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As appeared in the Mammoth Real Estate Times, early Summer 2001 edition.
Q: With all of the recent controversy surrounding utilities
like electricity and gas-namely cost, availability, efficiency,
we're wondering how we should ultimately set up the heating of the
home we are planning on retiring to in a few years?
A: Your question is one that we are hearing more and more
lately. Between the energy "crisis" that you refer to and the fact
that lots of new homes are being built and many homes and condos are
being remodeled with the intent of more permanent-type living, the
issue of which way to heat during the winter months is fundamental to
planning. To state that there is a "best" way would be wrong. And
with utility rates changing all the time it is certainly a moving
target.
More and more we are seeing people relying on several sources
of heat-even in new construction. Decisions are often dictated by
budget and limitations within the structure, and for most condominium
owners whether their particular condominium project has moved to make
propane available to them so they can retrofit or add some type of
gas fired appliance.
Mammoth's history of construction has created most of the
current conditions that people rely on or want to change. Obviously,
the first source of heat is the sun. Mammoth gets plenty of it, even
during the winter. Mammoth has an array of examples of people and
properties utilizing passive solar heating. Starting with our most
common basic home design placing our living spaces on the second
floor with windows facing to the south to modern planners using
computer generated modeling to maximize solar effectiveness in the
plazas of future village developments. People who haven't enjoyed the
opportunity to live in Mammoth during a winter cannot appreciate the
value of the sun and it's ability to make life easier at essentially
no extra cost. So in planning any type of project, that should be one
of the primary assessments.
The second most obvious source of heat is from firewood.
Mammoth's homes and condos of the past decades were built with all
kinds of real fireplaces and wood burning appliances-with some of the
remaining artifacts almost laughable in design and utility. Mammoth's
clean air ordinance passed in 1990 mandated change outs and upgrades
to those fireplaces and woodstoves. Today there are numerous product
lines of attractive and very efficient fireplace inserts and
woodstoves. For many woodburning is still a necessity everyday during
the winter and more and more people are utilizing it as an efficient,
effective and aesthetically pleasing method of augmenting another
heat source. I can't ever see Mammoth homes going entirely away from
this traditional heat source. It is part of being in the mountains
and is the most reliable source of heat in a power outage(which
thankfully we have fewer and fewer of.) Firewood should always be
available, either by going and getting it yourself or using one of
the local services.
One of the increasingly popular spin-offs of the woodstove is
a pellet stove (or furnace). Pellets are small, highly compressed
wood by-product (saw dust from wood mills) that run through a hopper
into a mechanism that operates like a small blast furnace and then
the furnace kicks heat into a room through a heat exchanger. The
technology has become quite efficient in the past ten years of
development. Pellets come in 40lb. bags and are easy to store and can
be purchased a bag or a ton at a time. The appliances offer the
load-it-up and walk away amenity. These stoves can run for days on
their own and can be operated from thermostats allowing them to turn
on and off by themselves. Some Mammoth property owners have made a
pellet stove the primary heat source in their home, often replacing a
woodstove while others use them again to augment another heat source.
I've been buying pellets for years and the price is pretty stable at
around $200 per ton.
Many homes built in the 1960's in Mammoth had gas heating via
propane tanks. Mammoth has no natural gas lines like much of
California, so that isn't an option. The old gas heating was mostly
through a floor or wall furnace but some actually had forced air
heating through ducting. Today that is the most common type of
heating found in new construction-forced air gas heating with bottled
propane gas. Many locals who live in newer homes will add heat via a
woodstove/fireplace or pellet stove and use the forced air system to
blow the heat around. In the last few years gas furnaces that look
like a woodburning stoves have become very popular. In applications
where ducting is impractical, these furnaces can replace
woodstoves/fireplaces and provide high levels of heating in an
efficient and aesthetic manner. And some of the older condominium
projects that have brought gas in are utilizing gas fireplaces like
new condos have. This is a very nice changeout, especially for units
on nightly rental because of cleanliness, warmth, and ease of use.
This would be a nice retrofit in a home too. Propane prices are much
like gasoline prices-up and down, except that there are bulk buying
opportunities from time to time.
Electric heat was the darling of the homes built in
the late 60's and 70's with most of the condos built in that era
originally relying on it as the primary heat source. Electricity was
clean and inexpensive for heating. Today most property owners try to
move away from any reliance on electric heat, but that may change
someday. Electricity could go through a metamorphosis like other
sources. Deregulation may make it cheaper even though that hasn't
happened yet. Mammoth's ability to produce geothermally produced
electricity may be a boon someday. I wouldn't rip out all of my
electric heat sources just yet. And many environmentally conscience
people stick to electricity because of their beliefs. We'll see what
the future holds in this area.
There are other heating applications that are becoming
popular. In some of the more expensive homes and condos in town we
are seeing hydronic heating systems. Main boilers send hot water
circulating through tubes in floors and wall units that maintains a
very pleasant all around warmth. The initial cost of the system is
more expensive with lower long term costs (theoretically). The
emphasis here is on overall warm feeling created by this heating.
Another heat source finding its way to Mammoth is fuel oil heating.
With fuel oil stored in a tank like propane, these applications are
typically centralized heat from furnaces placed on the inside of
outside walls. The cost efficiency of this heat is likely to make it
increasingly popular. And new active solar heating systems are likely
to come along which could makes things interesting.
So the future of heating in Mammoth is likely to be quite
varied. We may even see geothermal heat utilized in the near future,
although a long way off for the average home. The best strategy for
now seems to be to have at least two of the more common sources with
many owners wanting three or four. If electricity became cheap that
would certainly change things. And if global warming becomes a
serious issue, we might just be less interested in heating and be
more concerned about what type of air conditioner were going to need.
But for now, we've got plenty of that for free.
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