Wow, I haven't been on Garden Web in 7-8 months and what a surprise to find this thread I started several years ago back on the first page, LOL. Last year we moved in December and left my greenhouse at our farm for the rest of the winter. DH installed two "new" propane heaters in my greenhouse before we moved, and I have to admit they worked great on their own all winter without any help from me. I went back about twice a week to check on the greenhouse, water my plants, etc., but the greenhouse was basically on its own all winter. The plants didn't really thrive with the propane heat, but at least none of them died. My problems from the previous year had been caused from those piece of shi+ Northern heaters, which were defective from the very first day they arrived. I bought three of them, and it seems strange they were ALL defective. I highly recommend you don't buy your heaters through the mail from Northern. I do believe electric heat is a much cleaner source of heat, and better for my plants. I know this is a big argument here on this forum, but that is how I feel. If I could afford it, I would use electric heat and only use propane for a backup in case of power outages. But our electric rates have sky rocketed here, so even at $1.90 a gallon, propane is still cheaper to heat with. So that's what I'll be using this winter. Hopefully my experience here using propane will be more successful. We finally got the greenhouse moved here to our new home this week. I sure hope to get it up and running before freezing weather gets here. I'm looking forward to enjoying it again soon since I didn't get to last winter due to our move.

Snow reflects the entire light spectrum, thus it apears white (unless you live in London where we have grey snow). Obviously it's very unlikely to reflect straight off the snow on the ground and directly hit the pannels commonly installed on a roof, but when the light photons are bounced off the snow they do go back in to the atmopshere. From here they do a number off things, mostly they're bounced about by the atmospheric gases (mainly water), some are lost in to space and a large number are sent back down to earth again. You can see just how reflective the atmosphere is by looking at the sky. The human eye doesn't see light photons untill they impact particles/gases in the atmosphere, which is why outer space is filled with light photons and still pitch black. One of the many benifits of having atmospheric gases is their ability to trap various form of energy, mainly heat and light close to the earth's surface by reflecting most which are not asorbed on contact with the earth back down again. When the earth's surface is highly reflective the light is constantly bouncing between the ground and the atmopshere, thus raising the levels of solar radiation that will impact the solar collector, and giving a basis to my claim that cold climates are "filled with solar radiation". While the direct path of light provides the most useful energy in a solar system, a large ammount of energy can also be gained from indirect sources like reflection. Also, there will be clouds in cold climates, just it's more common to have clear skys in cold weather. The colder the air, the less water it can hold. Weather forcasts are in part based on rules like this because they're so dependable. Without clouds in the way (although in some cases they can actually help by reflecting light back when white and fluffy) solar systems can work better. Well, I hope this makes better sense. You'll have to excuse my slightly difficult description as I don't speak perfect english and scientific words are not every day lanuage.

They say the US has boosted its Nat Gas reserves by 50% by new methods of measuring reserves. Yet my gas bill just went up 30% in September. http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/energy/2008-07-29-natural-gas_N.htm Something wrong with that equation? A 50% rise in reserves yet my gas bill goes up 30%?? Can you imagine once all the cars and trucks start using CNG. NG prices will really skyrocket and large amounts of people will freeze to death. We heat with NG and keep the thermostat set at 64 at night and keep the heat OFF during the day. If it is in the teens outside the house gets down into the low 50's in daytime. I usually turn on the heat around 9 PM and shut it down at 8 or 9 am. To heat this 'part time' way cost us $325 a month for a modern, highly insulated 2400 sq ft house. (including garage as it has some water pipes in its ceiling). Let's get real about renewable energy...a survivalists view I marvel at some of the cornucopian's outlooks for our future. