The XMEN Clan Forums

I'm glad our house is a little newer and has Natural Gas heat. We have a lot of houses no too far from me that burn LP, and it was really scare up here last winter, and it was brutally cold. I wouldn't want to go through that hassle. I'm thinking that I might switch my water heater to gas once it's time to replace that thing. It costs less per them to heat water than it does per KWh. With a family of 5, that adds up quick.

To be really efficient, you'll probably want to look at installing a smaller heater near your kitchen/bathroom to supplement heating the water. That way you don't run the faucets for a minute or two waiting for hot water. Or you could do what I do with showers and just get in, bear the cold for a couple of minutes, and rinse off with nice hot water.

Just picture it... me rubbing male shower products all over my strapping young body (while it's cold!), then a luxurious steamy shower for a few minutes to loosen things up.

Then after you've been picturing this for a few minutes, go eat some ice cream. Trust me.



As for the house.... my next big project (possibly next summer) is to replace and extend our rotting wood deck with something new (possibly composite wood... but it's darn expensive), and plumb a natural gas line out there to switch my grill over from propane.

I don't know if composite is really the way to go yet when it's 3x the price of pressure treated or cedar decking. Eventually, we will put a deck on our place.. But after the bathroom, we're going to have windows installed this fall. The cheap contractor grade windows have got to go.. Last winter with -30F temps was pretty brutal with those cold drafts coming in.