Apartment to buy with coal heating. Any sense to buy electrical heater and new pc?

@OFaceSIG
i can mount an ac the opposite way (release the heat inside while cooling outside air), still doesnt mean its a heat pump or works like one, and i can have a heat pump in the ground,
with no AC installed whatsoever. might wanna read up on stuff before posting ..
wowza. AC units are heat pumps btw.. Might wanna read up on stuff before posting.
 
It's common to use forced air in the south and western parts of the country. The more I learn about the northern U.S. the more alien it seems to me.

I wonder if it is just because most of the housing stock here is older, in large part because most of the lots were already filled up with homes a long time ago.

When we were house shopping we must have seen over a hundred properties. I don't remember seeing a single one built after the mid to late 80's, and even that was rare. Most homes are 60's and 70's construction.

We wound up with a house built in 1953.

If heating in New construction transitioned away from hydronic towards forced air since the mid 80's that would make sense.

Central heat has been around forever, but central air used to be considered a rare and frivolous luxury up here. You'd heat with radiators, and either not cool at all or cool with window units. Forced air makes very little sense if you only want heat, but makes a lot of sense if you want to do both heating and cooling
 
I wonder if it is just because most of the housing stock here is older, in large part because most of the lots were already filled up with homes a long time ago.
Probably. Houses in that part of the country are much older on average. In the DFW area, there are some homes built in the early 1900's near downtown but you won't find that in the vast majority of the city. Most homes will be built in the 1960's or 1970's but the further out from Dallas proper you go the newer the homes get. Much of what you'll find in the suburbs of Dallas or Ft. Worth was built in the 1990's or later. There are a handful of homes built in the 1800's here and there but few of those survive to this day because of the inherent problems with maintaining them for that long. Foundations just don't last that long out here. Our weather is tough on wood, etc. More modern post tension foundations are designed for this area, but those only came about in the 1980's or 1990's.
When we were house shopping we must have seen over a hundred properties. I don't remember seeing a single one built after the mid to late 80's, and even that was rare. Most homes are 60's and 70's construction.
Houses built prior to the 1970's are a fairly rare sight in DFW. That's not to say they don't exist, but its certainly not the norm. Most of what you'll find for sale out here is going to be built in the 1970's or 1980's in Dallas proper and in the older suburbs. As you go further out, the houses get much newer. Incidentally, anything affordable is going to be pretty far away from Dallas proper and is going to most likely have been built in the mid-late 1990's or later.
We wound up with a house built in 1953.

If heating in New construction transitioned away from hydronic towards forced air since the mid 80's that would make sense.
As I haven't been in too many homes built prior to the mid-1960's, I can't say I've ever seen heating systems like that. The south is a very different environment than the northern parts of the country. We don't have wood burning stoves, basements, radiator type heaters or anything like that. Houses without central heating and air conditioning are also pretty rare as well.
Central heat has been around forever, but central air used to be considered a rare and frivolous luxury up here. You'd heat with radiators, and either not cool at all or cool with window units. Forced air makes very little sense if you only want heat, but makes a lot of sense if you want to do both heating and cooling
I've never seen anything but gas or electric central heaters here in the DFW area. When I lived in Arizona, we only ever had pretty much the same thing although some people had swamp coolers. Though if you go far enough north in Arizona, wood burning stoves, fireplaces and furnaces were fairly common.
 
I've never seen anything but gas or electric central heaters here in the DFW area. When I lived in Arizona, we only ever had pretty much the same thing although some people had swamp coolers. Though if you go far enough north in Arizona, wood burning stoves, fireplaces and furnaces were fairly common.

Traditionally the most common heat source up here were home heating oil burners hooked up to hydronic (and sometimes even steam in older homes) radiators.

Home heating oil is a heavy grade of oil anywhere from diesel grade and down to something much heavier. (Essentially, diesel is in the home heating oil range, so you can use it in a pinch (but it is expensive) but home heating oil is not necessarily in the diesel range so don't use it in a car unless you know what you are doing)

If you are lucky enough to live where there is natural gas you obviously choose that over home heating oil because it is much cheaper, lower maintenance and doesn't require constant oil deliveries.

