Heating with math →

Published March 10, 2018  ·  All posts on Mar 10  ·  

Something a little different today: I’ve been considering switching to heating with gas and I recently ran some numbers.

tl;dr: I will be continuing to heat with solid fuel.

Preamble: We have already deeply insulated our attic, upgraded insulation in the walls which were opened during some remodeling, and replaced all windows and doors with modern versions. (Our house was originally built in 1954.) This is the obvious first place to begin improving heating your home.

Electricity: My electricity costs $0.0758 per kWh. I can basically turn on my electric baseboard heaters and this is what I’d pay (per kWh) to heat our house.

Methane: This is the proper way to heat a home in northern climates. Unfortunately, “street gas” is not present in my neighborhood. One block over, yes, here, no. They would install it for me… if I’m willing to pay the entire cost to rip up the street and put in the gas main.

Propane: Chemistry geeks know that propane has about 12% less energy per molecule compared to methane. But generally speaking, appliances (my gas cooking stove, a gas heating appliance I would need to buy/install) can be adjusted to burn either fuel. Anyway. I already have a small propane tank that serves my cooking stove, so I would “just” need a larger tank — possibly MUCH larger, possibly so large that safety ordinances would require me to put it underground. Anyway. My propane costs me $5.999/gal — if you know about petroleum, this is an incomprehensibly high number. Meanwhile, 1 gal propane = 27kWhr of energy. And a gas heater (I’m imagining replacing my wood stove with an appliance that sits in the same space) is effectively 100% efficient at turning that gas into heat. So simple math shows that propane would cost me $0.222/KWh — about THREE times the cost of electricity.

Firewood: This is MUCH harder to compute. First off, I have to estimate how much energy is available in the wood I’m burning; that’s affected by species of wood, and how it’s seasoned and stored (because the MORE water in the wood, the more heat is “lost” to vaporize that water and send it away up the chimney.) Some factors to consider: Where I live, there are several readily available “fuel” species of trees that are sustainably available. I’ve found a reputable supplier who is not hauling it long distances and provides me the right sizes etc for what I want. I also have the absolute best imaginable way of storing the wood in “cribs” that expose it to air drying while having it under cover.

So I’m guessing 20 million BTU per cord. (A cord is a stacked, pile 4 feet tall, with a foot print of 4×8 feet. Technically, it’s a pile of 4-foot LONG logs, 4 feet high and 8 feet wide on the ground. A true wood heating system is a separate unit outside that is meant to take 4 foot long logs. I purchase ~16″ pieces split, which still makes the 4×8 foot print computable. I digress.) Good fuel species can be up to 30MBTU/cord. So I’m being conservative with 20.

20M BTU is 5,861 KWh. I pay $300 per cord (fellow Pennsylvanians just twitched because that is pretty expensive — 225 or 250 is typical — but this is excellent wood species, all cut and split to the correct sizes for stove fuel, delivered early in the season, and dumped exactly where I want it. As usual, I digress. So math happens leading to $0.0512 / KWh. Even if I figure-in that the wood stove is only 80% efficient (we have a great stove made in Scandinavia which really does exceed 80% efficiency when operated correctly), that only bumps the cost up to $0.0639 / KWh.

Update in 2019: My electricity costs $0.07039 per KWh. (That’s down about 1/2 cent.) I’ve a new firewood supplier, with the price down to $225 per cord. That’s $0.038 / KWh, and still only $0.048 / KWh at 80% stove efficiency.

And finally some references…

http://www.propane101.com/propanevselectricity.htm
http://worldforestindustries.com/forest-biofuel/firewood/firewood-btu-ratings/

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Begin the morning →

Published March 9, 2018  ·  All posts on Mar 9  ·  ,

Begin the morning by saying to yourself, I shall meet with the busybody, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial. All these things happen to them by reason of their ignorance of what is good and evil. … I can neither be injured by any of them, for no one can fix on me what is ugly, nor can I be angry with my kinsman, nor hate him.

