Pete C. wrote:

Nope, I do the math. In the case of nat gas, what kills your
theoretical savings is the monthly service charges for the many warm
weather months months when you are using hardly any gas, particularly
here in TX where the heating season is short.

Good point.

I live in a duplex - one side is my office. The gas company charges, as I
recall, about $11.00/month just to be connected. I don't begrudge them
that - they have to read the meter, send out a bill, keep records - as
overhead.

With about two hours work and a bit of pipe, I connected both halves of the
duplex to the same meter. It wasn't hard; the two water heaters sat on
opposite sides of a common wall. Simply poking a hole in the wall and
joining the gas supply lines together was relatively easy.

A call to the gas company to drop service one one side of the duplex
resulted in a savings of over $100/year.

Wait, there's more!

The remaining meter is the one servicing the "office" side of the duplex and
the bill is paid by a company check.

Deductible.

Pete C. wrote:
Ed Pawlowski wrote:

"Phil" wrote

HI again, original poster here. Thanks for all of the feedback. I
had been
thinking about switching to electric range so that I could get a
smooth cooktop range. A lot of the foods we cook splatter grease
over the top of the stove and it is a task to clean that up. A
smooth surface would'a been easier to clean.

Many people like the smooth tops, others hat them.

I've cooked on a few of them and they have their good and bad points.

The smooth tops are somewhat easier to clean if you clean them as soon
as something spills, before it has time to bake on, i.e. no waiting
for the top to fully cool, and interrupting cooking to clean if you
have to continue to use that burner position for a while. Since the
top is smooth, instead of spills dripping into a recessed drip pan
area somewhat away from the heat source, the spills just get solidly
baked on, and if you let them bake on they are difficult to remove
without scratching the surface.

One advantage of the smooth top is that you can slide a pan "off the
burner" to the side without it tipping or spilling and you can
position it anywhere on the cooktop.

Another advantage is that the smooth top provides additional counter /
workspace for small kitchens, similar to how RV stoves have covers to
serve the same function.

There aren't any big negatives to them really, they don't seem to have
as high output as good conventional electric or gas ranges, but they
are sufficient for most things. Not so good with a wok, even a flat
bottom wok, probably not very good with one of the double burner cast
iron griddle pans either.

Still, you can't singe off the pin-feathers of a freshly-plucked chicken on
an electric range. Or toast either a weiner or a marshmallow.

Bummer.

HeyBub wrote:
Pete C. wrote:
Nope, I do the math. In the case of nat gas, what kills your
theoretical savings is the monthly service charges for the many warm
weather months months when you are using hardly any gas, particularly
here in TX where the heating season is short.

Good point.

I live in a duplex - one side is my office. The gas company charges, as I
recall, about $11.00/month just to be connected. I don't begrudge them
that - they have to read the meter, send out a bill, keep records - as
overhead.

With about two hours work and a bit of pipe, I connected both halves of the
duplex to the same meter. It wasn't hard; the two water heaters sat on
opposite sides of a common wall. Simply poking a hole in the wall and
joining the gas supply lines together was relatively easy.

A call to the gas company to drop service one one side of the duplex
resulted in a savings of over $100/year.

Wait, there's more!

The remaining meter is the one servicing the "office" side of the duplex and
the bill is paid by a company check.

Deductible.


You're using the law to save money but the tax weasels will claim
your use of company utilities is compensation. The thought of how
much money and government resources to go after you for that would
boggle the mind.

TDD

HeyBub wrote:
Pete C. wrote:
Nope, I do the math. In the case of nat gas, what kills your
theoretical savings is the monthly service charges for the many warm
weather months months when you are using hardly any gas, particularly
here in TX where the heating season is short.

Good point.

I live in a duplex - one side is my office. The gas company charges, as I
recall, about $11.00/month just to be connected. I don't begrudge them
that - they have to read the meter, send out a bill, keep records - as
overhead.

With about two hours work and a bit of pipe, I connected both halves of the
duplex to the same meter. It wasn't hard; the two water heaters sat on
opposite sides of a common wall. Simply poking a hole in the wall and
joining the gas supply lines together was relatively easy.

A call to the gas company to drop service one one side of the duplex
resulted in a savings of over $100/year.

Wait, there's more!

The remaining meter is the one servicing the "office" side of the duplex and
the bill is paid by a company check.

Deductible.


Where did you say you lived again, Bub? IRS only pays the reward money
if I give them an address....

--
aem sends...

I might believe you if you mean by area, but not if you mean by
population. I'm not aware of any densely-populated areas (at least in the
eastern half of US) that do not have NG available in the street. I'm in a
semi-rural area several miles from city limits, no water or sewer, but
every house has a gas meter. At least in this part of country, people
only have to use bottle gas if they live WAY out in the boonies, where
there were not enough houses per mile to make running the gas line
profitable.

--
aem sends...

We don't have NG here in upstate NY, about 20 minutes from Albany, 5 minutes
outside of town. I'm in the boonies, but certainly not WAY out. They sent
out a survey (supposedly 25,000 copies) about 10 years ago and they said
only 5 people (myself included) wanted NG. They didn't say how many bothered
to return the survey, however.

Pete C. wrote:
Bob F wrote:

Pete C. wrote:
You misspelled "minutes".

No, I did not. I cooked extensively on electric stoves for about 30
years, so I'm well aware of their response times. Ten seconds is
about the maximum you need to hold the pan off the burner, and
indeed you don't even have to hole it entirely off, just lifting
the handle to have the pan at a slight angle and not in direct
contact with most of the burner is sufficient.

You must have a magic electric stove. Mine takes at least 2 minutes
before the burner cools enough to not continue boiling over a pot.

Perhaps I'm the magic element, since I have never had that issue on at
least a half dozen different electric ranges I have cooked extensively
on.


As far as cost, that depends on your local rates. Some places pay 4
or more time as much for electricity as others. Gas for heating is
probably half the cost of electric heating here, as determined by
converting from electric to gas.

