Closer to Solar Power than we've been assuming?

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I had no idea that was the case. I assumed that since the dishwasher was right next to the sink, that it had a hot water connection. In fact, I'm pretty sure it does, as when I've attempted to take a shower and it got turned on, the water got colder. (Although I suppose it could be due to lower water pressure - the shower is on the second floor.) I know the washing machine has a hot water connection - again there's a sink right next to it, so it's not like there would be a lot of extra plumbing - and as soon as I turn it on, the water is pretty much immediately hot - there's no way an internal heat source could heat that much water up that quickly and continuously while it fills. So I think it's pretty standard here for our clothes and dish washer to have hot water connections.

That's stunning - like I said, heat pumps gained popularity over here in the late 70s or early 80s. Granted, there are still people who like gas or wood stoves for their homes, but most people who have built homes in the last 30 years or so rely on electric heat, supplied by a heat pump. Prior to that, electric heat was base board heat, and was regarded as among the most inefficient, and thus also among the most expensive

Oh, they aren't cheap to install. I would never purchase a heat pump for a home that had some other form of heat. My parents had to replace theirs a few years ago, and I think they said it was $5,000 for a new one - so that's a chunk of change. That's why I said you usually see them on new homes, where you're going to be installing some type of heating system, and $5,000 is small compared to the total price of the house.

Base board heating isn't under the floor. It's those metal things you see that rise out six inches above the floor in each wall of a home. Of the two people I know who have underfloor heating, neither of them are electric. Radiators here are rather archaic - it's only people who have gas heat, and only people with homes that are 50+ years old. The last home I saw with one was my grandmother's - but that house was built in the 1930s.

While I haven't gone around my neighborhood and looked, I'm pretty sure everyone has a heat pump. The house and all of those around us were built as part of a new development in the mid-1980s (our house specifically was built in 1984). Since the same construction company built all the homes, I'm assuming that they installed the same type of heating system in all the homes.

As for economics and convenience - like I said, since almost all new homes today are built with a heat pump, you'd have to specifically request your home be built with some other heat supply in order to get one. I have do have friends that live in a very rural area, and they did build a home with a wood stove about 10 years ago - but that's the only one I can think of that's been recently built.

I do tend to think that wood or gas (I don't know anyone who uses oil) is somewhat less expensive than electricity, but not remarkably so. I spend $300-$400 per month on my electric bill, which is comparable to what my in-laws pay if you add their gas and electric bills together. Wood is definitely cheaper, but that's largely because my friend who lives in the country always collects the trees that fall on his property and uses a log splitter for of lot of his heating needs. He does keep a supply of wood pellets as well, but he owns a large pickup truck, so he doesn't have to pay for the delivery fee, and always buys the pellets in the summer when you can get them dirt cheap.

EDIT: While I am fully aware that generally speaking central and eastern European nations are somewhat less developed that their western European neighbors, I typically expect that you guys have the same stuff over there as we have over here. (And for the most part, that's true.) That's why I'm surprised to hear about something that appears quite different.

I cannot help but think that part of the reason is that we have a lot of newer homes over here. The population of the US is growing much faster than any of the European nations. As I understand it, there are many European nations where they expect the population to fall slightly in the upcoming decades. But in a nation like the US where you're adding a net of over 2.5 million people per year, well, they have to live somewhere, and so there is more new home construction.

 

Definitely - You're right that heat pumps require duct work to be placed throughout the house, and if some other system was initially installed without such duct work, it's prohibitively expensive to retro-fit a house with such a heating system. I don't know anyone who has tried to change their heat system to electric when they already have something else. Like you said, if you have something that works, there's little incentive to change.

However, I noticed when my friends who built about 10 years ago with a wood stove, they had similar vents in their house. I can only assume that such ducts allows for the more even flow of heat, unlike a radiator where all the heat comes from that source, and the room with the radiator is typically a lot warmer than the room right next to it without a radiator.

That's very different - most people in the US making an average salary can afford to purchase a house - not a big house by any stretch of the imagination - but you can get a basic house that you can squeeze a family of 4 into for about $150K. So provided you have an annual income of around $50K (and if you have two people working it's likely you do have that as a combined salary) you can get a house.

I don't see how that benefits the bank. Having empty houses is only an asset if you can sell them in the foreseeable future. If you're pricing 90% of the people out of the market, and you're just sitting on them, how does that help you? In the US, banks are incentivized to sell, because they are required to pay the property taxes on every home they own (there were a lot of foreclosures here in the last few years as well). So sitting on a property long term without any realistic hope of selling is not in the bank's interest.

I don't think the desire to own a home is in any way unique to Slovenia that you'd call it a national complex. That's certainly true in the US as well. Even though you can rent a home for less than what a mortgage would cost you, there is no return on investment when you make a rent payment. It is money that is simply gone. However, with each payment you make on your mortgage, you're building the equity you have in your house. Generally house prices rise over time (not true in the last 5 years, but generally speaking over the term of a 30-year mortgage). So even though you pay a heap of interest in 30 years (typically you end up paying back about 3 times what you borrowed over the course of 30 years), you can typically sell your house for at least 3 times what you paid for it 30 years ago, so there is a return on your money.

Example: I've been in my house for about 11 years, and I have enough equity built up in it that were I to sell, I'd walk away with about as much money (after paying off what I still owe) as what I originally paid for it. If I had rented for the last 11 years, I would have spent less, but I would never see a return on that money. In the US, purchasing a home is seen as much as an investment as it is fulfilling a practical need for a place to live. (Again, not true in the last few years - with home prices that have dropped, if you bought at the peak of the boom you're walking away with nothing, as you can't sell your house for what you still owe on it.)

