Weather Imagery

Let me fist begin by saying I do not think we’re going “Mad Max”. Meaning, you aren’t going to see people driving around with loin cloths and hockey masks in pursuit of gasoline and food. So please, keep that in mind as you read this post. I had to make sure my wife understood this before I started buying our supplies because I didn’t want her to think I was going nuts on her.

Having lived through the Los Angeles riots, I have seen first-hand what people are capable of when they don’t get what they want. They will burn down their own neighborhoods, loot their own stores, and shoot each other over stolen items. Although I didn’t live in New Orleans, I did see what people will do when they have no food, no shelter, and nothing better to do. Here again, they stole from private citizens, trashed stores and in some cases abandoned people in need. Here in Colorado, whenever we have a big storm forecast in advance, people tend to stock up on items as if it’s the end of the world. We’ll go to the grocery store the day after and the shelves containing the basic necessities such as milk, eggs, and bread are nearly empty.

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First and foremost, this blog entry refers ONLY to electric dryers. Do NOT vent your gas dryer inside your house. This is extremely dangerous and can be fatal! I cannot stress this enough. It is NOT possible to vent a gas dryer inside your house. Only an electric dryer.

OK, that being said …

As I was sitting on the couch one cold winter day, I could see a huge condensation cloud coming out the side of our house. I wasn’t alarmed because I knew it was the hot moist air from the dryer being vented outside into the chilly 15°F air. But I got to wondering, how could I utilize this heat instead of having it go to waste?

I did some shopping and found a little contraption that lets you vent an electric dryer inside. It’s really quite simple. The exhaust from the dryer passes through a plastic box that holds about 5 cups of water. As the vented air hits the water in the container, the small amount of lint that doesn’t get trapped by the dryer’s built in lint filter gets absorbed by the water and sinks to the bottom. The warm humid air then passes out of the container holding water and enters the house. Keep in mind, you still want to use your built-in lint filter on the dryer.

Now, most people wouldn’t want this. In fact, I can’t imagine anyone wanting this in the summer. Not only will it add heat to the house, but it will also add a lot of humidity. So much, that you could end up with a mold problem if you aren’t careful.

But in some climates, like Colorado, it’s downright cold in the winter. And in most homes, people add a humidifier to their furnace so that it increases the inside humidity level. The reason being, when a furnace heats up cold air from outside, the humidity level drops considerably. It can get quite low such that everything you touch creates a nice little static discharge. Quite annoying.

Anyhow, now that I vent the dryer into the home, I get extra heat and humidity that would have otherwise been wasted. When the dryer runs, the furnace will shut off because the temperature inside the house rises above 67 °F rather quickly.

It’s worked quite well so far. About the only problem I’ve had is on very cold nights, the humidity will condense on the windows and start to drip. When this happens, I have to re-vent the dryer outside. Not too big a deal. The one thing I was very concerned about hasn’t manifested itself. Lint! I haven’t had any lint buildup inside the house, whatsoever. None! This really surprised me.

Here in Colorado, if you want to finish your basement, you have to construct floating walls. What exactly is a floating wall and why do you have to build one?

The reason you have to build floating walls in Colorado is due to the soil. We have what are called expansive soils, in that the clay will expand when/if it gets wet. This can cause the concrete floor of the basement to heave an inch or two. While that doesn’t sound like much, it’s enough to cause some serious problems if you don’t take it into consideration. Imagine your concrete floor rising two inches, then also lifting the first floor of your house along with it. Bad news.

Building a floating wall is really quite simple.

• Lay a 2×4 on the ground where you want to build a wall. This is called the bottom base plate. Attach it to the concrete floor using liquid nails (or some equivalent) and concrete nails. Concrete nails are driven through the 2×4 into the concrete floor using a .22 caliber ammunition.




• Lay another 2×4 on top of the base plate. This is called the top base plate. Cut yourself 3 or 4 pieces of wood that are 1.5 inches thick, but less than 3 inches thick. These will be temporary spacers between the bottom base plate and the top base plate.




• Drill a pilot hole every 36 inches along the top base plate. Square the bottom and top base plates. Then, drive a 60d nail through the pilot hole through the top base plate and into the bottom base plate.




