This really is in the code. There are five legal options:

1/ Get an exemption because you are in a historic district.

2/ Install it somewhere hidden from view. Under the stairs maybe?

3/ Don't do it and pay any fine, then sue the city to recover the fine and remove the DOB violation. Being in a historic district is key to this, and it would help if you first try to get an exemption based on this status.

4/ Forget about the big electrical upgrade and do the upgrade piecemeal over a number of years.

5/ Convince some city council members to change the code.

As for stealing electricity, you can put the outlet on a switch, or it's own circuit breaker. If you can do it, option #2 is probably the cheapest route. Option #1 is probably the most desirable, but will require some sweet talking and a lot of time on your part.

I would love to have a back of the house outlet, but for my 30 inches of concrete front lawn a front outlet is beyond useless so I feel your annoyance.

Posted by: danielk at August 10, 2007 12:53 PM in response to Crazy Electrical Code question

Krypton will probably stay in there longer because it's a bigger molecule, and it is also better at stopping heat stealing convection currents while it is still there. Double and triple pane windows must use a non-dense material to form the seal between the panes for thermal efficiency so there is no way to make them completely gas tight with conventional materials.

You could theoretically use a welded closed cell aerogel seal, but this material currently is so expensive that it would costs millions of dollars to use it to build seals for the windows in a house. And it is also fragile, so it might not even perform very well in conventional double hung windows.

All that said, most high efficiency windows have argon or krypton by default because they are only slightly more expensive than the conventional nitrogen fill. The other features these windows have, such as the thin film filters that are opaque to non-visible forms of light will long outlast the gas and these high efficiency windows will still perform better in the long run. Unfortunately, window manufacturers are not required to post the performance numbers for their windows once nitrogen and other gassed from the atmosphere displaces the original argon/krypton fill so you can't compare price+performance across product lines or manufacturers. Just buy windows that look good and have decent initial numbers. Decent initial numbers at least tell you the windows don't have serious manufacturing defects such as a solid metal thermal conductor between inside and outside in the frame of the window.

Posted by: danielk at October 3, 2007 2:00 PM in response to Argon/Krypton

>>

I'm not a developer in CT, but first a good SDL material is not very thermally conducting. And more importantly the reason argon or krypton is added to the windows is to slow down convection currents within the cavity between the window panes. They do this because they are heavier gases than nitrogen. Nitrogen has an atomic weight of about 14 vs 40 for argon and 84 for Krypton. This is fine and all, but a much more effective way to slow convection currents is to shrink the space in which the convection current can operate, which is what both simulated and actual divided light windows do.

If you really could seal the space between the windows so it was airtight for 5+ years you would just make the cavity a vacuum so that there would be no convection current at all. I seriously doubt that the krypton and especially the lighter argon are still performing well 20 days out of the factory, much less 20 years.

Posted by: danielk at October 3, 2007 2:24 PM in response to Argon/Krypton

Most larger AC systems can be run in reverse. They are then referred to as heat-pumps. Heat pumps are theoretically the most efficient way to provide domestic heat, they're what you would want use for an all electric car if you lived in Maine. But we pay a lot for electricity in NYC so they are not as cost effective as gas or oil furnaces/boilers.

The biggest problem with them as supplemental heat is that a heat pump is tuned to a particular temperature differential between the heat source and sink. It will work very well when the temperature outside is up to about 30 Fahrenheit cooler outside than inside, but the efficiency will drop when the difference grows and it will provide almost no heat when you want the inside at 68 and the outside is at 0; which is when you need the heat the most.

When heat pumps are used instead of other means of heating in climates like ours, i.e. in areas where electricity is cheaper, they also include a supplemental resistive heating element. The resistive heating is inefficient, but it gets you through those cold days in comfort (a resistive heater is what a "space heater" and hair driers use). I don't know about the Space Pak AC, but since it is primarily intended as a cooling system I would doubt it includes a resistive heating element. Besides if you live in a the typical brownstone it would probably require you to upgrade your electrical service anyway if it did have a resistive heater.

A Space Pak system would also require tearing up your walls anyway, you might as well just get someone to add heating ducts in the front of the house. (If you do this, try to only put it the ducts in internal walls, the cavity in the external walls is probably only 1", which is insufficient even for small ducts, the interior walls in my house range in thickness from 2" to 3.5", the 3.5" thick ones are the ones containing the original ductwork.)

If you're trying to avoid tearing up the walls, then you can install a split AC system with the heat pump option and it will work as well as the Space Pak would without tearing up your walls. But again, in NYC, it will not work well on the coldest 15-30 days of the year; or 30-90 days if you like it toasty.

Posted by: danielk at October 18, 2007 3:25 PM in response to Supplemental heating system

I don't own a cell phone because I think holding a powerful radio transmitter half an inch from my brain everyday is about as smart as holding an incandescent light-bulb there. But I've lived under and next to cell phone towers and it never bothered me. The closest one ever was to me when in my apartment was 30 meters and pointed away (which they generally are).

I still don't think this should be done without consulting the co-op members. I lived in a co-op where they sold antenna rights; while I was far from the antennas, one of the antennas, which were on a low attached building, pointed straight into someone's apartment. If the cell-phone antenna planner knew their radiation maps would be shown at a co-op meeting they wouldn't have done this. It was done out of sheer lazyness, the 90 year old man living there did not need a dedicated cell-phone antenna.

Posted by: danielk at October 21, 2007 8:34 PM in response to Cell Phone Antennas and rooftop installations

>>

I'm not a developer in CT, but first a good SDL material is not very thermally conducting. And more importantly the reason argon or krypton is added to the windows is to slow down convection currents within the cavity between the window panes. They do this because they are heavier gases than nitrogen. Nitrogen has an atomic weight of about 14 vs 40 for argon and 84 for Krypton. This is fine and all, but a much more effective way to slow convection currents is to shrink the space in which the convection current can operate, which is what both simulated and actual divided light windows do.

If you really could seal the space between the windows so it was airtight for 5+ years you would just make the cavity a vacuum so that there would be no convection current at all. I seriously doubt that the krypton and especially the lighter argon are still performing well 20 days out of the factory, much less 20 years.

Posted by: danielk at October 3, 2007 2:24 PM in response to Argon/Krypton

I just went through the argon implosions. After 12 years my argon gas leaked out of my windows and two exploded this winter. The gas leaks out and a vacuum sucks in the panes. The company sent out a tech. with two new sashes; seven months later. They also tested all of the existing windows. Most of them were then drilled. They let the pressure equalize and then resealed like a car windshield. Ain't that crazy! I wouldn't bother with gases again.

Posted by: guest at October 3, 2007 6:09 PM in response to Argon/Krypton

I HAVE THE SAME SYSTEM AND PROBLEM BUT WHAT I DO IS IN THE CELLER CLOSE THE DUCTS MOST OF THE WAY IN FRONT OF THE HOUSE AND OPEN THE DUCTS ALL THE WAY FOR THE FRONT OF THE HOUSE

Posted by: guest at October 19, 2007 11:13 PM in response to Supplemental heating system

I have a gentleman pitching triple pane windows with krypton made my schuco. He insists the krypton is the way to go as it is much better than argon. He also says they have a lifetime warranty. So for me, the gas leaks out in 5+ years or not seems irrelevant if they plan to replace them for free. My issue is with the last comment I read about vaccuum sucking in the panes and exploding! Triple pane, krypton, lifetime warranty (12 38x55 windows for around $7,000 installed...good deal?

Posted by: guest at November 1, 2007 10:13 AM in response to Argon/Krypton