Adventures in Home Repairs

Ever wonder what it would take to get your house off of fossil fuel use? I have. Afterall, if humanity is to reduce CO2 emissions by 90% in order to stabilize the climate, this is the kind of question we should all be asking ourselves.

We have done some things to reduce our carbon footprint. Our latest consideration is that our boiler is on its last legs. It's 23 years old, so I guess it's done a decent job. It's not totally broke yet, but it's corroded and cracked, and slowly leaking. Not replacing it runs the risk that our basement will flood when the cover plate gives way and the "refill" valve keeps the water flowing to fill the empty space.

The solution is to get a new boiler of course. It's not what we wanted to be spending our money on, but at least the new one will be more fuel efficient. Our furnace runs on heating oil. Given that we have this costly repair coming up anyway, it got me thinking about if we could get off heating oil or not.

Geothermal would be the way to do it. Geothermal energy is energy derived from the ground. Once you get down below about 6 feet, the ground is consistently around 50 degrees. Circulating air or water through the ground using a compressor, you can heat or cool the air/water then circulate it in your house as heat in winter, and air conditioning in summer. I don't claim to understand the technology beyond very simplistic concepts so check out this Renewable Energy VT link to learn more.

Unfortunately geothermal heat isn't a cost effective option for a house like mine. I would have to do a lot of renovating to install ducts to carry the heated/cooled air, or replace all my hot water baseboards with ones designed for geothermal hot water (which isn't as hot as ones that go with fossil fuel furnaces/boilers). Then since we are town water we would have to drill a well (where the energy transfer would be made to heat or cool our house), and we would still have to buy the heat pumps. Doing all this would cost $30,000. Even with 30% discount off that price through a federal tax credit (if they are still offered) it's more than twice what a new boiler would cost. Then again, I know some people who have an old house that already had a well and a forced hot air heating system. In their case all they had to do was get the heat pumps. Easy peasy.

If we ever build a new house, perhaps then I will get geothermal heating/cooling. When building new, geothermal can be just as cost effective as traditional systems. And in the long run, even more effective since there are no fuel costs, just electricity to run the pumps, which could be solar.

What could you do to reduce the fossil fuels used by your home?

Places Ruined: Spills, Fires, Explosions

I follow a lot of environmental news networks so I see a lot of news that doesn't always get much mainstream coverage. I can't help think that if people heard about how frequently there are oil and oil related disasters more frequently they would be more fired up to get off of fossil fuels. Your energy source shouldn't kill you or the world around it. This list doesn't even include the evils of fracking.

How many of these disasters have you heard of? Almost all of them occurred in North America this year:

1. Canada's largest coal wastewater spill (264 million gallons) in Alberta, Canada on Halloween 2013. Downstream municipalities were told not to withdraw drinking water until it was deemed "safe."
2. Nearly 300 pipeline spills in North Dakota went unreported until the story broke in October 2013.     
   
3. Petroleum coke is now fouling Chicago and areas around Midwest refineries. "Petcoke" is a byproduct of tar sands mining. The Koch Brothers have been storing petcoke on Chicago's South Side as it waits export to countries with poor environmental laws that will burn this cheap and dirty form of energy (dirtier than coal!). It is blowing in the wind and fouling the air of middle and working class communities.                                                 
4. Exxon's Pegasus pipeline spill in Mayflower, AK, Mark 2013. At least 12,000 barrels of crude were spilled. This pipeline carries tar sands oil and made homes uninhabitable around the spill and left residents with health problems. 
   
5. A Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd train derailed in March 2013 (one week prior to the Pegagsus pipeline spill) and spilled 30,000 gallons of Canadian tar sands oil.
6. July 2013, a train carrying 7.6 million liters of crude derailed and ignited in Lac-Megantic in Quebec. The town was devasted by the resulting fire and 47 people were killed.
   
7. October 2013, Gainford, Alberta (Canada) Train Derailment. A  Canadian National tanker train transporting 13 cars of oil and gas derailed and caught on fire forcing 100 people from their homes.
8. Also in October 2013, another Canadian National train carrying propane derailed, exploded and caught fire near Edmonton, Alberta (Canada). Firefighters did not even bother to battle the blaze, they just let it burn itself out. No people were injured.
9. Just LAST WEEK (Nov 8) a 90-car train carrying 2.7 million gallons of crude oil derailed and spilled its contents into a wetland near Aliceville, Alabama. The fire is being allowed to burn itself out.                                                    

Though it occurred in 2010, I also want to mention BP's Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico which was not contained for 5 months and dumped 210 million gallons of oil into the Gulf. There are reports that it may still be leaking. The oil, combined with deadly dispersants that were supposed to help with clean up, left an ecosystem in crisis: fisheries decimated, cancerous shellfish, dead dolphins, tarballs still washing up on beaches that contain high concentrations of bacteria flesh eating. It will take decades for the Gulf to recover.

If you want to see a more comprehensive list of spills that goes back even further in time see this Wikipedia entry. It contains spills since 2012 that I wasn't even aware of.