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POWER TALK
LETTERS
Phooey on Heat Pumps
RE: Letter from John D. Bennett in the July 2008 issue. There is no heat from heat pumps. I built a house three years ago and did everything possible to make it energy efficient. The only mistake was installing a heat pump. In the winter all it does is blow cool air, and what little heat comes from the small heating coil in my system. The compressor runs and ices up in cold weather. So now I switch to the emergency-heat setting, which bypasses my compressor in winter. I have also purchased a small room electric heater so I can take off the winter coat I have to wear inside. We keep our upstairs bedroom at 58 degrees and downstairs at around 70 degrees. If you need heat, don’t buy a heat pump. You will be sorry you did when it really gets cold out.
O.R. Jordan
United Cooperative Services
Boo for Heat Pumps
I had the misfortune of owning a house in North Carolina with a high-efficiency heat pump and was sadly disappointed with its wintertime performance. The air coming from the vents was only a few degrees warmer than the ambient air in the house. With the thermostat set at 68, the return air was about 72 degrees—at its warmest. It was drafty and uncomfortable, and the house was always cold. The only time the air was warm was if the auxiliary or emergency heat was operating, and the electric meter on the side of my house spun like crazy. Whenever we had freezing precipitation it would melt down into the fan and compressor and impair its already poor performance.
Letter writer John D. Bennett’s recommendation that Congress mandate their use is an insult to our freedom of choice.
Marshall Valentino
Comanche Electric Cooperative
How Could You Omit The King’s Inn?
Oh, my goodness! How could Camille Wheeler, in the June 2008 edition, take the trip from Corpus Christi to the King Ranch without stopping at the best restaurant ever—The King’s Inn at Baffin Bay? I wouldn’t consider a trip to Corpus with stopping there for dinner!
Ann-Marie Holle
United Cooperative Services
Bouquet from New Reader
Just wanted to throw you a bouquet. After reading your magazine for the first time (May 2008 issue) at a friend’s house, I was delighted: Not only an article about Willie Nelson, but a wonderful recipe for strawberries in balsamic vinegar syrup. It doesn’t get any better than this! Good for you, and please keep up the good work.
Janice Mundy
WHERE TO TAKE YOUR CFLs
Good news on the environmental front! The Home Depot will accept unbroken consumer compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs) at all locations. The service is free and the first such offering made so widely available in this country, according to the retail chain.
Customers can simply hand over any expired, unbroken CFLs to the clerk behind the returns desk. The bulbs will go to an environmental management company responsible for coordinating CFL packaging, transportation and recycling to maximize safety and ensure environmental compliance.
According to the EPA’s Energy Star program, if every American swapped one incandescent bulb for a CFL, it would save enough energy to light more than 3 million homes for a year, save more than $600 million in annual energy costs and prevent greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions from 800,000 cars.
CFLs contain small amounts of mercury, a toxic substance. But according to the chief health officer at Environmental Defense, a conservation advocacy group, the amount of mercury in a CFL is very small, only 4 to 5 milligrams. This is almost 1,000 times less than what is in mercury thermometers.
HAPPENINGS
Come celebrate more than 150 years of Central Texas Wendish heritage at the 20th annual WENDISH FEST on September 28 in Serbin.
Event organizers expect more than 1,500 people to attend the fest in this tiny town 7 miles southwest of Giddings.
The festival honors the immigrants who sailed from Lusatia, in eastern Germany, to Galveston in 1854. Seeking religious liberty and the right to speak in their native Wendish tongue, the immigrants settled in what is now Lee County.
The event will feature worship services in English and German in St. Paul Lutheran Church, which has been in continuous use since 1867. Demonstrations and activities on tap include noodle- and sauerkraut-making, sausage stuffing, blacksmithing, and washer pitching and cross-cut sawing contests. Kornelia Thor of Leipzig, Germany, will demonstrate how to decorate Wendish Easter eggs, many of which will be for sale. Children’s contests include the klettern pfosten, in which children try to climb a greased pole.
For more information, call (979) 366-2441.
A TOUCH OF HIGH CLASS IN DALLAS
For years, the Adolphus Hotel had the distinction of being Dallas’ tallest building. Today, the ornate building on Commerce and Akard streets downtown is dwarfed by neighboring steel-and-glass towers. But the nearly century-old edifice is still among the city’s most beautiful.
Including additions tacked on over the years, the Adolphus, built in beaux-arts style by Adolphus Busch of the famous brewing family, stretches for a block. The original 19-story building, finished in 1912 at a cost of $1.8 million, features bronze details in French Renaissance and baroque styles. The Adolphus also boasts one of the country’s most impressive hotel-owned collections of art and antiques.
—From Historic Hotels of Texas: A Traveler’s Guide, Texas A&M University Press, first edition, 2007
ORGANIC LEDs HOLD PROMISE OF EFFICIENT LIGHTING
Organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs ) could outshine incandescent and CFL bulbs in the not-too-distant future. The OLEDs have a promise of 10 times greater efficiency than old-fashioned incandescent bulbs.
Experimental OLEDs are made by layering glass or plastic sheets with organic compounds that luminesce when electrified. They can produce 102 lumens of light per watt, according to Universal Display Corporation, a New Jersey company.
By comparison, incandescent lights, which turn most of their energy into heat, clock in at 13 lumens per watt. Fluorescent tubes, the most efficient and widely available lighting technology, produce 50 to 90 lumens per watt. Compact fluorescent lighting lands somewhere between fluorescent tubes and incandescents.
Conventional LED bulbs currently on the market are not as efficient as their experimental counterparts and are costly when compared to other options.
The U.S. Department of Energy has set a goal for OLED systems, which are also being developed by General Electric, to produce 150 lumens per watt and be available in 2015.
WHO KNEW?
The cost and supply of transportation fuels and natural gas get the headlines, but there’s another kind of gas in really short supply. The world’s largest reserve of helium, outside Amarillo, likely will be depleted within the next decade, according to Washington University in St. Louis.
This is not only bad for blimps and balloons but also for a broad array of scientific applications. In this case, recycling is the only solution, because a ready supply of additional helium isn’t available—on Earth, anyway. It’s estimated that the moon’s surface holds a huge supply of the gas.
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