|
central illinois | I live in an old farm house that was built in 1873 and have heated with wood, gas(for two years) and this year geo. I have removed all the exterior, reinsulated and have put in windows about ten years ago. The last wood burner I had was an outdoor central boiler and was a very good stove. We really enjoyed the heat and the hot water was great, but cut about 10-12 cords of wood a year. A couple of years ago I decided that my body was not keeping up with all the wood cutting,splitting,hauling so I loading so I sold the wood stove and burnt gas for two years. There was another reason that I gave up the wood which was that fact that you have to tend the fire almost every day. The two years that I heated with a gas it took 1300-1500 gal of lp and the house only seemed warm while the furnace was running. Last spring when at a home show we talked to a couple of geo contractors and with the energy credits decided to install a geo system. The contractor did an energy audit of the house to determine how many runs that needed to be installed to heat the house. The house was on the border if 4 loops would handle it so we installed 5 loops trenched in . The air conditioning was very good, but did not seem to take out enough of the humidity so we had to run a dehumidifier. I am not sure if it was because the summer was not as warm as normal or the amount of rain we had,but the air conditioning was very good. This winter we have been very happy with the heat. We have had the thermostat set at 71 and run the fan continuously and the house maintains that temp in any room of the house. I will say that the waterfurnace we installed uses a dc motor on the fan and has many variable speeds and is not moving alot of air when not heating or cooling but keeps the house at a very constant temp. Looking back at the last 10 years of electric use I have been running around $70 higher and am very happy with that but have only 3 bills to compare. | |
|
Geothermal vs outdoor wood stove?
