Cohousing-L Mailing List: common house heating, radiant heat and gas prices

[Ian Higginbottom (Ian.Higginbottom]

Hello Dave

The local gas company gave mw the price of gas in dollars per Mega Joule and
per Kilowatthour.  Gas is sold here by the the kilogram (or tonne if you buy in
bulk), but the company guarentee a certain energy content.  

The price per Kwh allows a comparison with the price of electricity.  Of course
you are right that the energy efficiency of the heater must be taken into
account in calculating the cost of heating the room.

The big attractions of radiant heat for us are:
- that there are no problems with dust,
- no convection cells are formed in the room,
- there is no significant hot air at the ceiling so no celing fan would be
required (which is important to the Morris Dancers in the group),
- the heat is felt within half an hour of turning the heater on,
- the room will feel comfortably warm at a lower air temperature than is
needed with convection heaters,
- the heater requires no maintanence
- the heater is child proof
- the heater is silent,
- in Tasmania, taking into account maintanence and the cost of money, it is a 
cheap form of heating (compared to gas, other electric heaters including 
heat pumps, and firewood).



Some people have raised the problem of low level em fields.  Thank you for
your info. This issue is of concern to some members so I shall be passing on the
info.

There are also health concerns with gas heaters in terms of the low levels
of hydrocarbons that escape into the room.  We have one member who has allergy
problems and was very worried about us installing gas.  The capital cost
of installing gas would be as high as installing the electric heat but the
running cost would be higher.  Gas heater have an active flue and a fan to
push hot air into the room, so they cause a low level of background noise
that some of us would prefer not to have.  Gas did not come out infront on
any of the 
criteria we used to compare heaters.

Another plus for electricity in Tasmania (and this one is a bit of an irony)
is that there is an over supply of electricity in the state, so using more
electricity is not likely to lead to the construction of more generating
capacity for a very long time to come.  All our electricity is generated
with hydro plant so there is no pollution involved in generating it.
The irony is that many of us have been campaigning for 10 or 15 years to have
the local electricity authority stop is dam building activities.

Thanks again for all the opinions
Ian Higginbottom