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornucopian Recently the cornucopians are putting their hopes in keeping the jets flying on algae oil? Well, who knows?? I am not like the atheists that claim they know everything under the sun...I am just a lowly agnostic that in the end does not know. But the cornucopians still have a way to go with algae powered jets. When the cornucopians can pave roads and make roofing shingles out of corn instead of asphalt and make tires out of sewage sludge instead of crude - maybe their time will have arrived. Whether one is an intellectual, cornucopian or survivalist, they all have to live in the future to some extent with their thoughts. The difference between a survivalist and the other two is this. The intellectuals can keep their mind fixated on the future and fantasy as long as they want. They have no reckoning in the present. Their currency of trade is in 'thought' and not in practical application. The survivalist on the other hand must come back to the present to prepare for and implement via 'practical application' what his future needs will be. As futurists we try to anticipate future events and the direction the world is headed in and as survivalists we try to prepare for those circumstances. So I'd suggest to Al Gore or any politician that takes up the renewable energy challenge to open up your eyes to truth of 'what is,' develop a survivalists mentality and not get lost in the fantasy of 'wishful thinking' with how you hope things to be. But being truthful is lofty goal in and of itself for politicians, irrespective of changing our entire world when it comes to powering it. The mantra of the ego based, power hungry politician is; "Give me power for a day and I hope the roof waits to falls in on the next guy and the music wont stop on my presidency." Everything they do while in office is aimed not at truth and what is best for our country, but at spin, lies and making themselves look good in the eye of the voters. All you political knuckleheads that go to these rallies to kiss the asses of your political deities - pin them down on 'Peak Oil' and see what they say. What you will get is NOTHING from them. They could not utter the words Peak Oil if their life depended on it. So it goes with truth and politicians - they do not mix. Al Gores proposed a challenge to both political candidates to switch all electric generation in the US from fossil fuels to renewables within 10 years. Mr. Gore is way off mark with what we will need for future energy generation in the US. He has not addressed a realistic view of the problem. He needs to increase his goal to a minimum of 300% to 400% of our current electric generation capacity. Then he may be approaching what America will really need. And I am conservative in my outlook. The actual number may be closer to 500% to 600% of our current capacity when we factor in the IF'S, AND'S & BUT'S. In the US, 93.2% of our electric comes from nonrenewable, fossil burning or greenhouse gas producing methods. If we are looking to hydroelectric and renewable sources, 4.46% of our electric comes from hydroelectric and 2.34% comes from renewable energy production. Out of this 2.34% of renewable sources, an undisclosed portion still contributes to global warming despite its prestige of being a 'renewable energy source' as it involves the burning of wood, black liquor, wood waste, municipal solid waste, landfill gas, sludge waste, tires, agriculture byproducts and biomass. Only a fraction of the 2.34% of renewable electric energy that is produced comes from geothermal, solar thermal, photovoltaic energy, and wind. These are the areas that Gore wishes to expand. http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epates.html Electricity is where mankind will turn to for power requirements when all fossil fuels as well as uranium dry up in the near future. We can see that humans love affair with fossil fuels will look like a blip on the screen of humans historical record on earth. from:LATOC If you don't know what peak oil has to say about our world and don't want to read the rest of my post, then at least check out: http://www.energybulletin.net/primer 1) When everyone switches to electric cars and plug into the grid, the demand for electricity will go up tremendously. 2) Homes that use natural gas, propane, heating oil will switch to electricity as the fossil fuels will dry up. The highest demand areas such as heating our homes, heating water and cooking are areas that can't be done on practical basis with solar in many parts of the country Sure if you life in CA or AZ you got some hope with the solar hot water. Maybe the NE can also get some hot water in the hot humid summers. But the goal of this massive energy change is to make it as seamless as possible. Proper planning is the difference between part time and full time power. Proper planning is the difference between less deaths versus massive deaths. http://dieoff.org/ 3) All trucks, trains and airplanes will have to find new power sources. Trains can switch to steam, electric or electromagnet. Truck may have to be smaller and run on electric or bio fuels. Farm equipment can be powered by bio fuels. But all these bio fuels take away from our food production. We can see that adding 5% of corn ethanol does to the food picture - and we still use 95% gasoline. What will happen to food when we are 0% gas and 0% diesel and 100% bio fuels and ethanol? Airlines? My prediction is they will eventually shut down. Although one commentator on CNBC puts her hopes in running planes on algae oil. Again time will tell. But as a survivalist I must go with 'what is' and not fantasy of the cornucopians. In any case, trains, especially electric trains will be a big area of transport in our future both for products, food and people when airlines cease operate. 