I totally understand... I used to have one of those hand held showerhead units that you could pull the washer out of to make it flow with far more water than "allowed".
I gave up the handheld to get the rainwater system, frankly I now prefer this and it does a great job, probably due to the larger surface area, I no loner have to move my head under the water, the water "footprint" is larger than my head.
That is similar to the unit that I used, works a treat and uses less hot water. One plus is that the flow is low enough that I can leave it on as long as I like, as hot as I like, and I don't run out of hot water, ever. My water heaters can heat water faster than this uses it, and that is with 5 people taking showers within a 1 hour time period.
That is true, in theory... I have yet to see an apartment make such a claim... but then I haven't looked recently, so perhaps they are doing so, but it would be new in my personal experience...
Is this something that you actually see happening, or is it just a technical point?
My downstairs unit blew the compressor. I could have replaced just the compressor, but then there is a risk of contamination in the lines (then you have to replace more), plus I was tired of spending $700 a month in the summer for power, plus they were 12 years old and cheap units, so it was time to replace them. $350 a month for 5 years to save 30% on my HVAC costs is really not a bad deal.
You paid $51K for your 2,700 sqft house? Where do you live? My house is worth about $350K. The cost is partly because it is a nice big house with tall ceilings and fancy everything, but the other part of the cost is to keep the riff-raff out. (that isn't politically correct to say, but it is the truth)
After all, my property taxes are about $7,000 a year, I suspect yours are just a tad less.:) But that does pay for a first rate police and fire dept, first rate schools, and very low crime.
........
side note, the above is just a reminder that we all come from very different social-economic places in life, perhaps we should have this info in a profile to better understand people's comments. I don't consider $17K for HVAC to be all that much, but others clearly do, neither one of us is "wrong", we just come from different points of view.
Sorry, but that just isn't true. If anything, requiring more efficient wood stoves means that they'll burn less wood and thus be able to heat their homes for longer since they'll use less wood to do so.
The technology to do this has been around for years, the EPA is just behind the times.
Actually, that is not true... Overall, 7% of power is lost during transmission... If it was as much as you say, they would have changed the system a long time ago... Power companies aren't in the business of wasting that much money (that they could put into their pockets).
I used to do that too, until really good rainwater shower heads came out.
I now have installed "compliant" showerheads that actually do a really good job because the designers took the new lower water amount and did some pretty cool things with it.
Consider giving it a try, you might be surprised.
Likewise with the new toilet designs, they do an amazing job with less water. Progress isn't always bad.
Coming from a professional helicopter pilot background, I'm used to flying with a 4-point restraint in the cockpit (we often flew with the doors off).
I personally would welcome a 4-point restraint system in cars, it would be more effective than what we have now. Sadly, I suspect I'm in the minority there.
Far more than nationally, this needs to be regulated internationally.
The problem is, the actions you take far away from me do affect me, I don't have to live next to you for them to do so. We all share the same air, the same water, the same Earth.
Saying that you pollute far away is no longer an excuse.
I'm strongly against the UN and strongly against the idea of a world government, but when it comes to the environment, I'll make an exception, because we all share it and pollution doesn't respect lines drawn on a map.
Yep, but then I probably use more electricity than the average person (most people probably don't have 2 complete HVAC systems with 8 tons of cooling). I typed up all the details in a lower post, but I'll repeat them here.
...
(copied from another post in this story)
I'll provide a few more details.
1. I live in Texas, it gets to over 100 in the summer here and tends to stay there for 2 months.
2. I have a large 2 story home, about 4,000 sqft, 5 bedrooms and 5 of us live here, so we use all of it.
3. I keep the house cold in the summer, usually set to 72 degrees. It takes a lot of power to lower the temp from 104 outside to 72 inside.
4. Our power bill in 2012 for August was over $700. In 2013 for August, $430. Nothing else changed, same numbers of computers/TVs/etc., same 72 degree setting, just $270 lower electric bill.
