One stage verses Two stage furnaces

[steve_bank]

When it gets chilly inside you can always put on a sweater and wear one of those hats with flaps to cover your ears. And gloves with the ends of the fingers cut off.

I use heat when its really cold. Usually kitchen cooking and keeping active keeps me warm enough in the winter.The kitchen and living room are in the same space with a counter separating the kit6chen.''I keep the barroom and bedroom doors closed in the wiener. The bathroom has a heat bulb in the fielding. Before going to bed I heat up the bedroom.

Baseboard electric heating.

Those small heaters that plug into a wall socket with built in fans might be good and cost effective for small rooms.

I ma conferable down to the mid 50s inside depending on what I am doing.

When the sun is shinning it does warm up my apartment, b. My type of windows do not support it it, there are window solar air heaters.

Roof top or on the ground solarr air heaters are easy to build, essentially a greenhouse. Water heaters no much more difficult.

A simple thermal mass can be sealed plastic garbage cans filled with water in a basement or garage. It works for cooling cooling as well, circulate cool night air around the cans..


If I were building a house in the right conditions I'd have a big rock in the house. Cool it at night in the summer, heat it up during the day in winter.

 

[Elixir]

'I keep the barroom and bedroom doors closed in the wiener.

I’ve always found that best.

 

[steve_bank]

Solar window heater.

DIY Solar Heating with the Heat Grabber – Mother Earth News

Build this DIY solar heating collector, the Heat Grabber is a "window box" solar collector you can fabricate in under an hour.

www.motherearthnews.com

Whataya know, Mother Earth News is still around.

Probably good source for DIY solar heating and cooling.

 

[thebeave]

Solar window heater.

DIY Solar Heating with the Heat Grabber – Mother Earth News

Build this DIY solar heating collector, the Heat Grabber is a "window box" solar collector you can fabricate in under an hour.

www.motherearthnews.com

Whataya know, Mother Earth News is still around.

Probably good source for DIY solar heating and cooling.

Is that affiliated with the Whole Earth Catalog? That was staple in our house in the early '70's. It was pretty cool (if you had hippy leanings back then, like I did).

 

[steve_bank]

Solar window heater.

DIY Solar Heating with the Heat Grabber – Mother Earth News

Build this DIY solar heating collector, the Heat Grabber is a "window box" solar collector you can fabricate in under an hour.

www.motherearthnews.com

Whataya know, Mother Earth News is still around.

Probably good source for DIY solar heating and cooling.

Is that affiliated with the Whole Earth Catalog? That was staple in our house in the early '70's. It was pretty cool (if you had hippy leanings back then, like I did).

I remember Whole Earth Catalog, don't know if it is connected.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I've never put a thermometer up there but attics typically are hotter than the environment in the summer.

Do you use heating in the summer?

Where I live, the attic is fiercely hot in summer, but the rest of the house is cooled, not heated.

Same ducts for heat and AC. The cooled air is going through ducts in a very hot space, that will lose some of the cool.

Florida has the AC in the attic too. Which seems really stupid. Can't make the house a little larger and put the thing both on the interior and with reasonably easy access to?

But according to this blog post, it is the best place to put the AC. They almost explain why.

???

And that's not what they are saying at all. That is talking about the merits of retrofitting a system into an insulated attic. The ducts were put into the walls when this house was built and we do not have an insulated attic. It's cheaper and more efficient to insulate between the house and the attic rather than insulate the attic walls. Attic walls would only be insulated if you were intending that to be an occupiable space. Nope, with engineered trusses supporting the roof (concrete tile--excellent for our climate, but very heavy, it can only be used on new construction where it's weight is considered in the engineering) it's pretty much a game of twister to go anywhere other than the accessways to the air handlers.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

When it gets chilly inside you can always put on a sweater and wear one of those hats with flaps to cover your ears. And gloves with the ends of the fingers cut off.

I own multiple pairs of such gloves--none of which provides much warmth at all. The light ones are purely sun protection, the heavier ones provide a certain amount of glove protection while retaining nearly normal ability to handle things. They're ventilated, not insulated! (Mine are sold as bicycle gloves, but I use them for hiking.)

If I were building a house in the right conditions I'd have a big rock in the house. Cool it at night in the summer, heat it up during the day in winter.

A big rock in the house won't actually provide all that much benefit as the energy goes in and out slowly. What you want is to be inside the big rock. Without a convenient cave you generally can't do that literally, but you can make earth-sheltered buildings or you can throw a concrete dome over the whole thing. (Note that trying to live directly in a concrete dome will be an engineering nightmare. You build a normal indoor structure inside it, it doesn't need an outside. Dead space between the sanely square building and the curved dome.) By the book the r-value of a concrete dome is low, but in practice it provides a sufficient thermal mass averaging out the swings that it works as if it had a much higher r-value. The house I grew up in had one wall that was simply concrete block, the effect was quite noticeable even though it was just a garage wall.

 

[steve_bank]

I grew up in New England where it was hot in summer and freezing in winter.

Attics typically had the floors and the roofs insulated, with an exhaust fan in the attic for summer.

If you put the AC in the attic without an exhaust fan the heat from the AC will heat up the attic and I assume will heat up the rooms underneath reducing cooling efficiency.

AC does not eliminate heat. It moves it somewhere else.