~ Marcus Aurelius

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Interview with Jesse Danger →

Published March 8, 2018  ·  All posts on Mar 8  ·  

This past weekend I had the opportunity to attend a Winter Immersive retreat hosted by the Movement Creative. There I finally got a chance to sit down with Jesse and record an interview. Be sure to follow the Movers Mindset on the web site, or wherever you prefer to listen to podcasts!

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Ever-present mental stress →

Published March 7, 2018  ·  All posts on Mar 7  ·  ,

Most people have been in some version of this mental stress state so consistently, for so long, that they don’t even know they’re in it. Like gravity, it’s ever present — so much so that those who experience it usually aren’t even aware of the pressure. The only time most of them will realize how much tension they’ve been under is when they get rid of it and notice how different they feel. It’s like the constant buzzing noise in a room you didn’t know was there until it stops.

~ David Allen from, Getting Things Done

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The key insight for me was once I realized there are two “directions” to thinking: I was always good at vertical thinking, going down thru a project (big or small), planning, organizing and doing. This was simply “thinking”, and how could there be more than one “direction” in which to think?

Unfortunately, I often got stuck when my brain started doing this other direction of thinking for which I had no name; no concept to attach: The horizontal thinking. The hopping from project to project — and I use “project” in the most broad sense of ANY thing involving a goal (“remodel house”, “send holiday cards”), any size (“seven years of projet management and contractors”, “buy stamps, buy cards, stuff, mail” ), and any number of steps. My mind hopped uncontrollably from thing to thing, around and around, across all the open loops, as the same things came up over and over and over.

These days, having a solid capture and review system enables me to close those mental loops. I can often read for a half an hour without my mind once interrupting me with some random, “I need to do this,” or “I need to remember that,” thought. (And if it does interupt me, I simple capture that thought once. Done. Freedom.) In the beginning I used paper notecards, then notebooks, software, and on and on. The exact system does not matter. It only matters that you trust your system. Only when you truly trust your system will your subconscious close all those open loops.

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Practice patiently improving →

Published March 6, 2018  ·  All posts on Mar 6  ·  

Too often nowadays Stoicism is brandished as a magic wand, as if one decides to “be” a Stoic and this, ipso facto, guarantees immunity from unhealthy emotions. It doesn’t, and Chrysippus, Seneca, and Epictetus would be astounded that anyone would think so. Stoic training is like training for the Olympics (a metaphor often used by Epictetus): you don’t just decide to be an athlete, start running, and win the race. You have to train, patiently, for years, improving gradually, and suffering setbacks. We are talking real life here, not wishful thinking.

~ Massimo Pigliucci from, Stoicism and Emotion, III

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More and more, as the years go by, I have been peering more closely into the dark corners of the basements of my philosophies, and ideologies.

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Areas of vast silence →

Published March 5, 2018  ·  All posts on Mar 5

One of the functions of art is to give people the words to know their own experience. There are always areas of vast silence in any culture, and part of an artist’s job is to go into those areas and come back from the silence with something to say. It’s one reason why we read poetry, because poets can give us the words we need. When we read good poetry, we often say, ‘Yeah, that’s it. That’s how I feel.’

~ Ursula K. Le Guin from, Ursula K. Le Guin on Art, Storytelling, and the Power of Language to Transform and Redeem

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In the beginning, I watched 2001: A Space Odyssey — no, I’m not old enough to have seen it in the theater, thank you — and, in all honesty, I did not understand most of it. Later, I learned about the story, read the related books, etc.. I rewatched the movie and began a long period of wielding my understanding as a badge of pride. (“I understand 2001! Here, let me show it to you. Let me explain it to you.”) I eventually went on to learn to play the Blue Danube on the piano because the piece is so prominent and moving in the film.

… cross-fade …

Very recently, I saw a solar eclipse and I wished someone had queued up Also sprach Zarathustra — whose introduction, by the way, still gives me shivers. It would have been sublime to have had totality begin just as the creshendo strikes in the opening . . .

I digress.

Also sprach Zarathustra is a tone poem and after the eclipse — perhaps in search of that sublime moment missed — I took the time to listen to it in its entirety.

