Wired For The 21st Century

Today we made big strides toward more modern living. I had an electrician switch out our old 100-amp service panel with a shiny new 200-amp panel. If a breaker box can be beautiful, this one is -- especially compared to the one that was there. Evidently at some point in the past, a fire had occurred in the old panel. Based on its location in the basement (directly under the dishwasher), I would guess that a water leak had dripped its way in to the old panel and caused a fire. There are still some charred-but-useable wires that were blackened when the panel caught fire. I'll be changing out all of the old wiring as we remodel, so the burned wires will be okay for now.

The best part about the new panel is that it will allow us to move ahead with central air-conditioning. The house is still heated by a boiler and radiators, but the only A/C in the house when we bought it was five window units. Because the exterior walls are solid masonry, the house is a bit like a cave. That is, it stays reasonably cool. Lots of big trees around also help fend off direct sunlight. The last few days have been a bit uncomfortable though, because the temperatures have been in the mid-80's. The temerature in the house isn't too auwfully hot, but with no central A/C to remove the moisture from the air, the humidity level inside has been less than comfortable.

When it became obvious earlier this week that the warmer temperatures were going to hang around for awhile, I was inspired to get on the ball and get one of the window units installed in our bedroom. I had removed the units when the weather started cooling off last Fall. The previous owners left them installed year 'round, which explains why their winter gas bills sometimes reached the $500 to $600 range. Ouch!

Now that we're using the window unit at night, my wife refers to our bedroom as "the hotel room". It has that familiar hotel room A/C sound kicking on and off throughout the night. And although the unit is very small and rated as an "Energy Star" appliance, it really uses the juice. I borrowed a gadget from a friend of mine that tells you how much it costs to run a particular electrical device. You just plug the gadget into the outlet, plug the appliance into the gadget, then use the buttons on the gadget to enter the local cost per kilowatt hour (this info is on my electric bill). After running the unit the first night, I was amazed to see that this tiny A/C uses about $2.00 of electricity over an eight hour period. When you think about cooling a small bedroom for only 8 hours a night costing $60 per month, you can begin to see how much more efficient a central A/C system can be. Our last house had a new 15-SEER Carrier brand A/C that only cost about $60 per month to cool the entire house.

Speaking of central air, I have a couple of different contractors coming tomorrow to give bids on installing a system. I am really hoping that with the 30% federal tax credit on geothermal systems, we just might be able to afford that option. I'm keeping my fingers crossed!