If you have natural gas then I think standby generators are still the method to beat when it comes to backup power. Too many potential pitfalls with batteries still, not to mention the higher cost.
Yeah, thanks, that is helpful. So, in an all electric house, did you use more electricity during the extreme cold than you would on the hottest summer day?
Absolutely. My single-day peak during the summer last year was about 55kWh on a 104F day. I exceeded that every single day of the winter storm, and doubled it or more four times. And that’s without using my heat strips (“aux” or “emergency” heat) which heat faster but use even more energy. I usually leave the aux heat turned off to save energy/money, and would’ve used it last week if not for the fact that it isn’t working. Instead my outside unit ran basically nonstop for days.
So, yeah. Heat pumps are great for spring/summer/fall and mild winters. But when it gets really cold…
So for reference…I average about 80 kWh/day during the summer. And by “summer”, I mean May through October. I peaked about 75 kWh one day last week.
Gas furnace?
He’s in the oil bidness. He has crude pumped in direct from Midland. He burns it in a 55 gallon drum in his living room.
Yes
The house I grew up in had a kerosene heater in the middle of the house. There was a drum of oil mounted on the outside of the house, and to turn the heat on, you had to open a valve at the furnace and gravity drain the oil from the outside drum. Once there was a pool of oil in the furnace, you threw a match or lit piece of newspaper in it. So it was something like you describe.
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I lived in an old craftsman in Arlington, Virginia, that had no heat other than a wood burning fireplace. So we used portable kerosene heaters. They emit an inordinate amount of heat, but they are obscenely dangerous, especially if you are a moron like me. It’s a wonder we didn’t burn that house down.
The house also had an old fashioned ice box which we didn’t use and a perilous oven which we did.
There were an ‘undred and seventy-six of us, living’ in’t shoe box in’t middle of road.
Actually, I grew up in a house that had a coal fire in the living room - which was the only heat in the house - with a back-boiler for hot water. We had a coal bunker in the back yard and we had to scoop coal from it in a scuttle to bring inside.
Our kids have missed out on a lot of fun.
My dad grew up in a 3bed 1bath 1100sqft house in the Port Arthur area, living with my grandmother and his five older sisters, with no A/C and a single gas furnace in the living room. Every now and then when talking about his time growing up, he says “The good ol’ days weren’t all that good.”
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We lived in some pretty modest housing in Wyoming and Colorado when I was a little boy, but I don’t remember ever being uncomfortable. I do remember a lot of reconstituted milk and other things that we would shake our heads at today, but at that time it was just the way things were.
We had central air, but then we moved to an older house without central air. It was tough.
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Griddy bites the dust, maybe others to follow.
I’d just like to point out that this was during the 80’s. The 1980’s. In a major global capital. Turn up the thermostat? Nah, fuck that, wot yer fink vis is, mate? Scuttle some coal from the bunker to the coal boiler and right smart, son.
Life in an empire positioning itself for its final descent.
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What a menace you were. Thank the gentrification gods for clearing you and your types right outta there.
Kidding aside, that version of Arlington is long gone. All the cool, old craftsman homes were individually demolished and replaced with 4,000 sq ft, 3 story tall McMansions with 3” air gaps between’em. Bleh.
To be fair, by the 80’s we’d moved into a house that had gas-fired central heating. 0-11, though was in the coal house.
We didn’t have air conditioning, at home, school, church…wherever. Just something you lived without. Can’t say it wasn’t uncomfortable at times. They finally wised up and started retrofitting schools with A/C in the 80s. I assume all new schools built since then have it to, as they are mostly enclosed boxes.