Comparative heating costs

nicholas bonham-carter

Maybe we need a section here showing people's heating costs, so various coop owners, and building owners, in a certain area can compare their monthly costs, per square foot.
Many coop owners' systems may be using much more fuel than would be needed if the system were properly maintained, by a real steam expert rather than "the long time resident", mentioned in another post (who is blamed for all discomfort!).
Many people come here for advice on making their systems more comfortable, and do not realize how much fuel is being wasted on discomfort. When they have the good luck to follow our advice, then they notice a real saving in consumption.
What we need is information on fuel use, so that people can compare their square foot fuel costs with another building in the same area, using the same fuel. Noticing disparity may be the great motivator, we need to reduce our carbon footprint. (This idea needs refinement!)--NBC

SWEI

There are a few national efforts to collect data like this, but they're mostly populated with large, recent commercial projects.

If we do collect data, we might want to include some weather info (average HDD, design temp, Zip code, something) along with some structural info (year built, upgrades, heat loss calc?)

Steamhead

Our Find a Contractor ad has a good example.

Jamie Hall

Sounds like a good idea to me. But I wonder -- shouldn't it be on the main forum, so we get comparisons with all types of systems? It could even be a sticky post -- the new forum seems to allow that. To start the ball rolling, the place I care for has used, over the past four years, an average of 0.40 gallons of oil per square foot of usable space (includes hot water) per year with an average yearly degree day total of 5,620.

Last year was a bear...

nicholas bonham-carter

I was thinking that residents of large metropolitan ares might be able to see costs, or fuel use per square foot, and be better able to see when something was wrong with their coop, or condo system, in spite of the resident expert saying it was in perfect shape. It might alert the coop owners that something needed change.--NBC

Jamie Hall

Insulation? Whazzat? When you are dealing with National Register property, insulation is much harder to do than one might think. There is insulation on much of the roof, and part of the house. The windows have storm sashes... and have all been repaired/restored, but modern thermopane or whatever, forget it. It would be nice to put foam in the walls -- but no one will guarantee that it won't blow the plaster off on the inside! And that would be hideously expensive to fix.

SWEI

Dense-packed cellulose will not blow out walls the way foam can.

Jamie Hall

The overall R for the building, which includes all the windows and doors and a good bit of infiltration is 3.9. Which is other horrible or not too bad, depending on how you look at it. Correcting for the windows, doors, and infiltration, the walls are around 5 or maybe more like 6, and the roof is around 20.

I'm thinking about the dense pack. There are some places where the interior walls have not been restored yet, and it might be possible to do that there. There is a cost/benefit calculation I haven't done yet, though...

SWEI

Cellulose is pretty forgiving stuff, and (at this point) is pretty much the only insulating material with no significant likelihood of major class action.

This should be required watching for anyone considering insulating with spray foam. I have much more (thanks to a longtime industry insider) but I can't afford even a mild encounter with Monsanto, BASF, Dow, and the like.

Jean-David Beyer

My cape cod house had essentially no insulation in the walls ("builder's batts"). The walls are real plaster on top of stuff that looks like drywall, but in those days, it was called rock lath or something like that.

I had urea formaldehyde insulation injected into all the walls, and extra fiberglass insulation over the second floor -- as much fiberglass as I could get in there (within reason).

Doing that did not blow off the plaster walls. Over 30 years now and they are still there. I do not think urea formaldehyde is used any more because some incompetent contractors did not manage to get the mixture right, and it outgassed formaldehyde for years in some buildings.

Jamie Hall

That rock lath is something else. I have that in a section of the building which was redone somewhere around 1920. Takes dynamite to get it off, I think. That would stay put... unfortunately, the areas of the house which really need insulation are horsehair reinforced plaster over the old, old accordion split lathe -- which has very little space for the plaster keys, and precious little strength. Comes off really easily (ask me how I know...)