Page 21 - Green Builder Sept-Oct 2020 Issue

BY JOSEPH WACHUNAS
I, I’D LIKE TO CANCEL MY SERVICE.”
These seven anticlimactic words in a phone
call to our natural gas company marked a
momentous achievement for my family—the
“H „nal black pipe carrying fossil fuels deep from
North Dakota Bakken „elds into our home has been shut o‡.
Our middle class family of three, living in a ˆ‰Š‹s ranch home, has
electri„ed everything. And in doing so, we’ve joined a movement—a
green energy strategy—with three fundamental tenets:
ˆ. Electricity is the quickest and most-realistic path to CO emission
“
free energy.
“. All household appliances and forms of transportation should be
switched to the most-energy e”cient electric models available.
•. Energy should be provided through renewables—ideally from
local sources—such as solar on rooftops.
Follow these three tenets and you can have your modern comforts
“cake” and eat it, too. Enjoy the fruits of technological progress and
stop sending greenhouse gases into an ever-warmer atmosphere
[over] the next ˆ‹‹ years.
We were already believers in number ˆ and it took us six years of
lackadaisically working to electrify everything to o”cially achieve
number “, and we’ll check o‡ number • later this year.
Electrifying everything has been neither expensive nor di”cult.
It has basically meant replacing old, ine”cient gas appliances at the
end of their lives with new, energy-e”cient electric ones. Hot air affair. An electric heat pump’s ability to move hot or cool air from
one place to another makes it invaluable in the effort to turn a house
HEAT PUMP fossil-fuel free. CREDIT: JOE WACHUNAS
We happened upon this strategy when we bought our house in “‹ˆ“. furnace, this “‹-year-old appliance was approaching the end of its
Immediately after moving in, we decided to turn the garage into an life. It was also responsible for a ton of our energy use (ˆŠ percent in
apartment, which meant replacing a “‹-year-old furnace that was the average home) and excessive carbon emissions (•,‹‹‹ pounds per
taking up valuable real estate. year). While researching electric alternatives, we happily discovered
By removing this old heating system, we explored cleaner that the heat pumps that were magically heating our home by pulling
alternatives and discovered heat pumps, which would become a heat from cold air could also be used to steam our showers.
fundamental part of our overall electri„cation strategy, and give us But we had to venture into uncharted territory. Heat pump water
the option of air conditioning in addition to heat. heaters were (and still are) new enough that I had a hard time „nding
[Because] heat pumps move hot or cold air rather than create it, a contractor who was familiar with them. I did much of the research
they can „nd heat even in air that feels cold, and lure it in. This makes myself. We had to become early adopters and embrace a relatively
them extremely e”cient—at least four times more so than electric new technology.
resistance heating and natural gas. Heat pumps run on electricity, but In this case, the reward for our risk was huge. This incredible water
sip it like „ne wine rather than chug it like cheap beer. Refrigerators heater uses a quarter to an eighth of the energy of a “standard” (electric
and air conditioners are heat pumps, so the technology is proven resistance or gas) hot water heater. This translates into savings of
and widespread. When heating a space, the direction is reversed to $“‹‹ to $¢‹‹ dollars per year. Like the ductless heat pumps on our
pull the heat into a space rather than out of it. walls, there is little di‡erence in the initial cost of the technology
Our system includes two interior, wall-mounted “heads” that bring and we still enjoy all the hot water we want.
in warm (or cool) air captured by a compressor placed outside. Our While these water heaters may seem too good to be true, I can
trusty heat pumps were cost equivalent to a new fossil fuel furnace, personally testify to their awesomeness. Beleaguered friends, who I
and have been keeping us warmed and cooled, with electricity, for regularly bombard with statistics and tours of my utility closet, ask
over six years. why they haven’t heard of these before.
The heat pumps proved to be a huge success. We knocked out Heat pump water heaters have the potential to be game changers
a chunk of our natural gas usage and still had lower-than-average in our climate crisis, given the large amount of energy and CO “
electric bills, despite using electricity to heat our home. emissions they save. I love ours so much that I installed a second
one in our garage apartment. This [unit] not only produces hot water
HEAT PUMP WATER HEATER for showers but also heats the entire apartment through a hydronic
The next gas user we tackled was the hot water heater. Like our radiant £oor heating system.

www.greenbuildermedia.com September/October 2020 GREEN BUILDER 19

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