Building Reserve and Using KWH

The info says the units are pre charged for up to 15 feet of line. Since mine are only about 5
feet, about all needed was to vacuum the air out to 500 microns, then release the unit charge.
Bruce Roe

Today perhaps is a benchmark day here, a lot of stuff got done or fixed or operational. Beside the Honda
420,000 mile maintenance and a few other things, the house energy plan is fully operational.

It started with cleaning up vampire electric loads and propane leaks a decade ago. 5 years ago the PV
renewable energy source started up, and has been much upgraded for more energy and less maintenance.
Electric power distribution has been upgraded for less loss and better instrumentation, getting attention to
fix my broken well as a bonus.

Now the house is heated and cooled by 3 mini split heat pumps, which require little attention and save huge
amounts of energy by operating efficiently in nearly all the weather variations here. Completed just in time
for the arriving cold. As a bonus the HVAC is decentralized, so no one failure can leave me in a desperate
winter situation. There is a long list of other advantages to this upgrade, no downside found yet.

Expectation is the next energy half year will be spent making observations of limitations of the complete
system.I have a few particulars, like are more peak BTUs per hour needed for the coldest days, or even
justified with the substantial electric resistance heat capacity still on standby? When the observations are
collected, another round of upgrades might happen, I hope they are much lessor than those past. Bruce Roe

I ran into a family friend in Maine who was involved with the vented kerosene heater market (Monitors) from very early when the were introduced to the US. Monitor pulled out of the market quite awhile ago and the still available Toyos were not marketed well (reportedly that is changing) so he figured around retirement age he could retire and not leave any customers in the lurch. The Monitors were the popular brand and the name Monitor pretty well meant a vented kerosene heater. They haven't been heavily promoted for years and most of the former Monitor dealers got out of them and jumped on the bandwagon to sell minisplits for heating as there was good incentives from various state bodies and lots of PR in the news. His plans for retirement are delayed as his phone is ringing a lot more often. Folks thought a mini split was an adequate year round heating source in Maine and a couple of long stretches of cold weather in the last few winters have convinced folks that they need a backup heater for really cold conditions as the electric heat they ended up depending on during those stretches really hit them hard in the wallet (stories of $500 monthly power bills were in the news). He has had to ramp his business back up and switch a part time employee to full time to deal with the calls, old units are being put back in service and he is going through his inventory of salvaged units to rebuild what he can and salvage parts for other customer units as the demand is high for existing installs and new installs.

Note sure where you are located but it will be interesting to see your experience with cold conditions. My tolerance is anything over 30 degrees outdoor temps I get enough heat if I set the thermostat and forget it. I can stretch it down to as low as 20 F if its a sunny day so I am getting passive solar gain. Add in any precipitation and the output drops and the unit starts to go into defrost mode frequently. I can get heat down to -10F but its not very warm and not very much. I switch over to my wood boiler with storage once the outdoor overnight temps go under 30 F so the mini split switches over to supplemental heat on sunny days to stretch my storage capacity.

About the most extreme cold here is -20 F in northern ILL. My old heat pump (deceased) could manage
to about 20F. The new units should drop that more than 30 degrees. I do not expect them to cut out there,
but rather to eventually be unable to cope with the house increased heat loss. If that happens they will still
be saving a lot of energy, resistance heat making up the difference. This will not cause me $ loss. The
original design was to replace 1100 gallons of propane with 28,000 KWH of resistance electric heat, which
has been achieved several years so far.

This winter will be the first trial of how these figures play out. I will not be surprised if the barefoot minis
miss the target. Rather I hope to figure out exactly what the target is, then think about the best way to get
there. Having already generated enough energy for the year, this is fine tuning so that managing energy
takes the minimum of my attention. I'll also be noting if some cool areas need more air directed to them,
or are candidates for another mini. The minis have programing for direction of the output air.

Note, the usual selling points for this stuff is best efficiency when operating (SEER), but my criteria will be
how well they make it through winter without adjustments. There are a lot of mini types out there, and
these specs vary greatly. Summer cooling I expect to be a slam dunk here. Bruce Roe

The cold season has arrived, and the 3 heat pumps are keeping the house toasty. My reserve
energy meter is showing about 30 KWH a day consumption with 40s F average. The array can
still make that much if there is any hint of sunlight. A very dark week has dropped reserve
half a hundred, but I am still hopeful of getting that back in the next week, before serious winter
begins. The KWH reserve curve will probably take a new shape this winter. Bruce Roe

Half way through Nov, average temps in the 20s, and the mini splits continue to use rather
minimal KWHs. The energy reserve from summer is still unused, new solar energy collection
is keeping up with use. Perhaps a small issue is getting uniform heat throughout a ranch
style house. But with the relaxing areas kept cozy, perhaps it should be considered an
advantage that some walk through or working areas are several degrees cooler. I could
fix it by running the blower, but would rather not. Bruce Roe

Good to hear your hard work has paid for itself. Stay warm my friend.