5. The units we replaced were 12 year old builder grade (our house is 12 years old) Carrier 13 SEER single stage units. Our cost to install the new ones was $17,200 and they are 16 SEER dual stage/dual speed TRANE units with a 10 year warranty. (5 ton downstairs, 3 ton upstairs)
Perhaps that helps put it all into perspective a bit. We won't see such a huge change in the winter, but since our furnaces were also upgraded to similar efficient units, we should save $100 or so a month in the winter.
So the $4K higher cost of 16 SEER units over the 13 SEER units has about a 20 month payback, give or take a month. It will save us the cost of the entire upgrade over the life of the HVAC system.
Shame that the air from Canada comes down here to the USA at some point, so sooner or later, these lines that we draw on a map will have to have less meaning, or the few will ruin it for everyone.
BTW, the EPA isn't banning wood burning stoves or furnaces, they are simply saying that you can't install a crappy one.
Those people in Canada who have old crappy wood burning furnaces probably should replace them, install clean ones and that is just fine, no need to switch to fossil fuels if wood is working, just burn it cleanly.
Environmentalism isn't a joke, the fact is that there are cities in the world today that you can go to and they are so filled with smog that you can hardly breath. We had this problem back in the 60's and 70's, which is what created the EPA in the first place.
The issue isn't *you* and the single stove, it is 10 million people doing the same thing. Each small bit adds up to a large bit.
The thing is, burning wood is fine, if you have a modern stove that does it at the right temp, you use dried out wood, and you don't release so much crap into the air.
The EPA isn't saying you can't have a wood burning stove, they are just saying that you need one that doesn't suck.
First, based on the temps you use and where you live, you might not have been actually using all that much to begin with.
Second, you might want to have it inspected by a third party to make sure it is setup right and not over/undersized for your home.
Third, you might have not actually gotten what you paid for, or have a dud unit, if it is still under warranty, I'd have it checked to make sure you got what you paid for.
Finally, regarding my own example, I'll provide a few more details.
1. I live in Texas, it gets to over 100 in the summer here and tends to stay there for 2 months.
2. I have a large 2 story home, about 4,000 sqft, 5 bedrooms and 5 of us live here, so we use all of it.
3. I keep the house cold in the summer, usually set to 72 degrees. It takes a lot of power to lower the temp from 104 outside to 72 inside.
4. Our power bill in 2012 for August was over $700. In 2013 for August, $430. Nothing else changed, same numbers of computers/TVs/etc., same 72 degree setting, just $270 lower electric bill.
5. The units we replaced were 12 year old builder grade (our house is 12 years old) Carrier 13 SEER single stage units. Our cost to install the new ones was $17,200 and they are 16 SEER dual stage/dual speed TRANE units with a 10 year warranty. (5 ton downstairs, 3 ton upstairs)
Perhaps that helps put it all into perspective a bit. We won't see such a huge change in the winter, but since our furnaces were also upgraded to similar efficient units, we should save $100 or so a month in the winter.
So the $4K higher cost of 16 SEER units over the 13 SEER units has about a 20 month payback, give or take a month. It will save us the cost of the entire upgrade over the life of the HVAC system.
What is so insane about that is that I actually agree, but I'd do it another way...
Lots of people who need to replace this old stuff don't need a tax break, they don't pay enough in taxes (the kind that you can use such breaks for anyway) to make it help.
I would provide low interest loans, secured by a lien against the house, for people to buy such things. Many people can't get credit, or it is very expensive, but if the goal is to get people to replace old and very inefficient appliances, HVAC systems, etc. then instead of tax breaks, provide the money in the form of a loan.
Frankly, most people replacing a 20 year old HVAC system with a new 16 SEER unit would probably find that a 10 year low interest loan would cost the same or less than the reduction in their monthly electric bill, making it a "free" upgrade.
Huge benefit to society, creates jobs, lowers our energy use, saves people money.
Lets say we live next to each other, lets say that you are struggling and have little money. For whatever reason, the only way to earn money that you have right now is to accept barrels of toxic chemicals and store them on your property (the chemical company pays you for this).
