To the progressives here

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crfriend
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Re: To the progressives here

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Freedomforall wrote: Fri Oct 22, 2021 5:43 pmThe [IRS] are wolves in sheeps clothing.
The problem is that it's the fat-cat class and the large corporations that are writing the tax codes for their personal benefit, not the betterment of society and the general welfare. That's why the billionaire class and most of the Fortune 500 companies effectively pay no tax at all -- and one of the reasons that things are so bad now for the general population. That they pay effectively no tax at all is perfectly legal and doesn't count as "tax evasion" because they are not legally required to pay tax the way what's left of the working class is -- and what they do pay is assessed at a vastly lower rate than it is for the workers.
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Re: To the progressives here

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Re: To the progressives here

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Yes, once again: I know this... that's not what's got me fired up.

What's got me fired up is our government, in its infinite wisdom, thought this was necessary.

I have a message for the Internal Revenue Service:

"Get the f--- away from me and go pick on someone your own size. I ain't no god damned tax cheat! I pay THOUSANDS every year, which is a hell of a lot more than these no good, lying, thieving, corrupted, perverted, sleazy, disgraceful, rotten, politician scoundrels!

Republicans, Democrats, they ALL CAN GO STRAIGHT TO HELL! :x"

I'm sorry but it just makes my blood boil! We've got millions of people working their asses off, paying anywhere from 30% or more of their wages to a government that gives back NOTHING in return, all the while Amazon pays nothing, Trump pays $750.

Jeff Bezos rides a giant penis into space, Trump lives in a golden palace. Meanwhile the rest of us toil our lives away surviving off of whatever we can lick off the back of their boots!

I tell ya I could bite a damned nail in half...
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Re: To the progressives here

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My issue partlyscot, Jim, SD, and the others is that the simple fact of the matter is the politicians (BOTH SIDES) simply refuse to overhaul the tax system to get the ultra wealthy to pay their fair share, but the government has to fund itself somehow... so what to they decide...?

Let's squeeeeeeeeeeeeeze every little drop we can from the proletariats. If it means that we have to double, triple, or quadruple tax them.... meh.... so be it. They're just worthless pawns anyway....

Muhahahahaha!
-Andrea
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Re: To the progressives here

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Not much different over here. Tax up overall for us. Then I learn that MP's can claim back motoring taxes for the London Low Emission Zone on their expenses! Not a cheap charge at £27.50 per day with only Christmas Day being exempt. So another way in which MP's with petrol-guzzling cars screw the electorate. With all the other things they can put on expenses why do we really need to continue to pay them a salary? We feel that MP's as a group are completely out of touch with the electorate and pursue their own petty agendas. There are mutterings of a protest about the green policies pursued by BJ. I think as time goes on and people realise what losing their cars and gas combi-boilers means - being replaced with out-of-reach electric jobbies and heat pumps that apparently struggle as replacements. Maybe I'll replace our combi with a wood burner. Not illegal here ( yet ) but cheaper to install than a heat pump and considerably worse for the environment. Go foraging for fallen branches and discarded pallets with our donkey and cart. Can't afford a horse.
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Re: To the progressives here

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Sinned wrote: Sun Oct 24, 2021 1:59 pm Tax up overall for us. Then I learn that MP's can claim back motoring taxes for the London Low Emission Zone on their expenses! Not a cheap charge at £27.50 per day
Am I reading this correctly? £27.50 per day in automotive taxes?

Dear god... how do you all afford it?
Sinned wrote: Sun Oct 24, 2021 1:59 pm I think as time goes on and people realise what losing their cars and gas combi-boilers means - being replaced with out-of-reach electric jobbies and heat pumps that apparently struggle as replacements.
You're right to be concerned, I'm not sure what the overall climate is in the U.K. but here stateside, heatpumps are only useful in the southern states. Even in a semi-moderate climate like the mid-east coast states (Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, West VA, etc) electric (or gas) backup is needed for those cold nights (below 32F)

But don't worry... your (our our) "leaders" won't be the ones struggling...
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Re: To the progressives here

