and internal horizontal studs (2 x 2's) with solid insulation in between, and then 2 feet of blown in insulation in the attic. Windows, of course, would need to be high efficiency.
January 25th, 2007
Converting from NG
If we are like the US, then 25% of NG use is domestic, the rest industrial. My suspicion, and hope, is that governments would force industry to shut down rather than having people freeze in their homes. But that is just a hope. And it would only buy us some time. Eventually homes would have to be converted. Oil could be one option people might want to convert to as it just replaces the furnace without costly ductwork, but there would be a number of problems, other than dwindling oil supply. Oil would require a tank, inside the home (they cannot be outside if I recall the standards). Some insurance companies will not insure a home with oil, only existing ones, not new ones. Then there is the supply and delivery of oil. There won't be enough trucks to deliver the required demand. So oil is not an option.
The only other system that can use existing ductwork is geothermal. But as you note not all places have the room. The holes need to be 10 ft apart, and thus "mega" homes, those more than 2000 sqr ft, will need at least 10 holes at 200 ft down each. The most expensive part is drilling the holes.
And it's not just homes but essential buildings that will need to be heated. Schools, fire halls, hospitals, food stores, and many others, that need to be protected. There is a new highschool in Markham that installed a geothermal system and it costs $3mill to install. But saves them some 70% on their heating bills, payback was somewhere around 10years. Thus doing all these buildings just in London could top half a billion dollars and take years to install.
How do we do this?
This does not include what can happen if gas drops and businesses have to close.
Richard
Komoka
No one is ahead of their time, just the rest of humanity is slow to catch on.
January 25th, 2007
A Tale of Two Houses
The natural gas crisis can be attacked at many levels, and one of them is at the household level, adapting and retrofitting existing homes to take them off of gas.
My wife and I currently are responsible for two quite different houses, one in St. Thomas, and one in London, and have considered ways to 'de-gas' both of them. Here are little scenarios describing the ideas we've had.
House 1: Red Brick Beauty
Description: ‘RBB’ was here before gas, and will be here afterwards. It is a 2000 sq. foot two-story brick on frame house with a south-facing front porch, built in 1905 on a small city lot in St. Thomas. Over the years it has been insulated with loose wall fill up to the second story, and has had the attic and basement developed and finished. The current furnace is mid-efficiency gas.
Strategy: RBB is not a good candidate for geothermal heat pump conversion, since the yard is too small for practical drilling or trenching, so the master plan is a mitigation strategy, that aims to make the house more flexible for handling intermittent and expensive gas. A 'buying time' approach that would carry the house through gas shortages of up to 2-3 months, and allow time for subsidized and community-based 'de-gassing' programs to be built, such as a (hypothetical) community geothermal plant on the nearby courthouse grounds.
Technical Actions: Purchase and install an add-in wood furnace side-by-side with the existing gas furnace, and stock a 3-month supply of seasoned wood. Update the blown-in insulation and do full window replacement to reduce heat loss. Capture winter solar heat with a glassed-in south-facing porch enclosure, that will be positioned so it is shaded in summer, to prevent overheating.
Social Actions: An additional and very important action for this house is social, rather than technical – we would convert the house from single-family use into a boarding house, while staying in residence ourselves, in order to split heating costs across 5-6 people, rather than 2.
House 2: Frank Lloyd Lite
Description: ‘FLL’ is a 1200 sq. ft. 1955 'stone veneer on brick' slab-on-grade rancher with a south-facing exposure. Walls are uninsulated and attic insulation is inadequate, and the furnace is low-efficency gas reaching the end of its service life.
Strategy: FLL is a good candidate for geothermal heat pump conversion, since the yard is large enough for drilling or trenching, so this is being considered. However, the electric/wood option described below is also being considered. In either variation, the master plan is a full solution strategy, that aims to take the house entirely off gas.
Technical Actions: Install a wood stove in the central living area of the house, with 2-year supply of seasoned wood. Convert bedrooms to electric baseboard. Convert hot water to electric. Do full window replacement to reduce heat loss. Strip out existing gas furnace and all ducting, and insulate attic to R45. Insulate inwards from the existing exterior walls with studs and insulation. Blown-in insulation in the parts of all of the interior walls that abut the exterior walls, to prevent heat leaks at these 'joints' between the new ly insulated exterior walls. Capture winter solar heat with a glassed-in south-facing trombe wall, that will be positioned so it is shaded in summer, to prevent overheating. (See http://www.energybulletin.net/25049.html)
Social Actions: Nothing (other than being a good neighbour and helping others out in a cold snap!) is needed by way of social action with this strategy.
Please add snapshots of your own 'de-gassing' plans below, and feel free to comment on mine.
(BTW: An energy audit and appropriate advice WILL be sought for either house... these are currently just concept sketches, and no actual work will be done without some careful analysis. In particular, the approach of insulating 'inwards' in an existing structure requires careful use of vapour barriers.)
January 25th, 2007
Renovations
Hi Dan.
Great to see some positive actions taking place. Our first task with our home just after we moved in last year (2005) was to replace all the old, original, windows with new ones. Do a careful check as to who has the best thermal windows, Delcan on Wellington is where we got ours. They were not cheap, for a main new window, which we got bigger because it is south facing, two windows for bedrooms and 4 basement windows was $11,000. But what a difference though. We added 6" more for attic insulation, upping it to about R45. Don't go cheap on that either, get the best R value regardless of the cost.