Now lets say one or two start leaking and it starts to affect the health of my family.
It strikes me as reasonable to ask the government to step in and tell you that you can't have such things on your property because it affects me.
Why the government? Because my other option (if we remove government) is to come over to your house and shoot you. I don't think we want to live in THAT world.
So back to government. The government (local, state, federal, whatever) passes a law that says you can't store toxic chemicals in your backyard.
You complain saying that this is hurting you, you have no other money and this is your only way to survive. Fine, but your right to make money and survive doesn't give you the right to screw up the environment around you and harm others, you'll have to figure something else out.
Otherwise, people like me will hire our government (via our tax dollars) to send some people over and make you stop. Because we don't want you to do what you're doing because it harms us.
Regarding the small numbers of rural people, I tend to agree with you in principle. In the USA, there aren't that many of them and frankly, probably aren't the real issue.
What concerns me much more is that there are a billion people in India, China, Africa, etc. who are all doing the same thing and no one is doing anything about it.
Our batteries for all our devices are made in China, not the USA. Why? Because, as I'm sure you know, the EPA's rules on making toxic things like Li-Ion batteries would be expensive here, but in China, polute away!
But that polution will affect us in the long run, we need to get them to clean up their act.
A good example that someone actually posted here awhile ago was that in the US and Europe, we can cut our carbon footprint to nothing, go 100% renewable, be great stweards of the Earth. But if China and India don't do this as well, it matters not, because they'll end up burning every drop of oil, every ton of natural gas, and every pound of coal they can get their hands on.
It matters not to the Earth if we burn all those FF in 50 years, 250 years, or 500 years... They were put into the ground over hundreds of millions of years, releasing them all in less than 1,000 years is a huge and drastic event in the history of Earth's climate.
What will happen? I have no idea, and frankly I think most people are just guessing as to the outcome since there is no event in history to compare it to. But I don't want to find out the hard way that it was a bad idea because once done, it can't really be undone.
We have no where else to live but Earth, I'd like to keep it as clean as possible. If that means I can't buy as many plastic gadgets, I'll survive. If the air and water becomes really nasty, I might not. Most importantly? My children might not, and frankly they are the reason I now care. When I was younger, I thought it was a bunch of crap, now I really don't know. But I do know that we should be really careful before we make changes that are hard to undo.
The poster above you was talking about the landlord, not the tenant.
Yes, the renter wants a lower power bill, but the power bill is a direct reflection of the age and efficiency of the HVAC system. The person paying to install the unit isn't the person paying the bill.
That is a fair point, $4,000 is indeed a decent amount of money.
That being said, the payback on my power bill is about 20 months, that is the break even point, after all it is pure profit.
I financed the thing over 60 months at 4.9% anyway, so the monthly payment isn't actually that bad and the lower power bill offsets about half of the monthly payment, so my actual out of pocket costs isn't all that high each month, less than our family cell phone bills, and we just made a big cut in our carbon foot print.
As a side benefit, the system does a better job cooling the house and keeping it even, since it is a 2 stage unit, it has a slower speed to run at to maintain the temp and be more efficient.
That's just it... burning wood for heat is fine, so long as it is a clean heating unit that burns wood at the right temp so that it doesn't release as much into the air and actually uses most of the heat for the home.
But isn't that what the EPA is saying? You can have your wood burning stove, so long as it isn't a crappy one.
Just like 10 SEER AC units used to be legal, now they are not, 13 is the minimum. Frankly it should be higher, the cost to go from a 13 SEER to a 16 SEER isn't that much, this past summer our downstairs AC unit went out, compressor failed. We replaced both units (upstairs and downstairs) with new 16 SEER dual stage units and our AC bill went down 30%.
The price difference between the 13 and 16 SEER units? Total of about $4000, that will be paid back in less than 2 years with the power savings (our old units were 13 SEER models).
I tend to agree with you on many things, however there is another point of view here...
The fact is, what happens locally no longer just affects locals. Polution doesn't tend to stay local, so it moves and affects us all over time.
