Cash for Clunkers

yes, but...

imagine if the Feds were willing to throw $4,500.00 into the mix for new high-efficiency boilers, furnaces & water heaters!

Hopefully they'll extend the existing 30% up to $1,500.00 past 2010. Just sold another 98% eff tankless yesterday because of that incentive.

The US economy

is very much an auto centric system rather than boilers and heating. An auto centric economy has inherant weakness and instability especially with gas pricing.

The incentive like the cash for clunkers has requirements that are to low in my opinion.

Perhaps all incentives related to all fuels should be based on btu content. Save a million btu's a year- here is is your incentive!

It's not about the environment, silly...

...It's about taking your money, giving it back to you to buy a car from (hopefully) YOUR car manufacturers, GM or Chrysler, to pay the workers that helped elect the people who are taking your money...get it? It goes like this "If you vote for me I'll steal someone else's money and pay you back for the favor with it"

You can buy a new Jeep Cherokee here for about 60% of the list price. It will get maybe 15 mpg going down hill with the wind at your back. And they throw in lifetime service, oil changes inspections, loaner car etc. So Chrysler, or should I say the US gov't, will give you a WELL over $10,000 to buy a gas guzzling Grand Cherokee, But only $4500 if you go with the Prius.

Ten grand will buy a lot of gas. Be a man and pass on the Prius ;-)

Have not seen it, but

I was there with Dan & his crew. Dan kept telling the film crew to concentrate on the students, not him. The flooring contractor had punctured several loops & had refused to return to help the students. The project had stalled. Two of the students researched on-line and on the same night read an article in Contractor and contacted me by e-mail asking if I'd visit to lend a hand. I agreed and asked what products they'd used. Warmboard.

Knowing Warmboard does cad drawings for installs, I contacted them. Sure enough they had and sent me copies. They asked If I knew the student contractor advisor for the project - Dan Foley! I contacted Dan and it became a reunion assist at U of MD.

Once Pappa located the general location, we let the students begin taking up the hardwood. After about an hour (Dan & his crew were helping the students in the outdoor mechanical room.) of beating on the floor with a hammer & chisel, the student resigned himself to using a circular saw as we'd suggested in the beginning(G).

Tubing turned out to be punctured under built-in & immovable cabinets, so those loops were cut off and a straight-through splice was made. That they were able to pull it together and get that SD entry finished was nothing short of a miracle! That they almost won was too cool for words.

As for the CfC incentive? You get nothing for your trade-in except the CfC cash. In our case, our Jimmy is worth what we'd get anyway. It's paid for & it runs just fine. Don't like the mileage, but we will probably wait to see what kind of mileage US cars can muster. Our big three missed the American desire for fuel-efficient vehicles and willingness to pay for hybrids by a planetary light-year. I've got mixed feelings about this thinly disguisded bailout & wonder what's going to happen when the 3-billion is gone - by next week if the pace of sales keeps up. I also wonder - looking forward - what's going to happen at the end of 2010 when the 30% or max of $1,500.00 runs out for owners who upgrade their buildings energy efficiency.

The mileage requirements for CfC is, IMHO, a farce. Way too low. The only shame for those buying a Prius should be on the part of those within the big three who ignored the rising tide and forged ahead producing gas guzzlers. The American public voted with their wallets and Toyota sales soared. US ingenuity is second to none when faced with a crisis. There's no reason why the big three can't produce vehicles that surpass in both mileage and quality.

Really doesn't go against the US work force no matter whose vehicle you purchase if the vehicles are built in the US. They all have pieces & parts brought in from foreign countries (including the big 3) and then get assembled inside the US by US workers.

Rules

Don't the rules say no politics on this forum. That is a rule I agree with. The HVAC forum is ruined by the nut job politics so you lose interest in discussing the trade with a bunch of dumb asses.