Our New Heating--and Cooling--System!

During the summer, I started to investigate updating our furnace to the 21st century! Talked with a few heating/cooling companies--got a couple estimates, then Larry said one of his co-workers liked Washington Energy. So a nice guy named David came out on a Saturday when Larry and I were both home. So guess what? Washington Energy got the job! Bright and early on the morning of September 28, one of their lovely trucks pulled up outside our garage.



Here is our new electric furnace. (No more propane!)


And our new heat pump! This will be the main source of our heat this winter, except when the temperature drops below 35, then the furnace (or "auxiliary heat") will kick in.

The old furnace has been removed.

The men leveled off the ground on the south side of our house and poured a small concrete slab, and by afternoon, they had the heat pump on it.

End of Day 1.

On Tuesday, September 29, the duct cleaning guy showed up.

Here a big hose is hooked up to the furnace.

He also went around to every duct inside the house with a smaller hose, pushing everything back toward the furnace and eventually into the big hose which goes to a suctioning machine inside the truck. (I have no idea what happens to the debris they get out of the duct work. Probably eventually ends up in a dump somewhere...?)

Then the other guys came back to finish the furnace/heat pump installation. Here's our brand new furnace all installed:

And the heat pump is connected and working! They checked it to make sure it was working--both on heat and cool. (So that's why it was so cold for a little while!)

Here is our brand-new programmable thermostat:

The Washington Energy guys changed things a little by moving the return air vent in the stairway hall to a higher point. (It used to be just a little bit above the stairs.)

In order to do that, they had to install a duct in an upstairs bedroom, which happens to be Caroline's room.

So now we've had our new system for close to four weeks. It was just in time, as the nights started to get quite chilly, and, in fact, the "auxiliary heat" would come on in the morning, and we had frost. Then around October 15, the rain moved in, and the temperature shot way up--nearly 60 in the day, and low 50's at night. Then Larry built a fire in our wood store on the night of the 16th, and the temperature in the hall around the corner got up to 76! It felt like summer, and if the heat pump had been set to automatically switch to cool, it would have come on! As it was, the house stayed in the lower 70's all weekend, and it wasn't until Tuesday morning of this week that the heat pump came on. So this week the temperature has gradually crept downward, hitting the low 40's. Just right for a heat pump--they are supposed to be about the most efficient and cheapest way to heat your house (except maybe for solar!). So we will see how it works this winter, and next summer we'll look forward to relief from the heat and humidity. (But I bet we don't have another over 100 degree heat spell like we did this year!)