Electric resistive heating, or electric heat pump? A heat pump is 3-4X
the efficiency of electric resistive heating. I drastically cut my
heating costs when I replaced electric resistive with electric heat
pump.

You are right about heat pumps. The capital costs are considerable, and
depending on your situation, the outdoor noise may be a problem with neighbors,
but they certain will compete with gas for energy cost if it's not too cold
where you live.

"HeyBub" wrote:

Why would you want to convert from gas to electric? As far as I can tell,
there is NO advantage in so doing and you have to give up several plusses.

I cooked on electric for forty years. I switched to gas about 5 years ago. It
took me about two days to start wondering why the hell I didn't do it forty
years earlier. -- Doug

On Sat, 15 May 2010 21:08:15 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:

There are 2 types of self cleaning ovens.

The first a continious cleaning catalytic coating that works poorly.
The spills kinda absorb into the coating. which discolors

Agreed. Wouldn't have one.

The good system which I have seals the oven for your safety and raises
the interior temp to over 1100 degrees F, cycle takes a few hours

It literally burns off and spills, and when thru leaves a light grey
ash thats easily just wiped up

Yep, I didn't know a gas oven would get hot enough (venting lost too much
heat). I'll have to look again, though see no disadvantage to "dual fuel".
We're still thinking about whether plumbing in LP is worthwhile (we just had
the tank put in at the other end of the house).

On Sun, 16 May 2010 09:31:57 -0400, "h" wrote:


I might believe you if you mean by area, but not if you mean by
population. I'm not aware of any densely-populated areas (at least in the
eastern half of US) that do not have NG available in the street. I'm in a
semi-rural area several miles from city limits, no water or sewer, but
every house has a gas meter. At least in this part of country, people
only have to use bottle gas if they live WAY out in the boonies, where
there were not enough houses per mile to make running the gas line
profitable.

--
aem sends...

We don't have NG here in upstate NY, about 20 minutes from Albany, 5 minutes
outside of town. I'm in the boonies, but certainly not WAY out. They sent
out a survey (supposedly 25,000 copies) about 10 years ago and they said
only 5 people (myself included) wanted NG. They didn't say how many bothered
to return the survey, however.

About ten years ago Vermont Gas went around and asked how many on our street
(maybe 20 houses) wanted gas. As it worked out, the only money out of my
pocket was $50 to have a clean-out installed in the chimney (should have been
there) and $12/mo for the burner rental. I hate oil heat, so sure! The gas
company paid for all installation costs, and even came back that spring and
re-seeded the lawn. Only one family on the street refused.

On Sun, 16 May 2010 00:01:32 -0500, "Pete C." wrote:


HeyBub wrote:

Han wrote:
"Pete C." wrote in news:4beed29a$0$26646
:

A generator solves that problem along with the defrosting freezer and
stumbling around in the dark problems.

But, but, you need tospend money to buy a generator and whatever
switching is required so as not to kill the electric company's
linemen.

It was the linemen who installed the infrastructure that fails for two weeks
when a larger than average bird roosts on the wire. Who cares if they die?

Perhaps. But the fact is that there has never been a single documented
case of a utility lineman being killed by an improperly connected
generator. In every single lineman fatality related to a generator, the
cause of the death has been the lineman not following procedures which
specify that every line must be tested and grounded before working on
it.

You've just defined the cause differently. No one dies from jumping out of
tall buildings, either, but dead is still dead.

" wrote:

On Sun, 16 May 2010 00:01:32 -0500, "Pete C." wrote:


HeyBub wrote:

Han wrote:
"Pete C." wrote in news:4beed29a$0$26646
:

A generator solves that problem along with the defrosting freezer and
stumbling around in the dark problems.

But, but, you need tospend money to buy a generator and whatever
switching is required so as not to kill the electric company's
linemen.

It was the linemen who installed the infrastructure that fails for two weeks
when a larger than average bird roosts on the wire. Who cares if they die?

Perhaps. But the fact is that there has never been a single documented
case of a utility lineman being killed by an improperly connected
generator. In every single lineman fatality related to a generator, the
cause of the death has been the lineman not following procedures which
specify that every line must be tested and grounded before working on
it.

You've just defined the cause differently. No one dies from jumping out of
tall buildings, either, but dead is still dead.

Nope, I didn't define the cause of death differently, I defined it
accurately. Cause of death - "Electrocution due to failure to test and
ground the conductor before handling it" - that's it, period. It makes
no difference the source of the electricity.

Doug Miller wrote:

In article . com, "Pete C." wrote:

Doug Miller wrote:

In article .com, "Pete C."
wrote:

No, I did not. I cooked extensively on electric stoves for about 30
years, so I'm well aware of their response times.

Judging by the next sentence, it doesn't seem so.

Ten seconds is about
the maximum you need to hold the pan off the burner, and indeed you
don't even have to hole it entirely off, just lifting the handle to have
the pan at a slight angle and not in direct contact with most of the
burner is sufficient.

You're, ummmm, overly optimistic if you think that an electric burner will
cool off enough in ten seconds to make a significant difference. Boil water
in
a teakettle on an electric range. As soon as the kettle begins to whistle,
turn the burner off, remove the kettle, and pour yourself a cup of tea. Set
the kettle back down on the same burner -- a burner that's OFF, remember --
and observe as the water comes to a boil again, and the kettle begins to
whistle. One more reason to dislike electric ranges.

The response time of electric burners isn't anywhere *near* fast enough to
avoid boilovers or scorched white sauces if you inadvertently set the heat a
bit too high, or if your attention gets distracted.

Well, I guess all the various electric ranges I've used over the years
must be using some alien technology then, as that has not been how any
of them have worked.

People who don't use a range for anything more complicated than frying
hamburgers generally don't have any problems with the slow response time of an
electric burner.

Funny, I've never had any difficulty making real (not blender)
hollandaise sauce on any of the electric stoves I've used, nor custard
ice cream base, nor creme brulee, etc.