Either way, you probably have radiators though.

Electric heat was extremely rare up here until the advent of modern air to air "hyper heat" style heat pumps, simply because resistive heating elements would be CRAZY expensive and traditional air to air heat pumps would just not be effective on the coldest days of the year.

Occasionally you'd see people with ground source heat pumps (with some people even calling them "geothermal" even though that is inaccurate) as they would work in the extreme cold as underground it stays ~50°F year round. These are still considered the gold standard, but never really gained traction as they are really expensive to install.

Sometimes some homes will have a resistive electric heater that is infrequently used just for supplemental heat in an addition, but for anything other than that they would be completely insane pricing wise.
 
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@OFaceSIG
i can mount an ac the opposite way (release the heat inside while cooling outside air), still doesnt mean its a heat pump or works like one, and i can have a heat pump in the ground,
with no AC installed whatsoever. might wanna read up on stuff before posting ..
Geothermal heat pumps are of course a thing. They are very rare in actual distribution and usage. Colloquially most people think of air to air heat pumps in this context. Just because someone doesn't mention something doesn't mean they don't know it exists. Sometimes it's just so rare it doesn't really apply to the conversation or useful.
 
my house is heat pump, aux electric furnace and central air. Summer bill is about 250 a month to keep the house cool. coldest winter months about 400 a month. but its the only utility bill i have. septic and well water. House never was any kind of gas or propane when we bought it. Is nice not ever worrying about carbon monoxide though. Backup heat is 2 wood fireplaces and an unpowered wood stove.
 
my house is heat pump, aux electric furnace and central air. Summer bill is about 250 a month to keep the house cool. coldest winter months about 400 a month. but its the only utility bill i have. septic and well water. House never was any kind of gas or propane when we bought it. Is nice not ever worrying about carbon monoxide though. Backup heat is 2 wood fireplaces and an unpowered wood stove.
I grew up in a house with gas in California, never once was carbon monoxide ever a worry. My house in Texas now is gas. Everything from the central heat to the cooktop. My damn oven and cooktop were electric for some wierd reason when I moved in. But I just remodeled the kitchen and installed a gas cooktop.

I think total bills are a bit of an innaccurate way to show this. As utility costs can vary wildly. I think electrical usage per sq ft is the best way. The state of Texas will send you your meter read monthly and I have that data for 3.5 years now. My average monthly electrical usage for the past 3.5 years is 1458 kwh. My sq ft of my home is 2700. So my average kwh per sq ft is .54. I personally don't believe that's high. Having gas has a lot to do with that.

What's everyone elses'?
 
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I grew up in a house with gas in California, never once was carbon monoxide ever a worry. My house in Texas now is gas. Everything from the central heat to the cooktop. My damn oven and cooktop were electric for some wierd reason when I moved in. But I just remodeled the kitchen and installed a gas cooktop.

I think total bills are a bit of an innaccurate way to show this. As utility costs can vary wildly. I think electrical usage per sq ft is the best way. The state of Texas will send you your meter read monthly and I have that data for 3.5 years now. My average monthly electrical usage for the past 3.5 years is 1458 kwh. My sq ft of my home is 2700. So my average kwh per sq ft is .54. I personally don't believe that's high. Having gas has a lot to do with that.

What's everyone elses'?
Just went through the last year.

1587 kwh average per month. 1600 sqft. 0.99 kwh per sq ft

Heat is definitely what kills me. Heat pump keeps cost down until its too cold then its furnace and that is expensive to run.
 
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I grew up in a house with gas in California, never once was carbon monoxide ever a worry. My house in Texas now is gas. Everything from the central heat to the cooktop. My damn oven and cooktop were electric for some wierd reason when I moved in. But I just remodeled the kitchen and installed a gas cooktop.

