Courtesy Don Jarvis

Burning fossil fuels is the main cause of air pollution, which does enormous damage to public health. Fortunately, technology has made eliminating fossil fuels much easier and cheaper, while allowing us to maintain our high standard of living.

WATER HEATER

One of the biggest recent improvements has been heat-pump (HP) water heaters that can be plugged into any handy 120-volt outlet.

We decided to get an HP water heater to replace our old gas water heater. The replacement is slightly larger in diameter and a foot taller than our old gas one.

With a $500 rebate from Provo Power and $600 federal tax credit, the installation cost was about the same as a new gas water heater would have been and produces no local pollution.

It is listed as a “hybrid system,” but that just means that it has a familiar resistance electric system to augment the heat pump if ever needed. It is more efficient and easier to install than a tankless water heater.

ELECTRIC HEAT PUMPS REPLACE GAS FURNACES

Courtesy photo

Another huge technological advance is efficient electric heat pumps to replace both your air conditioner and gas furnace. In the past, heat pumps worked poorly below freezing, but no longer. They are now so efficient that even in cold countries like Norway, most homes have heat pumps.

So when our downstairs gas furnace faltered a year ago, we replaced it with a heat pump. Some firms suggested a “dual fuel” heat pump with a small auxiliary natural gas furnace. But we wanted to completely eliminate fossil fuels, so we chose a highly efficient all-electric heat pump.

The heat pump’s condenser sits outside and looks like a large, slim air conditioner. It can cool inside air if needed, but most of the time it warms our basement, more consistently and quietly than the old gas furnace did.

Provo Power immediately gave us a $500 rebate for replacing our gas furnace with a heat pump.

The following year, our 20-year-old air conditioner quit, so we decided to replace it and our larger, aging upstairs furnace with another all-electric heat pump.

Its condenser also sits outside and is twice as big as the one for the downstairs furnace, but we love how quietly it moves air at the temperature we want through the old ducts and vents, both in winter and summer.

Provo Power will not give us another rebate for this, but we expect a $2,000 federal tax credit for it.

HEAT PUMP CLOTHES DRYERS — NOT YET READY FOR PRIME TIME?

Our earliest change was a heat-pump clothes dryer to replace our 1980s-era gas clothes dryer.

We researched all available heat-pump clothes dryers and ordered a smallish, expensive, top-quality German one with fair reviews.

We got no rebates or tax credits for the HP clothes dryer but were glad to plug it into a 120-volt outlet without running a new 220-volt line. We also liked how it provided us free, unlimited distilled water.

We were also happy to remove our long, winding dryer vent hose which had to be periodically cleaned of lint by a professional.

However, since the heat-pump clothes dryer is basically a dehumidifier for wet clothes, they don’t come out bone dry. After a while, we figured out how to get good-sized loads of clothes reasonably dry, but our bed sheets always wind up in a ball.

Most irritating was how often we have to clean out its three filters and vacuum a grill behind the large “plinth filter” to get the dryer to stop beeping and return to drying clothes.

We now regret that we didn’t just switch to an ordinary electric clothes dryer. It would not have been as efficient as the HP clothes dryer, would not have produced distilled water and would have still required the wasteful, lint-collecting dryer vent, but it would have been a lot less trouble.

NO CARBON MONOXIDE

By the way, we long ago replaced our gasoline-powered lawn mower with an electric one. Provo Power gives $300 rebates for that. Our car is a used but is a fancy plug-in hybrid, for which we got a $5,000 federal tax credit.

We have always had an electric stove, which does not increase childhood asthma like gas stoves do.

So we have no equipment in or around the house that uses natural gas or produces carbon monoxide or other pollution.

Two weeks ago, we had our gas meter turned off and will no longer have to pay the steadily climbing gas fees nor the monthly basic fee plus taxes of over $15.

One final benefit: We gave away our carbon monoxide monitors because we no longer burn any fossil fuels that could cause carbon monoxide poisoning.

Don Jarvis is an environmental volunteer living in Provo. He is a retired BYU professor.

Newsletter