Doug Miller wrote:


trimmed


Nope, I do the math. In the case of nat gas, what kills your theoretical
savings is the monthly service charges for the many warm weather months
months when you are using hardly any gas, particularly here in TX where
the heating season is short.

If you're incurring monthly service charges because there are months in which
you use hardly any gas, it's your own fault. Replace your electric dryer with
a gas dryer. Replace your electric water heater with a gas water heater.
You'll be using more gas, obviously, but a whole lot less electricity.

Nope, a gas water heater and dryer will still use very little gas here,
and the electric ones I have use very little electricity. The monthly
service charge for gas service would still eclipse the gas useage.
Electricity use is predominantly A/C and refrigerator during the warm
weather months, the water heater and clothes dryer hardly have any
effect.

Bob F wrote:

Pete C. wrote:
Bob F wrote:

Pete C. wrote:
You misspelled "minutes".

No, I did not. I cooked extensively on electric stoves for about 30
years, so I'm well aware of their response times. Ten seconds is
about the maximum you need to hold the pan off the burner, and
indeed you don't even have to hole it entirely off, just lifting
the handle to have the pan at a slight angle and not in direct
contact with most of the burner is sufficient.

You must have a magic electric stove. Mine takes at least 2 minutes
before the burner cools enough to not continue boiling over a pot.

Perhaps I'm the magic element, since I have never had that issue on at
least a half dozen different electric ranges I have cooked extensively
on.


As far as cost, that depends on your local rates. Some places pay 4
or more time as much for electricity as others. Gas for heating is
probably half the cost of electric heating here, as determined by
converting from electric to gas.

Electric resistive heating, or electric heat pump? A heat pump is 3-4X
the efficiency of electric resistive heating. I drastically cut my
heating costs when I replaced electric resistive with electric heat
pump.

You are right about heat pumps. The capital costs are considerable, and
depending on your situation, the outdoor noise may be a problem with neighbors,
but they certain will compete with gas for energy cost if it's not too cold
where you live.

Well, noise isn't a consideration since there is an A/C condenser
outside anyway since much of the year is cooling season. The A/C or
heatpump condenser also faces my shop which is some 80' away from the
house. The next neighbor is another 100' or so and that side of their
house has no windows.

As for capital costs, I just installed this new 4T heat pump along with
matching air handler for a total cost of $3,750 which qualifies as
pretty damned cheap in my book. As for efficiency, my monitoring
indicates that it works well down to about 28F outdoor temp, and north
TX doesn't get a lot of days below 28F. It was also a good jump in
efficiency vs. the old A/C, so there is savings in the cooling months as
well.

" wrote:

On Sun, 16 May 2010 09:31:57 -0400, "h" wrote:


I might believe you if you mean by area, but not if you mean by
population. I'm not aware of any densely-populated areas (at least in the
eastern half of US) that do not have NG available in the street. I'm in a
semi-rural area several miles from city limits, no water or sewer, but
every house has a gas meter. At least in this part of country, people
only have to use bottle gas if they live WAY out in the boonies, where
there were not enough houses per mile to make running the gas line
profitable.

--
aem sends...

We don't have NG here in upstate NY, about 20 minutes from Albany, 5 minutes
outside of town. I'm in the boonies, but certainly not WAY out. They sent
out a survey (supposedly 25,000 copies) about 10 years ago and they said
only 5 people (myself included) wanted NG. They didn't say how many bothered
to return the survey, however.

About ten years ago Vermont Gas went around and asked how many on our street
(maybe 20 houses) wanted gas. As it worked out, the only money out of my
pocket was $50 to have a clean-out installed in the chimney (should have been
there) and $12/mo for the burner rental. I hate oil heat, so sure! The gas
company paid for all installation costs, and even came back that spring and
re-seeded the lawn. Only one family on the street refused.

I love oil heat, or at least I did when I was in the northeast. No
reliance on any outside utility during nasty storms, 300 gal of heat and
generator fuel on site and ready at all times. That works out to the
ability to operate for at least two full weeks (more if the tank is near
full at the start) without any issues during one of the northeast's
killer ice storms.

Granted nat gas service doesn't have an outage very often, but it does
have outages, where oil never has outages. Nat gas also blows up at
least one home a month, while oil has never blown up a home.

Ed Pawlowski wrote:
wrote
That's the way we're leaning, even though it'll cost an extra grand
to bring
the gas line around from the tank. Electric ovens also commonly
have the self-cleaning feature. I don't believe gas gets hot enough.

They do make them in gas. Our old one was.

Bertazzoni is using electric for self cleaning though
http://www.bertazzoni-italia.com/

Ours is black and they are painted in the same shop as Lamborghini
cars.

So does it cook really fast?

Han wrote:
"Pete C." wrote in news:4bef7d01$0$23532
:

I spent about $800 on a generator, about 25 years ago. Maintenance
consists of $4 worth of synthetic oil each year. It has provided
power during many days worth of outages, including a ~72hr
continuous run. Many of these outages were in the winter in the
northeast where frozen pipes would have been a threat had I not had
the generator. Being portable, the generator has also been used on a
number of remote construction projects as well. So yes, a generator
is a very inexpensive and reasonable investment.

That's relative. Until a month or so ago, we never had more than a
few hours of power outage at a time. For that an expense of $1500
today plus the maintenance and risk of storing gasoline etc is NOT
worth it.
To me grin.

If you don't want to store gasoline, siphon it out of your car when you need it.

Pete C. wrote:
Bob F wrote:

Pete C. wrote:
Bob F wrote:

Pete C. wrote:
You misspelled "minutes".

No, I did not. I cooked extensively on electric stoves for about
30 years, so I'm well aware of their response times. Ten seconds
is about the maximum you need to hold the pan off the burner, and
indeed you don't even have to hole it entirely off, just lifting
the handle to have the pan at a slight angle and not in direct
contact with most of the burner is sufficient.

You must have a magic electric stove. Mine takes at least 2 minutes
before the burner cools enough to not continue boiling over a pot.

Perhaps I'm the magic element, since I have never had that issue on
at least a half dozen different electric ranges I have cooked
extensively on.


