|
NYSERDA, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, has just expanded it's Air-Source Heat Pump (ASHP) Program as of April 2019. This program is similar to the better known Solar Program which offers rebates and financing options for solar panel projects. Previously this ASHP Program offered a $500 rebate on the installation of high efficiency cold-climate air-source heat pumps. NOW, for whole house applications there is an expanded rebate program which offers a rebate to the customer of $1000 per ton of the outdoor unit!
Another very important part of this new program expansion by NYSERDA is the addition for customers to get low interest, no money down financing through the state for these systems. The interest rates range from 3.49-7.49% where lower income households can qualify for the lowest rate! This new option to finance these systems will significantly increase it's affordability especially for low income households where these systems might be a no brainer in efficiency and cost, but there are issues in getting a significant chunk of money together at one time. There are two types of financing available: On-Bill financing and Smart Energy Loans. On-Bill Financing: What are they? Residential On-Bill Recovery loans make it easy to pay and manage installation costs by adding them as a line item to your monthly utility bill. If you decide to sell your home and move, the unpaid balance of the loan can easily be transferred to the new homeowners. Terms. Interest rates are subject to the customer’s credit qualification. We encourage you to use our interest rate estimator to determine which rate may be available to you. Rates are subject to change. Smart Energy Loan: What are they? Through our residential Smart Energy loans, your repayments are made directly to NYSERDA’s loan provider. Terms. Interest rates are subject to the customer’s credit qualification. We encourage you to use our interest rate estimator to determine which rate may be available to you. Rates are subject to change. This program expansion is an extension of the Green Jobs Green New York initiative. New York State currently has the goal of cutting our green house gas emissions by 80% by 2050. Air-source heat pumps are going to be a large part of that. They are an environmentally friendly and efficient way to heat your house and/or your business.
13 Comments
Knob and Tube Knob and Tube Knob and tube wiring was the very first type of household wiring that was installed. It utilizes only two conductors per circuit, so that means that there is no grounding conductor, which in and of itself is a reason to tear it out. There are several reasons that you should have it replaced: 1. It is very old, and consequently brittle. 2. These wires get hotter than modern circuitry, so you can not put insulation in the wall around them. That means you can't insulate your attic floor, or your outside walls. If you do, it is a serious fire hazard. 3. The wires are most certainly overloaded. New houses have an average of 20 to 42 circuits. When the knob and tube was put in, nobody ever envisioned the amount of electrical load you would be putting on them. Back then most homes had four circuits at best. 4. The boxes that used to house the knob and tube wiring, receptacles and lights, are too small. The insulation on the wires will inevitably decay and cause a short circuit. 5. The slightest disturbance of the wiring, such as replacing a light or receptacle, could itself be fire hazard because of the brittleness. 6. The wiring is not color coded, so it is very likely that lights or receptacles are wired backwards. 7. It is a much greater shock hazard than new wiring. 8. This is a big one. Many insurance companies will not cover, or will cancel your homeowners insurance. 9. It really drags down the value of your house, many people will refuse to buy one that contains it. 10. Some electronics rely on a ground wire to operate properly, so you may be putting undue stress on your gadgets. 11. The safety of you and your family is at risk. The best thing to do, is find a qualified electrician, or contractor, and come up with a plan. Unless you are tearing out all the interior walls to expose the wires, it is pretty involved to replace it with new wiring. It may be easiest to replace one circuit at a time, because it takes a while to complete each section. The walls can sometimes be "fished", meaning strategically finding ways to get new wires in, with minimal wall damage. It is not cheap, but in the end it looks like it was always there. The other option it to use Wire-mold surface conduit. Some people do not like it for aesthetic reasons, but it is probably less expensive. Once all of the knob and tube is permanently de-energized, you can insulate your house normally (and safely). You will sleep better knowing your house wiring is not a ticking time bomb. Cloth Wire This is an example of cloth insulated wiring, where the cloth is directly wrapped around the metal conductor Cloth wiring is in old houses and is the predecessor to modern house wiring (Romex). There are essentially two types. One type has a ground conductor in it. The other does not. The cloth wire without an extra ground wire keeps you from using three prong receptacles, without ground fault protection. There is one thing for sure. These wires are pretty old. They have not been installed in houses for 50+ years. The wiring has a very old rubberized insulation and paper, that is very likely