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I turned an old, re-purposed material into a custom headboard. Photo by Adam Bearup
My wife created a “honey-do” list for me quite awhile ago and my schedule never allowed me to get started on that list. Like many other people in our country, I have found myself working from home more than I had in the past. One of the big items on the list is to clean the barn, and that got me thinking about the other line items on the list. As I looked at the different line items that would require me to build stuff, I immediately thought about all of the material that I had accumulated throughout my building career and how using that material to build stuff would be better than just throwing it out.
Reader Contribution .
The author’s air-source heat pump resembles an air conditioning unit, and it pictured here alongside one of the heating oil fuel tanks. Photos by Adam D. Bearup
The following story covers our recent upgrade to an air-source heat pump, which works in conjunction with our fuel oil furnace. The efficiency of heat pumps has improved in recent years and most of our building projects that do not have access to natural gas now have propane forced-air furnaces with heat pumps instead. The heat pumps provide heat and can help to conserve propane.
The heat pump that I am writing about is an air-source heat pump and it looks very similar to a conventional air conditioning condenser unit like those that sit outside of a house. According to the United States Department of Energy, “an air source heat pump can deliver one-and-a-half to three times more heat energy than the electrical energy it consumes”.