As far as cost, that depends on your local rates. Some places pay 4
or more time as much for electricity as others. Gas for heating is
probably half the cost of electric heating here, as determined by
converting from electric to gas.

Electric resistive heating, or electric heat pump? A heat pump is
3-4X the efficiency of electric resistive heating. I drastically
cut my heating costs when I replaced electric resistive with
electric heat pump.

You are right about heat pumps. The capital costs are considerable,
and depending on your situation, the outdoor noise may be a problem
with neighbors, but they certain will compete with gas for energy
cost if it's not too cold where you live.

Well, noise isn't a consideration since there is an A/C condenser
outside anyway since much of the year is cooling season. The A/C or
heatpump condenser also faces my shop which is some 80' away from the
house. The next neighbor is another 100' or so and that side of their
house has no windows.

As for capital costs, I just installed this new 4T heat pump along
with matching air handler for a total cost of $3,750 which qualifies
as pretty damned cheap in my book. As for efficiency, my monitoring
indicates that it works well down to about 28F outdoor temp, and north
TX doesn't get a lot of days below 28F. It was also a good jump in
efficiency vs. the old A/C, so there is savings in the cooling months
as well.

28F is really warm winter weather in much of the USA.

Where I live in Seattle, A/C is unnecessary for a well insulated house. Yes, it
gets warm inside several days a year but not bad if I vent it good in the
morning, and then close it up to keep out the heat.

Pete C. wrote:
" wrote:
On Sun, 16 May 2010 09:31:57 -0400, "h" wrote:

I might believe you if you mean by area, but not if you mean by
population. I'm not aware of any densely-populated areas (at least in the
eastern half of US) that do not have NG available in the street. I'm in a
semi-rural area several miles from city limits, no water or sewer, but
every house has a gas meter. At least in this part of country, people
only have to use bottle gas if they live WAY out in the boonies, where
there were not enough houses per mile to make running the gas line
profitable.

--
aem sends...
We don't have NG here in upstate NY, about 20 minutes from Albany, 5 minutes
outside of town. I'm in the boonies, but certainly not WAY out. They sent
out a survey (supposedly 25,000 copies) about 10 years ago and they said
only 5 people (myself included) wanted NG. They didn't say how many bothered
to return the survey, however.
About ten years ago Vermont Gas went around and asked how many on our street
(maybe 20 houses) wanted gas. As it worked out, the only money out of my
pocket was $50 to have a clean-out installed in the chimney (should have been
there) and $12/mo for the burner rental. I hate oil heat, so sure! The gas
company paid for all installation costs, and even came back that spring and
re-seeded the lawn. Only one family on the street refused.

I love oil heat, or at least I did when I was in the northeast. No
reliance on any outside utility during nasty storms, 300 gal of heat and
generator fuel on site and ready at all times. That works out to the
ability to operate for at least two full weeks (more if the tank is near
full at the start) without any issues during one of the northeast's
killer ice storms.

Granted nat gas service doesn't have an outage very often, but it does
have outages, where oil never has outages. Nat gas also blows up at
least one home a month, while oil has never blown up a home.

Best hope your tank is always near-full then. If there is a massive
sustained electric outage for the region, you won't be getting any
refills, once your local supplier empties his tanks, assuming HE has a
backup generator.

As to NG blowups- simple housekeeping reduces the accidental explosion
risk to near-zero. Compare that to the massive cleanup costs from even a
minor tank leak (assuming the local authorities find out.) I think the
odds favor NG by a wide margin.

--
aem sends...

Bob F wrote:
Ed Pawlowski wrote:
wrote
That's the way we're leaning, even though it'll cost an extra grand
to bring
the gas line around from the tank. Electric ovens also commonly
have the self-cleaning feature. I don't believe gas gets hot enough.
They do make them in gas. Our old one was.

Bertazzoni is using electric for self cleaning though
http://www.bertazzoni-italia.com/

Ours is black and they are painted in the same shop as Lamborghini
cars.

So does it cook really fast?


No, but it comes with a skinny model in a sparkly dress leaning on it.

--
aem sends...

"Bob F" wrote
That's relative. Until a month or so ago, we never had more than a
few hours of power outage at a time. For that an expense of $1500
today plus the maintenance and risk of storing gasoline etc is NOT
worth it.
To me grin.

If you don't want to store gasoline, siphon it out of your car when you
need it.



Not easily done these days. Tanks have all sorts of devices to prevent that
now.

In article .com, "Pete C." wrote:

Doug Miller wrote:

In article . com, "Pete C."
wrote:

Doug Miller wrote:

In article .com, "Pete
C."
wrote:

No, I did not. I cooked extensively on electric stoves for about 30
years, so I'm well aware of their response times.

Judging by the next sentence, it doesn't seem so.

Ten seconds is about
the maximum you need to hold the pan off the burner, and indeed you
don't even have to hole it entirely off, just lifting the handle to have
the pan at a slight angle and not in direct contact with most of the
burner is sufficient.

You're, ummmm, overly optimistic if you think that an electric burner will
cool off enough in ten seconds to make a significant difference. Boil
water
in
a teakettle on an electric range. As soon as the kettle begins to whistle,
turn the burner off, remove the kettle, and pour yourself a cup of tea.
Set
the kettle back down on the same burner -- a burner that's OFF, remember
--
and observe as the water comes to a boil again, and the kettle begins to
whistle. One more reason to dislike electric ranges.

The response time of electric burners isn't anywhere *near* fast enough to
avoid boilovers or scorched white sauces if you inadvertently set the heat
a
bit too high, or if your attention gets distracted.

Well, I guess all the various electric ranges I've used over the years
must be using some alien technology then, as that has not been how any
of them have worked.

People who don't use a range for anything more complicated than frying
hamburgers generally don't have any problems with the slow response time of
an
electric burner.

Funny, I've never had any difficulty making real (not blender)
hollandaise sauce on any of the electric stoves I've used, nor custard
ice cream base, nor creme brulee, etc.

