Electric baseboard heat bad?
 

We're looking at buying a 1961 home in Oregon. It has electric
baseboard heat. I've heard that it's expensive and doesn't heat the
house very well. Is this true? I don't want to buy a house and then buy
a new heating system.

Skyf

Electric baseboard heat bad?
 

request to see their utility bills for a year or two (if they tossed them,
they could easily get copies/statements from the utility).
if they don't seem keen on the idea, you could probably assume the bills are
very bad news.

bill


"skyf" wrote in message
oups.com...
We're looking at buying a 1961 home in Oregon. It has electric
baseboard heat. I've heard that it's expensive and doesn't heat the
house very well. Is this true? I don't want to buy a house and then buy
a new heating system.

Skyf

Electric baseboard heat bad?
 

According to skyf :
We're looking at buying a 1961 home in Oregon. It has electric
baseboard heat. I've heard that it's expensive and doesn't heat the
house very well. Is this true? I don't want to buy a house and then buy
a new heating system.

They heat perfectly fine, provided it was spec'd/designed properly.

For the most part, it's about the most expensive way to heat a house, but
these days with oil/gas prices going nuts, it may end up being cheaper.

[Electricity pricing is likely to be more stable than others.]
--
Chris Lewis, Una confibula non set est
It's not just anyone who gets a Starship Cruiser class named after them.

Electric baseboard heat bad?
 

On Fri, 21 Oct 2005 04:33:12 -0000, (Chris
Lewis) wrote:

According to skyf :
We're looking at buying a 1961 home in Oregon. It has electric
baseboard heat. I've heard that it's expensive and doesn't heat the
house very well. Is this true? I don't want to buy a house and then buy
a new heating system.

They heat perfectly fine, provided it was spec'd/designed properly.

For the most part, it's about the most expensive way to heat a house, but
these days with oil/gas prices going nuts, it may end up being cheaper.

[Electricity pricing is likely to be more stable than others.]
--
Chris Lewis, Una confibula non set est
It's not just anyone who gets a Starship Cruiser class named after them.

Traditionally, electrical resistance heating has been the most
expensive way to heat a house. Some parts of Oregon have a milder
climate than olthers. If the house was particularly well designed
and insulated, though, it may not be so bad. Right now, gas and oil
prices are high, but this also puts upward pressure on the price of
electricity. There isn't enough cheap hydro electricity to go
around.

In Oregon, utilities are required to inform prospective buyers of the
estimated costs based on previous bills. They are not required to
show you actual copies of those bills though. They will give you the
general range of the bill for winter vs. summer conditions. You give
them the address of the house you want to buy.

Beachcomber

Electric baseboard heat bad?
 

Although expensive, they are 100% efficient. If you put 1KW of
electricity in, you get 1KW of heat out. How much does the utility
company charge per KWH in Oregon?

Electric baseboard heat bad?
 

Electric is fine if sized right, you give no Kw cost for your area. I
pay .125 Kwh and last year apx 1 $ a therm Ng, at that price electric is
apx 2.2x more expensive than Ng. If you have cheap hydro and pay .05 kwh
you may be cheaper with electric with Ng much higher now, only you can
run your local costs or post them. My area produces alot of its
electrical from coal, Ng, and reactors so the only thing holding back
rate increases is time. Few areas have cheaper electric. Get copies of
bills going back many years they may have kept the temps very low. A
heating contractor can do a load calculation for you in writing and give
you costs and options, call out a few heating pros.

Electric baseboard heat bad?
 

skyf wrote:
We're looking at buying a 1961 home in Oregon. It has electric
baseboard heat. I've heard that it's expensive

Well it is resistance type electric heat and it will be as expensive,
but not more than any other type of electric resistance heat. In some areas
it may be less than fossil fuels, but more expensive most areas.

and doesn't heat the
house very well.

Not true at all. It is a great way to heat, but it can be expensive.

Is this true? I don't want to buy a house and then
buy a new heating system.

Skyf

Other than heat pumps, all electric heat will cost the same to use.

--
Joseph Meehan

Dia duit

Electric baseboard heat bad?
 

m Ransley wrote:

I pay .125 Kwh and last year apx 1 $ a therm Ng, at that price electric is
apx 2.2x more expensive than Ng...

That works for very large values of 2.2 :-)

Nick

Electric baseboard heat bad?
 

Joseph Meehan wrote:

Other than heat pumps, all electric heat will cost the same to use.

Let's not forget that dehumidifiers are heat pumps.

Moving a pound of 55 F 100% RH basement air with 0.0093 pounds of water vapor
up into an airtight house and warming it to 65 with 0.24(65-55) = 2.4 Btu and
drying it to 30% RH so it contains 0.004 pounds of water, releasing 1000x5.3
= 5.3 Btu, provides 5.3-2.4 = 2.9 Btu more heat than the electrical energy
needed to operate the dehumidifier.

