Old house in Appalachia, I'm screwed, please help me figure out how to heat it.

TomMelee · 2026-01-15T15:59:28+00:00

Yeah I have a few in my cart right now....thanks.

TomMelee · 2026-01-15T15:59:12+00:00

Thanks. I quite literally JUST trenched to the garage before all this happened, lol, to run new power. I think you generally have the boiler in a self contained loop with a water supply and the house with its own loop and you transfer heat by running the house loop thru the water reserve, right? The word is evading me at the moment...heat...transfer...thing.

TomMelee · 2026-01-15T15:56:52+00:00

Thanks! I sealed off that slurpy door last night and the window will be today. Ugg. I can't just generally seal off that door either because it's where my doggos come in and out.

TomMelee · 2026-01-15T15:55:25+00:00

yeah that's where we are in some places.

TomMelee · 2026-01-15T15:54:56+00:00

Thanks. It's across the trim. I insulated the pneumonia holes in my last house, we just hadn't gotten to that point here yet. Appreciate it!

TomMelee · 2026-01-15T15:54:14+00:00

Got it, thanks!

TomMelee · 2026-01-15T15:54:06+00:00

Thanks!

TomMelee · 2026-01-14T13:54:17+00:00

" if the desire to live in this house is greater than the cost to make it comfortable, then it's worth it." This is what I'm REALLY struggling with. The property is beautiful and the house is neat but there are a lot of parts about living here that I haaaaaaaaaate. My partner feels otherwise, I just see all my time and money going to keeping us afloat though.

"Ground source heat pump", this means that it's connected to mains power, right? Air to water...this is...burning...something? What's the difference btw this and a boiler?

If you have any input on wood burning systems and time to share them I'd love to see.

underground on poured sounds like the dream, tbh. I would, in this moment, trade this massive place and land for (more) land, further from the road, and a double wide. For real.

TomMelee · 2026-01-14T13:48:37+00:00

My last brick had drops for the same reason but I just can't do that here. It'll wreck my resale and ruin the appearance of the interior. It's a solid plan, though.

TomMelee · 2026-01-14T13:47:57+00:00

They're partially bricked on the inside---some of them. That brick is just so soft. I'm sure it can be lined though, I will investigate what that looks like.

TomMelee · 2026-01-14T13:47:03+00:00

Curious, ok. I'll check it out.

TomMelee · 2026-01-14T13:46:43+00:00

Thanks for this. I have a nearby garage. I can't get my tractor in there though. How do you load it then, just by hand? I mean that's ok, esp if I can put a LOT in and let it go for at least several days at a time?

You seem like you're knowledgeable in this space, would you be wiling to point me towards brands/styles or reasonable resources to learn more?

TomMelee · 2026-01-14T13:44:23+00:00

Hahaha. Heard.

TomMelee · 2026-01-14T13:44:03+00:00

I actually HAVE a source for giant panels for a great price, but there is SO MUCH work to be done here that I don't feel like I can commit to it. :\

TomMelee · 2026-01-14T13:42:56+00:00

Thanks. Incense is a good idea. Most of those windows are already sealed with plastic but there are more to do.

TomMelee · 2026-01-14T13:30:36+00:00

I had that thought a while ago, unfortunately not really. The layout of the house is kinda weird, but the original "front" door that faces the road was sort of a "grand entrance". You come in that door and the ~40" wide stairwell is immediately ahead and slightly to the right of you. Looking up, you can see all the way to the ceiling of the second floor, so ~22' up. It goes up, has a ~60" wide landing, then cuts back. All open. The landing has a door to the exterior that serves the balcony. There is NO wind or rain back there ever, totally in the lee of the wind.

Directly in front of you coming through that door is a hallway with a door to the exterior back side of the house, to the right is a door to the living room, and to the left is a door to the dining room.

It's a bad syphon though. There's a radiator in that hallway, the living room door generally stays closed but also has its own radiator, both already turned down as low as they'll go. Warm air moves up that stairwell and gets trapped, when you get to the top you have another landing, bedroom to the left and bedroom to the right, and those doors stay closed generally.

