Out With the New and in With the Old? Part 1

One of the biggest questions among old-house lovers is when to preserve and when to change a space or a system.  It's a hard question, and really depends on what is being changed, the house, the climate, and who is living there at all!  Every decision for what to do with our old houses is personal and meaningful.  But just as old isn't always better, new isn't always better either. 

We have made a lot of changes in our bungalow in the last five years, but the biggest changes are inside the walls and tucked away where no one sees them, but everyone can feel them.  Our biggest goal is to change all our systems to electric and eliminate our homes dependence on gas at all... even if we live in Minnesota, where our temperatures range from -50 to 110 F (-50 to 43 C).  It's a big range to live in, and requires a mix of heating and cooling as our planet's climate shifts more into the extremes.  In this area, we're really embracing the new. 

One of the ways we are embracing the new is by upgrading our electrical system.  When we purchased, one of the conditions of insuring our house was changing from a fuse box to circuit breakers.  It was a process I wish I had pushed on a little more, because this year, we did a second upgrade.  A lot had changed in what was allowed by code between 2016 and 2021!  We wound up completely upgrading our electrical system to 200 amps.  

When we purchased our house, it came with an electric dryer that was hotwired into the main power line, the vent was packed with lint, and the whole panel needed to come off to clean lint from around the drum.  We eventually found a new home for both our laundry machines, and in this panel upgrade added power to correctly add a washer and dryer back into our lives.  
Quick Safety Tip: 
Get a brush to clean your dryer vent, and always empty your lint trap!  Use the brush to clean the vent from both the outside and the inside to prevent dryer fires.  Laundry rooms are second only to kitchens in causing house fires. My spouse had a dryer fire as a teenager, so a new washer and dryer system was a must for him when we purchased.  

Our panel upgrade also coincided with changing out our gas water heater for an electric one. Our last water heater had been here for 22 years, and the typical lifespan is between 10 and 15 years.  It was definitely time before something bad happened.  Most home owners know the enemy to almost anything is water, and that is true for water heaters as well.  Over time, the metal in the tank can corrode, and this is when tank failure can happen!  But water heater tanks are also equipped with an anode rod: this is made usually of magnesium, and will corrode more quickly than the tank itself helping to preserve the tank and extend its lifespan!  These are also much less expensive to replace than the whole tank, and will preserve the tank from corrosion and replacement.

We stayed with a tank water heater, and often leave the breaker off to reduce its energy usage when we don't need it.  It does have the ability to add a programable timer, and we may invest in that part of the technology eventually.  We considered going to an on-demand tankless water heater, but the electric version requires a lot when it is using energy: depending on need, between 60 and 120 amps.  
​​For context: our fuse box used a maximum of 60 amps, and our first service panel had a maximum of 100 amps, so tankless electric water heaters use about as much energy as an entire house!  Perhaps as the technology continues to improve, we'll be able to move to that type, but for now this is working well for us.