this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2023
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Technology

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (25 children)

I mean, in the colder climates that have natural gas piped to homes anyway.

Why not use a pilot light worth of gas to keep the evap side a tad bit warmer on the days that it drops real cold.

Sure, your still using some gas, but you'll be extreme sipping at it.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (16 children)

Counterpoint: electrifying homes is also a huge cost savings in general once you are at the point where you're willing to forgo that big gas furnace in favor of an efficient heat pump system.

Cookers use very little gas. It's really only water heaters and furnaces that use a lot of it, and heat pump units are incredibly efficient for both those tasks. Though I will admit that the noise a heat pump water heater makes is just atrocious and you'll need to figure out if your can manage that in your life (e.g., by setting it to only run at night, when you're out of the house, or putting it somewhere far away from where you spend time).

Keeping a gas hookup at $15+/month for a single appliance like a water heater or range is an expense a lot of people can and should trim, but instead they treat it like a sunk cost and think "well I have this one appliance, so I may as well get MORE gas appliances". Which is intended. The whole "now you're cooking with gas" campaign and all the nonsense ad campaigns about how gas ranges cook better than electric* was a deliberate (astroturf) marketing campaign from natural gas utilities because they knew that keeping electric cookers in the house would stop people from abandoning the appliances that ACTUALLY use gas but were hard to get people passionate about. This isn't a conspiracy theory; we have the memos and POs.

* the difference is at best unnoticeable to the average cook and I truly believe the performance is worse, especially when factoring in time spent cleaning. Electric ovens are flatly better and modern electric cook tops work super well, even if not induction.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (11 children)

Gas is great if you need to boil a pot of water right now. Like in a restaurant kitchen.

Any application that is not in a massive rush is just fine on electric.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago

Technology Connections on YT did a side-channel experiment on this very thing.

https://youtu.be/eUywI8YGy0Y

Normally I wholeheartedly recommend his stuff, but the side-channel content gets very long winded and rambling, linked video included.

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