The geoexchange is not cheap either $15-20K, you will need a 6 ton system using verticle holes (6 down 150ft min). Much more efficient than horizontal (1000 linear feet for every 1000 sqr ft of home, thus may not be practical). The system I'm looking at is a two stage system where on cool days it runs on 2 tons, then on colder days 4 ton, then on really cold nights it will use both the 2 and 4 to heat the home. Appearently it is the most energy efficient type of heat pump. Uses etholine glycol for the pipes into the ground, I was told to stay away from the in-ground freon systems.
We once had baseboard heaters at another house, but all they did was heat the wall, and drive our electrical bill through the roof. The GSHP should be able to do the whole house no problem.
Option for hot water is an electrical demand type. No tank, though a tank is not really a heat loss as it is inside the house and any loss from the tank stays in the home, it's the loss from heating the water up that's costly. Demand systems are expensive, can't recall the exact price, should be able to go onthe net and find out, but you would need 2 min, one for the kitchen one for the bathroom. Again, most energy efficient method.
Renovating an entire house is not fun, costly, and takes a lot of time. Been there done that when I rebuilt an old victorian home when we lived in Beaverton. Because I did it myself, on limited funds, it took 15 years. Yep, it's a long haul project. I know of people who have done a whole house in 3, but they almost went bankrupt doing it and got divorced in the end. With 2 places, will be easier since you would not have to live in the renovated home.
Good luck on the project. And if you need the GSHP guy I know I can pass it on. Though I have a question, if the concern is also CO2, does buring wood produce less CO2 than NG? I don't know, so just asking.
Richard
Komoka
No one is ahead of their time, just the rest of humanity is slow to catch on.
January 25th, 2007
A quick thought on wood and carbon
Hi Richard - Thanks for all the detailed info on geothermal, a very useful addition to the 'degassing' topic, and I agree that geothermal is ideal as a near-zero-carbon alternative.
On burning wood (efficiently!), I do tend to think of wood as 'short-cycle' carbon that has been circulating repeatedly in the biosphere every few hundred years as it burns and then regrows in the form of new trees. Sort of self-sequestering carbon.
I think of coal, oil and NG as new inputs to the system, thus more damaging in the long term.
Of course carbon is carbon, so in the short term it is still an input, and your point is well taken. Perhaps some other forum members can comment.
Getting back to the household focus though: pellet stoves and corn stoves have also been mentioned by some, and the potential for switch-grass pellets as well.
Google 'wood furnace add-in' for info on wood furnaces that hook into existing duct systems. Some are Canadian made, so are not hard to get ahold of.
January 26th, 2007
Alternate heating
When we lived in Beaverton in the early 80's where we installed two wood stoves, one up stairs and one in the kitchen. We got logs and cut and chopped the wood ourselves. The pile completely filled a basement room 16x12 6ft high and it just barely made it through the winters.
Thus any form of heating that require storage of solid fuels is going to take up a comporable space.
During the night we'd be lucky if there were any burning embers left and the house would be freezing. So we went to coal, one place still sold it in bulk. The pile filled the same room up to 3 ft deep. But dirt cheap, $250 back then would last all winter, and would last all night too without refilling.
So going back in our standard of living to something like this is tough work, takes a lot of space. My big concern now is availability. Pellets, corn, wood, will be in short supply if too many people start to use it.
Richard
Komoka
No one is ahead of their time, just the rest of humanity is slow to catch on.
January 26th, 2007
stoves
I was at the Home Show today looking at the corn stoves among other things. They have capacity up to 34,000 BTU.
My concern is London has a bylaw that requires homes to have a furnace. So policy is the first issue to be able to use alternatives.
January 26th, 2007
stoves
I was at the Home Show today looking at the corn stoves among other things. They have capacity up to 34,000 BTU.
My concern is London has a bylaw that requires homes to have a furnace. So policy is the first issue to be able to use alternatives.
January 25th, 2007
Ground Source Heat Pump
I see GSHP as the only real alternative to any other method (that said, I also plan to buy a cookstove) to heat most buildings who have the room (at least some parking lots can be put to good use). The next step for me once I get the GSHP working is to have it run off grid.
With more people moving off NG will put more demand on the power system, which we know is already at the limit.
First I need to know exactly what it takes to run it, which one cannot know for sure until you go through a winter. The plan is to set up solar panels and a battery system that is hooked just to the GSHP. There are drawbacks to this, cost is the big one. Each panel is $1000 and each battery (must be deep drain) are $300 each, and you need lots. Problem is with solar is this damn winter, day 63 and only 12 sunny days. Batteries can only last about 2 days before having to be recharged. Plus batteries only have a about a 10 year life to them, which begs the question, then what?
The GSHP will also heat the greenhouse (it will be attached to the home once we extend it) so we can grow all year. Currently I have a bannana tree, 3 pineapples, 2 tangeries, passion fruit, kiwis, and various veggies are starting to sprout. Some will take years to produce. Better to start now.
Gardening is a biggy here. The ground here is terrible, too many years of farming. So I had 5 truckloads of triplemix brought in ($3,000 worth), half went into the greenhouse the rest will go on the garden. Good way to get it jump started.
Richard
Komoka
No one is ahead of their time, just the rest of humanity is slow to catch on.