Hacker News Reader

Comment by albatrosstrophy | Hacker News Reader

Also he mentioned they have to run on propane in winter. I wonder how much would that cost.

Where I live (rural Ontario), propane costs somewhere around $2500/year for heat. Hydro costs about $4000. The sane people stick to wood, which if you cut and split it yourself will keep to under $1000. We have disconnected all the electric heaters in my house (except for the newly-installed radiant-heat floor in the bathroom, because it's a luxury I'm willing to splurge on) and only fire up the second woodstove for those weeks it drops below -20.

Have a look at heatpumps, you may end up with a very pleasant surprise, assuming your lot is large enough. Even shallow grids to really well.

They are in the north. Heat pumps are worthless below a certain point. I think around 10-20F.

I’m guessing in-ground heat pumps with their heat exchanger liquid lines below the frost line still work…

Ground-source heat pumps take advantage of the fact that the earth stays at reasonable temperatures below the frost line.

They work just fine, you're just going to go a bit deeper then. I put a thermal sensor down an old well head in mid winter, it was -20 Celsius at the surface and a 'balmy' 12 degrees at 10 meters down. That gradient will allow you to do a lot of good stuff if you use a freeze proof working fluid for your heatpump.

Heat pumps don't work so well without some way to circulate the heat inside the house and are useless without electricity. I have a large acreage but the water table is under 250' of granite, and there are no ducts in my house. I would be very pleasantly surprised indeed if I could harness geothermal without electricity, extreme home renovations, and $100k in well-drilling costs.

Ah that makes it a lot harder, if not impossible. Too bad!

Wouldn’t you be able to have a heat floor heated by your wood? If wood is cheap where you live heating water with it is a nice upgrade from a basic wood stove.

Yes, it would be possible to use the heated cistern water from the wood cookstove but that would mean running insulated pipes through the house, using electric pumps to move the water, and additional maintenance of all that especially when it drops below freezing inside the house. Besides, the joy of the electric radiant heating in the bathroom is best experienced briefly first thing in the morning before going to rouse the fires. The older I get the more I'm willing to splurge on a few luxuries like that.

I’m currently renovating a house and we live with a single wood (pellet) stove for the whole building. Living in a 16C home is surprisingly fine but the worst part is indeed the cold bathroom in the morning.

About the same as electric, but a bit more hassle if it can't be delivered by truck. The most economic option is an outdoor woodstove, about $10K to install a big one and after that you need to keep it fed, a heat pump is another viable alternative. Another option is fuel oil (essentially: diesel), in an oil burning furnace.

The best way to cut your heating bill in Northern Canada is insulation, wooden houses are pretty good at this to begin with, you can get pretty close to neutrality by some solid engineering (South facing windows, take advantage of thermal mass), then you only need to add additional heat besides what you already generate when cooking on long stretches of overcast days, which don't happen all that often there.

Most people in Canada use natural gas (if the network exists near one’s home) or propane (if not) for heat in the winter. Electric is considered too expensive. I think things like electric heat pumps are more cost effective nowadays to something like -5C, but alas, much of Canada is far colder for many months.

Dig a few meters and your soil will be 13C, a great starting point for your heat pump.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com