Shop temp

[Jeff-C175 7,202]

1 hour ago, squonk said:

Did he have a white afro and beard and weigh 100 lbs? 

 

No, that sounds more like my Grandma!

 

Dad did work for E-K for quite a few years in the mid to late 70s. In Massachusetts I believe. My brother was living in MA for a while and he ran into a guy at the church he was attending who had worked for E-K.  Bro asked him if he knew Fred ____.  He said "OHHH, you mean 'six pack' !  Yeah, I knew him! "  Bro asked him why he called him 'six pack'.  Guy explained that every day at lunch time he would head out to his car and slam a six pack.  Yeah... Daddy drank a bit !  

Edited November 19, 2021 by Jeff-C175

[Gregor 4,846]

The furnace has ran now for 48 hours with the clocked wired in. I hooked it up Thursday, and started keeping track at 1:00 PM. The furnace has an induction fan and a blower fan. Combined, they draw a total of 3.8 amps, according to the tags on the motors. Our electric rate is not constant. It varies according to the time of day. Peak hours and off peak hours. I figured the average cost out at .12 per Kw hour. Using this calculator, ( https://www.omnicalculator.com/everyday-life/electricity-cost ). I calculated it costs .55 per hour to run the furnace, electricity wise anyway. I have no idea how to figure gas consumption, maybe someone else out there does.

 

From 1 PM Thursday, to 1 PM Friday, with the thermostat set at 71 F for the 24 hour period, the furnace ran a total of 6 hours and 35 minutes. ~$3.60 for the electricity.  The outside temp from Thursday to Friday was between 20 and 35 F for the 24 hour period. As per the thermometer on my house.

 

I then timed the furnace from 1 PM Friday to 1 PM Saturday, turning the thermostat down to 55 F at 7 PM Friday, turning it back up to 71 F at 3 AM Saturday. At 3 AM the garage was 58 F. The furnace had not ran at all between 7 PM and 3 AM. When I turned it back up, the furnace ran for 52 minutes, to bring the garage back to 71 F. Typically it ran in cycles of 6 to 8 minutes at a time.

 

As of today at 1 PM the furnace had run for 5 hours and 51 minutes, during the 24 hour period. 44 minutes less than it ran for the previous 24 hour period, BUT……...at 9 AM this morning my thermometer registered 44 F. At 1 PM it said 61 F.

 

The second 24 hour period was obviously much warmer than the previous. I cannot control the outside temp.

I will try this again later in the winter season when temps are colder, and a bit steadier.

[Handy Don 12,237]

I think you might be chasing your tail on this one unless you can get more data. There are too many variations.

Nonetheless, it is important for you to know that heating that garage is costing in excess of $100 a month in moderately cold weather. I'd be looking at insulation!

[Gregor 4,846]

I am not looking for total cost of heating my garage. I know there is more than $100 a month cost simply in electricity, and it's not cold yet. I am simply looking to compare setting the thermostat down at night, or leaving it constant. As far as insulation, the garage is 2X4 walls with 3 1/2" of insulation. There is 12" of fiberglass insulation in the ceiling. It has an insulated overhead door, no windows, one walk in door. I think my biggest heat loss is through the flood, but I'm not sure there is anything to be done about it.

On the upside, I have a couple of small garage projects left to do this season, and I will be pretty much done in the garage for the winter. I can turn the thermostat down to  40 or 50.

[Handy Don 12,237]

Yep, adding insulation where you already have it is low yield stuff. It's that floor. BTW, most people don't realize how thermally conductive concrete is!

 

In my previous home, I insulated and decked over the floor of my shop with tongue and groove underlayment, but of course it did not have to support anything as heavy as a car. For the stationary tools I set blocks down to the concrete under the tools' feet.

In my current home I used this under fairly heavy laminated flooring for a recreation room. Its normal use is to keep backfill soil away from the outside of below ground foundation walls especially where freeze/thaw is a factor--it's tough stuff. Our room has a slate bed pool table and I would have no doubt the floor would support tractors on wheels with ease.  I'm seriously considering installing it in my basement shop (inaccessible for tractors ) as well and I'd add pads to distribute any concentrated heavy loads. 

Edited November 20, 2021 by Handy Don

[Jeff-C175 7,202]

6 hours ago, Gregor said:

cannot control the outside temp.

 

No, but you can correlate run time to 'heating degree days'.  In this way you would be able to say the heater runs x minutes per degree day.

