3 feet in 50 years?!?

Frank Krygowski considered Mon, 2 Jan 2017
22:49:16 -0500 the perfect time to write:

On 1/2/2017 10:20 PM, Phil Lee wrote:
TV ads make a big thing of switching off all the
way instead of using standby (which may save a whole 10w of power in a
household with a lot of appliances which have standby capability) but
they miss the elephant in the room - shutting doors and ensuring that
you aren't wasting heat in rooms that aren't occupied.
The energy savings from that would be in the kilowatt range, where
standby settings on TVs and the like are usually now measured in
milliwatts.

I recall seeing a TED talk in which the speaker gave numbers on the
energy savings possible if British housewives would just heat only the
amount of water they needed for tea. She claimed almost all filled a
kettle and brought it to boiling to make just one cup.

I don't know if that's true, and I certainly don't remember the
purported total savings. But I know that most women I know (yes, it's
always the women, including my wife) do heat far more water than needed
each time. I can always grab a cup after my wife pours her cup of tea.

I note, though, that in the winter it's not really waste heat. We don't
heat the pot out in the yard, after all.

The same applies to other "wasted" power in winter though,since almost
all of it is wasted as heat - which is then removed from the heating
cost. That is partly why I'm baffled by this focus on standby, which
only makes any sense at all in summer.

Duane considered Tue, 3 Jan 2017 10:57:48
-0500 the perfect time to write:

big snip
No idea what a "frost guard" setting is. This is a house built in the
40s. One thermostat in the hall for 11 rooms.

It's a thermostat setting which keeps the place just above the
temperature at which things start freezing up and breaking.
You could have set that on a couple of electrical fan heaters, and if
the main heating fails, those fan heaters would work as a backup.
Odds are, they would never even switch on, as the main heating system
would keep running. But having a couple placed carefully around the
house (in places where they don't pose a fire risk) would be cheap
insurance. Heck, even a single one would do the job if the internal
doors were all open, and it's sited sensibly.
We rarely get extremely low temperatures here in the UK, but do
regularly get ones cold enough to freeze pipework. But as it's mostly
only just cold enough and for short periods, most people never even
realise, as residual heat inside buildings is usually sufficient to
stop any damage. The people who get caught out here are those who
leave the house empty without any precautions, then there's an
unexpected change in the weather. Heating system failure is a much
rarer cause, because temperatures that low are also much rarer.

Phil Lee wrote:
Duane considered Tue, 3 Jan 2017 10:57:48
-0500 the perfect time to write:

big snip
No idea what a "frost guard" setting is. This is a house built in the
40s. One thermostat in the hall for 11 rooms.

It's a thermostat setting which keeps the place just above the
temperature at which things start freezing up and breaking.
You could have set that on a couple of electrical fan heaters, and if
the main heating fails, those fan heaters would work as a backup.
Odds are, they would never even switch on, as the main heating system
would keep running. But having a couple placed carefully around the
house (in places where they don't pose a fire risk) would be cheap
insurance. Heck, even a single one would do the job if the internal
doors were all open, and it's sited sensibly.
We rarely get extremely low temperatures here in the UK, but do
regularly get ones cold enough to freeze pipework. But as it's mostly
only just cold enough and for short periods, most people never even
realise, as residual heat inside buildings is usually sufficient to
stop any damage. The people who get caught out here are those who
leave the house empty without any precautions, then there's an
unexpected change in the weather. Heating system failure is a much
rarer cause, because temperatures that low are also much rarer.


Ah. But the frost guard setting wouldn't have helped in this case since the
furnace failed. Backup electric heaters would have though.

--
duane