There is something to be said for being a responsible citizen of Earth and not trashing the place. We can debate how much and what that means, but saying that you can pollute locally as much as you want and no one should be able to tell you otherwise isn't bring very responsible either.
The irony is that people are paying Microsoft and Apple to market Windows and OS X to them!:)
But that isn't new, Coke pays billions a year in marketing and advertising to sell sugar water, so "technical merits" has little to do with what people buy.:)
The irony is that OS X is Unix under the hood, just a very custom version. That is what it would take for Linux to take off, a commercial company charging for it and putting a nice easy shell on it.
Since that isn't likely to happen (Red Hat tried it) at this point, that time has passed. The real chance for Linux was back in the 90s.
Slashdot Mirror
I gave up the handheld to get the rainwater system, frankly I now prefer this and it does a great job, probably due to the larger surface area, I no loner have to move my head under the water, the water "footprint" is larger than my head.
http://www.homedepot.com/p/Waterpik-Medallion-2-Spray-Showerhead-in-Chrome-CF-203GG/100660071
That is similar to the unit that I used, works a treat and uses less hot water. One plus is that the flow is low enough that I can leave it on as long as I like, as hot as I like, and I don't run out of hot water, ever. My water heaters can heat water faster than this uses it, and that is with 5 people taking showers within a 1 hour time period.
Is this something that you actually see happening, or is it just a technical point?
You paid $51K for your 2,700 sqft house? Where do you live? My house is worth about $350K. The cost is partly because it is a nice big house with tall ceilings and fancy everything, but the other part of the cost is to keep the riff-raff out. (that isn't politically correct to say, but it is the truth)
After all, my property taxes are about $7,000 a year, I suspect yours are just a tad less. :) But that does pay for a first rate police and fire dept, first rate schools, and very low crime.
........
side note, the above is just a reminder that we all come from very different social-economic places in life, perhaps we should have this info in a profile to better understand people's comments. I don't consider $17K for HVAC to be all that much, but others clearly do, neither one of us is "wrong", we just come from different points of view.
Burning wood properly is very clean, no problem... burning it improperly is just nasty and needs to stop...
The technology to do this has been around for years, the EPA is just behind the times.
Actually, that is not true... Overall, 7% of power is lost during transmission... If it was as much as you say, they would have changed the system a long time ago... Power companies aren't in the business of wasting that much money (that they could put into their pockets).
I now have installed "compliant" showerheads that actually do a really good job because the designers took the new lower water amount and did some pretty cool things with it.
Consider giving it a try, you might be surprised.
Likewise with the new toilet designs, they do an amazing job with less water. Progress isn't always bad.
I personally would welcome a 4-point restraint system in cars, it would be more effective than what we have now. Sadly, I suspect I'm in the minority there.
Far more than nationally, this needs to be regulated internationally.
The problem is, the actions you take far away from me do affect me, I don't have to live next to you for them to do so. We all share the same air, the same water, the same Earth.
Saying that you pollute far away is no longer an excuse.
I'm strongly against the UN and strongly against the idea of a world government, but when it comes to the environment, I'll make an exception, because we all share it and pollution doesn't respect lines drawn on a map.
(copied from another post in this story)
I'll provide a few more details.
1. I live in Texas, it gets to over 100 in the summer here and tends to stay there for 2 months.
2. I have a large 2 story home, about 4,000 sqft, 5 bedrooms and 5 of us live here, so we use all of it.
3. I keep the house cold in the summer, usually set to 72 degrees. It takes a lot of power to lower the temp from 104 outside to 72 inside.
4. Our power bill in 2012 for August was over $700. In 2013 for August, $430. Nothing else changed, same numbers of computers/TVs/etc., same 72 degree setting, just $270 lower electric bill.
5. The units we replaced were 12 year old builder grade (our house is 12 years old) Carrier 13 SEER single stage units. Our cost to install the new ones was $17,200 and they are 16 SEER dual stage/dual speed TRANE units with a 10 year warranty. (5 ton downstairs, 3 ton upstairs)
Perhaps that helps put it all into perspective a bit. We won't see such a huge change in the winter, but since our furnaces were also upgraded to similar efficient units, we should save $100 or so a month in the winter.
