What Did You Do To Your House Recently?

[topher800]

I have two regrets, one that I didn't do it earlier, and two that I didn't look into doing a heat pump for heat. Not sure it would have penciled out, but I should have at least investigated it.

I am eyeing an upgrade in this vain. I want solar panels, battery pack, and heat pump. If you could only afford two of the three which would you get?

+2 for heat pump
- We don't have AC, but it's getting a little worse each summer. We have gone from two weeks of hot nights a year to five weeks over 30 years.
- We have another 100 years of forrest fires before things equalize, so house needs to be closed down during smoke events.

+1 for battery pack (vs generator):
- Xcel Energy (our power company) has started the blackouts pre-wind event. We were down for 48 hours this spring.

+1 for solar panels
- self sufficiency

 

The heat pump went in a month ago.  With gas furnace backup.  The heat pump is a Bosch Bova.  While it is rated to -5F I believe, the installers set the switch over temperature to 25F.  This probably covers 80-90% of our "heating season".  I might tinker with that.

Heating bill last month compared to a year ago is about the same.  Gas dropped 50 terms and electricity went up 500 kWh.  Average temp was the same, electric rates were the same, and gas is up 5 cents from last year.  Seems a wash $ wise ($242 vs $258), not that I expected a savings.

Biggest thing I noticed is the change in Thermostat.  I used to have a Honeywell programmable.  It felt like that thing would try to keep the house within 0.1F of set point.  Furnace constantly cycled, drove me crazy.  They replaced it with an Ecobee, and the furnace runs much less frequently.  Furnace also spends much more time on low setting instead of high speed.  Temperature sensor in the house definitely shows up to two degree swing.  Much happier.

[davintosh]

Wow; it's been four years since I last added anything to this thread... We're still in the house that we moved into in 2020, and I just started tearing into a remodel of the master bathroom. It had one of the awful 1990s triangle whirlpool tubs in it; my wife hated it and it pretty much drained the water heater every time it was used. Didn't even have a heater to keep the water warm! 
So we shopped around and settled on a freestanding whirlpool/bubble tub to replace it, but given the layout of the bathroom, it was necessary to strip out everything but the shower to get it in there. Replacing the flooring while we're at it; same laminate flooring in the master bathroom and bedroom, and eventually through the rest of the main floor as well. 
The tub turned out to be a bit of an adventure; we ordered it directly from the manufacturer, and had it shipped to our house. When it arrived, it looked good on first inspection, but a week or so later I discovered a major problem while looking underneath to measure a couple of things; the section of the frame supporting the pump motor was cracked. I contacted the support people right away, and after some back & forth they offered to replace it with a new tub. Cool, but what do I do with the damaged one? More back & forth, and they tell me shipping it back isn't worth it, so they don't want it back. Nothing said about what to do with it, so now I'm looking into what it would take to repair it so that it can go into the basement bathroom. Yes, that means another bathroom to remodel, but I might know what I'm doing by the time that's finished. 

[Blue Shadow]

I checked the temp in the space around one of my outdoor water shutoffs to see if the coming chill will be a problem. IR thermometer read 57F. I’m ok with that.  May check tomorrow am if I find something else I need to carry to the basement. 

[stuartinmn]

I went to open the garage door two days ago, but it was frozen to the ground.  As a result the opener's drive chain jumped off the sprockets so now I get to fix that.  However, it's currently -18F so it's going to have to wait a couple days until it warms up again.