Air-conditioners do great good, but at a high environmental cost

Re:Air-conditioners do great good, but at a high environment... by twothamendment on Wednesday August 29, 2018 @12:44AM (#17865699)

> There is no real world scenario in a place that has a heating season where the cost to the consumer is better with electricity versus gas or oil. Electric costs about 4x for whole house heating...

I guess I live an unreal life. All of my heating and cooling is electric. My bills are lower than anyone I've compared with and in every case I'm heating and cooling more square feet. The magic? Ground source heat pump. Several people tried to talk me out of it and I'm glad I didn't listen.

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Re:Air-conditioners do great good, but at a high environment... by Spooky23 on Wednesday August 29, 2018 @10:22AM (#17868395)

That’s awesome — it tends to be a capital cost that people cannot afford to retrofit.

In my area, you need to drill deep wells for heat pumps to work. Our local branch library did it and it cost about $40k.

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Re:Air-conditioners do great good, but at a high environment... by ScottBurson on Wednesday August 29, 2018 @12:58AM (#17865774)

That's great — really, it is; if I ever get to build a custom house, I want to use a ground source heat pump — but we were specifically arguing over electric resistance heating.

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Re:Air-conditioners do great good, but at a high environment... by twothamendment on Wednesday August 29, 2018 @01:18AM (#17865861)

I guess I missed that. Yes, electric resistance heating is horrible on the wallet.

I have electric resistance as a backup to my heat pump, only because they wouldn't install it without it. It would cost so much to run I have the breakers turned off just so it can't be shocked by my bill.

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