4) Population increase. More people = more demands for electric. When people feel bad they look for diversions from pain. If they can't get drugged up with alcohol or drugs, they also like some genital situation to escape a hellish life. More sex = more people. I don't see the pop trend changing any time soon unless people can't get food and starve or freeze from lack of heat. 5) Global warming - hotter people demand more electric for A/C. 6) Solar and wind are good supplemental power sources but crappy uninterrupted power sources. One person said that on average a wind farm that is spread out will yield power about 33% of the time, as the wind is blowing on average in some part of a large geographic area. So, to make up for when the wind does not blow, we will need much larger scales of wind generation than we anticipate now. We get brownouts even with full capacity and fip the switch, fossil fueled convenience. Exporting the power is another problem. We can make electricity in high wind areas, but will lose much of it if we have to export the wind generated electric long distances to the big cities. Solar only works for a few hours a day in ideal circumstances...and does not work much at all if the sun is not out. Our countries power needs are 24 hours. The sorry thing about electricity is it cannot be easily stored. (We can store the 'energy' of electricity by pumping water via electric pumps uphill and having the water drain back downhill to power a turbine at a later time.) 7) The US will go back to being a manufacturing nation and have to cut it's addiction to cheap Chinese and other foreign goods. All these cargo tankers run on diesel. So, as we cut back on shipping, local manufacturing will return more so out of design than by desire. More industrial manufacturing = more need for electricity. 8) Without energy our country is open for takeover ... no jets...no tanks...no transport on the ground or in the air. Luckily we will still have nuclear powered submarines and aircraft carriers as long as the uranium holds out. But the jets on the flattop all use jet fuel. All the supplies for those subs and carriers petroleum dependent. Will our military be as successful as it is today when it is all electric? I don't know, but I do know an all electric military will drain the grids capacity even further. As a survivalist I cannot afford to live in dream land as the mind manacled intellectuals and cornucopians do, I don't pretend to have a crystal ball and be able to predict the future. I can only prepare for 'possibilities' of what are to come. Intellectuals and cornucopians put all their faith in predicting an unknown future that is based on lofty hopes, dreams and wishful thinking. Whereas the successful survivalist puts their hopes and dreams in preparing for an uncertain future and knows that 'wishful thinking' does not go far in life or death situations. In Richard Heinberg's book 'Power-Down' he contrasts the survivalist mentality with that of the preservationist. The wiki on this topic: "A survivalist is a person who anticipates and prepares for a future disruption in local, regional or worldwide social or political order." "Preservationism...as a term distinguishing between survivalist groups who wish merely to survive a collapse of civilization, and communities who wish to preserve as much of human culture as is possible in the event of collapse." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivalist http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preservationist Mr. Heinberg talked about a gene bank founded by Nikolai Vavilov in Russia and the dedicated preservationists that guarded the seed and gene pool. He went on to say how 9 of the scientists and workers starved to death because they refused to eat the seeds and tubers in the gene bank. Now, I don't know if a few seeds or tubers would have made much difference in their surviving. But I can say a survivalist would have eaten the first one to die. While their efforts were most admirable, we can say their life was not an enviable one for us to emulate. And in the end they failed miserably at self preservation and survival. But Mr. Heinberg brings up a good point - balancing the two areas of survival with preservation. For we may well survive, but if we do not preserve a semblance of a somewhat livable world to survive in, we may not wish to survive in what remains. In summation: Renewables are our future. Renewable are not a seamless and fungible replicant for fossil fuels. Renewables do not replace the petrochemical uses of crude oil. Renewables do not replace the specialized uses of natural gas in industry or food production. Renewables will be our future by design and not by