This amazing photo credited to Hoytamaulipas, shows the carnage when car meets bike race in Mexico. Link to the CNN story for more.

As mentioned in a recent post, our family is relocating to a new house. The house is an older one and in great shape but the furnace has been condemned and even if it was working was over sized for the house and very inefficient b todays standards. Where a high efficiency gas fired forced air furnace today would be rated near 95% efficiency, this one was just 60% or so. It is academic though. All four heat exchangers were cracked, making the unit a hazard so it needed to go.

I am making my plans to replace it and I am starting to consider a heat pump instead of a furnace. They use no fossil fuels and in our Pacific Northwest climate, the low temperature limitations of the heat pump are much less of an issue. To quote a random website:

In an air-source heat pump the air is cooled over finned heat exchangers, extracting heat into the evaporator of the heat pump. In a water source heat pump a similar process takes place as the water is cooled and heat extracted. In ground source systems a liquid is passed through a collector pipe buried in the source material or sunk into a bore hole and the heat accumulated in the liquid is then extracted in the same way that it would be in a water based system. Simple!

Right now I could go for a high efficiency gas furnace for $4,500.00 after rebates or spend about $8,000.00 after rebates for the Heat Pump system (that is right, cash from Ottawa and Victoria for both options).
For the heat pump, I would be paying for the electricity to run it, about the same as a refrigerator. For the gas furnace there is the cost of the fuel (of course) and some electricity for the fan. The gas consumption would be WAY less than the current furnace but still, the cost of CNG is not going to go down right?

Does anyone have any experience with this technology? I would appreciate some advice. The key is to get away from the carbon fuel and to lower my exposure to cost of living increases due to fuel cost escalation.

Recently, I found myself in San Diego. I was exhibiting at a Solar Power related trade show and I have to say I am astounded on how quickly photo-voltaic and solar-thermal residential systems are nearing grid parity, (how closely the costs of the systems match the cost of buying power from the utility grid).

In San Diego, the evidence of the military is everywhere. There are sailors and soldiers in uniform in the hotels, on the street, in the malls, IMing their BFFs at the malt shop and of course, near the harbour. While at the harbour myself, I visited the USS Midway, an aircraft carrier that joined WW2 at the end of the war and served the US Navy until the early 1990s.

The ship is now a museum and offers a look into life on board a fighting ship of the US Navy and is a fantastic showcase for a wide range of military aircraft. I had my cellphone camera with me and I took two dozen shots or more. My older son is an aircraft nut so I wanted to get a few good pictures for him. Some of them are here, for you. On the top deck, the flight deck, there was an awesome collection of jets and helicopters. While this I wandered around the vast blacktop surface, little stunt planes zipped overhead, practicing for an annual obstacle course. Across the harbour was the USS Ronald Regan. Nothing says ‘Great Communicator’ like a nuclear warship. In the harbour several armed coast guard boats and smaller gray navy ships maneuvered about. San Diego: sun, sand and gunmetal.