Last month's gas bill

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  • NorthGuy
    NorthGuy Solar Expert Posts: 1,913 ✭✭
    Re: Last month's gas bill
    ChrisOlson wrote: »
    Both my wife and I grew up in homes heated with wood. We lived in a house heated with LP gas heat for a short time when I worked for Cummins. We had a gas explosion in that house due to a bad water heater valve. When we built our new house we planned around wood heat because better than 95% of rural homes in this area are heated with wood, and it was what we grew up with and are used to. We have no need for a "backup" heat source because wood heat never fails. It is the oldest and most reliable heating fuel known to man, and it is carbon neutral. Our new furnace has a catalytic recombustor on it so there is no smoke from the chimney and no creosote buildup in it. Even though the wood heat does require a little work, we like it and wouldn't use any other source.

    We have a wood burning stove. It is located on the main floor in the living room, so you can seat next to it and it'll warm your limbs. It also has a glass door, so you can watch flames. Because of this location it doesn't warm the basement very well. We can use our gas furnace in "fan only" mode to circulate heat all over the house.

    I lived in a house were wood was the only source of heat. The only thing that I didn't like about it is that in the morning it sometimes gets too cold and it is not fun to crawl out of the bad in the cold to light up the fire. Although with your efficient furnace this shouldn't be a problem any more. It probably can go on for 10-12 hours.
  • NorthGuy
    NorthGuy Solar Expert Posts: 1,913 ✭✭
    Re: Last month's gas bill
    inetdog wrote: »
    I suppose you could put in a reservoir and a pump to daylight for your gas furnace condensate. Or just a reservoir that tipped into the floor drain whenever it got above a certain level. The reservoir would be have to be large enough to trigger the siphon.

    Thank you inetdog. That's a simple and real good solution. For some reason, I didn't think of that. Actually, there used to be a reservoir and a pump, but it was small - less than a liter. I still have it somewhere. I can retrofit the pump over a bigger reservoir, may be 3-4 gallons, and that will solve the problem.
  • westbranch
    westbranch Solar Expert Posts: 5,183 ✭✭✭✭
    Re: Last month's gas bill
    NorthGuy wrote: »
    It simply goes to the floor drain, which eventually leads to the septic tank.

    .

    NG, our HE furnace has a little sump ( 2 L ) of its own and whenever the mini sump fills, the float switch turns on and the small sump pump sends it to the house plumbing and eventually to the septic tank.

    I just cant visualize your septic line freezing.:confused: It must be exposed to the air. Ours is totally underground.
     
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  • NorthGuy
    NorthGuy Solar Expert Posts: 1,913 ✭✭
    Re: Last month's gas bill
    westbranch wrote: »
    I just cant visualize your septic line freezing.:confused: It must be exposed to the air.

    Thet's the pipe that comes out of the septic tank. It goes underground for some length and then, as the ground slopes down, it goes out into the air where it empties out. If water, instead of flushing by huge portions of 20-30 gallons, starts dripping drop by drop, it freezes at the tip very quickly.
    westbranch wrote: »
    Ours is totally underground.

    Where population is denser people are required to build leach fields, which let the water filter into the ground over a large area. In this case you would never see any pipes coming out. Many people in BC mountains have so called "Lagoons", which sort of replace septic tanks but are open to the air, but I never could understand how they work.
  • inetdog
    inetdog Solar Expert Posts: 3,123 ✭✭✭✭
    Re: Last month's gas bill
    Having lived rural most of my life I agree with Tony; don't put anything down the septic that isn't necessary.

    There are two reasons for keeping excess water out of a septic tank that I know of:
    1. The volume of water could exceed the capacity of the leach field, but North Guy does not have one.
    2. It could force actual effluent out of the septic tank before settling and bacterial action had finished processing it. A large enough tank would mitigate that.

    Now running all of your food garbage through a garbage disposal instead of mulching it or trashing it is different problem for the septic system.
    I once spent some time at a woodlands camp where the septic system was so overstrained that you had to put your toilet paper in a bag for collection instead of flushing it. :blush:

    And city sewer systems are very picky because they can only run a limited volume/flow through their waste water treatment system. Since sewer water storage is usually not plentiful, high storm volumes force the plant to discharge untreated or partially treated sewage, annoying the neighbors and bringing fines from the government. :-)
    SMA SB 3000, old BP panels.
  • Cariboocoot
    Cariboocoot Banned Posts: 17,615 ✭✭✭
    Re: Last month's gas bill
    NorthGuy wrote: »
    Thet's the pipe that comes out of the septic tank. It goes underground for some length and then, as the ground slopes down, it goes out into the air where it empties out. If water, instead of flushing by huge portions of 20-30 gallons, starts dripping drop by drop, it freezes at the tip very quickly.



    Where population is denser people are required to build leach fields, which let the water filter into the ground over a large area. In this case you would never see any pipes coming out. Many people in BC mountains have so called "Lagoons", which sort of replace septic tanks but are open to the air, but I never could understand how they work.

    They actually work very well, but aren't terribly popular with the Powers That Be due to the smell and potential to flow over into someone else's land or creek. The more air that gets to the effluent the faster it breaks down. But people don't like smelling the process.

    Went through a lot of trouble with the officials over the system at the old house. Made us put in an up-to-date design with a sand mound. Frankly it did not work as well, and required frequent maintenance on the mound pump.