Odd, then, that you still harbor the delusion that a burner on an electric
stove will cool off in ten seconds. Like someone else said, you must have
magic burners. Or else you're full of, ummm, unreasonable optimism.

In article .com, "Pete C." wrote:

Doug Miller wrote:


trimmed


Nope, I do the math. In the case of nat gas, what kills your theoretical
savings is the monthly service charges for the many warm weather months
months when you are using hardly any gas, particularly here in TX where
the heating season is short.

If you're incurring monthly service charges because there are months in which
you use hardly any gas, it's your own fault. Replace your electric dryer with
a gas dryer. Replace your electric water heater with a gas water heater.
You'll be using more gas, obviously, but a whole lot less electricity.

Nope, a gas water heater and dryer will still use very little gas here,
and the electric ones I have use very little electricity. The monthly
service charge for gas service would still eclipse the gas useage.

Wrong. You obviously haven't ever lived with gas appliances; you clearly don't
know *anything* about them.

Electricity use is predominantly A/C and refrigerator during the warm
weather months, the water heater and clothes dryer hardly have any
effect.

A gas water heater and clothes dryer certainly consume enough gas to avoid
minimum monthly service charges. Stop talking about things you know nothing
about.

Bob F wrote:

Han wrote:
"Pete C." wrote in news:4bef7d01$0$23532
:

I spent about $800 on a generator, about 25 years ago. Maintenance
consists of $4 worth of synthetic oil each year. It has provided
power during many days worth of outages, including a ~72hr
continuous run. Many of these outages were in the winter in the
northeast where frozen pipes would have been a threat had I not had
the generator. Being portable, the generator has also been used on a
number of remote construction projects as well. So yes, a generator
is a very inexpensive and reasonable investment.

That's relative. Until a month or so ago, we never had more than a
few hours of power outage at a time. For that an expense of $1500
today plus the maintenance and risk of storing gasoline etc is NOT
worth it.
To me grin.

If you don't want to store gasoline, siphon it out of your car when you need it.

I'm always amazed by the folks who think storing a 5gal can of gas out
back is some huge risk, and then park a car or two with 15-20gal of gas
each in their garage. Get a grip folks, storing a can of gas is not a
big risk.

Doug Miller wrote:

In article .com, "Pete C." wrote:

Doug Miller wrote:


trimmed


Nope, I do the math. In the case of nat gas, what kills your theoretical
savings is the monthly service charges for the many warm weather months
months when you are using hardly any gas, particularly here in TX where
the heating season is short.

If you're incurring monthly service charges because there are months in which
you use hardly any gas, it's your own fault. Replace your electric dryer with
a gas dryer. Replace your electric water heater with a gas water heater.
You'll be using more gas, obviously, but a whole lot less electricity.

Nope, a gas water heater and dryer will still use very little gas here,
and the electric ones I have use very little electricity. The monthly
service charge for gas service would still eclipse the gas useage.

Wrong. You obviously haven't ever lived with gas appliances; you clearly don't
know *anything* about them.

Electricity use is predominantly A/C and refrigerator during the warm
weather months, the water heater and clothes dryer hardly have any
effect.

A gas water heater and clothes dryer certainly consume enough gas to avoid
minimum monthly service charges. Stop talking about things you know nothing
about.

Perhaps if you are one of those wacko religious nuts with 43 kids. I'm
one single person, I don't use enough hot water or do enough loads of
laundry for the water heating or dryer consumption to be of any
significance. As I said, A/C and refrigerator are the primary power
consumers. My server rack in the garage is next in line.

I have not lived in a home with all gas appliances, nor would I want to
due to their inherent safety hazard (my LP cooktop is about all I can
tolerate and I have an LP detector in the kitchen). I have however done
an extensive analysis of a years worth of utility bills from two
comparable homes, one with gas appliances and one with electric and
found that the much hyped "savings" simply didn't exist.

Bob F wrote:

Pete C. wrote:
Bob F wrote:

Pete C. wrote:
Bob F wrote:

Pete C. wrote:
You misspelled "minutes".

No, I did not. I cooked extensively on electric stoves for about
30 years, so I'm well aware of their response times. Ten seconds
is about the maximum you need to hold the pan off the burner, and
indeed you don't even have to hole it entirely off, just lifting
the handle to have the pan at a slight angle and not in direct
contact with most of the burner is sufficient.

You must have a magic electric stove. Mine takes at least 2 minutes
before the burner cools enough to not continue boiling over a pot.

Perhaps I'm the magic element, since I have never had that issue on
at least a half dozen different electric ranges I have cooked
extensively on.


As far as cost, that depends on your local rates. Some places pay 4
or more time as much for electricity as others. Gas for heating is
probably half the cost of electric heating here, as determined by
converting from electric to gas.

Electric resistive heating, or electric heat pump? A heat pump is
3-4X the efficiency of electric resistive heating. I drastically
cut my heating costs when I replaced electric resistive with
electric heat pump.

You are right about heat pumps. The capital costs are considerable,
and depending on your situation, the outdoor noise may be a problem
with neighbors, but they certain will compete with gas for energy
cost if it's not too cold where you live.

Well, noise isn't a consideration since there is an A/C condenser
outside anyway since much of the year is cooling season. The A/C or
heatpump condenser also faces my shop which is some 80' away from the
house. The next neighbor is another 100' or so and that side of their
house has no windows.

As for capital costs, I just installed this new 4T heat pump along
with matching air handler for a total cost of $3,750 which qualifies
as pretty damned cheap in my book. As for efficiency, my monitoring
indicates that it works well down to about 28F outdoor temp, and north
TX doesn't get a lot of days below 28F. It was also a good jump in
efficiency vs. the old A/C, so there is savings in the cooling months
as well.

28F is really warm winter weather in much of the USA.

Not N. TX. for the more northern locations with more cold days and
colder temps on those days, you just switch to a ground source heat pump
instead of an air source one. Here with few really cold days, the cost
of using the backup heat those days is minimal and the cost premium to
go ground source isn't worth it.