 

Well, in my neighborhood the houses are small, 2-3 bedroom townhouses. They are all between 1000-1200 square feet. If you want a decent sized house, you're probably looking for at least 2000 square feet, but you'd never find something like that in or near a major city for the prize range of $150K I mentioned. You're probably looking in the range of $300K-$400K for something like that.

 

I'm not really well-informed on this but it seems to me that natural gas furnaces are the dominant form of heating in my area. (Our major utility here predominately deals in natural gas.) So I looked around and this site seems to confirm that (for the US): http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=3690

 

That is surprising to me - although like I said, most of the homes build prior to 1980 or so didn't use electricity, so perhaps that 50% using natural gas is also approximately the share of homes in excess of 30 years old?

 

Sorry - just saw your reply now.

All I can tell you is if you live within or nearby a major city (my home is about 10 miles outside of Baltimore, so in the suburbs), you are generally talking about smaller homes. If you want a larger home, and especially if you want a large yard, there's very little within the city. I mean, there's just no property of that size to purchase even if you were in a position to spend a million bucks on a home.

The homes you see on reality TV have to be in more rural settings. (That, or they were filmed prior to housing bust, where people were getting loans they never should have received.) Like I said, my house is small, but that's because I live in a townhouse community. I can certainly find larger homes nearby - say up to 2500 square feet, that are stand alone homes, and have somewhat larger yards too. But there's no way you're getting a "big" back yard - which I would define as an acre+ - anywhere nearby a major city.

Now, if you're living 30-40 miles outside the city - sure - you can find huge properties. I have friends that live that distance from the city, and they purchased 30 acres for around $200K - which isn't bad at all. Of course, it helped that the guy's brother was a housing contractor, and so he was able to get his house built at cost. But the point being that you'd never find a 30 acre lot anywhere near the city, and even something like half an acre would run far in excess of $200K, even if there wasn't a house on the property.

 

I thought there was an informative discussion on housing that followed but I see one of the *main* reasons for using renewable energy was never mentioned.

Global Warming.

Me and BTA have gone round and round on this issue and but factor in the damages caused by Global Warming.

Compare the economic damages related to fossil fuel based power (coal is really bad and natural gas is a great deal better but still involves burning formerly contained carbon).

As long as power companies don't pay for the damages their operations cause they are getting a big indirect subsidy.

So you have wind & solar with direct subsidies (easier to spot) and fossil fuel with indirect subsidies (harder to spot).

Lets see what the actual price for each type of power is when all (or at least the bulk of) subsidies (both direct & indirect) are factored in.


Someone (BTA?) said the truth hurts.

But a half-truth (only a partial look at subsidies) can be costly.

 

We are working them out but in the very least in some places flooding related damages, drought related damages in others, and likely property damage along coasts if you see sea levels rise.

 

Sure I can.

Adding carbon to the carbon cycle on the surface of the planet adds carbon to the atmosphere & changes the balance of chemicals in it. The types of chemical relate to how much warmth stays with the surface of the planet as opposed to escaping into space.

If increased planetary warming relates to floods, droughts, and higher sea levels (which isn't unthinkable) then damages related to those floods, droughts, & higher sea levels relate back to increased CO2 which caused the warming.


BTW I don't know if you have a habit of reading The New American or if Yahoo just picked it up for you out of pure chance but isn't it related to the John Birch Society (hence the less than subtle opinions/bias in the reporting).

 

Not as much as you would think. They extract this stuff in my home state with disastrous consequences. The air and water get heavily poisoned, even if it's not directly on your land. There are videos of people setting their tap water on fire due to the chemicals used in extracting it. And this doesn't take into account the environmental damage of it's usage at all.

If you want more info on it I would recommend the documentary called "Gasland" (that I got to work on a little bit and speak at it's first showing in Pittsburgh, yay!). Also there's this thing called forced pooling where if something like 50% of the people in a given area lease their land to these companies, everybody has to. Not a good thing all around.

 

@BTA

Or it is every bit as serious as saying smoking "could" cause cancer. Smoking is not promised to give a specific person cancer but it shoots the odds up.

Now last I checked I wasn't a doomsayer. But this is what I see as a real problem. Also I see the doubts stirred up by those funding the old cold war paranoid propagandists as a ploy to avoid cleaning up their act-let alone compensating others for damages.

@damedog

I had heard the video of that guy setting fire to water coming out of his faucet was faked. Is it for real?

Now you did touch on something that would concern me and that is poisoning of groundwater-I don't think that is an easy problem to fix if done. I've been told that the gas they go after is below groundwater so there isn't likely to be mixing but sometimes assurances aren't all they are cracked up to be..

 

Good. Now since I didn't make one it would probably be a good thing if you stopped grasping at strawmen.


I'm guessing that humanity will survive Global Warming. There will be lives lost and economic costs but I figure humanity itself is likely to survive.


Companies and governments have already proven themselves capable of harming people's health and/or property. All it takes to see that fact is to look at cancer related to smoking and damage done (often economic) by a chemical or oil spill.

And even if one isn't looking at pollution in specific there is still economic damage that can come from ignoring the environmental effects of the operations of a given group-such as what is happening with the Aral Sea.

So the ability for groups and organizations (including large companies) to inflict health or environmental damages-and the related economic costs-are things that have been demonstrated to be quite true mutiple times and places already.

 

One or two could have been faked, I can't say for sure, but i'm positive it's a real phenomenon as i've personally seen it done.

As for this global warming thing- i've seen enough science from enough respectable institutions to really not doubt it all that much. It's one thing to be a skeptic but another thing to be an outright denier. It may have other factors that contribute more or less but i'm not seeing much room to doubt honestly. And before we get into this Climategate thing, distortion works both ways: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11074