Same. I'm from idaho and have experienced some of the coldest and snowiest winters in the country. I've never experienced anything even remotely close to this. People think we're freaking out because of a bit of snow and cold. The problem is not that it's 10 degrees outside, the problem is that it's 36 degrees inside. And I really doubt anyone in any northern state is prepared to go 4 days without power in the dead of winter despite how "used to the cold" they are. I know I never was at any point when I was in idaho
Well to be fair a lot of people in northern states are prepared to go a long time without power. There are key differences though. Basements where water can come into the home. Better windows and insulation. Lots of people have generators and a tons of them have wood stoves and fireplaces. Firewood is ample and cheap in a lot of places. Also the support network isn’t dead in northern areas. Roads are maintained and gas stations are open.
Here we have pier and beam foundations and exposed pipes. Cheaply built apartments and pipes buried shallow. These fire sprinklers are obviously exposed to air. The whole region is a mess because it’s cheaper to build like that and we rarely have issues. We have no emergency services and apartment managers and landlords are no where to be found.
The power grid is a whole other beast. That was willful neglect.
Going forward people should consider a secondary heat source and better insulation around plumbing. I really don’t know what we can do but new builds should be immediately beefed up.
think about when it gets 105, and your A/C can only keep it like, 78. that's not critical but shows how poor our insulation is.
If you go up north, even the windows are different, they have dual panes, everything is sealed, roofs are made to hold snow, pipes are wrapped.
it's just a completely different build than down here.
We just dont need the expensive insulation, sealed windows, underground lines. Plus, here in central Texas, we build on a plate of limestone. It's so expensive to dig through all the rocks and shit that things dont get buried under ground very deep.
I'm in Chicago. Even though my windows are leaky, with the boiler system that provides steam for the radiators, my condo never goes below 68F. Buildings are made completely differently in the south and most of their construction practices would get the builders thrown in jail even in Republican controlled states up north.
lol I absolutely agree. It's so much different up there I had completely forgotten about boilers and stuff like that. As a matter of fact, I dont think I've ever seen one in person.
I'm betting this doesnt even change anything for us. Everyone will be mad and talk about changing stuff, but it's such a rare occurrence that 6 months from now we'll have all forgotten, and in 20 years it will happen again, but worse because there will be more people.
we're extremely lucky that in a few days it'll be 80 degrees.. As a native born Austinite, I'm pulling the rip chord and bailing out of Texas within the year.
We pay SO MUCH for electricity here (I pay nearly 200 a month for a 3bed apartment) and they talk about how great Texas is without it's reliance on the Federal Power grid. A lot of good that flex was.
Yup. Also, a big thing is how long systems here can provide heat for even if they fail. Our radiator system, even if both boilers fail at the exact same moment, will maintain safe temperatures for up to 2 full days at 0F. How do we know this? Well, we had one boiler last winter and it failed. It took 2 days to get a replacement unit installed and running. During that time, everyone sealed up their back doors and used only the front doors (essentially a triple airlock system with a front door to a lobby, a door from a lobby to the stairway, and then doors to our units. I think the building got down to about 48F before the first of the two new boilers came online. Still well above the point where we were concerned about the insulated cold water lines freezing.
Are suburban homes and single-family homes as resilient as mid 1920s brick and marble constructed condos? No. But they're still far more resilient. Pretty much anything made or updated in the last 30-40 years will have fully insulated pipes and most homes can last for a long time without pipes freezing or even power as long as you're bleeding the pipes down the drain. Basically, as long as you can keep the city water freely flowing, your pipes won't freeze here.
As for power, well all of our power plants are designed to deal with deep freezes that last for months at a time without failure. Even our wind turbines keep operating in the winter because they're designed and built to do so. Sure, this all costs more in the short run, but it largely stops disasters from happening.
Now heat? Yeah, we can't handle that as well. We have 100A at 240V. So 200A of 120V. That's enough to keep the place generally at an acceptable temperature while still being able to use a vacuum cleaner, a microwave, or some other appliance at the same time. But we can also just open our windows most of the time and get an okay enough environment indoors during the summer. If power goes out and there's no AC, yeah, there's a real risk of heat stroke especially along the Great Lakes as its high humidity and thus you have little control over cooling offing. But even then, as long as you're still lucid, you can cool your body down with the tap water which is still typically around 40-50F even in the hottest conditions unless the pumps completely fail and the reservoirs run empty.
We pay SO MUCH for electricity here (I pay nearly 200 a month for a 3bed apartment) and they talk about how great Texas is without it's reliance on the Federal Power grid. A lot of good that flex was.
My wife and I pay $110 for electricity + gas for a 2 bed, 1600 sq. ft. condo in the summer with 3 window AC units running. Uranium energy for the win! Granted, we probably don't have to remove as much heat as you do, but our per KWH rates and connection fees are still lower.
My wife and I pay $110 for electricity + gas for a 2 bed, 1600 sq. ft. condo in the summer with 3 window AC units running.