• Run your 2×4 studs to the ceiling. Leave the spacers between the two plates until you finish building up the studs. This will stop the top base plate from pushing down.




• Once you finish building the wall, remove the temporary spacers. You now have a floating wall (you can also think of it as a hanging wall). As you will see, nothing is attached to the bottom base plate except the 60d nail. It will act as a guide rod should the floor start to rise. However, it will not lift the top base plate.

We live in the small town of Falcon, CO which is on the eastern outskirts of Colorado Springs. Behind us is hundreds of yards of open space that will never be developed which means we take the full brunt of the winter cold spells that barrel in from the north. We found that our gas furnace would run almost continuously during a winter storm and struggled to keep the house warm. During cold nights when there was no wind, the furnace would still fire up about once every 20 minutes and even though it ran for a much shorter time, over the course of the month, our heating bills were averaging about $175.

The only other appliance we have in the house that uses gas is the water heater, which only costs us about $15 a month. So to heat our house, we were spending about $160 x 5 months, or about $800 a year on gas. This was after we installed brand new Champion Windows, replaced weather stripping, insulated the ducts, used a programmable thermostat, kept the house at 68F during “awake” times and sealed all the air infiltration points within the house. The heating bill seemed high and we wanted to cut our heating expense. We looked at purchasing a new higher efficiency furnace, but it was going to cost us about $1200 (not counting installation) and would only be about 10% more efficient than what we have now, so there wasn’t much savings in that plan.

We looked at wood stoves, but you can’t leave them unattended, aren’t nearly as efficient, and they need constant attention. So we instead decided upon a pellet stove. Even though the pellet stove runs a lot more often than the furnace, the pellets are far cheaper than natural gas. We bought 1.5 tons of premium pellets at a cost of $357, which will last us the entire year. This is less than half the cost of our natural gas for the year. So we are saving about $800 – $357 = $443 a year. When using the furnace, we would use a programmable thermostat to turn the temperature down to 64F at night and throughout the day to save on heating costs and still it cost us about $160 a month. As a result, the house was cold during these times and not comfortable. With the pellet stove, the house is warm all the time, all winter long and only costs us about $70 a month, which equates to a savings of $160-$70 = $90 a month.

The warm air finds it way upstairs into the kids room with no problem. We just have to leave their doors slightly open. All rooms on the same level are also kept warm. The only room that remains somewhat cold is our garden level downstairs room (half underground), but this isn’t a big deal because the TV, computer and amplifier tend to heat the room anyway. However, if you have a house that has lots of rooms and hallways, you may find that a pellet stove won’t work that well heating all the rooms. They work best with houses that have open floor plans.

Positive Notes

• Very efficient. I think they rate our Harman XXV stove around 85%, which is about the same as a middle-of-the-road gas furnace. The one thing people overlook is a pellet stove heats the air and circulates it within the house. A furnace heats the air and distributes it through ducts. Sometimes these ducts run through exterior walls, crawlspaces and attics where a lot of heat is lost to conduction heating nonliving spaces. So the pellet stove really is more efficient than a furnace once you take this into consideration.
• Pellets are a lot cheaper than natural gas. Pellets are usually made from wood byproducts, like sawdust that is usually thrown away. Some pellets also contain corn husks which are also normally just thrown away. Point being, pellets are made from “trash” products which means they are cheap. A 40 lbs bag costs about $4.10 (as of 2008). You can get them cheaper if you buy them by the pallet.
• Self-starting, auto feeding and completely safe to leave unattended. This is different than a wood burning stove.
• Very cheap to install. Ours only cost $150 and we had to vent it horizontally out a wall.
• You don’t need a chimney. You can vent it vertically or horizontally and no ash is produced. This is not true of wood stoves which require vertical venting and produce lots of ash.
• Built-in thermostat automatically turns on and shuts off the pellet stove once the desired temperature is reached.

