Danny Two Furnaces...

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Call me uninformed, but i never realized 2 furnaces in a house was a thing. How big or how many stories or what all else requires that?

The people we know with 2 furnaces have probably 5k sq ft houses and the first floor is big and open with the open ceiling foyer and great room.

You see newer construction have separate furnaces for the ground floor and second floor so that you can heat them more evenly. I would guess designs of the lawyer-foyer variety would benefit from them. Of course, it's unspeakably decadent to me, having grown up in a household where we barely used the one furnace we had.

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Lawyer foyer

I'm assuming they are electric furnaces

You know, it's weird, I couldn't help but inherit my mom's aversion to running the heat, but I will not run the AC, so it's 66 right now and will be 78 in July. She liked to be cold. I like to be cheap.


Who the hell in Illinois is on an electric furnace?

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A liberal that is against fossil fuels?

Electric heat is only really big in the South, where they can't lay gas lines and/or don't need it much anyway, or in Quebec, where hydroelectricity is plentiful and cheap, and even then they use baseboards more than central heat.

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In a two-story home it is always best to zone the first and second floors. Most of the time this is done with one furnace and dampers in the duct work. The better way of doing it is have two furnaces and AC condensers which can independently heat and cool each floor.

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1-800-HEATING

Strangely enough growing up our Chicago bungalow had electric baseboard heat. No furnace.

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When I got my ac redone in Friendship, the tech recommended a heat pump. Thus my ac unit produces heat as well. Where I am at, there is no gas delivery like Nicor. We all have LP tanks with truck delivered gas. So electric is preferred for heating.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

Heat pumps are pretty remarkable. I didn't think they had the muscle to heat in Wisconsin, though.

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They struggle once it gets below 10 or 15 degrees. Much of New England is full of heat pumps and poorly insulated old houses. People here need backup heat sources like propane or wood stoves to make it through most winters, although that need is diminishing given the rising mean winter temperatures we have experienced over the past several decades.

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Why wouldn’t he just go upstairs where the furnace was working? If he has two furnaces, he should have at least two TVs, or just watch on an iPad.

A lot of New England is still on the "some dudes in a truck come by with kerosene" plan, right? or is that kind of tapering off?

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Pretty sure it’s oil but yeah.

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Mine runs at temps above 25. I think they have ones that run at lower temps now.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

Same with us in WI. We have a 1,000 gallon propane tank in the front yard. It looks like a giant veal brat. Between the warm winters and the fact we are not there all the time means we only have it filled about twice a year. I call them up when it gets to 40%, which is slightly less than half (they only fill it to 85%) and they come out a few weeks later.

The (gas) furnace is good and we also have two gas fireplaces so the place stays plenty warm in the winter. And we hardly need to run the air in the summer.

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"I honestly don't see a good bet on the board here."

My LP tank is thankfully buried….

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Hawaii (fuck) You

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Scoops like this one are what keep me coming back to this place.

Good catch. I completely missed that.

But it’s full at 85%!

Tough crowd around here.

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Geothermal is electric as well but you don't have that in Chicago. We looked at heat pumps for an out building, they are getting better but propane was the option. They had coal trucks out here for a long time. When we moved into the one farm house on the farm the coal room was still half full of coal. the other half was spiders and dust.

Go tankless

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Everyone bernstein dislikes is probably worth listening to.