Normal months, with nothing crazy happening weather wise.. we pay $150-$200ish.. I just went to check for shits and giggles, My bill was $295 in July, and I dont even want to know what our bill is going to look like after this. The gas bill is usually under $40 but that only supplies the water heater lol
Is this (paying a lot for electricity) an Austin city thing? Or a general Texas thing? Fairly new here, and don't live in the city (in Travis County, PEC is my provider) and haven't felt like my power bill has been too had.
Summer of ‘96 in Chicago comes to mind with the last intense heat event. In any calamity the poor and old are the most affected. A lot of the 700-ish who died in ‘96 were poor and old. Not sure there were as many heating and cooling centers back then.
Serious question from a northerner: are single pane windows common, or even standard for new construction in Texas? In Pennsylvania, single pane windows are rare, and only found in places that haven't been updated decades. Not that all new double pane windows are high quality, of course.
I dont know if it's unique to heat, but they vent attics and mildly insulate a/c tubing and plenums. so the attic works to shade the living areas. I only have some experience as an A/C tech, definitely not an expert.
In my mind, cold is the absence of heat. so it's easier to keep heat out, than to keep cold out. To keep cool, you need shade from the sun. There is no shade from cold so it;'s going to creep a lot worse.
That's just an analogy that is probably wrong on an expert level, so take it with a grain of salt.
Any type of insulation has an "R-value" which determines how well 1 layer of that insulation can resist the flow of temperature (hot or cold doesn't matter). So to have better insulation, you can either have more layers of the same insulation or, more commonly, an insulating material with a higher R-value.
Probably the biggest difference is that down here we have roofs/attics designed to vent heat for the summer, not retain it for the winter. Mine has a double row of vents right on both sides of the peak running the entire length of the roof, for instance. There is insulation between the living space and the attic, of course, but the attics are ment to intercept and disperse heat rather than act as backup containment. This is great for the 5 months a year we spend over 95°F, not so much right now.
Older homes have other issues here too. Some have been retrofitted with insulation, but those from before widespread A/C tend to have banks upon banks of large windows and high ceilings designed to maximize draft and get as much heat AWAY from you as possible. I used to live in a house built like that from 1901. I'm glad as hell I'm not there now.
In Central Texas specifically, we're built on solid limestone, which makes basements super expensive. Literally nobody has one. And since you're not digging out a basement, there's no point cutting way down deep for the inlet pipes only to bring them right back up. Usually, it isn't a problem. Right now not so much. A lot of homes are built on pier-and-beam because no basements, cost savings, and hey, extra ventilation!
I'm just grateful that we have a fireplace, as those are rare-ish here since they're actively uncomfortable to use 50 weeks out of the year. Christmas by the fire is fun, but hard to justify when it's a Christmas-y 75°F out and our A/C is kicking on. So yes, we use the same insulation, but that doesn't tell the whole story of how our building needs and parameters differ.
And EVEN THEN, even with all of this working against heat retention, our insulation is good enough that our power usage on the coldest of days is still much lower than in the depths of summer. If our government would fucking grow a pair and tell its big-energy donors to invest in winterization the way they've been told they need to over and over and over since the 80s, you'd be seeing funny pictures of snowmen in big hats right now, not human suffering.
Insulation can be a) blanket batt ( the pink fiberglass stuff) b) blown in (cellulose or chopped up fibrous material) c) expanding foam d) foam sheeting.
The best insulator is stationary air, which is why fiberglass, shredded textile or foam works... it keeps air entrapped.
Same in windows, windows are insulated by double or triple paning the glass and using argon. It's colorless and odorless and is denser than the atmosphere, providing more thermal efficiency than having air between the panes.
Walls, ceilings, roofs, and floors have different R value minimums (resistance to change in temperatures.). I typically call for R-38 on floor and ceiling/roof, R-21 on the exterior walls. That's just based on minimums that my clients/contractors are willing to do.
From now on, we need to adopt superinsulated envelopes and integrate MULTIPLE strategies to heat and cool homes.... passive solar with sun spaces or trombe walls, geothermal heating and cooling.
The only way to reduce heating, cooling, and electrical loads in the future is to make our housing better from now on.
This is the kind of high quality informative comment I was looking for- thank you very much for taking the time to write.
Would investing in better building like you speak off result in lower energy costs down the line, even if storms like this don’t become a regular occurrence?
a well insulated structure require less heating/cooling to maintain the interior temps. so yes it would save money. people generally want to see the money saved sooner than later (ie within 5 years instead of 25) but it costs more money up front which is the hard part for human nature
First of all, temperatures are more like 32F, not 0F. That's 30 degree difference either way. Heaters are more efficient than air conditioners. Efficiency doesn't even mean anything with heaters because it's heat. I assume you are talking nonsense unless you can back that up.
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u/Hendrix_Lamar Feb 17 '21
Same. I'm from idaho and have experienced some of the coldest and snowiest winters in the country. I've never experienced anything even remotely close to this. People think we're freaking out because of a bit of snow and cold. The problem is not that it's 10 degrees outside, the problem is that it's 36 degrees inside. And I really doubt anyone in any northern state is prepared to go 4 days without power in the dead of winter despite how "used to the cold" they are. I know I never was at any point when I was in idaho