So the $4K higher cost of 16 SEER units over the 13 SEER units has about a 20 month payback, give or take a month. It will save us the cost of the entire upgrade over the life of the HVAC system.
BTW, the EPA isn't banning wood burning stoves or furnaces, they are simply saying that you can't install a crappy one.
Those people in Canada who have old crappy wood burning furnaces probably should replace them, install clean ones and that is just fine, no need to switch to fossil fuels if wood is working, just burn it cleanly.
The issue isn't *you* and the single stove, it is 10 million people doing the same thing. Each small bit adds up to a large bit.
The thing is, burning wood is fine, if you have a modern stove that does it at the right temp, you use dried out wood, and you don't release so much crap into the air.
The EPA isn't saying you can't have a wood burning stove, they are just saying that you need one that doesn't suck.
First, based on the temps you use and where you live, you might not have been actually using all that much to begin with.
Second, you might want to have it inspected by a third party to make sure it is setup right and not over/undersized for your home.
Third, you might have not actually gotten what you paid for, or have a dud unit, if it is still under warranty, I'd have it checked to make sure you got what you paid for.
Finally, regarding my own example, I'll provide a few more details.
1. I live in Texas, it gets to over 100 in the summer here and tends to stay there for 2 months.
2. I have a large 2 story home, about 4,000 sqft, 5 bedrooms and 5 of us live here, so we use all of it.
3. I keep the house cold in the summer, usually set to 72 degrees. It takes a lot of power to lower the temp from 104 outside to 72 inside.
4. Our power bill in 2012 for August was over $700. In 2013 for August, $430. Nothing else changed, same numbers of computers/TVs/etc., same 72 degree setting, just $270 lower electric bill.
5. The units we replaced were 12 year old builder grade (our house is 12 years old) Carrier 13 SEER single stage units. Our cost to install the new ones was $17,200 and they are 16 SEER dual stage/dual speed TRANE units with a 10 year warranty. (5 ton downstairs, 3 ton upstairs)
Perhaps that helps put it all into perspective a bit. We won't see such a huge change in the winter, but since our furnaces were also upgraded to similar efficient units, we should save $100 or so a month in the winter.
So the $4K higher cost of 16 SEER units over the 13 SEER units has about a 20 month payback, give or take a month. It will save us the cost of the entire upgrade over the life of the HVAC system.
Lots of people who need to replace this old stuff don't need a tax break, they don't pay enough in taxes (the kind that you can use such breaks for anyway) to make it help.
I would provide low interest loans, secured by a lien against the house, for people to buy such things. Many people can't get credit, or it is very expensive, but if the goal is to get people to replace old and very inefficient appliances, HVAC systems, etc. then instead of tax breaks, provide the money in the form of a loan.
Frankly, most people replacing a 20 year old HVAC system with a new 16 SEER unit would probably find that a 10 year low interest loan would cost the same or less than the reduction in their monthly electric bill, making it a "free" upgrade.
Huge benefit to society, creates jobs, lowers our energy use, saves people money.
Win-Win-Win
Lets say we live next to each other, lets say that you are struggling and have little money. For whatever reason, the only way to earn money that you have right now is to accept barrels of toxic chemicals and store them on your property (the chemical company pays you for this).
Now lets say one or two start leaking and it starts to affect the health of my family.
It strikes me as reasonable to ask the government to step in and tell you that you can't have such things on your property because it affects me.
Why the government? Because my other option (if we remove government) is to come over to your house and shoot you. I don't think we want to live in THAT world.
So back to government. The government (local, state, federal, whatever) passes a law that says you can't store toxic chemicals in your backyard.
You complain saying that this is hurting you, you have no other money and this is your only way to survive. Fine, but your right to make money and survive doesn't give you the right to screw up the environment around you and harm others, you'll have to figure something else out.
