"Though heat pmps don't give me that warm and toasty feeling that a gas furnace does."
Excellent points.
I was in on the design phase of a large Church building because we had outgrown our old one. One of the cool things we did was to dig a fairly deep and large hole next to the building and of course it became a pond. Then the pipes were run from the bottom of the pond into the HVAC room in the church basement where the BTU's were gleaned from the warmer water and circulated thru the system to aid with the enormous amount of btu's required to heat a church building that would hold over 2,000 people throughout the building.
It was a LONG time ago. 1982. We've come a long way since then in terms of heating and cooling efficiencies as well as various methods to cut down on usage as well as household budgets.
Zim brought up the heat pump. And the natural gas furnace. I like BOTH of those. I own a high efficiency Heat pump because of the climate I live in. There are some days or even weeks that it get too cold to capture BTU's from the air so the very large electric resistance heater element kicks in and becuae It is oversized for my house it does not stay on very long at all. Short amount of electric required to keep the house warm and toasty.
Don't get me wrong, where I am gets cold in the winter unlike you southerners who enjoy much warmer winters but you also have fire ants and other assorted critters I won't put up with.. We get the arctic blasts occasionally and it gets below 32 degrees quite often...
My average electric bill for my entire home, and my house is 100 percent electric everything, in the winter was around the $180 mark with one monthhaving a high of about 205. That includes my hot water heater, washer, dryer, STOVE and OVEN, and everything else in the house that needs power.
So I am a huge fan of Heat pumps.. The A/C works like a normal a/c central unit would. Keeps us comfy in summer also.. The secret to using a heat pumps for heat is adding a whole house humidifier to put moisture into the air and monitor the humidity level. We keep ours around 44. Warm and comfy..
Geo-thermal home construction built into the ground using the heat of the earth to keep the house warm is another thing that would work well but presents its own set of problems.
What happens to ANYTHING covered by dirt and left alone for a year?? Yeah. The earth has a tendency eat at things and digest them. Also, talk about some serious excavation iffen one were to develop a crack in the concrete or block walls for the basement area or any other part of the house you need to get to for repair..
So there ARE drawbacks that need to be considered before taking that "plunge" into the earh for geothermal warmth..
It's an interesting topic and there ARE NO best solutions or answers but lots of choices. Glad you guys brought it up.. This is my tiny contribution to this great discussion..
AND lastly, might I remind those who do not know, almost ALL of Europe and other nations are powered by electric from Nuclear power plants which provide LOTS of energy at the lowest costs.
MAybe we should consider adding a few more of those and eliminating rolling brownouts out west and more electric to meet those demands. I mean, the entire country could benefit from that and it would be efficient..
Just more food for the topic.....
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