All Forum Posts by: Seth Borman

 Energy does not equal electricity, the 73% includes gasoline. Do you heat your home with gasoline? I don't.

 A gas stove is about 40% efficient, an electric stove is about 75% efficient. If you are in California, 50% of your electricity come from gas, the rest is mostly nukes, hydro or renewable (coal is .2%). Factor in distribution losses and you are still using less gas to run an electric stove than a gas one. 

But also keep in mind that the business case for electrified cooking is the weakest of all the appliances, the strongest case is for water and space heating where heat pumps use 1/3 the energy to do the same thing. Most people living in California would use less gas for heating if they had a heat pump that was powered by a gas turbine somewhere. They are that efficient.

 Pretty easy to build a home without a gas line, half of all new houses don't have one, but they all seem to have electricity, don't they?

The grid load problem in CA is because of ACs on hot days. Are you going to solve that with natural gas too? 

Having seen inherited properties a time or two, the first thing you need to be thinking about is collecting rent, not paying property taxes...

I'm not an expert on this but the term for it is encapsulating the crawlspace, and it's generally a good idea as long as you do it right.

I would use that search term to find more information on how to do it right. 

I did that to a seven unit, worked out pretty well. Mini splits don't do great if there are a lot of walls so keep that in mind for two bedroom units.

 The NEC doesn't care about zoning. A multiunit building can only have one service drop, that doesn't mean that it can't have more than one meter.

The city or utility might have their own spin on things, but it isn't coming from the electrical code.

 No, it's never going to look cheap, because it never will be. It's 100x the price of surface water. Cutting water consumption is much cheaper than finding more water.

 Right now water isn't priced for conservation. I will know that people are serious about saving water when they start to price it like it is important.

Desalination is too expensive, it would be like solving a power shortage by hiring day laborers to generate power on stationary bicycles.

Toilet to tap is a lot cheaper. Rainwater capture is cheaper. Tearing out lawns, golf courses, cotton or hay fields... it's all cheaper.