Ducks really are big eating machines and do a great job ridding the lawn of grubs. When we had the Call ducks, they were allowed access to the raised beds. Since they’re a bantam breed I never saw a lot of damage, though I think I’d limit access if the day ever comes we get a standard breed. I’m still in the fence about getting more animals though.
Update on the geothermal project here: The company we're dealing with has a kind of screwy way of doing things in the preliminary steps, which we've went along with until now. From here, we have to sign the contract before they send someone on site to do a more in depth look at the interior of our home. And we only have 3 days to back out, according to the contract, should we need to do so. I spoke to the sales guy on the phone and he said there's rarely ever any surprises once they get to this point ( I've sent a lot of pics and they have a 3d rendering of the house. Oh, and a Google Earth image 10+ years old.) Would you sign a contract on a $48,000 project ( not counting rebates and federal credits ) without someone showing you where things will be going? So we went from being 95% on board to me just sending the sales rep a very cordial "thanks but no thanks" detailing why. Thing is, we'd likely sign off on the project and do it if they'd just send someone here to do the next steps in an order we feel more comfortable with. So there's still a chance. But if not, screw it, I'll order firewood and be done with it. Stay tuned.
Update: 5 minutes after the above post they emailed to offer every reassurance they could. 10 minutes later that was followed by a very reasonable proposal wherein we front $500 and they’ll go “out of order” and send someone to the house before we sign. If we back out then, they keep the money ( we aren’t likely to back out ). We sign off, the $500 comes off the total cost. Its actually a solution my father in-law suggested, and we feel it’s fair.
Fuck no. I'd have no problem paying a few hundred bucks to get them on-site and figuring shit out. That seems more than fair.
I'm curious, how are they supposed to even give you a quote on the project without coming into your house???? When we got our geo installed, the guy literally counted the fins on the radiators throughout the house before he could even figure out what version of the geothermal unit we would need to install in the house. He counted windows, whether they are single or double pane, where doors were in relation to radiators, where stairs were, if there were fireplaces near the radiators, and on and on and on. The absolute worst thing you can do with geothermal is getting a unit under powered for your space, forcing it to run at the highest settings constantly. Another HUGE thing, make them show you they are fully licensed by NYSERDA otherwise you won't get any of the tax breaks coming to you. The company is the one who has to send in the NYSERDA documents BEFORE YOU INSTALL and NYSERDA have to approve the plans for the system otherwise, no tax incentives for you. AquaTec Water Services out of Gilboa is a good company that installs geo systems. You can probably reach out to them and see if they can give you some details. Also, 48k before tax breaks is kind of expensive for a geo system. We paid 70k before taxes for ours, but it's a hot water radiator system which there really isn't good technology for, our house is 150 years old and still has mostly original glass in a lot of the windows, it has poorly set up chimneys so tons of heat just runs right out of the house, etc etc. It also runs the entire hot water system for a 7000sqft house so it's a top of the line most robust system you can get. We also had to encase all three of the wells because they hit an underground aquifer and you can't just stick the geo pipes surrounded by water. Before you do anything, if you want to chat, let me know.
Will do, thank you. The company is pretty reputable, I’ve done a shitload of research into them and the product. I’ve also texted previous customers at random to ask questions and they were very helpful. Im confident in the product, it’s just their process made us uncomfortable. The price is higher than we first expected due to some upgrades needed in our house, and we’re okay with that. Plus extra cost for a vertical loop instead of horizontal After NYSEG and NYSERDA rebates were looking at about $14k less than that I believe. And those are spelled out in the contract. It’s all good, we just needed to lean on them a little in order to get some reassurance.
Just an update, today we officially signed the contract to have the geothermal put in. Our insistence that they do the walk through BEFORE we signed off helped put any concerns to rest I think. The guy was here Friday for about three hours doing a very thorough scan of the interior as well as confirming measurements and all that. We'll need to have a small masonry job done, so they kicked back $1,500 off the cost of the project to help towards that. We no longer have to burn firewood or worry about fuel oil prices ( well, once it's installed anyhow ) which is awesome to think about.