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Moon, the temperature range in the UK is just below freezing to the low eighties. Generally only snows in Scotland. We may get some in England but only deep in high ground. Can get humid with the normal periods of rain and wind. Sometimes we get the tail end of a storm dumping loads of the wet stuff in a short period causing floods. High winds felling a tree or two and taking some tiles off rooves. In winter we need the boilers to maintain a decent internal temperature in the home just like y'all. There are millions of houses heated by gas and I shall be surprised if there is a huge uptake of heat pumps. Since they are thinking of making it compulsory for mortgage suppliers not to lend for houses with boilers it could be an emergency stop, not only for the housing market, but if people can't move for the job market. Not good. But since the inmates are now running the country ....
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Re: To the progressives here

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While I don't think a homeowner should be required to have any certain heating system over another, I may have to play the devil's advocate for a moment on heat pumps...
Sinned wrote: Mon Oct 25, 2021 12:06 am the temperature range in the UK is just below freezing to the low eighties.
The range you describe is the sweet spot for heat pumps. Keep in mind, heat pumps don't generate heat, they transfer it. Provided you don't have long runs of sub-freezing temperatures, a heat pump may actually save you money depending on a few factors such as:

1) The cost of electricity in your area compared to natural gas
2) How well insulated your home is
3) How big your home is

If you have access to natural gas (I've never personally lived in a house that did), then you can have the best of both worlds, a heat pump with a natural gas "back up" as opposed to electric resistance.

In my region, I've been told that natural gas is the cheapest way to heat, with heat pumps coming in second, then propane, no2 heating oil (off road diesel), and finally electric resistance. I've personally heated on everything except for natural gas, and I would concur with those figures.

I've not ran a heat pump since we left Damascus in late 2016. I can tell you in the hardest months in winter, our electric bill topped out at around $300 per month. During the spring and fall, we'd run around $100 per month, so about $200 of January and February's bill was actual "heat cost". At the time, I recall the cost of electricity was just under 10 cents per kwh. Today I note that Appalachian power is running just under 13 cents per kwh, with more increases in the works.

I've not burned oil since our earliest days in Pulaski, around 2003/2004. I would recall it would cost around $500 to fill the oil tank, and that tank would have to be filled about three times per season, so $1500 per year.... in 2003 dollars! :shock: In 2004 the heat exchanger cracked in the oil burner (resulting in the house sooting up pretty bad) and for most of that year we heated on portable kerosene heaters.We later had a new electric furnace installed with new ductwork. The plan was to upgrade it to a heat pump at a later time. With the 15kw electric furnace installed, our light bill shot up from around $60 in the winter to around $300 (2006). So a little bit cheaper than oil. Around 2009 we finally installed the heat pump system in the air handler and our light bill started to decrease by about $100 per month in the winter, though Appalachian power raised their rates and before long our winter heating bill was back up to $300 again... :roll: They'd tell us to replace our lights in CFL's (LED's weren't really popular yet), insulate, insulate, insulate... and we did. Every time we'd shave a few bucks off our bill they'd just raise the rates!

These days, pretty much everyone I know, and I mean EVERYONE heats primarily on a heat pump. All of my neighbors, all of the businesses I can think of, my parents, my sister, our friends, everyone... I think I might be the last southerner left that still hasn't made the upgrade (we plan to at a later date). As of now, our "official" (mortgage approved) source of heat is the 140k BTU oil burner in the basement, though we're going on our fourth winter here and we've never ran it, other that just to fire it a few times to make sure it still works. I poured about five gallons of diesel in it before we closed on the house in 2017, and as far as I know there is still a few gallons left in the tank.

What we actually heat on is a 30k BTU ventless propane heater in the living room. It will actually heat the entire house (we only live in a 950 square foot house), even on the hardest winter nights. And that's impressive considering we have old hollow doors, and old 1950's double hung windows still installed (a few of them are broken and taped up with plexiglass). Sometimes during the cold evenings, while we're sitting in the bedroom watching TV or reading a book, I'll light our small kerosene heater just to break the chill. We don't run it while we sleep or while we're away from home.

It's been relatively financially cheap, though they tell us thanks to the various supply/labor shortages that it's going to cost upwards of 50% or more to heat on propane and kerosene this year... So I don't know how we're going to handle that other than to just "eat it". It is what it is. I'm also hearing it may be a milder winter in my region, so perhaps that might offset some of the cost.

