Brooklyn1 wrote:
....
An unheated crawl space is not a good place for water pipes.

it is not unheated nor is it open. only when the power goes
out for several days is there any worries (even in the middle
of the winter with sub zero temperatures).

the crawl space is where the heater is at for the
house, stays pretty warm.


I
suggest closing the crawl space, insulate, and since you already have
a gas supply install a ventless gas heater, they work fantastically
well, need no chimney, and no electric. I have two of them, a 30,000
BTU in my basement and a 10,000 BTU in the tool shed that contains my
well tank. They were a far better option than a generator. Ventless
gas heaters are 99% efficient (no heat goes up a chimney), they are
thermostatically controlled, and have a self contained carbon monoxide
detector that shuts them off when it senses incomplete combustion. At
next to it's lowest setting it maintains my 2,000 sqft basement at
70ºF, I keep the basement door open and at the other end of the house
installed a 6" X 12" register in the hallway floor so it keeps the
entire house at 70ºF too, and this is when it's hovering around 0ºF
outdoors. This winter I'm using the one in my basement in conjuction
with my propane fired boiler for hot water baseboard, it keeps the
boiler from coming on nearly as often as it did previously. This past
May I had a tankless on demand water heater installed (I no longer use
my boiler to make hot water, my boiler will be off from April to
November, my propane bill has already been $500 less than for the same
period in the previous year, it will pay for itself in 18 months. I
thought long and hard about a generator, but I can live without TV/PC
for a few days during a power outage, and during winter I don't need a
fridge/freezer here. For $35 I bought a crank radio that works great,
it will even charge a cell phone battery, and Ray-O-Vac makes
fantastic battery operated lanterns, they give as much light as a 100W
bulb and will run for 80 hours on three D cells... much better than
burning candles. I don't need to squirrel away water for flushing,
even during the coldest winters the creek out front is running, I'm
able to scoop all I need with a 5 gallon contractor's bucket. Anyway,
ventless heaters and tankless water heaters are beautiful things.

there are several upgrades i would like to make at
some point in the future, but at present we're as we
are...

we spend about $600-900/yr for heat and to run the
gas fireplace once in a while. the rest of our monthly
costs are electric at about $1200/yr. compared to many
we're quite inexpensive on heating/cooling. if it were
just me i could probably cut those expenses in half or
more.


songbird