1/ Got a quote on doubling up our house heating oil tank this morning. I can understand why some people get intimidated into things they don't really want. I had an idea in my head, and this guy - while very nice - "knew better", so kept trying to steer me in another direction
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2/ why? bc he was trying to save me $500. ...at a cost of losing like 100 square feet of my basement. Money is not tightly bounded. I can work some extra hours, but I can not easily replace those square feet. I'm pretty articulate and reasonably forceful, so I had no problem
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3/ asking "are you saying this is IMPOSSIBLE, are you saying this is a POSSIBLE BUT A TREMEMDOUSLY BAD IDEA, or are you just saying that your DEFAULT is to do it my way?". Turns out "oh, sure, we can do it that way". ...but I've run into this before.
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4/ Chimney repair guy wanted to cut through our plastered and textured wall, right in the living room, and install a big steel access door. Why? Well, it would save him half an hour doing a thing the right way.
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ⓘ Dogs don't have thumbs Retweeted YallQaeda
5/ yeah and this is terrible I'm prob in the top 1% of white collar folks who are able to talk to tradesmen and ask relevant questions (e.g. why do you need to go through the wall? Couldn't you use an SDS diamond coring bit and go through the concrete?)https://twitter.com/jkrwld/status/1504821554974232579 …
ⓘ Dogs don't have thumbs added,
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6/ and so I can get what I want fairly reliably ...but I expect huge numbers of people get things that are 5-10% sub-optimal for their own utility function bc they didn't know the 1 question to ask, or the 1 way to push back.,
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ⓘ Dogs don't have thumbs Retweeted Jesse Smith
7/ More cynical than my take (rare!). I think most tradesmen mean well / are honest, but they are just lazy (not physically, but intellectually - "I like to do it this way").https://twitter.com/JesseTayRiver/status/1504825149178195972 …
ⓘ Dogs don't have thumbs added,
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Replying to @MorlockP
Rural competence is higher. Rich city dwellers experience this all the time at their 2nd homes. $3mil NY apartments they can't heat or cool vs $400k Catskill homes to which dudes show up and actually fix shit.
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Replying to @JesseTayRiver @MorlockP
Many of my neighbors also enable scammy HVAC contractors by trying to brute force high performance systems into dilapidated Victorians where the real problem is insulation and air leaks
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Replying to @paleonormie @MorlockP
Yeah, giving people a hard target of <60kbtu/hr design day loss is maybe one way to get there. For 80% efficient wood burning folks this is <4 cords/year.
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our house is modern and well insulated (6" walls!) ...and we burn 15 cords/year huge house, open fields, lots of surface area to conduct heat away
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Replying to @MorlockP @paleonormie
I've retrofit ~2k houses, and something's up. I'd check unconditioned ducts, high air leakage (attic), air handler driven room pressure, uninsulated masonry walls, low wood-burning eff. Assuming >70% wood burning, I see annual btus in that range 1-2x year.
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