degraded by now. If you have this kind of wiring, I would have it evaluated by a professional, to determine its integrity, and what you can do to mitigate any fire risk,or whether it needs to be redone. The second kind of cloth wire has an extra wire called a equipment grounding conductor, or just ground by most people. This wire is a step up from the 2 wire kind. You can use three prong receptacles, and the wire is a bit safer. I would have it evaluated to determine if the insulation is rotting. If you move the wires in a box, and the insulation starts to fall of then something needs to be done. There is a real fire risk. An old house with old wiring requires a skilled evaluation to develop a plan to make ts safer. It is also possible that the wiring is just fine,and you don't need to update it at all. Chances are though, you may not have enough circuits,and you are tripping breakers. In many cases adding a few new circuits, to take load off of the old ones can really help a lot. Arc fault breakers can be an inexpensive short term solution to fireproofing old wiring. They will open the circuit faster than a normal breaker should there be a fault. This can be a band-aid until new circuits can be installed to replace the old ones. Romex - Modern House Wire Romex is the most common type of residential wiring. In this picture we see 12 gauge wire which is encased in a yellow jacketing, 14 gauge wire is white Romex is the modern standard for household wiring. Its technical name is Non-metallic,or NM cable. The newest kind is NM-B. NM-B is the new standard, so if you have new wiring installed, this is the kind you would get. What is important to know is that this wiring, when installed correctly, is very reliable, and should last for decades. Unlike Knob and Tube, or some older cloth wiring, romex always has a ground wire, which makes it inherently safer, both from a fireproofing standpoint, and it is less likely to allow someone to be shocked. Its outer jacket is slippery and makes installation easy. The only problem is that the cable is relatively soft, and can be damaged by a nail or screw that is driven into the wall. It is important to know that if you see an electrician installing romex that it should be run through the very center of the studs. It is required to be 1 1/4" inches in from the face of the stud, on both sides. If this is impossible, the a nail guard(steel plate), must be put over the wire to prevent someone from using a nail or screw there. In all new residential installations Arc Fault Breakers are required in most of the circuits in your house. These breakers will not reset if the wire is damaged, or installed incorrectly. It is a good idea to have them put in existing houses, because they really do help prevent electrical fires. The good news is that if you see you service panel is filled with romex wires, you can rest assured that the wiring is not that old, and is certainly not rotting. Metallic Cable Metallic cable - MC is mostly used in commercial settings, but can also be used in residential settings where the wiring needs to be more heavily armored Metallic Cable - BX
It is not uncommon to see metallic cables in houses. If you look at your service panel, you can usually see the wiring coming out, unless you panel is recessed. The older style of metallic cable is called BX cable. BX cable has a steel outer jacket, that is very strong. These cables did not have a ground wire carried inside them. Instead, the out jacket itself is used as the ground path. There is good and bad news about this kind of cable. The good news is that it is very tough and if it should short out, it should trip a breaker with only a low chance of starting a fire. The bad news is that the individual wire insulation is not as durable as new insulation. Consequently, due to its age, it is not uncommon to open a box with a light, switch or receptacle and find that when you move the wires the insulation starts to crumble away. If this is the case then the wiring should be updated. I recommend to homeowners that in the short term, Arc Fault Breakers, should be immediately installed to offer some protection to the circuits. It is not worth risking an electrical fire. Chances are, with a house that old the walls are wood/plaster lathe, and are not as fire proof as newer construction. Metallic Cable - MC MC cable is newer than BX. They have a separate ground wire in them, which is a good thing. These cables are tougher than their non-metallic cousins. consequently, they are more resistant to nails or screws, or other incidental contact. You will often see it installed in garages and unfinished basements. non-metallic cables are generally not supposed to be run on surfaces where they are exposed to damage, so MC/AC cables are the preferred method. The national electric code requires a few things that are different for metallic cables than non-metallic cables. First, the boxes must be metal, and have proper connectors. The boxes must also be bonded(grounded). an MC cables outer jacket is not considered a ground path, so a green screw must bond the ground wire to the box. An MC cables jacket is considered and proper ground path, so it does not require a bonding screw to the box. It is never acceptable to run a metallic cable to a plastic box. It is however OK to use a metal box with non-metallic wiring. These are steps you can take when getting ready to start your A/C or mini-split Heat pump at the beginning of the warm season.