…and that led me to adjust my living room for optimal viewing
…to crank up the volume
…and to cue up 2001.

It was just as awe-inspiring as I recalled. Just as awe-inspiring as I’d hoped.

…and then I read this piece — from the perennianlly stellar Brain Pickings — about le Guin’s conception of art.

Something clicked and I gained a new appreciation for the film: “Yeah, that’s it. That’s how I feel.”

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Eclipse photography 3/4 →

Published March 4, 2018  ·  All posts on Mar 4  ·  

I will admit, when the cloud moved away just in time, all of nature grew silent, and the shadow of the moon arrived, I secretly wished someone had cued Also sprach Zarathustra.

The eclipse was magnificent and moving. Planning a year in advance, so that we could be standing directly in the path of the shadow cast by a celestial body 220,000 miles away… I can’t describe it. Moving. Exciting. Awe-inspiring. Fun! Getting to see and do cool science experiments you only read about. Sure, in celestial terms, our little moon’s shadow flits across our blue mote many MANY times. But I count myself among the lucky ones who took the time to align my life — even if ever so briefly — with these majestic orbs.

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People who are able to make an impact on the world →

Published March 3, 2018  ·  All posts on Mar 3  ·  

The self-limiting beliefs infect all of us because all of us like being competent, we like being respected, we like being successful. When something shows up that threatens to undo all of those things, well then it’s really easy to avoid it. What goes hand-in-hand with that is the sour mindset. The mindset of, “We are not getting what we deserve.” The mindset of, “The world is not fair.” The mindset of, “Why should I even bother, it’s probably not going to work.”

One thing those of us who are lucky enough to live in the world where we have enough — we have a roof and we have food — is we find ourselves caught in this cycle of keeping track of the wrong things. Keeping track of how many time we’ve been rejected. Keeping track of how many times it didn’t work. Keeping track of all the times someone has broken our heart, or double-crossed us, or let us down. Of course we can keep track of those things, but why, why keep track of them? Are they making us better?

Wouldn’t it make more sense to keep track of the other suttf? To keep track of all the times it worked? All the times we took a risk? All the times we were able to brighten someone else’s day? That when we start doing that we can redefine ourselves as people who are able to make an impact on the world.

~ Seth Godin from, Seth Godin on How to Think Small to Go Big (#177)

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Seth Godin has a lot of unusual (as in, high-fidelity, clear, insightful, meaningful, useful) things to say. This bit of insight made me stop in my tracks — literally made me stop walking and fumble for my podcast player controls to capture the time code so I could dig this out.

“We can redefine ourselves as people who are able to make an impact on the world,” indeed.

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Simply report problems →

Published March 2, 2018  ·  All posts on Mar 2  ·  

Now it may turn out that what a junior employee sees as a problem that they don’t have an answer to really isn’t a problem. On the other hand, some problems are much easier to identify than they are to fix. This is particularly true with ethical and cultural problems.

~ Ben Cotton from, You don’t need to have an answer to report a problem

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This piece is short, so my pull-quote may not make complete sense. I don’t like to pull-quote so much that you can get away with NOT reading the source because, in general, if I’m linking to it then I think the source is important enough to be read entirely.

I digress.

Ben raises a point here that jumped out at me once I saw it. I’ve been hearing and saying that same piece of advice and, yeah… it’s wrong. Yes, if you can bring a solution (or solutions, or even a half-baked first attempt at a solution) with the problem report, great! …but do not—never under any circumstances—refrain from speaking up when you see a problem. It’s either not a problem and you’ll level up when someone explains it, or it is a problem, or it’s a system in-built blind spot that is a problem… or… you know what? Just speak up.

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Persistence of tyranny →

Published March 1, 2018  ·  All posts on Mar 1

Tyranny is our capacity to rationalize exceptions to rights for our enemies. Tyranny is our willingness to dismiss violation of rights as unimportant or minimal.

~ Ken White from, «https://www.popehat.com/2018/02/15/the-persistence-of-tyranny/»

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