Oh, and for anyone thinking of installing a solar heating system, please call me so that I can practice my maniacal laugh. To put it bluntly, they suck. They all suck.<\/p>\n
You are much better off paying for a good gas furnace and gas water heater than trying to “save the environment” with a solar heating system. According to the contractors we have replacing most of ours right now, the whole system probably cost around $40,000 to install in the early ’70s and has probably saved close to $3,000 on gas bills up to the point when it died dramatically necessitating an almost complete replacement. This is NOT<\/strong> a cost saving measure.<\/p>\n To help to understand this, let me try to explain the total “cost” of a solar system. First off, it is made from metals and glass. These things do not simply grow into the shape of a solar system and get picked by farmers; it takes energy to dig them up, refine them, shape them, assemble them, transport them and install them. If all of that energy had been spent heating your home, the heat would probably outlast the solar system. But that is not all.<\/p>\n Solar systems also require energy to run. What, you think the heat magically gets from the roof to a tank in the basement? NO. Something must be pumped up to collect the heat and then moved through some sort of storage facility to hold it for when it will be needed. All of the systems must be monitored to determine when it is appropriate to try to collect heat, which takes energy. And to top it all off, a solar system works best in the summer when you don’t need as much heat as you do cold, which you cannot get from a solar heater.<\/p>\n Solar heating, not just a bad idea, a stupid one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Oh, and for anyone thinking of installing a solar heating system, please call me so that I can practice my maniacal laugh. To put it bluntly, they suck. They all suck. You are much better off paying for a good gas furnace and gas water heater than trying to “save the environment” with a solar […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyberzod.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyberzod.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyberzod.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyberzod.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyberzod.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cyberzod.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68,"href":"https:\/\/cyberzod.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49\/revisions\/68"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyberzod.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyberzod.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyberzod.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}