Do light bulb heat BTUs Equal electric heater BTUs

[The Daring Dufas]

I think I read that traditional fireplaces/ovens are built that way in Finland. I suppose Scandinavians have developed ways to keep warm over the years. :-)

TDD

[DerbyDad03]

te:

re:" Friend built a house years ago with a "thermal core""

A former co-worker built a post and beam house with a huge layer of sand under the slap as a "thermal base".

The chimney runs up through the center of the house. It is surrounded by drywall with a gap between the drywall and the chimney. The drywall does not go all the way to the peak of the house. At the highest point is a thermostat that controls a large fan in the basement that pulls the warm air down along the chimney and deposits it in the sand. (I don't recall the exact method he uses to do that)

He has black plastic pipe running in a spoke pattern in the sand from the chimney to the outer walls and up through the slab. The last time I was over there (many years ago) he hadn't run the pipe up to the first floor yet, but I remember walking over to the pipes where they came out of the slab and feeling the heat rising out of them with no fan or furnace running. The sand was just giving up it's heat.

[DerbyDad03]

The majority of my "high lights" point up, not down.

The ones that point down are mostly CFL's, so they don't qualify of as "heat balls".

Most of the ones that point up have 2 150W 3-way heat balls, the others have bug-frying tungsten halogen lamps.

[clare]

Scandanavian ceramic stoves are based on the same principal, on a smaller scale.

[The Daring Dufas]

I think Finnish fireplaces are so cool(no pun) and if I had the means to build a home, I would definitely include one in its construction. Some of them can be quite large.

TDD

[mm]

Yesh, but the light they emit is still light. Which turns into heat. Evenly on the walls and furniture and people, except when they are in the shadows.

As to the light on your ceiling, how many floors does your house have?

[mm]

My mother rented a house that had that, in Pennsylvania. The owner or the previous tenant didn't like it, so while my mother was there the owner replaced it with electric baseboard heat.

Nothing else was economical to install because they'd have to run air ducts or pipes, and take a lot of space in a 1-story house with no basement for the furnace.

(I think this happened before I visited so I never experienced it myself.)

[clare]

Far from unheard of, hydronic radiant heatis quite common in many areas, particularly in higher end homes.

And talking about primitive, untill a decade or two ago, central heat in Britain was a "luxury"

[Rooster_joose]

replying to mm, Rooster_joose wrote: MAYBE ON THE PLANET mERCURY ALL THE OXYGEN IS LIQUID