So yeah, I'm kinda wishing I had a heat pump already. I'm going to pay out of the nose burning fossil fuels this winter from the looks of it... Currently I'm literally the ONLY one on my street that doesn't have central air and has to fight with a window unit twice a year.... :lol:
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Re: To the progressives here

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Moon, you almost sound like a salesman for heat pumps! You say that they are pretty common over where you are. Over here, rare. There are 2 types of heat pump - air and ground source. The ground source involves drilling a bore hold down to as much as 300ft or digging up the ground surrounding the house to lay pipes a couple of foot down. This might be problematic for us because about half the rear garden is taken up with a large conservatory and a cattery and the front garden is half paved and half covered in pebbles. Air pumps are an extraction unit in a box with fan on the side of the house which extracts the heat from the surrounding air. How noisy is the fan and presumably you need a "hot" water tank in the house along with a compressor? How effective are they at maintaining a 20 degree ( centipede ) internal temperature? What about hot water for a bath or washing dishes? We normally shower with an electric unit. Costs I am not worried about yet - it's practicality and performance that are my main concerns. The impression here is that they are not good at keeping the house warm and don't heat the house as quickly as a gas boiler.
Also hot water is not that hot. We wouldn't want to have an immersion heater as well. Your opinion is valued.
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Re: To the progressives here

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A couple of years ago I was at a lecture given by a scientist who was in a position to have all the relevant facts at his fingertips.  He showed in a very simple manner that the energy output of a heat pump is not very much more than the energy content of the fuel burned at the power station -- and that situation has only recently come about because of the improvement in efficiency of the power station.
Heat pump .gif
Old power stations converted 0.2 per unit (=20%) of the energy to electricity whereas some modern stations convert 0.5 p.u. (50%).  There have also been improvements in the efficiency of the heat pumps, but these have been much smaller.  Given the environmental cost of manufacturering heat pumps and their potential lifespan, there is not a great deal to recommend them at the present time.
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Re: To the progressives here

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Sinned wrote: Mon Oct 25, 2021 6:52 pm Moon, you almost sound like a salesman for heat pumps!
I can assure you I make no commission... but if Trane, Heil, Carrier, York, etc are listening and want to pitch a few bucks my way... :mrgreen:

I have no experience with ground heat pumps (it sounds like what we would call geothermal here stateside), so I will have to refrain from any thoughts or opinions on those, I can tell you that the price tag seems to put them out of reach of most people in my income class.

I will have to focus on what you call an "air heat pump", or simply "a heat pump".
Sinned wrote: Mon Oct 25, 2021 6:52 pm Air pumps are an extraction unit in a box with fan on the side of the house which extracts the heat from the surrounding air. How noisy is the fan and presumably you need a "hot" water tank in the house along with a compressor?
Honestly I've never heard of an electric heat pump being used to heat water in a hot water heater (for hot water on tap I presume?) Most places that don't have access to natural gas (pretty much all of rural America) will use electric water heaters to heat their water. As for a heat pump doing the job, I can't see them being very good at raising the temperature of water to the average set point of 120 degrees in any timely fashion.

The unit I'm thinking of, which is VERY common in southern American homes is quite simply an air conditioner system with a reversing valve. In the summer time, the coil in the indoor air handler serves as the evaporator and to provide cooling for the home, and the condenser is outside to displace the heat from the home outdoors. In the winter time, the reversing valve in the outdoor unit (the heat pump) turns the outdoor coil into the evaporator, which serves to absorb what little heat may be in the outdoor air at the time, transferring it via the refrigerant to the indoor coil which is now serving as the condenser, the condenser then gives off its heat to the living space.

An electric heat pump doesn't generate heat, it just transfers it from one location to the other. There is no water tank, but there is a compressor, and a fan in the outdoor unit, as well as inside of the air handler indoors. The outdoor unit does make noise, though in recent years the noise seems minimal and doesn't seen to be distracting.

A thought just occurred to me... when you say "water tank", are you referring to your old boiler tank? Assuming that this heat pump will heat your radiator pipes? If so, then I must apologize but it would seem that once again, one word means two different things on either end of the atlantic. When I think of heat pump, I'm thinking of a forced air system with duct work and fans. There are no radiators, no steam systems, no water tanks... just air and a refrigeration system to transfer heat.

If you ask for a heatpump here stateside, that's what you're going to get.

