Heating & Cooling—Our #1 Energy Enemy!

The world can be an overwhelmingly chaotic and confusing place, with certain current events causing tragedy abroad and stress and confusion here in Canada.  While this blog is not the forum to discuss these unfolding horrors, acknowledging this conflict and our collective grief feels important as a reminder that we are dealing with ‘problems’ that are inconsequential in the moment.  When a global tragedy is occurring, humanity shifts focus, and almost forgets other major problems in the world. 

That being said, the climate crisis is here and we must still make our decisions viewed through that lens as we explore all of the many possibilities for us all to reach net zero, or at least significantly reduce our use of fossil fuels. As we progress into our third two-week challenge, we realize how extremely doable this is.

Steve and I have had many, many conversations about how to proceed with improving our home. When this contest began we had no plans to update our heat pump—we thought ourselves to be in great shape on that front, having had a heat pump installed approximately 12 years ago.  However, when we started to explore replacing the hot water heater with one that was more efficient but still used gas—for example, an on-demand tankless system—we realized that it was important to us to not use any fossil fuels in heating or cooling.  

That’s really the point … we all need to radically reduce our use of fossil fuels, and when we landed on that as the most important aspect the rest was just in the selection of what was best for our home.  The Canada Greener Homes Loan program made the decision pretty easy; we decided to replace the heat pump and the accompanying gas furnace back-up, as well as our gas-fueled hot water tank, and install a much more modern heat pump with an air handler and a heat pump hot water heater, all running off electricity. 

We’ll update you on how it went!