All Forum Posts by: Seth Borman

 If you're trying to save water, not energy to heat it, then you need to install a tank water heater with a smaller tank. 

The most efficient water heater you can buy is a heat pump water heater. It uses a tank and heat from the unit to heat the water. You can get 15 amp 220v, or even a unit that plugs into the 110v plug that a gas water heater uses.

If that is the case then there was an issue with your install. I haven't had that issue with any of the 8 mini splits I've used.

I don't understand what it means to "not be impressed by them."

They do exactly what they are designed to do, heat and cool without having to run ductwork.

They might not control humidity all that well.

But they almost always use less electricity than ducted HVAC. Particularly ducts run through a hot attic...

Flip your houses for owner occupants. Or get them vacant now and wait for rents to go up before you register with the city housing office.

If they haven't figured out that they need to register housing units and inspect them regularly, they will.

This isn't at all true. A 100 amp panel can support a heat pump. If you plan on using heat strips you will need more.

That's only true if you have a gravity system. Many hydronic systems use electric pumps. From the perspective of someone that has lived in cooling climates for a long time, the idea of a boiler system in a place that rarely freezes is absolutely ridiculous. It's not worth the cost and it's not worth giving up AC.

Even then, it's often cheaper to use a heat pump than it is to use gas. 

Which form of energy a house uses is pretty low on the list of things to consider when buying, particularly in Houston where heating is not much of a thing.

Gas isn't more "efficient," it's generally cheaper. A heat pump is much more efficient, even factoring in power generation and transmission losses. A heat pump water heater, for instance, uses less gas than a gas water heater, assuming the electricity is produced by burning gas.

Electric resistance heat is expensive and inefficient.

A power outage in Houston is almost never an emergency except in the coldest storms every 50 years.

When the power goes out your gas heat generally becomes unusable as well, because you still need electricity to run your blower motor.

If your summer AC bills are over $400/mo I would start with looking at the building envelope and HVAC rather than just adding solar. If you do add solar later you'll need less of it to offset what you use.

In LA it helps to go to LADBS and request the records, not everything is online. You can sometimes get permits that you can't get ay other way. I've had to do that a couple of times.