I think total bills are a bit of an innaccurate way to show this. As utility costs can vary wildly. I think electrical usage per sq ft is the best way. The state of Texas will send you your meter read monthly and I have that data for 3.5 years now. My average monthly electrical usage for the past 3.5 years is 1458 kwh. My sq ft of my home is 2700. So my average kwh per sq ft is .54. I personally don't believe that's high. Having gas has a lot to do with that.

What's everyone elses'?
I pay 11.9c-12.1c per Kilowatt hour. At my old house, my power usage could be upwards of 6,000 kWh or more during the summer months. You can see how much power was used last summer. The usage dropped off in my case because one AC unit was down and that was fixed in April of this year. June is bad as that's when I moved out. So the doors were open a lot, etc. It got jacked up last month from the lazy contractors cranking the AC down as low as it would go and leaving it like that. For reference, the house is 3,877 square feet.
1722867007477.png

The issue with that house comes down to the window and door seals all failing and basically losing cold air. So the A/C's were running hard all the time. Though with the downstairs A/C having been replaced by one about two and a half decades newer, the power consumption would probably be a bit better this year. Though again the larger problem is the windows and doors causing a complete loss of efficiency in climate control. My electric bills since my Ex moved out were around $450-$650 depending on the time of the year.

In my new house my first electric bill (for last month) was $264.00. The house is 1,895 square feet. I keep the A/C cranked down to about 68-70F depending on if the girlfriend is over here or not.
 
I pay 11.9c-12.1c per Kilowatt hour. At my old house, my power usage could be upwards of 6,000 kWh or more during the summer months. You can see how much power was used last summer. The usage dropped off in my case because one AC unit was down and that was fixed in April of this year. June is bad as that's when I moved out. So the doors were open a lot, etc. It got jacked up last month from the lazy contractors cranking the AC down as low as it would go and leaving it like that. For reference, the house is 3,877 square feet.
View attachment 670606
The issue with that house comes down to the window and door seals all failing and basically losing cold air. So the A/C's were running hard all the time. Though with the downstairs A/C having been replaced by one about two and a half decades newer, the power consumption would probably be a bit better this year. Though again the larger problem is the windows and doors causing a complete loss of efficiency in climate control. My electric bills since my Ex moved out were around $450-$650 depending on the time of the year.

In my new house my first electric bill (for last month) was $264.00. The house is 1,895 square feet. I keep the A/C cranked down to about 68-70F depending on if the girlfriend is over here or not.
6kw!!! jeez lol
 
I pay 11.9c-12.1c per Kilowatt hour. At my old house, my power usage could be upwards of 6,000 kWh or more during the summer months. You can see how much power was used last summer. The usage dropped off in my case because one AC unit was down and that was fixed in April of this year. June is bad as that's when I moved out. So the doors were open a lot, etc. It got jacked up last month from the lazy contractors cranking the AC down as low as it would go and leaving it like that. For reference, the house is 3,877 square feet.
View attachment 670606
The issue with that house comes down to the window and door seals all failing and basically losing cold air. So the A/C's were running hard all the time. Though with the downstairs A/C having been replaced by one about two and a half decades newer, the power consumption would probably be a bit better this year. Though again the larger problem is the windows and doors causing a complete loss of efficiency in climate control. My electric bills since my Ex moved out were around $450-$650 depending on the time of the year.

In my new house my first electric bill (for last month) was $264.00. The house is 1,895 square feet. I keep the A/C cranked down to about 68-70F depending on if the girlfriend is over here or not.

Damn, that is an insane amount of electric use.

I think the all time high I ever had was ~2750 kwh.

The pool pump which pulls like a constant 13 amps at 120v drives up power use when it runs.
 
6kw!!! jeez lol
Well, you can see that was in August and September. The summer months tend to be bad in that house. Otherwise my usage is closer to the 2kWh mark. I really can't explain why January was under 1kWh. The heater is gas in that house but the blower is electric. I suspect I didn't really use the heater at all, but I must not have been playing games a whole lot or something during that time. I don't know.
 
Are you of the opinion that just having a PC with an unreleased 5090 "on" is somehow going to heat your apartment?