Otherwise, people like me will hire our government (via our tax dollars) to send some people over and make you stop. Because we don't want you to do what you're doing because it harms us.
Just food for thought...
Regarding the small numbers of rural people, I tend to agree with you in principle. In the USA, there aren't that many of them and frankly, probably aren't the real issue.
What concerns me much more is that there are a billion people in India, China, Africa, etc. who are all doing the same thing and no one is doing anything about it.
Our batteries for all our devices are made in China, not the USA. Why? Because, as I'm sure you know, the EPA's rules on making toxic things like Li-Ion batteries would be expensive here, but in China, polute away!
But that polution will affect us in the long run, we need to get them to clean up their act.
A good example that someone actually posted here awhile ago was that in the US and Europe, we can cut our carbon footprint to nothing, go 100% renewable, be great stweards of the Earth. But if China and India don't do this as well, it matters not, because they'll end up burning every drop of oil, every ton of natural gas, and every pound of coal they can get their hands on.
It matters not to the Earth if we burn all those FF in 50 years, 250 years, or 500 years... They were put into the ground over hundreds of millions of years, releasing them all in less than 1,000 years is a huge and drastic event in the history of Earth's climate.
What will happen? I have no idea, and frankly I think most people are just guessing as to the outcome since there is no event in history to compare it to. But I don't want to find out the hard way that it was a bad idea because once done, it can't really be undone.
We have no where else to live but Earth, I'd like to keep it as clean as possible. If that means I can't buy as many plastic gadgets, I'll survive. If the air and water becomes really nasty, I might not. Most importantly? My children might not, and frankly they are the reason I now care. When I was younger, I thought it was a bunch of crap, now I really don't know. But I do know that we should be really careful before we make changes that are hard to undo.
Yes, the renter wants a lower power bill, but the power bill is a direct reflection of the age and efficiency of the HVAC system. The person paying to install the unit isn't the person paying the bill.
That is the problem.
That being said, the payback on my power bill is about 20 months, that is the break even point, after all it is pure profit.
I financed the thing over 60 months at 4.9% anyway, so the monthly payment isn't actually that bad and the lower power bill offsets about half of the monthly payment, so my actual out of pocket costs isn't all that high each month, less than our family cell phone bills, and we just made a big cut in our carbon foot print.
As a side benefit, the system does a better job cooling the house and keeping it even, since it is a 2 stage unit, it has a slower speed to run at to maintain the temp and be more efficient.
The issue is that older models of wood burning stoves often burned at the wrong temp and of course the owners didn't allow the wood to dry out first.
But isn't that what the EPA is saying? You can have your wood burning stove, so long as it isn't a crappy one.
Just like 10 SEER AC units used to be legal, now they are not, 13 is the minimum. Frankly it should be higher, the cost to go from a 13 SEER to a 16 SEER isn't that much, this past summer our downstairs AC unit went out, compressor failed. We replaced both units (upstairs and downstairs) with new 16 SEER dual stage units and our AC bill went down 30%.
The price difference between the 13 and 16 SEER units? Total of about $4000, that will be paid back in less than 2 years with the power savings (our old units were 13 SEER models).
The fact is, what happens locally no longer just affects locals. Polution doesn't tend to stay local, so it moves and affects us all over time.
There is something to be said for being a responsible citizen of Earth and not trashing the place. We can debate how much and what that means, but saying that you can pollute locally as much as you want and no one should be able to tell you otherwise isn't bring very responsible either.
Maybe... But if you're wrong, there are no do overs... History is filled with evil people, and they don't always lose...
Having a cure for Alzheimer's disease doesn't really help you much if you no longer exist, now does it?
But that isn't new, Coke pays billions a year in marketing and advertising to sell sugar water, so "technical merits" has little to do with what people buy. :)
The irony is that OS X is Unix under the hood, just a very custom version. That is what it would take for Linux to take off, a commercial company charging for it and putting a nice easy shell on it.
Since that isn't likely to happen (Red Hat tried it) at this point, that time has passed. The real chance for Linux was back in the 90s.
Shame...