Won’t you still need to burn some wood, or is there another heating system with an alternate fuel? The process of circulating the water below ground will bring it to 50-55 degrees F, correct? Or am I misunderstanding the process?
This explains it better than I can. My in-laws have geothermal heating and cooling. They live in a big Victorian home and it’s their sole source of heat, even in Central NY Winter. And it’s pretty comfortable. Additionally, it cools the house great as well.
Clay and shale, largely. The two bore holes will each go down 500’ but they’ll get through the shale no problem.
It depends on the system you have installed whether you need a back up heating source. On ours, because it is a hot water radiator set up, geothermal units can only heat the water up to 140 instead of the normal 180 most forced air geothermal units can. We also have a 250 gallon hot water tank hooked through the geo system (we are turning the house to a bed and breakfast and have to make sure all the rooms have hot water at all times.) This makes it very difficult for the system to maintain temps to sufficiently heat the house at all times. It does really well, but we still need about 500 gallons of fuel during the winter as a backup heating source. We have the largest hot water system you could get at the time, but even the next sized one up wouldn't change much. Our house is also an old Victorian, huge square footage and all the original windows and insulation so to say it's not very efficient for heating is an understatement. FYI about geo systems, they do burn up a big chuck of electric running a heating pump pretty much nonstop. It's constantly circulating water all day, every day. The best setup is solar, into a battery, with the geo running off that. The cost savings from electric to fuel is pretty significant, especially since electric rates don't vary hardly at all, but heating oil/gas prices fluctuate wildly depending on time of year. For our setup, we've gone from winters, which run about 5 months, costing $1000 for electric and $6000 for heating oil to $1500 for electric and $800 for propane.
That was a concern I had, and no one could tell me how much that would run us. Doing some math, based on NYSEG rates and average power demand, our electric would go up about $800-1000 a year, tops. The only thing that would make it significantly more would be if we cranked the heat to fluctuate wildly. Then it uses way more electricity.
@walt A good tip for the geo operation, it doesn't do well with instant heating changes. The system in general is meant to keep a constant temperature all the time. If you try and turn it from 68-75, it'll take hours to heat up and run through the system. Best advice, find a temperature you are satisfied with, and don't touch it all winter. Or if you do decide to move it around, plan ahead. Another big tip, don't use smart thermostats with anything attached to the geo. We bought a nice learning Nest system and had to sell all of it because it kept trying to lower the heat during the day and crank it up at night. Our geo couldn't keep up with the wild temp swings and the back up would kick on constantly. The biggest source of the increase in electric is the circulating pump. We have 3 450' wells and the water in the geo can't sit stagnant. The whole design is to constantly move water from below the surface through the heating pump and through the needed lines. It circulates 24/7, 365. When you crank the heat, it needs to move water through the whole process faster and the heating pump also kicks into different stages (at least on ours). All of this leads to an increase in electric usage. Granted, it's super efficient in what it does, but it's still an added expense on the electric side.
Yeah we’ve already said we’ll set it and leave it alone. If we get chilly, grab a blanket or turn on the fireplace for a little bit. Good tip on the smart thermostat, thanks!
UGHHHHHH. Something got in our coop last night and killed the entire flock. 12 chickens. Didn't take them or eat them, just killed them. It's so upsetting. They were more like pets then just farm animals. The coop was so protected too, there were a couple spots where a snake could get in, but we didn't think anything else could. Can't believe it....
So sorry for your loss. It's hard to loss one, let alone all at once. From what you describe, it sounds like a weasel got in. They will kill for sport and can get in very small openings. They will also dig.
@bewildered I'm thinking that as well. There wasn't many spaces it could get into, literally a garter snake would come and go now and again, but we didn't think it was big enough for anything else to get it. It couldn't have dug under anything as there's a concrete pad on the coop floor and 4x4's bolted into the floor. Only thing we can think of is there is spaces between the roof and the studs in their run and it could have pushed through the flap between the run and coop. We'll have to reinforce everything before we get new chickens. Thanks for all the well wishes. It's like losing 12 dogs at once.