NC and Other Southerners, I Need Your Advice!

jhiggins

jhiggins

Joined
Jul 11, 2003
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Well as many of you know, my wife and I are getting serious about moving to North Carolina. We are looking at the area around New Bern, Greenville, Goldsboro, and Washington. If all goes well with selling our house here and liquidating a lot of our stuff, we'd be looking at about this time next year making the move. This would obviously be impingent upon getting a property down there sometime between now and then. My worries are due to many things, but some thoughts in particular have to do with an unstable future economy and the looming oil crisis.

We take for granted the luxurious lifestyles we Americans live while being so seriously addicted and dependent on fossil fuels. Driving a car is one thing, but staying alive and healthy is another. I am worried for the future - MY future, and the future of America if we can't get our heads out of our asses and start whipping-up some better sources of energy. I'll get to the point in a minute, but this is a very complex and convoluted problem that has been stewing in my head for a long time, and reading the latest issue of National Geographic certainly didn't help.

The new NG has an article entitled, "After Oil - Powering the Future." Its a pretty good eye-opener. I have been thinking along these lines for years, but this article kind of brought a certain clarity to my musings. What do we (I) do to stay healthy and happy in the face of certain collapse of the life we have known for the last 50-60 years? Times are changing, and we are definitely facing the end of our planet's #1 fuel source. We've taken things for granted so long now, its hard to imagine anything else.

How will we get to work? How will we heat our water for showers? How will we power the houses we live in? How will we heat our homes in the winter?

Now I have to say that I am defintely NOT a green-nut. I don't give a rat's-patoot who is dumping toxic sludge in the river, or how many crazy harpooners are gang-raping innocent narwhales, or who gets the highest head-count while out on a rampant seal-pup-clubbing spree. What I do care is about me and my own. So let me FINALLY get to the point of all this chatter, and and ask a couple simple questions.

- How is everyone in the Southlands heating their homes these days?

- Is electric heat a viable alternative? What do you guys in NC pay per KWH? I'll explain why I am asking this in a sec...

They way I see it, Linda and I can buy property and build a house on it. I want to be able to live in that house, if necessary, on nothing but a wood stove for heat if need be. So I am thinking of central AC, and electric heat - augmented by wood heat. Does anyone do this sort of setup?

Is wood expensive in NC? How do you Southern folks heat your homes, and would you change it?
 
I know quite a few people that heat with wood, augmented with propane for hot water.

I have faith that we as a nation will demand better energy sources , and they will be met. We have tremendous coal reserves that could do in a pinch. Fission has great possibilities also.

As soon as the families that are controlling the oil (and the world) figure a way to capitalize on new sources, things will change.

I'm not sure about elec per KW. But our house is about 2500 Sq Ft and costs about $250-275 per month in elec in the dog days. Bout $75 -100 in winter. Gas heat in Winter runs about the same as elec does in Summer. I would guess our energy bills average out to $275 a month.

I'll be in the same boat this time next year myself Jeff, just in a different region.

We plan on building an over-insulated house on a radiant heated concrete slab, and a passive solar collecting wall. Might throw in a nice fireplace for ambiance'. Not concerned about the cooling where we'll be.
 
our house is around 1200 sq. ft. We have a heat pump/electric AC and I think our power bill is around $130 a month.

Most people in NC either use electric or gas for heat. You could offset it with wood in a fireplace I guess.
 
Mark, I doubt you will need AC much. Might be good to get a window unit though. When I was in Oregon I only needed AC for about 2 weeks a year. Nice!!!
 
Thanks Mark, and Brian. You know something I read in that article struck me as quite terrifying. It said our planet's energy consumption amounts to 22 hundred-watt bulbs burning nonstop for every person on the planet. Holy smokes! Makes you question if we really need all those lights in Vegas or Times Square, huh?

Brian... how many months of the year do you actually use your heat? I am thinking a fireplace and a woodstove will do us just fine for everything except the very cold days. As far as AC goes, we lived in FL for several years and enjoyed the weather without AC being on for everything except the seriously-hot days. Its the way we were raised anyway - that old-timey Yankee frugality.

Anyone know what it costs for firewood down there? It's roughly $125-$150 per cord up here, cut and split and dumped in a pile one your property.
 
we use our heat from about late october to mid march I think.
 
blgoode said:
we use our heat from about late october to mid march I think.
Click to expand...

Pretty much exactly what I thought too. I'm thinking a woodstove and fireplace combo will help trim a month or so off of each end of that. It's all relative you know. We keep our house around 60F here all winter long, and that's comfortable to us. The first 80 degree day here inspring/summer, and we are dying here!

But alas, such as the world turns, so do we become acclimatized to our environment. Linda and I lived in southwest Texas for a few years. We grew to love it, but I will have to say definitely the coldest winter I ever spent in my life was on the flightline in Del Rio, Texas! :)
 
You can also check out a magazine called "Home Power". its more high tech and more expensive than just woodstove heating but they have articles (some detailed, with decent to excellent schematics) on fully powering your house on alternative energy. Lots of people apparently are going completely off grid; some people are even selling surplus power to their power companies.

in some states, they will give you tax credits for certain levels of alternative power as well. something to look into anyways.
 
Fire places don't help heat a home... only a room, they're terribly ineficient.
 
Higgy, here is what we did for my folk's place. My Dad and I built the house approx. 26 years ago, but wanted it to be efficient. The fireplace was made with a cuatom built firebox, out of heavy steel. There are probes in the firebox, that transfer the heat to 18" of air space around the firebox. The air space is connected to the ductwork, thru to the central ac/hting unit. When the fireplace is in use, just turn the circulation fan on and heat the house.
Not real scrispy, but for bedtime just right. Probably cut the gas bill, in winter by 1/3 or more. At the time the cost was around 2 grand to add the features needed.

Ken
 
Looks like a smart fella would figure out a way to use the heat from his gas foge to help out in the winter. I guess you could just live in the shop :)
 
I don't know what the initial outlay is, and how well it is accepted depends alot on who your neighbors are....but my uncle set up an outdoor boiler/furnace a few years back and I really like the set up myself.
He can burn coal or wood, and it seems really efficient. (haven't been there in winter to know how good of a job it does at heating the house though). Burning coal, it only has to be stoked a few times a day. Maybe add a bucket full morning and night and give the fire box a quick poke or two during the day. Wood, you'd have to keep a much closer eye on to keep it going, but you can go cut a cord of firewood yourself in a pinch when you can't get coal :cool:
He also burns it in the summer as a hot water heater, letting it heat the swimming pool to circulate the water through it when its not needed somewhere else. They pretty much have a 15X30ft hot tub :eek: :D

I don't know how much it cost to set up, or exactly what plumbing and stuff is required in the house, but I like how it works. Seems like it would serve very well to back up, or augment a heat pump, especially for a work at home kinda guy who could check the fire once in awhile ;)


I also know some folks who went the geothermal route and they seemed to be pretty happy with that. Guess you kind of have to be building the house to work that out though, where as some of the other options can be put in place on an existing one.
 
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