It appears the 90 threaded onto the compression nut.
That is an excellent solution! 
Far better than what I suggested!
Nice to see what the original looked like.
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Great work around 
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Hey guys,
The “Oil to Electric Rebate Program”, and/or the “Greener Homes Program” has made us look into some of these options. This might be canada specific as far as rebate programs currently ongoing, but the actual “work” obviously isn’t.
I’m wondering if any of you have done anything to your homes (or work on other people’s homes) related to these programs/conversions. What was the process like, it seems like there are a lot of criteria to meet, and from the sounds of some of what I’ve heard so far, at least the Greener Homes program, only offers up $5000?
One specific thing, related but not necessarily limited to these programs, that we’re interested in, is changing our oil burning furnace to an electrical one. Is that a thing - I assume it is. And wouldn’t it be pretty straight forward regarding the amount of actual equipment changes/structural changes (work being done inside walls and all that) to the home. In other words, wouldn’t you just have to change out the oil burning furnace (and I guess, remove the oil tank) with one that uses electricity to heat the water? I’m talking about a home heating oil burning furnace that is used to heat water, which then circulates through baseboard heaters to heat the home, and also heats the water from the faucets. Could that system’s heating source (oil, furnace) not just be changed over to electric? I’m not talking about changing the baseboard or any heating currently installed with electrical (resistance) baseboard heating or anything like that.
Thanks. I’ll probably have other questions.
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It is totally a thing and a big one here in New England, we are planning on getting one of these or something similar installed in our 1890 Victorian with steam radiators as a drop-in replacement when our gas boiler kicks it, you’rett looking for a “high temperature air to water heat pump”, you must have a water pump in the system already. I think it will be pretty cheap to convert our steam to hydronic from what I can tell.
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Thanks. I’ll have to look into this.
But one important note is that this isn’t a home we’re planning on staying in. In fact, we’re planning on selling it and moving to something smaller (it’s not a ‘big’ home) that we can afford to buy outright. That’s been the idea for over a year now, but just no actions of any significance towards it. We only want to do the things that are really necessary or that might add value(?) to the home. The oil tank is only covered (by insurance) until January of this coming year (basically 5 months away). So, it’s either replace the tank with a new one - a hassle of it’s own (due to the way the house was built, I seriously don’t see how a new tank would be brought in - and no, there’s no option to have it outside), or switch to some other form of home heating (that is covered by insurance for full home heating) - ideally one that wouldn’t require extreme amounts of “renovations” and expense.
Edit: Due to the fastly approaching “insurance won’t cover your oil tank, thus won’t cover your home/provide insurance” date, we might end up just having to replace the oil tank. Which sucks, whether we were staying here or not. Oil furnace/home heating is not a selling point. Any other technology would be more of a selling point. I think some type of “replacing the oil furnace” (just the device that heats the water which heats the home) with an electric powered equivalent would be the easiest and most cost effective option. But I duno what device exactly to look for.
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Hot water heating is typical in the UK using radiators. The water is taken from the hot water tank and cycled through the radiators as well as being used for showers ect then put back into the hot water tank. The water is heated either by natural gas, electricity or a back boiler behind a fire.
In Nova Scotia they want you to swap your oil furnace to a heat pump, but if there is a power outage usually in winter, you have nothing to heat your house with, also if the temps drop past minus12c your heat pump will go onto auxiliary heating and burn loads of electric. Our old house gad a big heat pump and forced air, if it went onto auxiliary heat it would use 15 kilowats an hour and not make much heat, now we have an oil furnace, wood stove/cooker as well as a small heat pump.
Through last winter we burned mostly wood, turned on the oil furnace in the mornings to heat the place up quickly, and had the heat pump running continuously unless temps dropped past minus 11. If there is a power outage we can use a small generator to run the oil furnace and keep the fridge and freezer going.
After having a wood stove I would never be without one now here in NS.
The problem with the 5,000 for switching over to a heat pump is it will only get you one small one not enough for a house just a room 10x15ft on average. So to get the rest of the house done is pretty costly and you still have to find a way to heat the house if the temps drop past minus 12c or pay large amounts of money on auxiliary heat.
I think this is all a con, the government want to make you dependant on electricity, they don’t like people being independent they are harder to control and keep in line and they get less tax dollars.
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I think it’s a little less nefarious than that, it’s more so people who traded the church for the state and gulp down the anti-oil dogma kool aid daily. They are like the ‘adult’ version of european teenagers throwing soup on paintings to “end oil now!”.
We gotta be real here, unwinding the petroleum economy is going to take generations and so far it isn’t paying to be an early adopter. We’ve had hybrid cars in our family for 15+ years because it’s a reasonable compromise and will continue to make those types of decisions as the tech advances, but “OIL ENDS TODAY” people are crying wolf and doing more harm than good in my opinion.
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If the exterior temps run below 38 - 40 F , a heat pump will not work & the auxilary heat strips will run constantly . Try heating a home with the usual 15 - 20 kw aux heating strips . Geothermal if your groundwater stays constant while more expensive initially is best bet .
What the Green New Deal fails to address is just how dependent our whole society is on petroleum . 90+% of items you encounter on a hourly basis are derived from it in one fashion or another .
