It was last January that we noted the Westerly Ranch House project on one of my favorite shows, This Old House.

The [ughh!] Magnolia Network is, this Saturday morning, running reruns of This Old House, season 41, originally broadcast in 2019-2020, a major, expensive, remodel of a home in Westerly, Washington County, Rhode Island. Westerly is a beach resort town which in the 2020 election gave 55.6% of its votes to Joe Biden; Washington County as a whole voted 58.57% to 39.20% for Mr Biden.

And what did the obviously wealthy homeowners, in liberal Rhode Island, in a show originally meant for the liberal Public Broadcasting System, choose for this project? One episode shows the installation of a 1,000 gallon underground propane tank, for their heating system, their water heater, their range, and their fireplace.

Now we return to another This Old House project, the Seaside Victorian Cottage, in Narragansett, Rhode Island. According to Wikipedia, voters there gave 5,333 votes, 59.1% of the total to Joe Biden, and only 3,551, 39.3%, to President Trump in 2020. Now, I don’t know how the obviously well-to-do homeowners specifically voted; there’s always a chance that they were smarter than the majority of their neighbors and voted for Mr Trump.

This series was hard dated: the initial walk-through was just prior to the COVID panicdemic beginning, and ran through the summer and into the fall of 2020, as the Democrats were running on global warming climate change, and touting their proposals to fight it and dramatically reduce or eliminate the use of fossil fuels.

But one thing I noticed, and for which I specifically looked, was the energy source they planned. And there it was, in the second episode — season 42, episode 6 — the remodeling contractor said that there would be a 1,000 gallon propane tank installed in the back yard. Richard Trethewey, the plumber and HVAC expert for the show, showing us in a later episode, that a new, modulating gas furnace was installed.

Yup, once again, those wealthy New Englanders aren’t going for electric heat pumps, but warm, dependable gas heating for the cold, Rhode Island winters. Their HVAC system appears to allow the large, new exterior condensers to be used for heating as well, but the gas furnace is new and in place.

More, the homeowners had a new, fairly sizable gas fireplace installed, as you can see in the photo to the left. More, they had a gas fireplace installed outside, on their backyard patio.

The kitchen features an oversized Wolf gas range.

Episode 9 has Mr Trethewey telling us about the water heating system. The homeowners are going with a more efficient ‘instant’ hot water system, but, anticipating higher demand, they’ll have three instant hot water units, all gas fired, linked.

The final show of the series showed us, very briefly, that a new, large propane-powered generator had been installed in the back yard, so the homeowners wouldn’t have to worry about losing sparktricity in a New England nor’easter.

Now, I certainly don’t begrudge the homeowners for the opportunity they had, and the money they were able to put into a dilapidated home. I was unable to find a value on the house, but similar homes in the area are valued at over a million bucks. But the city of Narragansett, which has an historical commission very interested in keeping the exterior of the home in keeping with the neighborhood, and local city permit agencies, apparently had no objection to the extensive use of propane in the remodeled home.

So, when I read how the climate change activists want to push people to “Electrify (their lives) in 2023 to fight climate change,” I note that the people who can afford to remodel extensively in high cost areas love them some natural gas or propane service!