I don't know where you live but I can tell you a 4090 (and 3090 before) PC doesn't heat the room well at all for me in the winter here.
Yes, I was thinking same. Computers can produce a lot of heat, but they aren't a replacement for "plugin fire". Maybe if you had a roomful? Of course, at that point you might have to run your own coal power plant to supply the power. The good news, then you'll have both power and heat.
 
Well that... really depends. In my small European apartment the 4090 gaming PC with 48" OLED and 5.1 speaker setup are pulling well over 1000 watts total from the wall and it's definitely enough heat. Though we don't get harsh winters here but still I don't need to turn on the 1000w electric heaters when I'm gaming for hours.

Summer is a bit tricky without AC, but the insulation is superb so I just need to keep windows and doors shut during the hot hours and it's bearable.
 
Probably. Houses in that part of the country are much older on average. In the DFW area, there are some homes built in the early 1900's near downtown but you won't find that in the vast majority of the city. Most homes will be built in the 1960's or 1970's but the further out from Dallas proper you go the newer the homes get. Much of what you'll find in the suburbs of Dallas or Ft. Worth was built in the 1990's or later. There are a handful of homes built in the 1800's here and there but few of those survive to this day because of the inherent problems with maintaining them for that long. Foundations just don't last that long out here. Our weather is tough on wood, etc. More modern post tension foundations are designed for this area, but those only came about in the 1980's or 1990's.

Houses built prior to the 1970's are a fairly rare sight in DFW. That's not to say they don't exist, but its certainly not the norm. Most of what you'll find for sale out here is going to be built in the 1970's or 1980's in Dallas proper and in the older suburbs. As you go further out, the houses get much newer. Incidentally, anything affordable is going to be pretty far away from Dallas proper and is going to most likely have been built in the mid-late 1990's or later.

As I haven't been in too many homes built prior to the mid-1960's, I can't say I've ever seen heating systems like that. The south is a very different environment than the northern parts of the country. We don't have wood burning stoves, basements, radiator type heaters or anything like that. Houses without central heating and air conditioning are also pretty rare as well.

I've never seen anything but gas or electric central heaters here in the DFW area. When I lived in Arizona, we only ever had pretty much the same thing although some people had swamp coolers. Though if you go far enough north in Arizona, wood burning stoves, fireplaces and furnaces were fairly common.
That thing about the foundations is why I try very hard to not built anything with a foundation before the year 2000 because DFW gets things sooner than AR does. I have wood burning stoves but it was a big deal to add them to the house in town via a ridiculously long 38'x8" chimney pipe for my gigantic wood fired oven. It adds a few minutes to starting to get a draw in there. It has another one upstairs too that shares the exhaust like they do in the old country but made with modern materials but it's about a third of the size of the one downstairs.
 
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@travm
lol, they arent.
heatpumps can work both ways (producing cold or hot air inside), ACs will produce cold air only, unless they have an added heat pump.

OFaceSIG
naah, meant that ppl confuse one system (cooler), to be heat pumps.
 
they dont produce heat, for heating the room, unless they have an added heater or heat pump.
 
lol, yeah, said that earlier as a joke, but short of that, no real room heating with standard AC, and definitely more power waste than using a room heater.
 
AC units aren't designed to be run with low evaporator temps.
There is no suction accumulator or defrost timer.
The unit will be short lived.

Just as a snow blower isn't designed to be used as a leaf collector! ;-)
 
they dont produce heat, for heating the room, unless they have an added heater or heat pump.

An a/c becomes a heat pump by adding a reversing valve. Probably a bit more engineering if you intend for both heat exchangers to be absoring and releasing heat.
 
An a/c becomes a heat pump by adding a reversing valve. Probably a bit more engineering if you intend for both heat exchangers to be absoring and releasing heat.
Not much. When it came time to do the hvac again at deer and duck camp last week I gleefully got 21 sere (old not v2 sere i refuse to use it) ones that also reverse for heat which will be just fine for almost every Winter in southern Arkansas and we retain the wood stoves and a couple of propane furnaces for cold snaps. There are also a fair few electric furnaces for use when the main generator needs load tested or is running for some other reason and it's cold outside all or mostly at the same time.
 