Now as for how well these forced air systems work, that all depends on the air temperature outside. In my experience they work pretty well down to the mid 30's F, and can even be pretty effective slightly below freezing. Once it gets down into the 20's F, then you'll find the unit kicking into "auxiliary" more often, which will either energize your electric resistance backup (VERY expensive to run), or in some cases there may be a natural gas or propane backup. Usually this auxiliary kicks in when the temp drops below 3-5 degrees of the set point of the thermostat and will kick back out a few degrees shy of the set point allowing the heat pump to work.

In the debt of winter, the compressor tends to run basically all of the time. Even so, the cost to run a compressor constantly is still less than cycling electric resistance more often. Compressor's do tend to fail, and can be expensive to repair. If you know someone with an EPA card (or whatever you all use over yonder), sometimes you can get a buddy to change one out for you on the cheap. The last system I messed with ran on R-22 (one of the last good ones). I've not had one since they changed over to this new refrigerant (R410a), thus I don't have much experience with it other than I hear they run VERY high head pressures. In fact, upon looking at a PT chart, I see even the suction runs pretty high.

Anyway, if you have a house that's all piped up for steam heat (from a boiler) than the cost to outfit it with forced air ducts and registers may indeed be expensive, and will generally take up a lot of room between floors, inside of walls, etc. Every house I've lived in has been mostly one story, so ducting was as easy as crawling around in a crawlspace or basement and hanging new duct work. My house in Pulaski had a finished attic which had one duct line that ran up through a closet to the upstairs room. There is also the hole you have to cut in the wall for the return line, and all of the little holes you have to cut in the various rooms for the air registers.

Do understand, I generally come from a long line of trailer dwellers (a.k.a "trailer trash"), forced air systems are basically all I've ever known. Houses with hot water steam... well those are the houses downtown owned by the upper classes... you know, the ones made of actual brick...! :lol: 8)

As always, YMMV :mrgreen:
-Andrea
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Re: To the progressives here

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It's worth recalling precisely what a "heat pump" is -- it's nothing more than an evaporator/compressor/condenser cycle where the evaporator and condenser roles can be reversed depending on whether one wants to heat or cool the area that one is residing in. The minimum temperature in that can be attained is the boiling point of the medium undergoing change, and the maximum is whatever the compression temperature heats it to at the output of the compressor. No higher and no lower.

In summertime, the evaporator is in the living-unit (or attached to it by way of a heat-exchanger) and the condenser is in the ground (or the outside air); in wintertime, the condenser is in the living-unit (or attached by a heat-exchanger) and the evaporator is in the ground (or outside air). The state-change physics are well understood; squeeze something to liquefy it and it'll get hot, remove the heat from the liquid, then allow it to expand in the evaporator and it'll get gold, remove the cold from the gas and repeat the cycle.

Ground temperature below about six feet down is reasonably constant (with attention to latitude and local conditions) so that should not really be a problem.

All of the above having been said, there's a lot going on in the equation including all sorts of inefficiencies both electrical and physical as well as the inefficiencies of the power grid and the transmission system.
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Re: To the progressives here

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crfriend wrote: Mon Oct 25, 2021 11:17 pm remove the heat from the liquid, then allow it to expand in the evaporator and it'll get gold,
I didn't know you were into alchemy Carl...! :P :lol:
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Re: To the progressives here

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moonshadow wrote: Mon Oct 25, 2021 11:23 pm
crfriend wrote: Mon Oct 25, 2021 11:17 pm remove the heat from the liquid, then allow it to expand in the evaporator and it'll get gold,
I didn't know you were into alchemy Carl...! :P :lol:
Merde. It looks like auto-corrupt got me again because "g" isn't particularly close to "c". (either in music or on a QWERTY keyboard).
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Re: To the progressives here

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crfriend wrote: Mon Oct 25, 2021 11:33 pm
moonshadow wrote: Mon Oct 25, 2021 11:23 pm
crfriend wrote: Mon Oct 25, 2021 11:17 pm remove the heat from the liquid, then allow it to expand in the evaporator and it'll get gold,
I didn't know you were into alchemy Carl...! :P :lol:
Merde. It looks like auto-corrupt got me again because "g" isn't particularly close to "c". (either in music or on a QWERTY keyboard).
Keep it up and you'll have Dennis sold on a new heat pump... :P :mrgreen:

Pay no mind to that snake oil we use for freon. :lol:
-Andrea
The old hillbilly from the coal fields of the Appalachian mountains currently living like there's no tomorrow on the west coast.
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