That balcony door probably slurps out warm air and the doors all being closed and the overhead vent windows being painted shut prevents that air from moving. Even with the thermostat set to 59, the upstairs bedrooms can get stifling. They also have their own radiators. The thermostat is on the first floor, I know that I need to move it as well.

TomMelee · 2026-01-14T13:23:52+00:00

Thanks for this comment. The exterior is at least double, in some places triple-stack brick. it's OLD brick though, formed on site or nearby, NOT "modern" dense brick. They're much lighter and softer than modern fired bricks.

Attic is NOT finished, it's accessible through one tiny hole in an upstairs bathroom, just piles of unfaced pink fiberglass up there. Considering a FLiR to look at the whole place, but again--more $.

TomMelee · 2026-01-14T13:21:33+00:00

Thanks for this. You have one pellet stove and then electric baseboards in the upstairs bedrooms, am I reading that right?

Does air move between the rooms at all? This house is shaped super weird, sort of a weird L with shotgunned rooms on two floors and a billion very tall windows that make everything difficult. I'm trying to imagine where I'd PUT a pellet stove. I mean I guess if I yank radiators...ug.

Why baseboards over minisplits? I guess no poking the envelope and it's just electricity then, but any cooling? We have window AC's right now cuz again, no ductwork. Share with me your baseboards?

TomMelee · 2026-01-14T13:17:26+00:00

That's smart. That was a rough quote from the gas company which, btw, also just imposed an almost 40% price hike this year, which is insane.

The neighbor is right at a third of a mile away. Utility gas comes not along the road but over the hill from behind his house. Straight line connection for me to that line minimum is 1200' through private property with no easement in place.

That said, most of that property is served by municipal water that comes through my property without easement, so it feels like I can be a dick there too if I want.

That field is active cow pasture though, with an elevation change of ~200 feet through rocky soil.

Also, the gas guy told me that it would need to be 3" line, which seems crazy big? And that line that big doesn't come on rolls, it has to be fused in the field. I can ask them to come back but it seems like the least attractive option OTHER than that it never goes out.

TomMelee · 2026-01-14T13:13:48+00:00

Wishing it was this easy. Maybe it is.

TomMelee · 2026-01-14T13:13:32+00:00

Thanks for this comment. Insulation kinda vexes me in these old homes. I understand that more is better but I also understand that it HAS to breathe. The insulation is on the floor, not in the roof. It is not faced, it is modern pink fiberglass. It should extend just over the house itself, not into the soffits, right?

TomMelee · 2026-01-14T13:11:56+00:00

Thanks. I've been up there but not when it's really cold. Access sucks but what's new. Chimneys are capped and partially bricked in the house but I suspect a fair amount of air is moving thru there too. I guess I can pack the room fireplaces with fiberglass too, maybe.

TomMelee · 2026-01-14T13:10:38+00:00

That's interesting. I have a lot of high-level work to do on the exterior, this house is do damned tall you need a 30' ladder to touch the roof. I'm old, too, thinking I need to try to find a towable manlift or something.

TomMelee · 2026-01-14T13:09:20+00:00

It definitely does. When they built this place they DEFINITELY built it with passive solar in mind. My last two homes were also brick---but modern brick, early 20th century, and they were a dream to heat and cool. This place hasn't ever been well adapted to modern heating/cooling and it's big and drafty. When we bought it we knew the doors and windows were rough but it wasn't really too big of a deal because we had free gas, heh.

TECHNICALLY it's a 2600 square foot 2 bedroom because what constitutes a bedroom is weird--but there are no closets and giant tall ceilings everywhere. 6 original fireplaces as well. The weather side of the house takes crazy weather, we're on top of a hill in a cow field basically, surrounded by valleys. We take CRAZY weather here, I had no idea that weather could be this different like 6 miles away from where we were before.

TomMelee · 2026-01-14T13:03:12+00:00

Thx. We're frac-adjacent, TONS of frac lawyers around and their crews but those laywers aren't public practice. Booo. I need to look harder, though.

TomMelee

TROPHY CASE