 

I used to have a link to a website that published daily degree days and I'll look to see if I can find it again.

 

Here it is: https://www.degreedays.net/

 

You're also going to need to go for longer sample times in order to filter out the 'noise' in the data.  I would suggest at least a week at a time.

 

Edited November 21, 2021 by Jeff-C175

[Gregor 4,846]

16 hours ago, Gregor said:

I calculated it costs .55 per hour to run the furnace, electricity wise anyway.

Seems I made a mistake in using the electricity calculator. Actual cost is 5 1/2 cents per day rather than 55 cents per hour. If this is not right, let me know, but I hope it is.

 

I found another electricity calculator on line. According to it, my cost is 38 cents per day, if the furnace runs for 7 hours.

 

Math never was my strong suit. I've never really found my strong suit.

Edited November 21, 2021 by Gregor

[Zeek 2,286]

17 hours ago, Gregor said:

The furnace has ran now for 48 hours with the clocked wired in. I hooked it up Thursday, and started keeping track at 1:00 PM. The furnace has an induction fan and a blower fan. Combined, they draw a total of 3.8 amps, according to the tags on the motors. Our electric rate is not constant. It varies according to the time of day. Peak hours and off peak hours. I figured the average cost out at .12 per Kw hour. Using this calculator, ( https://www.omnicalculator.com/everyday-life/electricity-cost ). I calculated it costs .55 per hour to run the furnace, electricity wise anyway. I have no idea how to figure gas consumption, maybe someone else out there does.

 

From 1 PM Thursday, to 1 PM Friday, with the thermostat set at 71 F for the 24 hour period, the furnace ran a total of 6 hours and 35 minutes. ~$3.60 for the electricity.  The outside temp from Thursday to Friday was between 20 and 35 F for the 24 hour period. As per the thermometer on my house.

 

I then timed the furnace from 1 PM Friday to 1 PM Saturday, turning the thermostat down to 55 F at 7 PM Friday, turning it back up to 71 F at 3 AM Saturday. At 3 AM the garage was 58 F. The furnace had not ran at all between 7 PM and 3 AM. When I turned it back up, the furnace ran for 52 minutes, to bring the garage back to 71 F. Typically it ran in cycles of 6 to 8 minutes at a time.

 

As of today at 1 PM the furnace had run for 5 hours and 51 minutes, during the 24 hour period. 44 minutes less than it ran for the previous 24 hour period, BUT……...at 9 AM this morning my thermometer registered 44 F. At 1 PM it said 61 F.

 

The second 24 hour period was obviously much warmer than the previous. I cannot control the outside temp.

I will try this again later in the winter season when temps are colder, and a bit steadier.

 

Your other option is to do what I did . . . sell the heater, the thermostat and the clock and move to Florida  

[SylvanLakeWH 25,604]

40 minutes ago, Gregor said:

 

 

I found another electricity calculator on line. According to it, my cost is 38 cents per day, if the furnace runs for 7 hours.

 

Seems awfully low to me… 

 

 

[Gregor 4,846]

Calculator

 

3.8 Amps X 120 volts = 456 watts

 

 

[lynnmor 7,309]

1 hour ago, Zeek said:

 

Your other option is to do what I did . . . sell the heater, the thermostat and the clock and move to Florida  

 

Hang on to that thermostat, you will need it about 360 days a year to keep the A/C and electric meter cranking. 

[Maxwell-8 4,277]

On 11/21/2021 at 3:16 PM, Gregor said:

Calculator

 

3.8 Amps X 120 volts = 456 watts

 

 

 

0.12$ a kWH, we pay close to triple that here in Belgium....

[Gregor 4,846]

I have looked at a lot of different methods on line for figuring gas consumption by any one appliance. Sometimes I come up with vastly different numbers.

 

The best figure I can come up with for my 45000 BTU furnace is, it cost slightly less than $1.00 an hour, to operate my furnace. This is based on a natural gas cost of $9.57 per 1000 Cu Ft of gas.

I used this method to calculate my gas usage. Right or wrong, it's what I did. This is simply an example. It's not my heater.

 

 

Here are the particlars:

1. I have Goodman model GMPN100-4 furnace. (natural gas, single stage, pilotless and an input rating of 100,000 BTU per Hour)

FIRST WAY USING BTU INPUT RATING:

1.One cubic foot of natural gas has about 1,030 BTU.