Jesus.

An AC IS a heat pump.

It's just a one way heat pump. Whereas what laymen usually call a heat pump these days is two way.

But heat pump is a broad term for anything that forces heat from one side and dumps it out the other. Usually this involves a compressor/phase change cycle (but there are some exceptions)

Heat pumps (including AC's) don't generate heat or cold.

They just move heat from one side to the other, much like a pump pumps water from one side to the other. Thus the name. When you use a heat pump for heating, you are pumping the little heat that is available in the cold outside air and concentrating it inside, just like if you were using a pump to suck up moisture somewhere there is little of it, and concentrate it in a vessel full of water.

A traditional AC is a one-way heat pump that pumps heat from the inside to the outside.

A modern heat pump pumps heat both ways, either from the outside to the inside, or from the inside tot he outside, depending on whether you need heating or cooling.

Heck, your refrigerator/freezer is a heat pump that pumps heat from inside the unit to the outside of the unit.

What defines a heat pump is that they use some sort of energy (usually electrical converted to mechanical in the compressor) to force heat from one side to the other. They don't generate heat. They just move it.

This is in contrast to - for example - a resistive heater (like a space heater or a toaster oven) which converts electricity into heat or a burner/boiler/furnace which burns some sort of chemical energy to convert it into heat (oil/gas/wood/etc/).

Since a resistive heater creates heat out of the electricity, rather than just using the electricity to move the heat, they are usually MUCH less efficient (outside of some extreme cases) which is why they are so popular for people looking to save money on their utility bills (or save the planet, you do you)

Did they not teach you this in middle school science class?
 
True, but to me its based on what it can do.

as long as its not working in both "ways" (e.g. can provide heat+cool air), its an AC, if it does its a heat pump, the same way ppl dont (use the technically proper language and) ask if you removed the heat from car/house/drink,
but say "is it cold" (cooler).
 
Jesus.

An AC IS a heat pump.

It's just a one way heat pump. Whereas what laymen usually call a heat pump these days is two way.

But heat pump is a broad term for anything that forces heat from one side and dumps it out the other. Usually this involves a compressor/phase change cycle (but there are some exceptions)

Heat pumps (including AC's) don't generate heat or cold.

They just move heat from one side to the other, much like a pump pumps water from one side to the other. Thus the name. When you use a heat pump for heating, you are pumping the little heat that is available in the cold outside air and concentrating it inside, just like if you were using a pump to suck up moisture somewhere there is little of it, and concentrate it in a vessel full of water.

A traditional AC is a one-way heat pump that pumps heat from the inside to the outside.

A modern heat pump pumps heat both ways, either from the outside to the inside, or from the inside tot he outside, depending on whether you need heating or cooling.

Heck, your refrigerator/freezer is a heat pump that pumps heat from inside the unit to the outside of the unit.

What defines a heat pump is that they use some sort of energy (usually electrical converted to mechanical in the compressor) to force heat from one side to the other. They don't generate heat. They just move it.

This is in contrast to - for example - a resistive heater (like a space heater or a toaster oven) which converts electricity into heat or a burner/boiler/furnace which burns some sort of chemical energy to convert it into heat (oil/gas/wood/etc/).

Since a resistive heater creates heat out of the electricity, rather than just using the electricity to move the heat, they are usually MUCH less efficient (outside of some extreme cases) which is why they are so popular for people looking to save money on their utility bills (or save the planet, you do you)

Did they not teach you this in middle school science class?
You would not find this level of technicality in any US class except for college level physics classes.
 
You would not find this level of technicality in any US class except for college level physics classes.

Really?

This is qualitative stuff. Easy.

College level stuff would be calculating heat transfer and deriving its formulas using differential equations and calculating things like CoP's and the like.

Maybe it varies based on where you are.
 
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