Where I live in Seattle, A/C is unnecessary for a well insulated house. Yes, it
gets warm inside several days a year but not bad if I vent it good in the
morning, and then close it up to keep out the heat.

When I lived in CT, A/C wasn't needed much on a reasonably insulated,
shaded house, but a dehumidifier definitely was. Even here in TX, the
"neutral" month or so between heating and cooling seasons tends to need
a dehumidifier. I hate humid.

aemeijers wrote:

Pete C. wrote:
" wrote:
On Sun, 16 May 2010 09:31:57 -0400, "h" wrote:

I might believe you if you mean by area, but not if you mean by
population. I'm not aware of any densely-populated areas (at least in the
eastern half of US) that do not have NG available in the street. I'm in a
semi-rural area several miles from city limits, no water or sewer, but
every house has a gas meter. At least in this part of country, people
only have to use bottle gas if they live WAY out in the boonies, where
there were not enough houses per mile to make running the gas line
profitable.

--
aem sends...
We don't have NG here in upstate NY, about 20 minutes from Albany, 5 minutes
outside of town. I'm in the boonies, but certainly not WAY out. They sent
out a survey (supposedly 25,000 copies) about 10 years ago and they said
only 5 people (myself included) wanted NG. They didn't say how many bothered
to return the survey, however.
About ten years ago Vermont Gas went around and asked how many on our street
(maybe 20 houses) wanted gas. As it worked out, the only money out of my
pocket was $50 to have a clean-out installed in the chimney (should have been
there) and $12/mo for the burner rental. I hate oil heat, so sure! The gas
company paid for all installation costs, and even came back that spring and
re-seeded the lawn. Only one family on the street refused.

I love oil heat, or at least I did when I was in the northeast. No
reliance on any outside utility during nasty storms, 300 gal of heat and
generator fuel on site and ready at all times. That works out to the
ability to operate for at least two full weeks (more if the tank is near
full at the start) without any issues during one of the northeast's
killer ice storms.

Granted nat gas service doesn't have an outage very often, but it does
have outages, where oil never has outages. Nat gas also blows up at
least one home a month, while oil has never blown up a home.

Best hope your tank is always near-full then. If there is a massive
sustained electric outage for the region, you won't be getting any
refills, once your local supplier empties his tanks, assuming HE has a
backup generator.

I never ran into such an issue, the region just wasn't likely to
experience anything that would take more than a week to recover from. If
I were in a higher risk area I would have simply added a second 300gal
tank (max 600gal per fire rated space). I also had a 55gal primary tank
for the generator and only switched to drawing from the big tank if that
55 was getting low.


As to NG blowups- simple housekeeping reduces the accidental explosion
risk to near-zero. Compare that to the massive cleanup costs from even a
minor tank leak (assuming the local authorities find out.) I think the
odds favor NG by a wide margin.

Ask the folks killed in those nat gas explosions. As for leaks,
secondary containment for indoor tanks is pretty trivial, and the
containment only need to match the largest individual tank, so for two
300gal tanks, you only need 300gal worth of containment which equates to
only a foot or so dam around the tanks.

Pete C. wrote:
Bob F wrote:
Han wrote:
"Pete C." wrote in news:4bef7d01$0$23532
:

I spent about $800 on a generator, about 25 years ago. Maintenance
consists of $4 worth of synthetic oil each year. It has provided
power during many days worth of outages, including a ~72hr
continuous run. Many of these outages were in the winter in the
northeast where frozen pipes would have been a threat had I not had
the generator. Being portable, the generator has also been used on a
number of remote construction projects as well. So yes, a generator
is a very inexpensive and reasonable investment.
That's relative. Until a month or so ago, we never had more than a
few hours of power outage at a time. For that an expense of $1500
today plus the maintenance and risk of storing gasoline etc is NOT
worth it.
To me grin.
If you don't want to store gasoline, siphon it out of your car when you need it.

I'm always amazed by the folks who think storing a 5gal can of gas out
back is some huge risk, and then park a car or two with 15-20gal of gas
each in their garage. Get a grip folks, storing a can of gas is not a
big risk.

Not a BIG risk, no, but gas cans don't have vapor recovery canisters to
catch any fumes outgassing from the tank on a hot day when the garage
gets close to 100 degrees inside. Not to mention, gas cans are a lot
more prone to getting leaks, or getting knocked over by short people,
sometimes with less-than-tight lids. For people without backyard sheds
to keep the gas can in (along with the mower), I recommend they build a
little 3-sided box with a roof, or something, to keep the rain off the
can and the mower. IIRC, at one house my mother had, we used stacks of
concrete block, a few pavers for for a floor, and a hunk of corrugated
roofing that was laying around. Think farmer's equipment shed, just real
small. And if they want pretty, Rubbermaid has a nice line of trash can
enclosures that work well for the task.


--
aem sends...

The Daring Dufas wrote:

A call to the gas company to drop service one one side of the duplex
resulted in a savings of over $100/year.

Wait, there's more!

The remaining meter is the one servicing the "office" side of the
duplex and the bill is paid by a company check.

Deductible.


You're using the law to save money but the tax weasels will claim
your use of company utilities is compensation. The thought of how
much money and government resources to go after you for that would
boggle the mind.


No, the business charges me a modest amount for utilities (water also). Our
coporate tax attorney told me to forget about it inasmuch as it is way below
the de minimus rule, but I, being as righteous as a disciple, said "Render
unto Caesar..." and so forth.

On Sun, 16 May 2010 21:28:11 -0400, aemeijers wrote:

Bob F wrote:
Ed Pawlowski wrote:
wrote
That's the way we're leaning, even though it'll cost an extra grand
to bring
the gas line around from the tank. Electric ovens also commonly
have the self-cleaning feature. I don't believe gas gets hot enough.
They do make them in gas. Our old one was.

Bertazzoni is using electric for self cleaning though
http://www.bertazzoni-italia.com/

Ours is black and they are painted in the same shop as Lamborghini
cars.

So does it cook really fast?


No, but it comes with a skinny model in a sparkly dress leaning on it.