    You really should have that pipe buried. Put it into a rock pit; that's an old system that always worked well but has somewhat limited capacity. Would not do for those "100 gallons per person per day" figures the gov't came up with from somewhere a while back. A bit ironic in these days of water-saving appliances!

    You know the new septic field problem is? Anti-bacterial soap. Kills off the bugs that break down the gunk. Yes, there's such a thing as "too clean". :roll:
  • westbranch
    westbranch Solar Expert Posts: 5,183 ✭✭✭✭
    Re: Last month's gas bill

    the way a lagoon operates is that the outflow is meant to be below the 'static' water level where it is situated, just under that level, so that there is little or no backup in the pipe. However the pipe has to enter that lagoon at about a 45* angle so the solids move right on by the end of the pipe.

    History: We had to replace a septic tank with, we found out the hard way, a too large lagoon at our field office, not properly sealed (bentonite clay layer on the bottom), and too low an ambient RH - so a hi evaporation rate... that had the pipe about 3 feet in the air first winter.... it froze solid right up the pipe when temps hit 30 below F. We broke the pipe with the backhoe so that the office did not have to be shuttered till spring...
     
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  • solarvic
    solarvic Solar Expert Posts: 1,071 ✭✭✭✭
    Re: Last month's gas bill

    There is another kind of sewage system biring installed in western pa. and my daughter has one. There are 2 separate buryed tanks close together. Frst tank gets the sewage like a regular septic tank.The water from that tank tranfers to the next tank that is filtered thru sand. From there the filtered water transfers to another tank in the back tard. You put clorix tablets in that tank and there is a motor that stirs the water mixture. There is 2 pipes that stick up from ground level about 6 ft. with sprinklers. Has a timer that you set so the sprinklers empty the water in the middle of night. All the water evaporates on top of ground. The grass there grows a lot faster than the rest of the yard, especially if you have a dry summer. If you have any power outages the timer comes on the wrong time of day. Just missed getting a shower from it last summer when mowing the yard. You still have to get the first tank pumped like a regular septic tank. :Dsolarvic:D
  • Lee Dodge
    Lee Dodge Solar Expert Posts: 112 ✭✭
    Re: Last month's gas bill
    solarvic wrote: »
    There is another kind of sewage system biring installed in western pa. and my daughter has one. There are 2 separate buryed tanks close together. Frst tank gets the sewage like a regular septic tank.The water from that tank tranfers to the next tank that is filtered thru sand. From there the filtered water transfers to another tank in the back tard. You put clorix tablets in that tank and there is a motor that stirs the water mixture. There is 2 pipes that stick up from ground level about 6 ft. with sprinklers. Has a timer that you set so the sprinklers empty the water in the middle of night. All the water evaporates on top of ground. The grass there grows a lot faster than the rest of the yard, especially if you have a dry summer. If you have any power outages the timer comes on the wrong time of day. Just missed getting a shower from it last summer when mowing the yard. You still have to get the first tank pumped like a regular septic tank. :Dsolarvic:D
    I have seen what I think is that type of system used over recharge zones (for underground aquifers) where you cannot get approval for a conventional septic system since the effluent might flow into the underground aquifer. They also are used where the land has too much bedrock for a conventional leach field.
  • solarvic
    solarvic Solar Expert Posts: 1,071 ✭✭✭✭
    Re: Last month's gas bill

    It is hard to get the land to pass for a sytandard septic ststem in our area because of having clay in the soil. It would of passed for a mound system but the the people that install them said that they usually fail in a few years and you have to get them redone. Surprisingly there doesn,t seem to be any odor from daughters sewage system. solarvic
  • ggunn
    ggunn Solar Expert Posts: 1,973 ✭✭✭
    Re: Last month's gas bill
    solarvic wrote: »
    There is another kind of sewage system biring installed in western pa. and my daughter has one. There are 2 separate buryed tanks close together. Frst tank gets the sewage like a regular septic tank.The water from that tank tranfers to the next tank that is filtered thru sand. From there the filtered water transfers to another tank in the back tard. You put clorix tablets in that tank and there is a motor that stirs the water mixture. There is 2 pipes that stick up from ground level about 6 ft. with sprinklers. Has a timer that you set so the sprinklers empty the water in the middle of night. All the water evaporates on top of ground. The grass there grows a lot faster than the rest of the yard, especially if you have a dry summer.

    http://www.amazon.com/Grass-Always-Greener-over-Septic/dp/0345471725
  • Skippy
    Skippy Solar Expert Posts: 310 ✭✭
    Re: Last month's gas bill
    Total Bill: $24.62
    Amount that's actually natural gas: $4.56

    The breakdown:
    Basic charge: $13.23
    Delivery charge: $4.03
    Commodity (gas): $4.56
    Carbon tax: $1.64
    GST: $1.18

    As we conserve more this situation will only get worse.

    I know what you mean, right after I installed my heat pump (from forced air natural gas), the only thing I had running on my gas bill was a gas water heater . . it used about 1 cubic meter a day . . . so I used about the same as you - 5 $ for gas, and 25 $ for "other charges"
    I soon switched to the solar water heater with the on demand back up, and turned the gas off. Then they wanted to charge me to remove the meter !
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