Just like the beds I planted earlier with fall mustard greens and sugar snaps, I went through where the fennel, basil and tomatoes were and dug the bed. In a slacker version of John Jeavons’ recommendation, I simply went along with a spade and loosened the top 20 cm or so of soil. Jeavons would have recommended pulling that dirt out, then using a broadfork to loosen the subsoil. I didn’t have time for that, so I didn’t go to that length. Since I still have very little topsoil, most of what I loosened up was huge chunks of clay. I added about a centimeter or two of compost, most of which came from my own compost bin, and mixed that into the top layers of soil as I broke up the giant clods of clay. Once I got that done, I inoculated an envelope of fava beans and planted them in the loosened bed. I’m still of two minds about the favas. Half of me wants to till them under in the early spring to add organic matter to the soil on top of the nitrogen they will be fixing all winter and the other half wants to have fresh favas in the spring. No need to make a decision at this point, though.

My peppers are producing like mad, and I still have blossoms. M. and I harvested three gorgeous Nardello peppers on Friday, one of which we ate on the way back to the house, another wound up in a breakfast omelet and the last wound up in a veggie quesadilla along with some fresh shiitakes from my CSA share. The Cuban peppers are putting out another flush right now, which should be ready in a week or so, and my red bell peppers are a few days from being picked. Identical plants that I gave to my back door neighbor have been producing like crazy for the past two weeks, so I’m taking that as a sign that my soil is a bit tapped out right now.

When he got around to asking our names, he discovered that they didn’t match the one on the account he was supposed to terminate. We pointed out that the folks next door had just moved in and that we’d gotten a misdirected bill for them a few weeks back. We’d dutifully set it back out for the mail carrier and thought nothing more of it. It is alsoimportant to note that our own power bill, then one we’d just paid, had been for a short pay cycle.

It turns out that the folks next door had applied for a connection using our address by accident, realized it, and then re-applied with the right address. Progress Energy decided to simply cancel our account and transfer the service at our house to the guy next door. I was astounded to discover that they would do this without even the most cursory phone call to make sure that we wanted our service disconnected.

After discussing the situation with the company, we’re confident that we’ve got our side of the situation straightened out. They’ve opened a new account for us and made sure that we’d have uninterrupted service. I feel sorry for the poor guys next door. They had almost assuredly been paying their bill – the one that actually was for their address. But when I left, it looked like their power had been cut and the outstanding bill will almost certainly be applied against their credit report. Mainly though, this appears to be a total failure by Progress Energy to sanity check their billing and account processes.

Not too shabby.

After receiving my first electrical bill that included a full month of the heat pump, I realize I may have underestimated the savings. The amount had only increased by about $35. At first, I thought that this month might have been warmer than usual, and in fact there were some warm days in the month. There were also several nights of temperatures in the teens. The National Weather Service’s climate data page did not indicate that the highs and lows during the month were excessive in either way (average temperatures 3-5 degrees above normal in December and a roughly equal number of days above and below in January.) With that, I was reasonably satisfied that the bill represented a typical January bill. A quick check back through my financial records showed me that from Oct. 2006 to Oct. 2007, I’d spent $766 on heating oil.

Going back to my spreadsheet, I plugged those differences in. Still not trusting the $35 number, I assumed that over the 6 month “winter” period, I’d average $50 more a month, for a total of $300. This number I assume is the cost of heating with electricity. Plugging in the growth rates I mentioned earlier, I set about determining my time to payback over an oil furnace. It’s less than 5 years to save the $2300 difference between the two units. But this really isn’t a good comparison – the new oil furnace would be much more efficient than the ancient Lennox furnace we had. The oil furnace we were quoted on was 90% efficient. Though I don’t have the numbers for certain, I’m estimating that the old furnace was no more than 70% efficient. Using that to adjust the cost of fuel oil, I recomputed the time to payback and got 7 years. Still, not bad at all. Assuming the growth numbers hold, I’ll save around $9000 (in today’s dollars) over the lifetime of the heat pump. And this doesn’t even count the savings in the summer of the 16 SEER heat pump over the old 11 SEER air conditioning unit that came with the house.

Bottom line for us was that the heat pump is looking to be a very good investment. And if folks like Nanosolar make it ultra cost-effective to put photovoltaics on every roof, the heat pump will be an even better decision.

Technorati Tags: energy, heat pump, home, oilheat