Got the electric bill. It was a near record setting cold Nov, some temps into single digits, but
the 3 mini splits had no trouble keeping the house warm. Snowfall many times normal as well.

In fact it appears KWH consumption was down to only 81% of my warmest previous year,
before the minis. That despite I am now allowing myself the luxury of a dehumidifier in the
laundry room, should check its use. Total about 54 KWH a day. Despite terrible clouds,
managed to offset that with 40 KWH daily generation. Bruce Roe

That is so totally awesome !!

Bruce:

Most likely not a crisis but to me, the need for a dehumidifier in the laundry room may be a red flag. If it's humid in there, it may mean that the venting from the dryer is inadequate. That may mean that necessary (makeup) air to replenish what gets exhausted by the dryer's blower cannot get to the laundry room. Question: Does it take longer to dry a load of wet laundry in the winter than in summer ? Longer or with more moisture buildup than in the summer when things are not as buttoned up may be an indication of inadequate supply air to the dryer blower. Sometimes folks forget that all the air that leaves a space (in this case, your laundry room via the dryer blower) must originate from someplace outside the space. This sometimes happens when folks go on a house tightening rampage and forget that every drain (in this case the dryer exhaust which drains the air from the laundry room) needs a vent, be it a cracked door, window, or other intentional vent. The necessary makeup air will come from someplace or, in the limit, the flow will be reduced or (unlikely but possible) deadheaded all together.

Or, Sometimes folks who have electric resistance heat for the drying don't vent the blower exhaust at all (never a good idea for lots of reasons) and wind up with excess moisture. I put an outside air source on my gas fired dryer when I lived (if you can call it that in the winter) in Buffalo, and opened/closed the damper for dryer operation. Strictly non OSHA compliant because of no fail open measures and probably other things, but it improved (lowered) drying times by using outside air w/usually lower dew points.

Folks in cold(er) climates such as yours or where I came from usually need to add moisture to air in conditioned spaces, not take it out.

Long subject about indoor air quality and energy conservation.

Respectfully,

Filing in the dehumidifier situation. Summers can make activities uncomfortable here because
the humidity is so high. Remember rain is pretty regular, outside venting will not help. In the
past the AC was rarely run, saving energy. Same for a dehumidifier.

But recently some of the Previous Owners plumbing started multiple leaks, and I finally moved
up a dehumidifier in the clean up process. This fall this new machine (hopefully very efficient)
got moved to the laundry room because that tended to be the most humid, with a permanent
drain. It does have a control, so it only runs as needed, not continuously. I expect it rarely
operates in winter, except when the sun powered drier quits (clouds and snow) and clothes
hang downstairs. A measurement of daily KWH for each month might be interesting to record.

At this time running the (very efficient) AC with its moisture removal is acceptable. It appears
there may be quite an annual energy surplus, so several other things might happen. One is
letting the humidifier take care of the laundry area (which includes the electronics shop).
Another is using a big mini split to limit more comfortable temps and humidity in the car shop.
Or maybe one of the new ventless clothes driers. Water heating? Bruce Roe

Just a 1 Jan note, the mini splits continue to use less (heating) energy than any Dec of the
previous 5 years. Jan and Feb heating will probably be a much more serious test though.
All my propane and resistance electric heat sources remain switched off. Bruce Roe

Good to hear they have been a success.

Do you have any information about the relative temps. or degree-day information for the last 5 Dec.'s vs. Dec. 2018 ? Maybe the weather has something to do with it. Also, any conservation improvements over the last year ?

About all I have is the high temp for each day. Maybe someone recorded degree days. I
can't reference one year ago, because the not yet discovered leak in my well was covering
up the other energy uses. Best guess I have is the internal leak started about Dec, got worse
for weeks till I finally figured it out. For the other years there is a range of usage, but this time
I am under all of them.

Conservation wise, a lot improved 2010 to 2013, but the only notable thing lately is running
a dehumidifier part time. Bruce Roe