For all of the Too Hot posters who reside up North.... How would you feel about giving up your gas furnace in your house? That is coming a lot sooner than later. In fact, as of 1/1/2023, you can receive a very nice tax credit for switching to a heat pump and getting rid of your gas furnace.
There have been tax credits for heat pumps for over a decade. If I'm ever faced with replacing my oil fired boiler, I'm absolutely going with heat pumps.
There have been smaller tax credits but as of this year the tax credit is $2k on the installed price. This was part of the IRA and is supposed to run through 2035
Good grief. Had no idea Fox had taken it that far. I assume they’re rationalizing it with ratings and paychecks, but I wonder if, as individuals, if they ever feel embarrassed or guilty about the damage they do.
I can tell you I’ve never cared how my dryer, heat pump or furnace worked - even up north. I wouldn’t randomly replace one but if it failed and electric was safer, cheaper with tax credits I’d swap.
If you’re talking about the type of heat pumps we use down south I’m not sure they work below certain temperatures? Must be a different type?
They've made a lot of improvements in heat pumps. Up until the 90s/early 2000s heat pumps weren't viable up north, but the newer ones do pretty well. Not as efficient at sub-freezing temperatures, but still more efficient than gas furnaces or electric elements. We replace ours a couple of years ago and had some good conversations with the guy from the shop while trying to figure out what to replace it with. The original was a little underpowered so we had to do a little more than just plug in the same old thing. Because it is Florida, we still ended up with an old school heat pump/electric elements in the air handler for really cold temps, it was cheaper than the fancy new stuff, but even with the cold temps the last few days we haven't had the electric elements kick in, so even the old-school single speed heat pumps are better in cold temps than they used to be. The old system would have the electric elements kick in any time the temperature outside got into the 30s. We've had a couple hard freezes since we installed the new system and the electric has never kicked in.
You're correct that your basic heat pump won't work in colder conditions. Heat pumps with inverter compressors can perform in colder temperatures though. Which is what this tax credit in the IRA is aimed at. Most people who reside up north like to feel that hot heat from a gas furnace coming out of their vents. A heat pump doesn't put out that same temperature of heat to get that same feeling as a gas furnace.
Great piece from Kareem on the idiocy I get that gas stoves are better for cooking. I also understand that none of us wants to lose our artifacts of comfort, whether metal lawn darts or gas stoves. But the whole reason civilization evolves is because we learn about our mistakes. In the nineteenth century, Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis, acting on the new and unaccepted germ theory of disease, encouraged hand-washing by the hospital staff thus reducing mortality rate by 90%. However, the other doctors rejected his theory and the obvious results, eventually firing him and destroying his reputation and life. (“They’ll have to pry the germs from my cold, filthy hands…”) Instead of proclaiming their heated defense of gas stoves, shouldn’t our elected officials be proclaiming their defense of the children suffering? What are their specific reasons for defending gas stoves as if they were sacred altars? None. They just want to tap into the knee-jerk outrage whenever science trumps nostalgia. This isn’t about gas stoves, it’s about who stands in the way of protecting Americans—even when it’s other, un-informed Americans. Gas Stoves Begets Culture War, The Rise of Antisemitism, The End of Art (and Popular Culture)?; GOP Defends George Santos, Missouri Hates Bare Arms & More. Plus Music and TV
After having had an electric stove in my previous house and gas in the one before that and my current one, I will never go back to electric. My wife and I mostly cook with cast iron and the temperature control with electric stoves and ranges is comparatively awful.
Good piece from Jill Filopovic on the science and the politics: Some five decades’ worth of studies have found that gas stoves are hazardous to human health, with a recent one suggesting that gas stoves in US homes may be to blame for nearly 13% of childhood asthma cases. Gas stoves are bad for the environment, too, powered as they are by fossil fuels. This has led to some liberal cities – Berkeley, California, and New York City – to mandate that some new buildings use electric over gas. But the blistering gas stove dispute really ignited when a commissioner at the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), Richard Trumka Jr, told Bloomberg that gas was a “hidden hazard” and that when it came to banning gas stoves, “any option is on the table. Products that can’t be made safe can be banned.” Still, though, even suggesting that the federal government may ban gas stoves was a spectacularly dumb political error. Trumka telling a reporter that his agency was considering banning gas stoves in new builds was foolish. It was more foolish still to follow up the firestorm by telling CNN that, while existing gas stoves aren’t being banned, “everything’s on the table” when it comes to limiting the use of new ones. Big changes, and especially big changes to items that many people use every single day and invest significant amounts of money in, are tough for anyone to stomach. I recently switched to induction, and not at all voluntarily — the full story is in the Guardian, but as I wrote over there, a few months I ago I, too, would have told you that you could pry my gas stove from my cold dead hands. And while I’m a pretty solid follow-the-science health-conscious liberal, I would have resented the hell out of the government telling me I couldn’t choose my own cooking apparatus in my own home — especially if it meant that I had to switch to something that was far inferior (ahem, electric coil ranges) and that turned something I usually really enjoy into a process that I find frustrating and annoying. Why Are We Fighting About Gas Stoves?
