Taxes The smokestack shows particles and gas, but doesn't really show heat. The heat is what the Antartic ice doesn't respond favorably to.

Utilities

There's something wrong with the picture. Own my home. Paid for. It costs a couple hundred dollars a month for property taxes, and it costs a couple hundred dollars a month for electricity. That would be after tax dollars, I might add. The taxes are a rip-off (paid 14,500 for house, assessed 36,000 immediately), but you can't fight city hall and I didn't grow up in this town so I get a little "welcome stranger" added to the tax. You're not supposed to know about this, but everyone who's been here their whole life has a lower assessment. You're not even supposed to notice, but it is standard operating procedure. Put the house up for sale and move to a fair taxing jurisdiction. Now, let's get to work on the electric bill. Day/night meter. 84 gallon tank set at 105 degrees. Five kids, lots of baths and showers. While I'm waiting for the house to sell, I'll cure that electric bill.

Easier said than done, but education is never cheap. I've got an old military electric generator, skid A generator like this without the wheels. Really too big. Only need 6 horsepower.mounted, 4-cylinder flathead, 220 volts at 400 cycles. This is a nice house with Calrad electric heating elements (baseboard) in each room. I've never used them, because I have a wood stove in the attached garage. I blow heat in to the house from the garage, and it works good. The electric heating system has its own electric box. I disconnected it from the main service and connected it to the electric generator. I didn't know how sensitive the resistance wire heating elements would be to frequency (400 cycles instead of 60 cycles), but I would find out. No problem, heating elements don't know the difference. I fired up the generator and turned on the heating elements in all the rooms, and everything worked fine. I calculated the wattage of all the heating elements and figured the total load to be about 11,000 watts. That would require about 22 horsepower in my experience. Electric works good, now let's get to the hot water, which is what's costing me the money.

The generator is parked beside the hot water tank (84 gallons). Hot and cold water faucets on the top of the tank, because it is in the garage and that provides running water in the garage. When the generator was running, I couldn't help but notice that the muffler, which was mounted horizontally, was hotter than a Ten cent hooker. I've got to get that under control, the muffler, not the hooker. I cut the ends off my garden hose. That got me clampable connectors for the water faucets on the hot water tank. One garden hose end to the hot faucet on the top of the tank, and one garden hose fitting on the drain fitting at the bottom of the tank. The bottom of the tank would have the coldest water because heat rises. The garden hose screw connectors fit these faucets and I had two cut barden hose ends dangling. Now I put fiberglass reinforced aluminum tape (like auto body shops use) around the muffler, after wire brushing the rust. This was just to make the surface smooth and less abrasive. Now I wrapped a 20 foot length of 3/8 th inch copper tubing around and around the muffler, about ten loops. Now I connected one end of the copper tubing to the drain fitting of the hot water tank by clamping it in the garden hose that hung off this fitting. I clamped it with a radiator style clamp. I connected the other end of the copper tubing to the hot water faucet on the top of the hot water tank using the same technique. I opened the drain valve on tank and bled the air out at the hot water faucet on the top of the tank. That filled the copper tubing from end to end with the 105 degree water in the hot water tank. Now I wrap the copper tubing and muffler with 3 inch fiberglass insulation so the heat of the exhaust will be trapped in copper tubing. This is a very cheap to build heat exchanger. I hoping that the water will percolate and that will cause it to circulate into the hot water tank. I have the hot faucet at the top (heat rises) and the less hot (colder) drain valve at the bottom. If heat rises, it should circulate.

I fired up the generator and turned on all those electric heating elements inside the house to create a load. I went in the house and was checking the elements in each room at my leisure. I think there were 14 elements total. I'm going to let this run a few hours to see what I've got. Suddenly, I heard my ol'lady scream. I ran to the sound (kitchen) to see what was the trouble. What's a matter, I said. She reached over to the sink and turned on the hot water. Wow, hot water and lots of steam, boiling hot water. I ran to the garage and shut the generator down, and checked the clock. It had only been running about 45 minutes. In 45 minutes the water in the hot water tank went from 105 degrees to about 212 degrees. That would be 84 gallons. Friggin' unbelievable. I'm thinking I should shut down the wood stove, make my own electric, and run my electric heating elements, and get this free hot water. That presents a little problem. I've got so much hot water, I won't need the electric heating elements. I've got enough hot water for baseboard hot water heating. I've got too much hot water. What else might I not need? I've got to Smog. Got the picture? That's what we're trying to get rid of. The kind you can't see.calculate the actual btu needs of this house. Wow, if everything is organized correctly, and I make my own electricity, I'll only need about 7 or eight horsepower to supply the total energy needs of this house. That's when I sold the house, and didn't finish. The calculations are correct and revealed much of what you read at this web site. There is awesome inefficiency in the utility industries. Read all the energy stories. You may be stunned, even depressed, but you won't be stupid any longer.