desire. But they are the default choice for our furture power needs as ALL fossil fuels and nuclear energy source will be depleted in the near future. The more realistic we are with our evaluation of the conversion to renewable energy, the less deaths will occur from fantasizing about the improbable future that the intellectuals, cornucopians and political spin doctors have dreamed up.. Book and DVD list. All available from your local library. Beyond Oil: the view from Hubbert's Peak by Deffeyes, Kenneth S. http://www.princeton.edu/hubbert/ The Coming Economic Collapse - how you can thrive when oil costs $200 a barrel by Leeb, Stephen A Crude Awakening - the oil crash Lava Productions AG, Switzerland DVD http://www.oilcrashmovie.com/ The End of Suburbia - oil depletion and the collapse of the American dream by Greene, Gregory DVD http://www.endofsuburbia.com/ Fed Up http://www.amazon.com/Fed-Up-Angelo-Sacerdote/dp/B000CNGC6G High Noon for Natural Gas: the new energy crisis by Darley, Julian http://www.highnoon.ws/ The Long Emergency: surviving the converging catastrophes of the twenty-first century by Kunstler, James Howard Oil Apocalypse History channel DVD Peak Oil Survival: preparation for life after gridcrash by McBay, Aric Powerdown: options and actions for a post-carbon world by Heinberg, Richard Resource Wars: the new landscape of global conflict by Klare, Michael T http://www.amazon.com/Resource-Wars-Landscape-Conflict-Introduction/dp/0805055762 A Thousand Barrels a Second: the coming oil break point and the challenges facing an energy dependent world by Tertzakian, Peter Twilight in the Desert: the coming Saudi oil shock and the world economy by Simmons, Matthew R. Well written book examining 12 of the key Saudi oil fields. Who Killed the Electric Car? Sony Pictures Classics release http://www.sonyclassics.com/whokilledtheelectriccar/ Zoom:the global race to fuel the car of the future by Iain Carson and Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran.

"Does anyone who is considering geothermal have a calculation comparing heating with gas?" I have a chart dating back to 2009, however it is Metric, in French and relates only to price structures in the Montreal Quebec region. It's the relative prices for different sources of energy broken down into the final cost per kW of heat delivered into the home. Here in Quebec there are 2-elecrtical rate structures available for residential customers. One is the single rate known as the 'D' rate and the other is the Dual Rate know as the 'DT' rate, available to clients having 2-sources of energy, one being electric (with HP as an example) and the other being carbon based. The way it works is those with the single rate pay about 7.46-cents/kW year round and those with the Dual Energy rate or Bi-energy rate pay about 4.33-cents/kW when the temperature is warmer than -12C (+10.4F) and about 18.44-cents/kW when the temperature is -12C (+10.4F) or colder. This is done for basically 2-reasons, one being not to stress the grid when it's extremely cold and the other to maintain a large supply of clean electricity to export to our American neighbours at a substantial profit. Back to geothermal verses gas, in 2009 and the prices haven't substantially changed, 1-kW of heat delivered into the house with the single rate and a 90% efficient gas furnace cost about 8.45-cents/kW. Single ratepayers with geothermal and COP-4, the cost would be about 1.87-cents/kW. Where it gets REALLY interesting here is the dual energy rate WITH geothermal. The basic cost of electricity remains at 4.33-cents for the entire year except for a period totaling about 2-weeks of the year when it's -12C (+10.4F) or colder, at 18.44-cent/kW. With a geothermal split heat pump unit and a gas furnace, geothermal clocks in at an unbelievably low rate when coupled to the dual energy rate. When it's warmer than -12C (+10.4F) the cost per kW of heat delivered into the house with a COP-4 is just 1.08-cents/kW and the gas never comes on. Even when the cost per kW skyrockets to 18.44-cents/kW with a COP-4 geothermal HP the cost per kW of heat delivered into the home is still only about 4.61-cents/kW. Remember that with geothermal there are NO defrost cycles - EVER! That when the backup gas does come on it is to assist the geothermal, not instead of the geothermal. So that when it's -30C (-22F) or colder, the gas and the geo are only on for a short while because they are on together, in tandem, the geo still at COP-4 and the gas furnace staged to whatever is required. This rate of only 1.08-cents/kW of heat delivered is the lowest rate I've ever seen for active heating. As a nice bonus, it's also the same low rate for air-conditioning in the summer, not to mention DHW production with a desuperheater especially when coupled through a buffer tank to an instantaneous gas DHW heater. Open loop geothermal with passive cooling would be about the closest thing to 'Free' at this rate as there would be no compressor running, only a blower and circulating pump! Rather long and convoluted but I hope this helps. SR