So Many things...

[ruwhei]

Oh the fun!

Ok, so many things have happened in the past 60 or so days.

--> I had to replace my HVAC system

So this house I live in was build in 2003, which is pretty new by most standards, but HVAC systems have only about a 20 year life span.  Back in 2016 or so, I had an inspection does on the Furnace, which showed it was being cracked and

Comments

[calzephyr77]

Ah, the joys of home ownership! We replaced the furnace and hot water tank and added AC in 2016, when the house was almost 20 years old. The hot water tank was going and the furnace was fine, but after our neighbours had an emergency furnace replacement in January, we wanted to be proactive about it. Hopefully the new system is robust! We're the second owners of our home, but yep...contractor specials suck.

Happy belated birthday! I'm glad you were able to visit family too.

[ruwhei]

Yikes does Calgary get hot enough to need AC?

Speaking of Calgary they have one of my favorite kitchen knife stores there, Knifewear - https://knifewear.com/

[calzephyr77]

Oh that's awesome, I follow @knifenerd on Twitter :-D He sounds like a great guy.

You know, you wouldn't think Calgary gets that hot, but our house gets East West sun all year and summers were brutal. We had a chain of fans and a swamp cooler going throughout the house. No amount of blocking the windows or leaving them open at night helped and the birds would overheat. There were times when our house reached 90F, if you can believe it! We installed new honeycomb blinds this summer and it helped.

This past summer was really hot. I noticed all over social media that locals were installing AC. There were days when the unit was working really hard too. I don't know if it's a blip or this new weather is here to stay.

[ruwhei]

Yeah I guess its easy to forget that the plains, far away from the coasts, can get pretty hot. Especially since you are farther north, in the summer time there are more hours of sunlight than down here and that can get you pretty toasty warm over a period of time, like you said!

In the summer I let my house get up to about 82F or so but anything after that and it starts feeling uncomfortably warm. Luckily, even though it might be 109F outside or something, its only until it gets to be around 4pm or 5pm that it gets hot inside. That's when the AC kicks on. So, it kind of makes the same sense for you too.

[hastka]

Ouch man... that is pretty spendy for the HVAC stuff - I must be in the wrong line of work. So far (knock on wood) I've been making do with my 1980s-vintage boiler, which in theory should last forever until the boiler tank rusts through. ;-P But I'm sure the efficiency is not great on that

[ruwhei]

You may remember I added solar power to the house, so electricity cost for me is somewhere between "Free" and "A lot" depending on what time scale you're looking at. lol. There's a push here to electrify everything and get rid of natural gas. Indeed, when it came time to replace my furnace I was asked to consider a heat pump system, which means everything is electric

[hastka]

5-7% of a differences vs. what?

[xolo]

Happy Belated Birthday!