How Many "Heating Degree Days" Are There Where You Live?

 
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lsayre
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Post by lsayre » Sun. Jan. 22, 2012 8:43 am

Using the standard base of 65 degrees F., how many average annual "Heating Degree Days" are there where you live?

For my area of Ohio the average annual HDD figure is 6,148

Here is a link to historical average monthly and annual HDD's by city for the entire country.
http://ggweather.com/ccd/nrmhdd.htm

I've found that my heat demand (coal usage) tracks my local HDD's quite linearly on a daily/weekly/monthly (and yet to be seen, but assumedly also annual) basis.

For the months of December and January I'm burning a highly repeatable (and now, predictable) 1.63 lbs. of coal per HDD per day.

If I took this principle even farther and I moved my house( with no changes made to it) to an area with 8,000 annual HDD's, then I should expect to burn more coal to the tune of 30% annually, since 8,000/6,148 = 1.30


 
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Post by Yanche » Sun. Jan. 22, 2012 10:02 am

Your state or local energy building code will have a design criteria that includes heating and cooling degree days. This is what a HVAC professional is required by law to use when sizing a heating or cooling system. ALL locations in the US have such codes. If your local town doesn't have a code, then your state's code applies. Interestingly, in my county for a heat pump system, the electric resistance heating backup must meet 100% of the heating requirement.

So for me, 30 miles west of Baltimore my heating degree days are 5206.
Carroll_County_Degree_Days.jpg
.JPG | 97.2KB | Carroll_County_Degree_Days.jpg

 
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Post by Rob R. » Sun. Jan. 22, 2012 10:11 am

There is nothing on that list within a 2.5 hr drive of me, so I looked up the last 12 months at degreedays.net ~7300 for the last 12 months. I found another site that said 7500 is average for my area.

 
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Post by jim d » Sun. Jan. 22, 2012 10:17 am

if you listen to NOAA weather radio they give it every 20 min or so

 
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Post by lsayre » Sun. Jan. 22, 2012 10:46 am

I discovered a web link to 'Chippewa Lake, Medina County, Ohio' which is only about 5 miles west from my house, and it says that 30 years of data show an average of 6,692 heating degree days, vs. only 6,148 for the city of Akron, which is about 20 miles south-east from my house. I wouldn't have thought that a mere 25 miles would make that much of an impact on HDD's, but apparently it can and does. Akron is listed at 1,004 feet above sea level, and Chippewa Lake is listed at 1,177 ft. above sea level. My house is at 1,208 ft above seal level. Perhaps that plays some small part in it?

Here's the link:

http://www.worldclimate.com/cgi-bin/data.pl?ref=N ... 06+331541C

 
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lsayre
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Post by lsayre » Sun. Jan. 22, 2012 11:36 am

I'm heating 2,520 sq-ft with 1.63 lbs. of coal per degree day. Therefore, if I divide my coal burned per degree day by my homes sq-ft of heated floor space, I get:

1.63/2,520 = 0.00065 pounds of "coal burned per degree day per square foot"

My home is 48 years old and in need of upgraded insulation, doors, and windows.

 
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Post by Scottscoaled » Sun. Jan. 22, 2012 1:21 pm

What is the site that gives you the up to date degree days for the current year? :)


 
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lsayre
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Post by lsayre » Sun. Jan. 22, 2012 1:33 pm

This one does it:

http://www.degreedays.net/

I just ran it for a few of the weather stations close to my house, and the data for the past 3 to 5 years agrees more closely with the Akron, OH data than the Chippewa Lake, OH data. I noticed that the Chippewa Lake data was accumulated over a 30 year span which ran from 1961 to 1990. Perhaps it really was measurably colder around here back then than it is now? Global warming anyone? :o

 
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Post by Short Bus » Sun. Jan. 22, 2012 7:31 pm

11600 HHD by one of the above systems
I had some thoughts on this issue, expressed them here So You Want to Compare Coal Usage.

 
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Post by lsayre » Sun. Jan. 22, 2012 7:49 pm

Short Bus wrote:11600 HHD by one of the above systems
I had some thoughts on this issue, expressed them here So You Want to Compare Coal Usage.
By your method I'm currently at about $0.087 DPSPTHDD's (to date).

This vs. my estimate before firing up (before even beginning my install) that I would be at about $0.066 DPSPTHDD's. I did not factor DHW into my initial calculation, and I was off (too highly optimistic) on the overall system efficiency, the actual BTU's of "as delivered" anthracite, the cost of my delivered anthracite, and the initial learning curve as well. My overall efficiency started out bad, but now it is nicely improving by the day. Right now I'm getting $0.0815 DPSPTHDD's.

BTW, how much sub-bit do you burn over 11,600 HDD's?

 
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Post by Short Bus » Sun. Jan. 22, 2012 8:22 pm

Now that I've realized the benifits of brushing out my boiler tubes every two tons, much less.
At 7500 BTU/lb I use more tons than most, but cleaning the heat transfer area is critical to efficiency.

 
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Post by Freddy » Mon. Jan. 23, 2012 7:46 am

7,920

 
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Post by sterling40man » Mon. Jan. 23, 2012 9:21 am

9651 average.

 
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Post by CapeCoaler » Mon. Jan. 23, 2012 9:54 pm

Only 5614...

 
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Post by 2001Sierra » Mon. Jan. 23, 2012 10:03 pm

6860, some interesting comments and links. Thank you everyone


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