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I am looking at a Industrial flooded lead acid battery storage for electricity with solar, wind and possibly water. We have been at this property since October on a large river so we get a lot of wind in winter, it comes from behind us in summer so not so good then. We have several small brooks that could provide electricity with small turbines some parts of the year when its not freezing and solar all year round could get us off grid I believe, but I want to just observe how these things could work before I start throwing money at them.
Geothermal is good but it’s difficult here as granit bedrock is all over NS with not much soil depth unless your lucky. It also takes a fair while to recover your investment.
Yeah we have just ordered a hybrid Toyota corrola cross back in May, hybrid seems the best option as far as traveling fairly economically can be done without going fully electric and being compromised on distance and speed of travel. In cold weather those LiPo batteries don’t work well and your travel distance can be cut considerably.
The house we have bought is 150 years old, no insulation apart from in one roof space of the 3 we have with R15 fiberglass and an inch thick polystyrene layer under the vynil siding lmao, so atm my priorities as I gut the place is insulating everywhere as I go replacing all the old windows and doors to decent energy saving standards and as much insulation as I can fit in the walls. I have increased the 4x2 outside wall studs with 2x2 so I can at least get R20 in the walls. Still not sure whether it’s worth putting on vapor barrier which is what I am probably going to do today in the 2 rooms I an converting into a new bedroom and onsuite bathroom. At least it may keep out some of the draughts even if it doesn’t completely deal with the moisture.
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This sounds like our system, except it’s heated with an oil “water boiler” (furnace?), and I don’t think there’s a “tank” (a separate tank). There’s an expansion tank - which I just learned that that’s what it was, during our zone valve replacement (the thread that inspired this thread) where I asked lots of questions to the service tech.
Yea, this is what I’ve been reading too. And that situation is going to happen, probably a lot.
Did you find the cost of firewood to be reasonable, how’d you source it, are you in a somewhat rural part of the province - or at least have access to buy it with ease, or do you get it yourself?
What kind of generator (would you need an inverter/sine-wave generator for that application)? I was considering a generator years ago but only for an indoor grow room. Didn’t get one after.
I bet you love the wood stove. Relative independence. (We’ll have to put an end to that. “Ahh, umm - the trees! We have to save the trees, now. You’re killing the trees. Tree lives matter. Treequality/Treequal rights. What about the children?”). Anyway…
Course.
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How’d you go about this? Just by attaching 2x2 lumber to the existing 2x4 studs to get a little extra depth?
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Diesel diesel diesel!
Yeah, I ripped down some rough cut 2x4 lumber into 2x2 and nailed them on, checked how plumb the studs were with my Lazer level, and just shimmed anything more than 3/8ths out of the line, surprisingly for a hundred and fifty year old house things are pretty good for square and level but the odd one hear and there is way out of plumb, but I think it was built that way rather than moving out of whack. I think with the 1 inch of nail board, 1 inch of wooden siding, then an inch of polystyrene on top of the wood, plus the vynil siding I should be getting close to another R5 on top of the R20 insulation going in on the inside.
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Whew. That’s a tough call. I’ve fully renovated 2 100+ year old houses. Here’s what I’ve learned:
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every time you have a plan for how the work will go, as soon as you open the wall or the floor, that plan goes to shit and it will be 5x harder than you thought.
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you will need way more specialized tools that you think. Sometimes they are not too expensive, sometimes they are really pricy. Factor that in.
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plan on needing double the number of dumpsters you think. Budget accordingly.
It’s hard, frustrating work. And normally I’d say hire someone if you can afford it….
But the truth is, contractor prices have skyrocket since Covid and I don’t know anyone who can afford a pro anymore.
If you have a little money to hire someone, do all the rough work and just hire a contractor for the finish (drywall, plaster, finish carpentry) they will make everything look great, even if your rough work was a bit sloppy
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All good advice. Although my drywall mudding turned out very well.
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The problems I encountered were mainly because the place had been renovated by morons 4 times over a hundred years so every time I opened it up I’d find 3 extra incarnation of moron. Guess that makes me the next moron.
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so true. Especially in old houses! Can’t tell you how many times I’ve screamed “why the fck is this like this?”
Because some other home owner did it themselves…
And in 40 years some new homeowner will be swearing at me in the grave for dumb stuff I hammered into something
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Learned to use my powers for evil. I was supposed to live there. It turned into a flip. I still lived there.
By the end I just didn’t care anymore. Got it done though.
But I went in with zero knowledge of the trades. I’m just a guy with zero skills fixing up this massive century home never mind me.
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I was a residential remodeler for well over a decade.
@firehead is correct on a couple of points, IMO.
That right there is experience speaking. That’s just how things go. You do not know what exactly is going on behind that wall surface or under those floor boards.
This brings up an interesting point. What is your tool situation? Do you own and know how to safely use the tools required? You may, of course, be able to rent at least some of the tools that will be required, but that does not address your skill level.
Renovating a house, particularly an old house, can be more than a little challenging (not to mention frustrating). It is a BIG and time consuming job. If you lack relevant experience, I would definitely suggest hiring it out.
Edit: When I would bid a remodeling/renovation job, particularly though not exclusively older homes, I would compile my materials list, figure up how many hours I was looking at, and then add a solid 30%. No shit. And I knew guys who added more, depending on the job, of course. It can be tricky work.
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Based on your personal experience as
, would you suggest undertaking the job?
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