51–60 of 163 posts
The ideal number of cats per home in New Zealand is zero. Cats prey on local wildlife, much of which is near extinction as it is because of introduced predators including humans. Those who advocate for banning cats in New Zealand have a pretty strong case.
As an aside about the actual content: cats come with vet bills you have to be able to pay if you want to ethically own one. That's a huge expense.
Cat v panel heater: Which is better?
6:34 AM, 24 Aug 2020 James Powers
Cats are affectionate, panel heaters are not.
How many cats do you need to heat an energy-efficient home?
It’s the question on everybody's lips. Well, maybe not everyone's lips, and it's possible this is a niche topic, but it is relevant.
A 3kg cat has a heat output of 14.8 watts, or 129.65 kilowatt-hours - the metric commonly used by power companies to show you how much energy you're using.
These numbers are important when it comes to the design and building of energy-efficient homes, as the heat output of random things like cats can lead to overheating.
For example, to be certified Passive House, a building must have an annual heating demand of less than 15kWh per square metre to maintain a comfortable temperature.
For a typical Kiwi house of 150sqm, the annual energy demand would be 2250kWh. The number of cats required, therefore, would be 17.35, but let's avoid chopping cats and round up to 18 whole cats.
This equates to 1 cat per 8.33sqm.
Easy as. Let’s bulk order a cat litter.
Cats cost about $250 per year to ‘operate’ which equates to a total running cost of $4,300 per year*. This is a bit more than $475 for gas or $675 for electric, although the installation cost is less for cats.
* The calculations have used an average heat load. In reality, the heat load will vary considerably throughout the year. You will need significantly more cats in colder weather and less during mild weather.
In hot weather, you can, of course, let the cats out, but this represents a significant waste of resources if you continue to feed them. And as cats cannot be used for cooling, you would also have to introduce an alternative cooling system such as lizards or other cold-blooded animals.Earlier quoted context omitted.
Gosh it's almost like different places in the world have different costs of living.
They do, but cost of electricity is relatively consistent because cost of production is (or at least upper bounded, some places have particularly cheap electricity because of geography). In this case the trick is that 30nzd=20usd and they didn't feel the need to clarify the currency.
I was once desperately poor. Too poor to turn on the heat. But I did have access to friendly cats, so I've been through this experiment in real life. One cat stuffed under the blankets at night is a significant improvement. But as you add more and more cats, the improvement becomes only incremental. I eventually learned that two cats was really the best one could hope for. Best positioning is between the legs, and wi…
I can recommend hot-water bottles, plus a kettle for quick assembly. It's a lot less cozy though, I suppose.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They do, but cost of electricity is relatively consistent because cost of production is (or at least upper bounded, some places have particularly cheap electricity because of geography). In this case the trick is that 30nzd=20usd and they didn't feel the need to clarify the currency.
It's a New Zealand website on a New Zealand TLD that specifically qualifies, "for a typical Kiwi house", but you thought it wasn't clear that they would be dealing with NZ dollars?
I didn't look at the domain name.
I didn't look at the about us page or anything else to indicate the location.
I assumed kiwi house was a style of architecture and didn't make the link with nz.
$675 for 2250kWh of electricity? They're doing something wrong. That's 30 cents per kwh of heat . Even if you just use resistive heating you beat that in every state, and probably most of the rest of the world. But it's better than that, because that's heat not electricity. 4 watts of heat transfer for 1 watt of electricity is reasonable with a heat pump, so it's $1.20, or if you consider that co-efficient of perform…
However, even that can't be compared, because in NZ, electricity charges include all distribution costs. Americans typically only look at the generator charge per kwh, ignoring transmission, lines and any daily charges.
The breakdown works out approximately [1]:
30% - generator 10% - national transmission network 26% - local lines operator 20% - retailer 13% - sales tax
New Zealand has split transmission, generation, retail, and the local lines operator into separate companies. There are generators without retail and at one time there were retailers without generation (I think they were all killed by the wholesale market). The government runs long-distance transmission (through a crown corporation) while local lines operators can be private.
The amazing thing is that in a country of [1] https://www.ena.org.nz/news-and-events/news/your-power-bill-...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_electricity_market...
Tough to say. All I saw was a blank white page with no text or images. After jumping through some hoops I saw all that javascript was for a couple paragraphs of text. So I'll just mirror it here for others. As an aside about the actual content: cats come with vet bills you have to be able to pay if you want to ethically own one. That's a huge expense. Cat v panel heater: Which is better? 6:34 AM, 24 Aug 2020 James Po…
Tough to say. All I saw was a blank white page with no text or images. After jumping through some hoops I saw all that javascript was for a couple paragraphs of text. So I'll just mirror it here for others. As an aside about the actual content: cats come with vet bills you have to be able to pay if you want to ethically own one. That's a huge expense. Cat v panel heater: Which is better? 6:34 AM, 24 Aug 2020 James Po…