2.Divide the furnace input rating(in my case 100,000) by 1030 to get the number of cubic feet of gas the furnace will use in one hour. So 100,000(BTU) divided by 1030(BTU per Cubic Foot) is about 97 Cub Feet.

3.My supplier's bill is based on units of one hundred cubic feet(CCF) so I divide 97 cubic feet by 100 to determine how many CCF the furnace will burn per

hour. This turns out to be 0.97 CCF

4.My supplier charges $.745 per CCF so it costs me 0.97 times $.745 = $.72 per hour for natural gas for my furnace to run.

[Jeff-C175 7,202]

6 minutes ago, Gregor said:

Right or wrong

 

I think that's correct for determining the CF of gas per hour... and the cost, but it doesn't mean much unless it's correlated to the degree days if your goal it to try and determine whether or not the 'setback' method is more economical.

 

[Gregor 4,846]

1 minute ago, Jeff-C175 said:

if your goal it to try and determine whether or not the 'setback' method is more economical.

Thats true, but unless I can control the outside temp, there really is no way to do that. At least not for my brain.

[Jeff-C175 7,202]

7 hours ago, Gregor said:

Thats true, but unless I can control the outside temp, there really is no way to do that. At least not for my brain.

 

Go to that 'degreedays.net' website that I posted a link to.  You can download the data for free into a .csv file.  Easy peasy.

 

[Gregor 4,846]

I entered my numbers into the Degree Days Calculator.  It gave me a lot of numbers. For instance, using 71 as a base temp, the numbers for;

11/11/21.....21

11/12/21....34

11/13/21....34.6

11/14/21....34.2

 

and so on ans so on. Just what these numbers represent?  Aint got a clue.

[ebinmaine 67,672]

Here's an article with a fair explanation. 

 

https://www.degreedays.net/introduction

 

 

[Gregor 4,846]

I read the entire article. I now understand what the numbers mean, I think. I have my clock hooked up to the furnace, and am keeping track of run time for every 24 hour period. I started Monday morning at 7 AM, and will continue until...........................I dunno.. Until I tire of it I guess. It will be interesting (to me anyway) to compare the run time of the furnace, to the degree days on the chart, at the end of a weeks time, 2 weeks, and so on.

Once I have a couple of weeks recorded, then I can try turning down the temp at night for a 2 week period, and once again compare hours of run time to degree days. 

As far as actual cost of running the furnace, I have it at 52 cents per hour. Some things Degree Days does not take into consideration are wind rain and snow. WHile these things do not actually make things colder than the ambient temperature, they will bring warmer objects down to the ambient temperature quicker.

 

This is the kind of thing a person does when he doesn't have anything else to do.  

I gotta build me a bigger shed.  

 

[ebinmaine 67,672]

8 minutes ago, Gregor said:

This is the kind of thing a person does when he doesn't have anything else to do.  

I gotta build me a bigger shed

Building a bigger shed would inherently give you something to do.  

 

It is interesting to see your results.....

 

 

 

[Handy Don 12,237]

3 hours ago, Gregor said:

Some things Degree Days does not take into consideration are wind rain and snow. WHile these things do not actually make things colder than the ambient temperature, they will bring warmer objects down to the ambient temperature quicker.

Pursuing this and coming up with a feasible deterministic solution would be of terrific interest to building scientists and likely earn you a doctorate. Good luck!

[Gregor 4,846]

16 minutes ago, Handy Don said:

Pursuing this and coming up with a feasible deterministic solution would be of terrific interest to building scientists and likely earn you a doctorate. Good luck!

That's a little over my head. Actually way the over my head. I am simply trying to satisfy my own curiosity as best I can. I do believe I understand more about it now, than I did a week ago. Next week, maybe I can not only explain to my wife it does no good to turn the heat down at night, but I will be able to explain WHY ?

[squonk 41,162]

On 11/21/2021 at 8:35 AM, Zeek said:

 

Your other option is to do what I did . . . sell the heater, the thermostat and the clock and move to Florida  

The savings on electricity will be nullified by the use of the industrial sized bug zappers! 

[Gregor 4,846]

10 minutes ago, squonk said:

The savings on electricity will be nullified by the use of the industrial sized bug zappers! 

My nephew and his wife moved to southern Alabama a few years ago. They didn't stay long. In her words: "I am not living with bugs bigger than the dog ! "

[ebinmaine 67,672]

Hence, I live in Maine.

Spiders insects and snakes that could take you out are so rare here that they don't even have to exist, on paper...