Building a home

[Asher]

I've read that all east coasters do. It's just one of many things wrong with "y'all".

In Toronto, every place I was in had a smooth ceiling. In Calgary & California, I always see some kind of texture. It's odd how there's this much of a west/east coast divide on something so inane, but there is.

[Hauldren Collider]

Huh, that is interesting. I didn't realize such a divide existed.

[Asher]

There are technical reasons many prefer knockdown ceilings -- they'll hide any imperfections in the drywalling, which will almost always be there to some extent (and to a greater extent with complex ceilings like the one we have in our bonus room). They also diminish the echo effect you get more in large rooms with smooth ceilings and also dampen the noise in general.

[Hauldren Collider]

If you have carpeting, you don't have to worry about echos, I would think. At any rate, it's an aesthetic preference--It certainly doesn't look bad (although I do dislike popcorn ceilings), but I just don't think it looks as nice as a smooth drywall ceiling.

[Hot Mustard]

There's another benefit to knockdown over popcorn that my kids and I appreciate - balloons don't sometimes pop on them.

re: Hot water - I'm not up on the latest in that area, but I have heard that there's some cool new options that involve no tank at all - did you look into those?

[Asher]

Yeah, there's tankless ones. A couple guys at work got them and weren't that impressed with them.

They save like ~20% off your energy bill vs a natural gas one w/ tank, but they cost so much more expensive you'd need to own it ~20 years to break even. Even aside from that, they found the water temperature to be inconsistent which was quite maddening. The delay between getting standing cold water to getting hot water is also longer, just because it does need to ignite and heat the water (which doesn't take long, but takes longer than having already-hot water).

They also apparently require more maintenance (in particular de-scaling).

[onodera]

Is there no centralised hot water supply in urban/suburban Canada?

[Asher]

Is there no centralised hot water supply in urban/suburban Canada?

That would strike me was incredibly inefficient...

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Me too.

And yes, that texturing is definitely better than popcorn ceilings.

[onodera]

That would strike me as incredibly inefficient...

How so? There must be a power plant nearby. They always produce lots of waste heat. You can use this heat to heat up water and deliver it via insulated pipes to houses. This might be a tad inefficient for suburbs, but this must be the way it is done in cities in all civilized countries.

[Asher]

How so? There must be a power plant nearby. They always produce lots of waste heat. You can use this heat to heat up water and deliver it via insulated pipes to houses. This might be a tad inefficient for suburbs, but this must be the way it is done in cities in all civilized countries.

I've not heard of any country doing that. The amount of heat lost would be enormous, insulated or not. Particularly in the winter.

We have insulated hot water pipes within the house and the standing water gets cold awfully fast. I can't imagine it over many kilometers...

And why would the power plant be nearby? "Nearby" is many dozens of kilometers, usually.

Does Russia and/or Europe really do it that way? If so, that's probably a sign of the backwards old world more than the new world.

[Dinner]

I prefer flat ceilings personally.

I had my ceiling redone with a textured flat finish ceiling because I liked the look so much in my sister's house. Originally my house had the popcorn finish from 1978 but it kind of looked dated (at least to my eyes) so I had the ceiling refinished and put in some canister lights into the living room while putting a new chandelier (with a ceiling fan) into the dinning room.

[onodera]

I've not heard of any country doing that. The amount of heat lost would be enormous, insulated or not. Particularly in the winter.

We have insulated hot water pipes within the house and the standing water gets cold awfully fast. I can't imagine it over many kilometers...

And why would the power plant be nearby? "Nearby" is many dozens of kilometers, usually.

Does Russia and/or Europe really do it that way? If so, that's probably a sign of the backwards old world more than the new world.

Uh, Asher, do you really live in Calgary? http://www.enmax.com/dec
Also, district heating is used in downtown Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver.

[Asher]

Uh, Asher, do you really live in Calgary? http://www.enmax.com/dec
Also, district heating is used in downtown Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver.

Those things are only available in the very densely populated downtown core, where obviously they make a lot more sense (no different than having a centralized boiler/heating system for a corporate campus).

They are not even remotely close to being viable for houses.

[BlackCat]

I've not heard of any country doing that. The amount of heat lost would be enormous, insulated or not. Particularly in the winter.

We have insulated hot water pipes within the house and the standing water gets cold awfully fast. I can't imagine it over many kilometers...

And why would the power plant be nearby? "Nearby" is many dozens of kilometers, usually.

Does Russia and/or Europe really do it that way? If so, that's probably a sign of the backwards old world more than the new world.

link

Even evil canuckistan has started on this :

Canada

District Heating is becoming a growing industry in Canadian cities, with many new systems being built in the last ten years. Some of the major systems in Canada include:

Montreal, QC has a district heating and cooling system in the downtown core.
Toronto, ON - Enwave provides district heating and cooling within the downtown core of Toronto, including deep lake cooling technology, which circulates cold water from Lake Ontario through heat exchangers to provide cooling for many buildings in the city.
Calgary, AB: ENMAX is currently building its Calgary Downtown District Energy Centre which will provide heating to up to 10,000,000 square feet (930,000 m2) of new and existing residential and commercial buildings. Construction of the Calgary Downtown District Energy Centre has begun with commercial operation anticipated for March 2010.
Vancouver, BC:
Central Heat Distribution Ltd. operates a central heating plant in the downtown core of Vancouver, British Columbia. In addition to building heating, the Central Heat Distribution network also drives a steam clock.
A large scale district heating system known as the Neighbourhood Energy Utility[24] in the South East False Creek area is in initial operations with natural gas boilers and serves the 2010 Olympic Village. The commissioning of an innovative untreated sewage heat recovery system anticipated for January 2010 is expected to supply 70% of annual energy demands and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Windsor, ON has a district heating and cooling system in the downtown core.
Drake Landing, AB, is small in size (52 homes) but notable for having the only central solar heating system in North America.
London, Ontario and Charlottetown, PEI have district heating co-generation systems owned and operated by Fort Chicago Energy Partners L.P. [25]
Sudbury, Ontario has a district heating cogeneration system in its downtown core, as well as a standalone cogeneration plant for the Sudbury Regional Hospital. In addition, Naneff Gardens, a new residential subdivision off Donnelly Drive in the city's Garson neighbourhood, features a geothermal district heating system using technology developed by a local company, Renewable Resource Recovery Corporation.[26]

Many Canadian universities operate central campus heating plants.