Well, that's cookin'.

On Sun, 16 May 2010 19:15:39 -0500, "Pete C." wrote:


" wrote:

On Sun, 16 May 2010 09:31:57 -0400, "h" wrote:


I might believe you if you mean by area, but not if you mean by
population. I'm not aware of any densely-populated areas (at least in the
eastern half of US) that do not have NG available in the street. I'm in a
semi-rural area several miles from city limits, no water or sewer, but
every house has a gas meter. At least in this part of country, people
only have to use bottle gas if they live WAY out in the boonies, where
there were not enough houses per mile to make running the gas line
profitable.

--
aem sends...

We don't have NG here in upstate NY, about 20 minutes from Albany, 5 minutes
outside of town. I'm in the boonies, but certainly not WAY out. They sent
out a survey (supposedly 25,000 copies) about 10 years ago and they said
only 5 people (myself included) wanted NG. They didn't say how many bothered
to return the survey, however.

About ten years ago Vermont Gas went around and asked how many on our street
(maybe 20 houses) wanted gas. As it worked out, the only money out of my
pocket was $50 to have a clean-out installed in the chimney (should have been
there) and $12/mo for the burner rental. I hate oil heat, so sure! The gas
company paid for all installation costs, and even came back that spring and
re-seeded the lawn. Only one family on the street refused.

I love oil heat, or at least I did when I was in the northeast. No
reliance on any outside utility during nasty storms, 300 gal of heat and
generator fuel on site and ready at all times. That works out to the
ability to operate for at least two full weeks (more if the tank is near
full at the start) without any issues during one of the northeast's
killer ice storms.

You still need electricity to run the furnace. Gas isn't any more of a
problem.

I absolutely *hated* it. I had all sorts of reliability issues in one house
(out of heat for three days, once, with all the niceties like frozen pipes).
The other wasn't perfect, but better. It stinks, too.

Granted nat gas service doesn't have an outage very often, but it does
have outages, where oil never has outages. Nat gas also blows up at
least one home a month, while oil has never blown up a home.

You've been reading the funny papers again. Try spilling a tank of oil and
get back to me.

On Sun, 16 May 2010 18:57:59 -0500, "Pete C." wrote:


" wrote:

On Sun, 16 May 2010 00:01:32 -0500, "Pete C." wrote:


HeyBub wrote:

Han wrote:
"Pete C." wrote in news:4beed29a$0$26646
:

A generator solves that problem along with the defrosting freezer and
stumbling around in the dark problems.

But, but, you need tospend money to buy a generator and whatever
switching is required so as not to kill the electric company's
linemen.

It was the linemen who installed the infrastructure that fails for two weeks
when a larger than average bird roosts on the wire. Who cares if they die?

Perhaps. But the fact is that there has never been a single documented
case of a utility lineman being killed by an improperly connected
generator. In every single lineman fatality related to a generator, the
cause of the death has been the lineman not following procedures which
specify that every line must be tested and grounded before working on
it.

You've just defined the cause differently. No one dies from jumping out of
tall buildings, either, but dead is still dead.

Nope, I didn't define the cause of death differently, I defined it
accurately. Cause of death - "Electrocution due to failure to test and
ground the conductor before handling it" - that's it, period. It makes
no difference the source of the electricity.

You're either a liar or simply stupid.

On Sun, 16 May 2010 22:26:16 -0500, "Pete C." wrote:


Bob F wrote:

Han wrote:
"Pete C." wrote in news:4bef7d01$0$23532
:

I spent about $800 on a generator, about 25 years ago. Maintenance
consists of $4 worth of synthetic oil each year. It has provided
power during many days worth of outages, including a ~72hr
continuous run. Many of these outages were in the winter in the
northeast where frozen pipes would have been a threat had I not had
the generator. Being portable, the generator has also been used on a
number of remote construction projects as well. So yes, a generator
is a very inexpensive and reasonable investment.

That's relative. Until a month or so ago, we never had more than a
few hours of power outage at a time. For that an expense of $1500
today plus the maintenance and risk of storing gasoline etc is NOT
worth it.
To me grin.

If you don't want to store gasoline, siphon it out of your car when you need it.

I'm always amazed by the folks who think storing a 5gal can of gas out
back is some huge risk, and then park a car or two with 15-20gal of gas
each in their garage. Get a grip folks, storing a can of gas is not a
big risk.

Five gallons isn't going to get you vary far into a three-day outage.

Pete C. wrote:

Where I live in Seattle, A/C is unnecessary for a well insulated
house. Yes, it gets warm inside several days a year but not bad if I
vent it good in the morning, and then close it up to keep out the
heat.

When I lived in CT, A/C wasn't needed much on a reasonably insulated,
shaded house, but a dehumidifier definitely was. Even here in TX, the
"neutral" month or so between heating and cooling seasons tends to
need a dehumidifier. I hate humid.

I'll have to say, after living in Detroit and Boston, I don't miss hot and humid
weather on bit.

HeyBub wrote:
The Daring Dufas wrote:
A call to the gas company to drop service one one side of the duplex
resulted in a savings of over $100/year.

Wait, there's more!

The remaining meter is the one servicing the "office" side of the
duplex and the bill is paid by a company check.

Deductible.

You're using the law to save money but the tax weasels will claim
your use of company utilities is compensation. The thought of how
much money and government resources to go after you for that would
boggle the mind.


No, the business charges me a modest amount for utilities (water also). Our
coporate tax attorney told me to forget about it inasmuch as it is way below
the de minimus rule, but I, being as righteous as a disciple, said "Render
unto Caesar..." and so forth.



Aye, yer an honest lad, Slàinte mhòr agad!

Nope, it's not Klingon.

