Background:
My wife and I have lived in the Pacific Northwest for our entire lives. We have sequestered together in a small forest on the Western slopes of the Cascade mountains for nearly 40 years. The forest is nearing 100 years old and is second growth in what was a virgin forest, that was harvested in the mid 1920s. The original huge old stumps with toe board notches still stand. Although our forest is relatively small (about 2.5 acres), it is a beautiful mix of Western Red Cedars, Douglas Fir, Hemlock, Big Leaf Maples and Alders. It is a temperate forest with moss everywhere. The trees have grown tall and thick. The forest, beyond our grassy yard is carpeted with thousands of Sword Ferns and Oregon Grape. In another 50 years it will be considered a virgin forest once again. All in all, a very peaceful place to live. If it survives.
During our fortunate and very enjoyable time living here, we have seen many changes. Recently we have come to realize that we are part of the negative impacts. In short, we have been using a very dirty form of heat.
The house was originally built with inefficient oil heat technology. It was later converted to baseboard heat when the original oil furnace was taken out and used at another property. Baseboard heat was installed as a replacement prior to our purchase. Although baseboard is better from a pollution standpoint it was definitely inadequate for this multilevel home. Natural gas is not available, here. So, soon after purchasing the home we decided to upgrade to a “86% high efficiency” oil furnace. The old duct work was still mostly there, and the new unit was fitted to it, and it was connected to the existing underground oil tank. The capacity is 500 gallons.
From that point on, each year we paid to have the tank filled and averaged around 470 gallons of oil consumption annually. This has been augmented with forest wood selectively harvested to encourage growth and all the wood ashes are distributed around the forest. Power goes out here and we also use wood as a backup. We were quite proud of our selection of a high efficiency heating furnace. Initially oil was fairly cheap. It kept rising over the years and recently it was well over 5 dollars a gallon! That means to fill it right now is about $2,700 that just gets us through the cold months and the price keeps going up! We also had a concurrent electrical bill for lights and running the oil furnace blower and fan. The average was $500 per month combined.
So, once the change was made, decades went by. The forest grew. We enjoyed many wonderful years. And all the time the Earth grew hotter and hotter, until we finally came to realize that our choices (not ours alone of course) had been impacting the environment for all these decades. Global Heating has started to parch even this moss-covered part of the world!
Time for A Change!:
This year, the time was near to fill the tank again. The difference this time was, that we realized that we needed to completely stop using oil as a home heat source. Here was something that we had to do to make a positive change! According to my numbers we had, over the years, burned right around 18,000 gallons! (And that doesn’t include the initial oil furnace that was installed during construction of the house and used for many years by the prior owners).
We purposefully used up the little oil left in the tank from last season. We ran out and I kept pouring in a couple of gallons from a 5-gallon container, while we researched Heat Pumps and installers. The tank must still be decommissioned but that is another story.
Rebates?:
The Inflation Reduction Act is currently active for up to $2,000 on income tax at the federal level for a heat pump installation. This state is still sitting on the biggest pot of money and will maybe make up its mind in 2024 or so on how to distribute the funds. It has been stated that it will not be retroactive! Oh S**t!. We simply could not wait another damn year!
Making the Jump:
So, we scheduled the removal of the old oil furnace and installation of a “ducted” heat pump. That is to say the new central (air handling) unit would be fitted to our existing duct work in place of the furnace. We also needed heat strips installed on top of the air handler for the times when the outside temperature drops below the unit’s ability to extract heat from outside. The electrical panel was just big enough, but it is full now and we will need a bigger one if we ever add an EV charging circuit. It also included the outdoor unit like everyone has seen and thinks of as a heat pump. The installation took two days. We had no heat for one night because the sales person missed the fact that our water heater was too close to the onboard heat strip circuit breakers and had to be moved (local code that is to do with access). That caused some delay. Otherwise we would have had heat strip heat the first night. Fortunately we had wood heat to fall back on.
Initial Observations:
We decided to set the thermostat at 64 F and not change it for one month. This was started on the first of December 2023. The house temperature doesn’t vary much and the heat boosting strips seem to come on when the outside temperature hits 35 F or lower.
The heat vents blow air that is not as hot as the old oil furnace. I set the fan to automatic which means it runs 24/7 and adjusts between low medium and high settings as needed. So far the heat level is good for us. It is pretty much even in all parts of the house! We had cold spots with the oil furnace. The air current coming from the vents is mostly neutral in temperature. It can feel cool just because of the air velocity. I had to reverse one ceiling vent because it blew directly on a seating area. The air flow was redirected towards an outer wall / sliding glass door. That fixed it.
So, far we are happy. It has been a mild December. In January we should see our first month of running the heat pump with little firewood heat. I am nervous about that first bill and have no idea how it will stack up against the combined Oil Heat and electrical bills. There is some comfort in knowing that we will no longer be feeding the oil monster that is destroying our planet.
Next year Solar Panels? Well, it would offset the electrical bill.
Until then I can update with monthly costs if there is an interest.