Radiators... I love 'em! I know it may sound crazy - but I do love the look of them. After admitting this to B last month at a friends Christmas party (where I spotted an original in their Toronto home) he looked at me like I was mad. After telling me how inefficient they are, I admitted I didn't want one that was used to heat my home - I just love how they add character to homes that would've once been heated by them.
Well - let me tell you how excited I was when I opened the February 2010 copy of Canadian House & Home Magazine last night and discovered a small piece on ECORAD. Let me give you a low-down on ECORAD and what they do (incase you missed it in the magazine). The gist of it: ECORAD takes old discarded cast iron radiators, saves them from ending up in the dump and converts them to electrified raditor systems! YUP! They'll even take one you own and convert it for you (which is only slightly cheaper than purchasing one). I literally jumped off of the couch (despite my sore foot) and hobbled as fast as I could to the basement to show B.
Now, why, you may ask, do I care about electric heating? Well, this past summer/fall, as B and I began our hunt for a new furnace and air conditioner, it had been suggested that we try a heat pump. There were 3 main reasons:
1) Because of the size of our house, two small units (one on the main floor and one on our teeny tiny top half), would be able to heat and cool it
2) Yup - you read that right - the unit will save us money as we'll be buying a heating AND cooling system in 1!
3) We'd be able to lose the huge furnace AND all the duct work, and reclaim a lot of space (and some headroom) in our basement
Though I wasn't completely sold on installing electric heating in our home (scary thoughts of house fires started by electric heat!!), B was pretty insistent. The biggest downside - he was talking about installing baseboard heating in the basement to keep it warm and stop the pipes from freezing. Now, I know that they make stuff that looks like actual baseboard now - totally great option - but for some reason I couldn't get THIS kind of image out of my head:
So, this leads us back, full circle, to my excitement when I discovered the small write up on ECORAD last night! It meant that there is a fighting chance that I could get a traditional cast iron radiator as electric heating in our 1920's home (depending on cost, of course). The best part is, the systems are completely environmentally responsible since 99% of their materials used are recycled! Oh yeah - and I almost forgot to mention... they're Canadian!
Yes, I could probably sit here and write all day on the wonderful company that is ECORAD - but I'll leave it at that. If this little piece struck a cord with you - jump on over to their website and check them out!
Anyone have an old radiator they are looking to get rid of? :) I'll get her refurb'd and give 'er a good home... promise!
My wife and i went through a similar HVAC replacement as you've described. We ended up getting a heat pump/AC on the second and third floor, we wish we had got one on the first floor too now. They heat and cool quite nicely and run fairly efficiently. However we were told they shouldn't be your sole heat source, as they don't really work so well when it gets super cold out.
ReplyDeleteIf you guys haven't had an energy audit, it is worth considering. You get money back for installing insulation, low flow toilets, tankless water heater, and central heat pumps/AC. The amount you could would likely get for all those things is considerable ($1500 for the heat pump/AC and $630 for the tankless, and up to $2500 for insulating your basement, $130 for each low flow toilet). Cheers and good luck!
Thanks for the tip on it not being your sole heat source - I'll look into it. Do you have another heat source aside from the pump?
ReplyDeleteWe did have an energy audit done back in early October, so we're working our way through a lot of the recommendations we got from our auditor!
Thanks for reading!
Kerry
Glad to hear you got the audit. We were really happy we did too. HVAC is crazy expensive and getting a big cheque from the government takes some of that sting away.
ReplyDeleteWe do have another heat source, it's a natural gas wall furnace by Rinnai (model 1004), it sits at the front of our house on the main floor(which fortunately is quite open) consequently the unit is able to comfortably heat our entire main floor and much of our second floor. We love how efficent the wall furnace is, our monthly gas bill is peanuts now. Infact we probably use as much gas BBQing in the summer as the furnace uses to heat our house in the winter.
We've never experienced a day where it was so cold that the heat pump didn't work at all, but when it is super cold (sub -10) it cycles on and off constantly and is probably sucking a lot of juice. On those days, we adjust the thermostat higher on our natural gas heater and lower on our heat pump.
I saw the same article and had the same response. I love the look of radiators. I would rather have an electric radiator than an electric fireplace for extra heat.
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