The DOE has worksheets that can help you calculate the relative cost of heating and cooling with different systems using your current energy costs. Of course you need to predict the relative costs over the next decade or two to really tell what is best. How is your crystal ball working? I would like to clear up a couple of common misconceptions. One type of heat does not dry a house in the winter any more than another. Leaky house envelopes dry houses. Heat by flame of some sort might dry a house more because they draw more outside air in if there is not a source of outside combustion air. That would be the only mechanism. There is nothing special about heat pumps in poorly-insulated, leaky homes. No heat or air conditioning source works as well in that situation as well as they do in tighter, well-insulated homes.

We are removing our chimney for a kitchen remodel and need to replace the existing water heater, since it currently vents out the chimney. (We have a gas water heater.) The water heater is to be installed in a currently unfinished basement with ten foot ceilings. We have had two plumbers out to scout out the situation and have been told that we cannot install a direct vent because of the height of our ceilings and the limited pre-manufactured piping those heaters come with. So we have been told that we have two options: -Install a Power vent water heater. The two models floated to us were a Bradford White 50 gallon (which the brand gets terrible reviews on consumeraffairs.com) and a Rheem RTgh 84Dvln or Navien NPE 180A (which both had an installation cost of over $3000). My concern with this type of water heater is that it might be loud. We live in a 100 year old house and you can hear everything. -Install an energy efficient electric, probably with a 50 gallon tank over tankless. A third plumber preferred to do this over the gas power vents, though did not specify why he preferred electric to gas. While the overall install might be somewhat cheaper, we would have to have an electrician come out to install a line, and it would cause our monthly energy bill to increase, probably roughly $50 a month, whereas the gas bill would probably decrease only $6. (We live in the PNW) Here are my questions: Are the power vents loud? Of these two options, what have you installed and been happy with? We would like to upgrade for energy efficiency, and are willing to spend the money to do so, but do not want a product that's going to last a shorter length of time (that's what we were told when we upgraded to a 98% efficient gas furnace; it cost more and our HVAC guy said it would last prob 10 years). Thank you much for any advice you can give me...

One of the reasons why I'm asking this question is that I have found a particular installation deal for an energy star water heater from a well respected company in my area. It is a GE/Rheem 40 gallon water heater, model gg40t06axk00. I haven't been able to find out anything about it, can't find it on the internet. I also don't know if I'm elgible to install it where my current water heater is (in a cabinet in my garage with an outside door). The other two non-energy star water heaters are GE/Rheem prog38-38urh62 and GE/Rheem prog48-40urh60. These two I've been able to find on the internet, just wondering if there's any comments on them here in regard to reliability and longevity. Is anyone familiar enough with water heaters that they could look the energy star one up for me and post a URL or some way that I could potentially look at specs and reviews? Thanks so much.

Austin, should be there a filter somewhere else in the air handler? If you look under the air handler it is probably open, you would be looking straight at the AC coil by looking up under the unit. You could put a filter in the filter rack of the unit in that slot under the pvc drain line that comes out lower right of the AH. Also, what are the ramifications of this poor setup? The evaporator gets dirty, which can freeze the coil or clog the condensate drain and water leak down all over the water heater and onto the floor. Potential IAQ problems as it's harder to keep coil clean. Excessive cleaning can lead to refrigerant leaks if not performed properly. Pain in the butt to work on, due to no room. Leads to corner cutting which in turn leads to further problems down road. Will I still get cool air with the AC turned down? Sure it will cool fine, as long as their are no outstanding problems. It can work, it is just not how I would install a system, because you are just begging for problems and having to deal with higher maintenance costs with this kind of set up. With that said, there may be no other better place to put it. Sometimes to cure something, you have to tear it down and start over.