Nobody even had window units growing up and I never even considered getting an AC unit for my apartments until I moved to Toronto in mid-2000s. But I couldn’t function without AC any more and I think every house in my neighborhood has central AC.
My guess is that Canada is a rich enough country that central heating instead of space heating is the norm and if you’re going to have all those ducts to heat your home, then you might as well use them for central air conditioning if summer is warm enough to justify AC.
Eastern Canada, just like the eastern US, is mostly baseboard heating, either electric or hydronic. Forced air is a pretty awful way to heat. Drys everything out even more than it already is in the dead of winter. Just generally less pleasant overall, really.
2/3 of the airbnbs I stayed at had central heat (other was radiant, I think). Neither of the two had central air conditioning.
Wow, I always thought the exact opposite. I just assumed ducts were superior and radiant was just old and outdated. Never actually considered looking into it.
It is a function of age, but forced air systems were adopted because they are a lot cheaper to install, not because they’re better.
In-floor radiant > Radiators (actually convection) > Forced hot air
Eta: Forced is cheaper compared to hydronic. Electric baseboard is cheapest of all
Is in-floor radiant an option with wood floors? We got it in the bathroom and it’s great in the winter. I never even considered putting it in the rest of the house when we remodeled. But no one mentioned it as an option, and I’m sure they would try to upsell us if they could.
It is, but it’s very expensive to do a whole house, especially as a retrofit. And it is almost always a hydronic system.
We already had to rip out the floors for the kitchen remodel and since they were contiguous with a lot of the rest of the house, we redid the flooring on most of the entire first floor. I assume if they have to rip out the floor anyway, then the install should be easy, right?
omg please stop quoting posts directly above yours that were only made a minute ago. It’s maddening.
Sorry, I just do it because I think that when someone interposes, the lack of clarity is 10x more maddening.
I guess I could just post and go back and put the quote in for those rare times.
You certainly aren’t the only one who does this, but you are the most prolific.
As for in-floor radiant heat, as a hydronic system it is installed under the subfloor and usually done from below. You typically need to rip out all your ceilings to do it as a retrofit.
Yeah, I do it on purpose, though. I didn’t realize it was tilting. I’ll try your way for a while.
They didn’t rip out the ceilings below to do it to my master bathroom. What that some different kind of in floor heating?
I had baseboard heating in a 100 year old building we rented that used to be an office. First heating bill in November was $300 and it wasn’t that cold outside. We switched to space heaters and blankets, turned the baseboard heating to 12 degrees after that.
That was likely just a matter of poor insulation and/or a very old and inefficient boiler. There’s little difference in operating costs for heating methods that use the same energy source.
Oh I thought of a few more
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Went to a show at Stanley Park and they did that thing at the beginning where they acknowledged the indigenous tribes who inhabited the land before it was taken from them. This wasn’t so much lol as weird. The woman who did it seemed quite earnest.
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Also in the not lol but weird category. I saw the extensive remnants of an anti-Canada day protest at some government building. From what I could tell the issue was that the establishment of Canada caused the death of many indigenous people and therefore should not be celebrated. This was also 2+ weeks after Canada day and there were still lots of signs and stuff that were still there and not cleared off.
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Saw no less than 3 protests against vaccine mandates. That’s more than I have seen firsthand in USA #47 since COVID began. But I guess there is not much chance of me accidently running into a protest in a place where I’m not really exploring and know my way around.
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Downtown Vancouver pretty much smells like weed everywhere you go. Moreso than any city that I’ve ever been to. Way more than Portland or Seattle, which I think are fair comps.
Land acknowledgement stuff is super standard here. Done in schools every morning, before every sporting event etc.
my wife’s research was that electric heating was the most costly, yes the building insulation was poor as well.
Raptors games too? I guess they must do it before the broadcast starts, because I never saw it on TV.