Negative Notes

• Initial cost. We paid $3400 to buy and have the Harman XXV installed.
• Somewhat noisy combustion and blower fans. Not a big deal if the pellet stove is not in a room you sleep in. It’s not so noisy that you cannot have a conversation. For example, it’s about as loud as a small room fan set on low speed. After awhile, it’s like a refrigerator … you don’t pay attention or notice when it’s running.
• Needs an electric plug. A pellet stove uses electricity for the mechanical hopper, auger and the combustion fans. However, these three things are what make the pellet stove burn it’s fuel with high efficiency. If you lose power, the stove will not work. However, there are battery backup options you can purchase. We picked up a small computer UPS battery backup and tuck it behind the stove. Because the stove only pulls about 100 watts, it will last for hours.
• Need a dry place to store the pellets (garage, basement).
• You need to be able to lift a 40 lbs bag about once every 2 or 3 days
• Like a wood fireplace, you will need to occasionally clean the pellet stove to remove ash. This only takes about 30 seconds because there is very little ash produced. If you get high grade premium pellets, you may not have to clean the stove until 1 ton of pellets have been burned.

So far we love the stove. Our furnace hasn’t kicked on once and our bill was only $29.92 last month (water heater plus normal service fees). If the pellets last us the entire winter (which they should) and we save $90 a month on our gas bill, the stove will pay itself off in 6 years. It will pay itself off sooner if we turn the stove down at night or when we leave the house. Right now, we just leave it at 70F all day and night. Also, pellet stoves are quickly gaining in popularity because of the cost savings. As pellet demand increases, more “trash” items will be used in making the pellets which could further reduce their manufacturing cost.

UPDATE: It looks like we are going to end up a bit short on pellets this year. It doesn’t look like 1.5 tons is going to be enough, so we’ll end up buying 2 tons next year. I think I’m also going to get the hardwood pellets to see if there’s a difference. Still no problems with the stove. The glass seems to get this yellow soot on it that’s kind of difficult to clean off, but I found using a razor blade takes it off fairly easily. I’m not using the best pellets so maybe that’s what’s causing it. It’s not that big a deal, though.

Update: We ran into our first problem with the pellet stove. The igniter started failing and the pellets wouldn’t catch on fire. Since the stove was under warranty, they replaced the igniter free of charge with no hassles.

In an effort to save money on energy bills, people think insulating anything and everything will help retain heat and thus run the furnace a little less. While that is true in areas of the house that are conditioned with heat or AC, this isn’t the case for the garage. Trust me, I found out the hard way. I insulated my entire garage which is not heated … the walls, ceiling, and garage door and notice only a small difference. Here in Colorado where temperatures get into the single digits, my garage is at most only 15°F warmer than outside and I spent about $500 insulating it. When going from 5°F to 20°F, you still aren’t going to spend a whole lot of time in the garage, so why bother? Now if I spent a lot of time in the garage and added a heater, that’s a different story and I would probably see a big difference. In that case, insulating the garage is definitely worth it.

Unless your garage is heated though, insulation will have little affect on the temperature of your garage in cold climates. Just because you add insulation won’t make the garage that much warmer or cooler. The main purpose of insulation is to slow the conduction of heat from the walls and ceiling to the outside and vice-verse. Insulation does not generate heat. If your garage is already cold, the area will virtually remain the same temperature whether you have insulation or not. And remember this, when you open your garage door in an unheated yet insulated garage, you recycle the air in a matter of seconds then trap the new cold air until you open the door again. And no, things like a refrigerator, freezer, or lights will not heat the garage to make the insulation worthwhile.

Now, if you do want a warm garage, then I would add a heater and insulate the ceiling, walls, and garage door. Depending on the size of your garage, insulating the walls with batts of R-13 will typically run you about $100. If the ceiling has 24″ center joists, that will cost about $200. The garage door will cost about $100 if you use the pink Styrofoam stuff from Home Depot, but that will only insulate your door to about R-6. If you spend a lot of time in the garage, buying an insulated garage door might be better, but it will cost you about $1500.

But before you do anything, the best way to make your garage a little more comfortable is to stop any cold air infiltrating into your garage from the outside. Put new weather-stripping down where the garage door makes contact with the ground. If you have a door entrance from outside into the garage, make sure the seal is intact and no air is coming in around the frame. These are good first steps that will only cost you about $40 and can make quite a difference. Even a slight draft can make your garage feel much colder than it really is when it’s 10°F outside.