11–20 of 131 posts
OTOH if your power goes out, being able to bake a quiche and not freeze to death is useful.
How are you heating your home? Most methane furnace designs use electric blowers to actually get the heat into the home (at least in North America).
There was a bunch of articles about this in 2020. After looking into the data my conclusion is the threat is overblown (big surprise), a large part of it is from cooking of any kind (heating produces particulates) and that if you take some basic precautions (open a window, use vent fan) the risk is very low.
Opening a window significantly is also pretty unfeasible most of the year.
OTOH if your power goes out, being able to bake a quiche and not freeze to death is useful.
How are you heating your home? Most methane furnace designs use electric blowers to actually get the heat into the home (at least in North America).
OTOH if your power goes out, being able to bake a quiche and not freeze to death is useful.
How are you heating your home? Most methane furnace designs use electric blowers to actually get the heat into the home (at least in North America).
We could still cook food on our gas stove.
We still had hot water from our gas hot water heater (though the pipes eventually froze).
Relatedly I found this video on electric kettles vs gas stove efficiency for heating water pretty illuminating too: https://youtu.be/_yMMTVVJI4c?t=763 The summary is that a cheap electric kettle can boil water way faster and with far less wasted energy than a stove top kettle.
Small nit-pick: Electricity generation itself is often very lossy. In the case of fossil sources, the energy waste is just further up the chain (with solar power too, but it matters much less).
There was a bunch of articles about this in 2020. After looking into the data my conclusion is the threat is overblown (big surprise), a large part of it is from cooking of any kind (heating produces particulates) and that if you take some basic precautions (open a window, use vent fan) the risk is very low.
It is extremely common, even default in the US in my experience, to not have vent fans not actually... vent. As a renter, I don't really get a choice in the matter. Opening a window significantly is also pretty unfeasible most of the year.
That said, mobile homes pretty much always vent outside in my experience.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is extremely common, even default in the US in my experience, to not have vent fans not actually... vent. As a renter, I don't really get a choice in the matter. Opening a window significantly is also pretty unfeasible most of the year.
I see many of them that simply vent into the attic. This requires a properly vented attic, and has the downside of introducing moisture into the attic, which can lead to damage. That said, mobile homes pretty much always vent outside in my experience.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How are you heating your home? Most methane furnace designs use electric blowers to actually get the heat into the home (at least in North America).
in the texas freeze last year natural gas never stopped flowing even though power was out for about 5 days. I cut the wire to my gas furnace and put a plug on the end. My small 2kw generator could easily run the blower on my gas furnace. We could still cook food on our gas stove. We still had hot water from our gas hot water heater (though the pipes eventually froze).
Relatedly I found this video on electric kettles vs gas stove efficiency for heating water pretty illuminating too: https://youtu.be/_yMMTVVJI4c?t=763 The summary is that a cheap electric kettle can boil water way faster and with far less wasted energy than a stove top kettle.
And it can cost a pretty penny to get a building up to this standard.
Relatedly I found this video on electric kettles vs gas stove efficiency for heating water pretty illuminating too: https://youtu.be/_yMMTVVJI4c?t=763 The summary is that a cheap electric kettle can boil water way faster and with far less wasted energy than a stove top kettle.
That seems pretty obvious from their construction. I don’t know anyone that uses a stove top kettle. It’s unfortunate that in the US our electric kettles are much slower than in the U.K.
The big question in my mind is whether the electric kettle itself is the "final form", or if I'll be proselytizing the same people in ten years to get an Asian style hot water heater/reservoir instead.