Nick

Electric baseboard heat bad?
 

On 20 Oct 2005 18:36:31 -0700, "skyf" wrote:

We're looking at buying a 1961 home in Oregon. It has electric
baseboard heat. I've heard that it's expensive and doesn't heat the
house very well. Is this true? I don't want to buy a house and then buy
a new heating system.

Skyf

My home was built in 1966.....Baseboard electric heat....and to be
honest it heats just fine.... As for being expensive ...sure it is
no question about that at all.....but is it that much more expensive
then other forms of heat? I do not think so... No ductwork, no
furnace, adding another room to the house did not require any
"math" to figure out the additional heat load etc....

Hard to comparee prices with the Price of Natual Gas, Propane expected
to really jump this winter...my electric rate has been unchanged for
years no guarentee it will stay that way but I doubt it jumps 20-30
or even 40 percent

Bob G

Electric baseboard heat bad?
 

Electric baseboard heat bad?
 

No ductwork

But if you've got AC then that's sort of irrelevant, isn't it? The ducts
serve dual duty for cooling and heating so they're going to be there anyway.

Hard to comparee prices with the Price of Natual Gas, Propane expected
to really jump this winter...my electric rate has been unchanged for
years no guarentee it will stay that way but I doubt it jumps 20-30
or even 40 percent

That and there are better public utulity regulations in place on most
electricity suppliers. I suppose it'd be cheaper to use electric and better
the environment as all the pollution would be manageable at the point of
generation. But it's currently less expensive to ship around heating oil
and natural gas than build-out the wiring grid.

Me, I'm looking at adding a corn stove.

-Bill Kearney

Electric baseboard heat bad?
 

You mean I can take my heat pump evaporator coil unit, bring it indoors, remove
heat from my house and then put it back into the house and get more heat that I
take out for no energy cost?

Bunch of nonsense.

This is just plain grade nine physics.

wrote in message
...
Joseph Meehan wrote:

Other than heat pumps, all electric heat will cost the same to use.

Let's not forget that dehumidifiers are heat pumps.

Moving a pound of 55 F 100% RH basement air with 0.0093 pounds of water vapor
up into an airtight house and warming it to 65 with 0.24(65-55) = 2.4 Btu and
drying it to 30% RH so it contains 0.004 pounds of water, releasing 1000x5.3
= 5.3 Btu, provides 5.3-2.4 = 2.9 Btu more heat than the electrical energy
needed to operate the dehumidifier.

Nick

Electric baseboard heat bad?
 

Nick wrote?

Moving a pound of 55 F 100% RH basement air with 0.0093 pounds of
water vapor up into an airtight house and warming it to 65 with
0.24(65-55) = 2.4 Btu and drying it to 30% RH so it contains 0.004
pounds of water, releasing 1000x5.3 = 5.3 Btu, provides 5.3-2.4 = 2.9
Btu more heat than the electrical energy needed to operate the
dehumidifier.

can you run that past us again please?
Namely;
One pound of air containing 0.0093 pounds of water raised by (65-55= 10 deg.
F) = 0.093 BTU?
Drying (removing) out the water from 100 to 30 per cent = 0.0093 * 0.7 =
0.0065 lbs.
Heat released from that 0.0065 lbs of water would be .....................
??????
And that's the point where I lost it!
Can you help me out?
Terry

Electric baseboard heat bad?
 

"Terry" wrote in message
. ..
Nick wrote?

Moving a pound of 55 F 100% RH basement air with 0.0093 pounds of
water vapor up into an airtight house and warming it to 65 with
0.24(65-55) = 2.4 Btu and drying it to 30% RH so it contains 0.004
pounds of water, releasing 1000x5.3 = 5.3 Btu, provides 5.3-2.4 = 2.9
Btu more heat than the electrical energy needed to operate the
dehumidifier.

can you run that past us again please?
Namely;
One pound of air containing 0.0093 pounds of water raised by (65-55= 10
deg. F) = 0.093 BTU?
Drying (removing) out the water from 100 to 30 per cent = 0.0093 * 0.7 =
0.0065 lbs.
Heat released from that 0.0065 lbs of water would be .....................
??????
And that's the point where I lost it!
Can you help me out?

What Nick was saying, is one pound of 55F air at 100% RH contains 0.0093
pounds of water. After you heat it up and dry it down to 30% RH, it has
0.004 pounds of water, so you've removed 0.0053 pounds of water as
condensate.

Nick then approximated the amount of heat given off by 1 lbm of water when
it is condensed as 1000 BTU (its a little more, but that's a nice round
figure). So if 1 lbm of water vapor gives up 1000 BTU, then 1000 BTU/lbm *
0.0053 lbm = 5.3 BTU given up by the condensing of 0.0053 pounds of water
found in one pound of air.

