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December 07, 2004

Warming up the House

Today, Bogner Sheet Metal showed up at our house to start the installation of our new Trane propane furnace. It's going to take them about a week to complete. They are putting it into the crawl space under the house. This will free up the closet on the main floor that the old furnace was in. I plan to tear out the closet and open up the kitchen, doubling it's size. The ancient diesel/oil furnace that was in the house when we bought it was not up to code and it also had a crack in the combustion chamber causing an awful smell. We haven't used it since the summer when we ran out of fuel. I did some research and found out that our title insurance covers undisclosed items that were not permitted. After dealing with the county planning department and the title insurance company for two months, I finally won the claim and the insurance comany is paying for the new furnace installation which runs about $12,000. The catch is the deductable is $4750, but it's still a good deal. One of the issues of the new install is finding a place to put the cold air return duct. After talking with the project manager and learning about air flow and CFMs, I'm proposing we put it inside the lower kitchen cabinet with the grate opening on the wall on the back hallway. We're also adding extra heat vents to the office/bedroom, upstairs washroom and downstairs washroom in the guest bedroom. I've also obtained a 500 gallon propane tank. This is a big tank; most people have 250 gallons. My reasoning for the large size is to have the ability to purchase propane at a bulk rate in June during off-season when propane prices are low, and have enough gas to last all year. Owning your own tank is also a good thing because you can shop around for gas from suppliers without being locked into a contract. The large tank will also come in handy in the future when the stove is replace with a gas one. I also plan to switch the electric hot water tank to a propane powered hot water on demand unit resulting in power savings. By heating the house with the wood burning stove alone, we have almost burned through a cord of wood in three months. On really cold nights it just doesn't have the BTUs to warm the room. By next week that won't be a worry.

Posted by stephen at December 7, 2004 10:01 PM

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Posted by: keith at December 8, 2004 11:59 AM

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