Decisions, Decisions

 

Heating and Cooling

The year my parents rented an old farmhouse, when I was a child, my job was to feed coal into the furnace down in the basement. I had a heavy shovel, and I remember feeling as if I were vaguely David Copperfield-ish, going down the stairs to do this arcane task. I felt I was feeding a great dragon as I shovelled the coal in. The smell of it was unique and new and somehow delicious. The sound the shovel made, scooping the coal, was interesting and pleasing. But the cellar scared me a little.

Most of my childhood we had a regular furnace but no air conditioner. I remember sleeping on the cement floor in the basement to cool off, or sometimes sleeping on the rollaway bed in the carport with my brother and sister. When I was in junior high we moved into a new house with a swamp cooler, which cooled the house through evaporation. It made sense in a desert, but I don’t think it would work where I live now. It’s entirely too humid here. Back home, you could hang clothes to dry in the yard and they’d be stiff as boards within hours. Here, they just collect moisture and drip and go moldy. We joke that we can bend crackers without breaking them.

Fairly early on in our marriage, my husband and I lived in a log cabin heated entirely by a wood stove, and we never did get the hang of operating it. Sometimes we couldn’t get it going in the morning and we’d be freezing and my husband would give up and throw in an expensive paper-wrapped fire-starter log from the hardware store. Then it would get so hot that we’d feel suffocated, and because none of our windows could open, we’d fling wide the front door and fan the hot air out. The heavy logs of the walls retained the heat (and a lot of dust and spiders), but they sucked up all available humidity and turned our skin to leather. We’d still wake in the night to a freezing cabin, having once again failed to figure out the right setting for the damper, and we’d grumblingly start the whole cycle over again.

In our current city house, we have a natural gas furnace and an air conditioner the size of a small car. We like to open the windows to let in natural breezes, but again, the humidity is a challenge, and the wood floors begin to swell and pop, so we have to close the windows again and resort to mechanical means to chill the air and lower its water content.

All of this is to say that heating and cooling systems and I have a complicated history, and I lack confidence in choosing which to go with for the church.

This morning my husband and I had a virtual chat with the heating company to try to decide what the best solution would be. We know we want to get rid of the existing oil tank and furnace, which are getting elderly and also terrify me somewhat. However, we are assured that this is the cleanest-burning, high-efficiency, 120,000 BTU furnace there is, and it’s hardly been used (though in five years or so we may not be able to get parts for it).

Propane is a bit less expensive but still a fossil fuel. I have learned, however, that it does not contribute to greenhouse gas emissions and is considered to be fairly environmentally friendly to burn, and you never have to worry about spills and contamination, but it still has to be produced and processed and delivered. It also would not address the high humidity in the church, so a dehumidifier would still be required. And a propane furnace would require a huge sausage-shaped tank situated in the middle of the yard, with a trench connecting it to the house that has to be at least ten feet away. So not lovely.

The other alternative I hoped to use is a heat pump, which could both heat and cool the church with electricity. About 85% of electricity, I am told, is generated from green sources, and someday if I want to really dig deep in the pockets, I could install solar panels to supply it myself. Goodness knows I have a huge roof to install solar on. The heating guy told us that the electricity to run a furnace/air conditioner and the electricity to run a heat pump are about the same. I have a hard time grasping this. But, he says, it would be too small to really do a good job with a building this size. It seems the dilemma isn’t the square footage, it’s the 21-foot ceiling upstairs.

So…In the end, looking at the cost of each alternative, my husband and I decided if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. We have a source of heat, so we will continue with it for now, though we’ll want to buy a new tank---except with Covid, they can’t get us a new tank until next spring, most likely. So…in the end, after studying all these different alternatives and waking gasping in the night at the potential cost…we’re going to install an itty-bitty dehumidifier that inserts into the existing ductwork. And that’s all we’re doing for now.

My philosophy is to do things once, do them right, and never have to think about them again. But in this case, it’s just a matter of putting it off until circumstances force a decision down the road. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Whew!