It takes about 0.24 BTU to warm up one pound of air by one degree. So to
warm up the air from 55F to 65F would take about 0.24 BTU/lbm-F * (65-55) =
2.4 BTU for every pound of air.

So, starting with air at 55F at 100% RH (call it state 'A'), if you run it
through 'some process' to get to 65F at 30% RH and some condensate (state
'B'), you have to add 2.4 BTU sensible heat to warm each pound of air, and
the vapor releases 5.3 BTU/lbm of latent heat to condense the water vapor
from one pound of air, so you have a net excess of 2.9 BTU for each pound of
air you run through this 'process'.

But that doesn't tell you how much energy you have to expend to get each
pound of air from point 'A' to point 'B'.

daestrom

Electric baseboard heat bad?
 

Terry wrote:

Moving a pound of 55 F 100% RH basement air with 0.0093 pounds of
water vapor up into an airtight house and warming it to 65 with
0.24(65-55) = 2.4 Btu and drying it to 30% RH so it contains 0.004
pounds of water, releasing 1000x5.3 = 5.3 Btu, provides 5.3-2.4 = 2.9
Btu more heat than the electrical energy needed to operate the
dehumidifier.

One pound of air containing 0.0093 pounds of water
raised by (65-55)= 10 deg. F = 0.093 BTU?

No... Air has a specific heat of 0.24 Btu/lb-F, so raising a pound of air
(ignoring the small amount of water) 10 F takes 2.4 Btu.

Drying (removing) out the water from 100 to 30 per cent = 0.0093 * 0.7 =
0.0065 lbs.

No... 65 F air at 30% RH has Pa = 0.6e^(17.863-9621/(460+50)) = 0.189 "Hg, so
wi = 0.62198/(29.921/Pa-1) = 0.004, ie a pound of that air contains 0.004
pounds of water vapor.

Heat released from that 0.0065 lbs of water would be .....................

No... It takes 1000 Btu to evaporate a pound of water, so condensing
0.0093-0.004 = 0.0053 pounds of water out of that air releases 1000x0.0053
= 5.3 Btu, but heating the air from 50 to 65 requires 2.4, so the net heat
gain is 2.9, unless we use a simple air-air heat exchanger to warm upcoming
basement air up to about 65 with replacement room temp air that cools to
about 50 on the way down to the basement.

Nick

Electric baseboard heat bad?
 

daestrom wrote:

...starting with air at 55F at 100% RH (call it state 'A'), if you run it
through 'some process' to get to 65F at 30% RH and some condensate (state
'B'), you have to add 2.4 BTU sensible heat to warm each pound of air, and
the vapor releases 5.3 BTU/lbm of latent heat to condense the water vapor
from one pound of air, so you have a net excess of 2.9 BTU for each pound of
air you run through this 'process'.

But that doesn't tell you how much energy you have to expend to get each
pound of air from point 'A' to point 'B'.

That energy heats the house, like electric resistance heating. The net COP
is about 1.6. We can also ignore the small amount of heat removed from the
liquid water if it leaves the house below room temp.

Nick

Electric baseboard heat bad?
 

wrote in message
...
daestrom wrote:

...starting with air at 55F at 100% RH (call it state 'A'), if you run it
through 'some process' to get to 65F at 30% RH and some condensate (state
'B'), you have to add 2.4 BTU sensible heat to warm each pound of air, and
the vapor releases 5.3 BTU/lbm of latent heat to condense the water vapor
from one pound of air, so you have a net excess of 2.9 BTU for each pound
of
air you run through this 'process'.

But that doesn't tell you how much energy you have to expend to get each
pound of air from point 'A' to point 'B'.

That energy heats the house, like electric resistance heating. The net COP
is about 1.6.

Were do you get this particular number? How many kwh / lbm of condensate?


We can also ignore the small amount of heat removed from the
liquid water if it leaves the house below room temp.

True.

daestrom

Electric baseboard heat bad?
 

daestrom wrote:

...The net COP is about 1.6.

Were do you get this particular number?

From a fairly new Kenmore dehumidifier with a kWh meter and a measuring cup.

But air conditioning a basement seems more efficient, and ACs cost less, and
they can be used all year, and they don't require an air-air heat exchanger.

At 54.3 F (Phila deep ground) and 100% RH, Pw = e^(17.863-9621/(450+54.3))
= 0.430 "Hg. At 60% RH with 100APw(1-0.6) = 5340 Btu/h (an ASHRAE swimming
pool formula), we might keep a $69 10.2 EER Daewoo AC busy with A = 310 ft^2
of basement floor.

Nick