  If you have a fuse box in your house that looks anything like the picture to the left, I would recommend you have it upgraded to a breaker box. There are several reasons I say this: 1.It is old. 2.I can almost guarantee it is overloaded. Any house nowadays requires more circuits than the old fuses boxes hold. 3.It will increase your resale value. 4.Some homeowners insurance companies raise your rate, or even cancel your policy, if you have one. (it just happened to a customer of mine recently) 5.They are a known fire hazard, because people oversize the fuses, and the wires can get very hot, without blowing the fuse. 6.It is somewhat difficult to tell if a fuse is blown, compared to a breaker. 7.There is no room for new circuits, whereas a new panel could have 42 spots (yours likely has less than 12). 8.When a breaker trips, you don't need to run out to the store and buy a new one. 9.Looking at the face of the fuse panel, you can not tell what is the proper fuse size. The cover needs to be removed to determine wire size. 10.Changing fuses can occasionally be hazardous. I have been shocked when inserting a fuse, because it was wired backwards.
 AFCI breakers are the latest and greatest in circuit protection. They are designed to protect your house wiring against a variety of faults, and help prevent fires. The receptacles (outlets) are the same but work for just that outlet or a portion of the circuit. These receptacles look just like GFCI receptacles.
Arcing faults can be caused by damaged, or improperly installed wiring. These faults can get very hot, and are a common source of house fires. Driving a nail or screw into a wire, rodents, loose wire nuts,or even age can cause a wire to fail. These breakers will not reset, until the fault goes away, or the wire is repaired. If it keeps tripping, call a qualified electrician to locate the problem. You can test an Arc Fault breaker by hitting the button. It should pop open the breaker. Then you turn it all the way off, and then back on again. If you find an Arc fault breaker that is tripped in your house, first unplug everything om that circuit, then try to reset it. If it resets, then it could be a faulty cord or device that is plugged into it. If it still trips then call an electrician, because you may have a serious problem.  GFCI receptacles are designed to protect people from getting shocked. They contain sensors that measure the balance between the hot and the neutral Connections. To put it simply, it senses that there is current going somewhere it shouldn't. For example, through you! Ouch!
It is so sensitive that it will open in a few hundredths of a second, on very low fault levels. The standard fault sensitivity is set at a level that a small child can survive. The most common faults are caused when water is present, most electrical devices that get wet could possibly cause a shock, and way very well not trip a standard circuit breaker. One of the great things about GFCIs is that they can protect a string of receptacles. So one device could protect all of the plugs in your garage, for example. They are required in kitchens,bathrooms, unfinished basements, within 6 feet of any basin, exteriors, and garages. The national electrical code does not require you to replace all of your plugs, in these locations, unless the device is being changed for a different reason. Personally, I recommend changing them anyway, for safety reasons. Another use of GFCIs is to allow two prong ungrounded plugs to legally be replaced with a three prong receptacle. This is your only option if the circuit is ungrounded, and you need three prong plugs, aside from rewiring the circuit. There are also GFCI breakers that can go in your breaker box, these cost $50 dollars and up, compared to GFCI receptacles which vary from $25 and up. There are two buttons on the receptacles, one is the test button, which should pop when pressed, causing the plug to de-energize. The second button is the reset button, which should turn the plug back on. If the button won't reset I recommend getting an electrician to check it out. The plug itself could be failing, or they may be a fault that needs to be located. You can look for an obvious fault yourself first, such as an extension cord lying in a puddle. |
AuthorHere we, the owner's, of LaMorte Electric Heating and Cooling share the many strange and scary things that we see out in the world of construction. Archives
May 2019
Categories |
LaMorte Electric Heating and Cooling
|
LaMorte Electric Heating and Cooling is proud to be an Inclusive employer. We support the LGBTQ+ community!
|
LaMorte Electric Heating and Cooling is proud to be a Tompkins County Living Wage Employer.
|
LaMorte Electric Heating and Cooling is proud to be listed on the Sustainable Finger Lakes map. We are proud to be a part of their regional sustainability movement.
|
LaMorte Electric Heating and Cooling is proud to be a NYSERDA qualified air source heat pump installer.
|
LaMorte Electric Heating and Cooling is proud to be an Elite Mitsubishi Electric Diamond Contractor.
|
|
|
Lamorte Electric - 607-229-4576
1570 Danby Road, Ithaca NY 14850 |
RSS Feed