TDD

Pete C. wrote:
Bob F wrote:
Pete C. wrote:
Bob F wrote:
Pete C. wrote:
Bob F wrote:
Pete C. wrote:
You misspelled "minutes".
No, I did not. I cooked extensively on electric stoves for about
30 years, so I'm well aware of their response times. Ten seconds
is about the maximum you need to hold the pan off the burner, and
indeed you don't even have to hole it entirely off, just lifting
the handle to have the pan at a slight angle and not in direct
contact with most of the burner is sufficient.
You must have a magic electric stove. Mine takes at least 2 minutes
before the burner cools enough to not continue boiling over a pot.
Perhaps I'm the magic element, since I have never had that issue on
at least a half dozen different electric ranges I have cooked
extensively on.

As far as cost, that depends on your local rates. Some places pay 4
or more time as much for electricity as others. Gas for heating is
probably half the cost of electric heating here, as determined by
converting from electric to gas.
Electric resistive heating, or electric heat pump? A heat pump is
3-4X the efficiency of electric resistive heating. I drastically
cut my heating costs when I replaced electric resistive with
electric heat pump.
You are right about heat pumps. The capital costs are considerable,
and depending on your situation, the outdoor noise may be a problem
with neighbors, but they certain will compete with gas for energy
cost if it's not too cold where you live.
Well, noise isn't a consideration since there is an A/C condenser
outside anyway since much of the year is cooling season. The A/C or
heatpump condenser also faces my shop which is some 80' away from the
house. The next neighbor is another 100' or so and that side of their
house has no windows.

As for capital costs, I just installed this new 4T heat pump along
with matching air handler for a total cost of $3,750 which qualifies
as pretty damned cheap in my book. As for efficiency, my monitoring
indicates that it works well down to about 28F outdoor temp, and north
TX doesn't get a lot of days below 28F. It was also a good jump in
efficiency vs. the old A/C, so there is savings in the cooling months
as well.
28F is really warm winter weather in much of the USA.

Not N. TX. for the more northern locations with more cold days and
colder temps on those days, you just switch to a ground source heat pump
instead of an air source one. Here with few really cold days, the cost
of using the backup heat those days is minimal and the cost premium to
go ground source isn't worth it.

Where I live in Seattle, A/C is unnecessary for a well insulated house. Yes, it
gets warm inside several days a year but not bad if I vent it good in the
morning, and then close it up to keep out the heat.

When I lived in CT, A/C wasn't needed much on a reasonably insulated,
shaded house, but a dehumidifier definitely was. Even here in TX, the
"neutral" month or so between heating and cooling seasons tends to need
a dehumidifier. I hate humid.

If you hate humidity, stay away from Bama. When I lived out in the
middle of the Pacific ocean, the humidity wasn't as bad as my home.

TDD

In article .com, "Pete C." wrote:

Doug Miller wrote:

In article .com, "Pete C."
wrote:

Doug Miller wrote:


trimmed


Nope, I do the math. In the case of nat gas, what kills your theoretical
savings is the monthly service charges for the many warm weather months
months when you are using hardly any gas, particularly here in TX where
the heating season is short.

If you're incurring monthly service charges because there are months in
which
you use hardly any gas, it's your own fault. Replace your electric dryer
with
a gas dryer. Replace your electric water heater with a gas water heater.
You'll be using more gas, obviously, but a whole lot less electricity.

Nope, a gas water heater and dryer will still use very little gas here,
and the electric ones I have use very little electricity. The monthly
service charge for gas service would still eclipse the gas useage.

Wrong. You obviously haven't ever lived with gas appliances; you clearly
don't
know *anything* about them.

Electricity use is predominantly A/C and refrigerator during the warm
weather months, the water heater and clothes dryer hardly have any
effect.

A gas water heater and clothes dryer certainly consume enough gas to avoid
minimum monthly service charges. Stop talking about things you know nothing
about.

Perhaps if you are one of those wacko religious nuts with 43 kids.

Nope, just two. We do wash our clothes and bathe regularly, however. YMMV.

In article .com, "Pete C." wrote:


I have not lived in a home with all gas appliances,

That's quite obvious, actually, since you appear to know nothing at all about
them.

nor would I want to
due to their inherent safety hazard

You mean "due to your irrational fears"...

(my LP cooktop is about all I can
tolerate and I have an LP detector in the kitchen). I have however done
an extensive analysis of a years worth of utility bills from two
comparable homes, one with gas appliances and one with electric and
found that the much hyped "savings" simply didn't exist.

Uh-huh. Right.

LP is far less safe than NG.

Natural gas is lighter than air and will escape out a high spot in a
leak.

Whereas LP will hang around like in a pool till BAM it finds a
ignition point

Oil furnaces appear to need much more service than NG..

" wrote:

On Sun, 16 May 2010 18:57:59 -0500, "Pete C." wrote:


" wrote:

On Sun, 16 May 2010 00:01:32 -0500, "Pete C." wrote:


HeyBub wrote:

Han wrote:
"Pete C." wrote in news:4beed29a$0$26646
:

A generator solves that problem along with the defrosting freezer and
stumbling around in the dark problems.

But, but, you need tospend money to buy a generator and whatever
switching is required so as not to kill the electric company's
linemen.

It was the linemen who installed the infrastructure that fails for two weeks
when a larger than average bird roosts on the wire. Who cares if they die?

Perhaps. But the fact is that there has never been a single documented
case of a utility lineman being killed by an improperly connected
generator. In every single lineman fatality related to a generator, the
cause of the death has been the lineman not following procedures which
specify that every line must be tested and grounded before working on
it.

You've just defined the cause differently. No one dies from jumping out of
tall buildings, either, but dead is still dead.

Nope, I didn't define the cause of death differently, I defined it
accurately. Cause of death - "Electrocution due to failure to test and
ground the conductor before handling it" - that's it, period. It makes
no difference the source of the electricity.

You're either a liar or simply stupid.

Nope, but people who think these poor linemen were killed by some
careless person with a generator are irrational and emotional.

The procedures for working on lines in the field state that *every* line
must be tested and grounded before working on it without full protective
equipment. If that procedure is followed, it is not possible to be
electrocuted regardless of whether a power co generator is online or a
home generator is online.

Every single lineman fatality related to a home generator is the result
of their own carelessness in not following procedures.