Need help conserving energy

Hope this is somewhat relevent. This winter we put in the house two "high tech" wood pellet burning stoves and have cut back our Con Ed (we live in Westchester County, NY) usage by 75-90% in terms of natural gas to heat the house. We put the computers on stand by at the end of each day, turn off the electric, and we bought a Prius... We are doing our best to become less dependent on fossil fuels - even though I do not consider myself a tree-hugger.

 

Give this a try:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00...4&link_code=as1

 

An excellent starting point is the Rocky Mountain Institute (www.rmi.org). Loaded with uncommon sense with the thrust that efficiency is more cost effective than the usual mind set of "go get more." First: do an energy analysis of your residence, including demand. Look over your utility records for the last 12 to 24 months. Compare energy used (in Joules or btus) compared to the climatic demand for energy (heating & cooling degree days) divided by square meters (or square feet) to arrive at energy use per square meter and an Energy Efficiency Index (EEI). Also follow-up with Jame Dulley (http://www.dulley.com/) for many details on conserving and more efficient use of energy.

 

A great simple place to start is replacing your light bulbs with CFL's they're much more available and less expensive now, and work great. I even just found some dimmable candelabra style ones for our dining room chandelier. They cut our power bill by about $10/ month. Then sealing up your house and looking for the ghost load. That's the step I'm on now. See the Kill-A-Watt link above. I just ordered one of those. Hopefully it will help!

 

Another simple thing to start the energy conservation process rolling is: obtain switch - outlet plate gaskets from your local hardware store. You can make your own, but having premade is much easier.

It may take 1.5 hours to do the entire house. Upon completion you have plugged up the equivalent of a hole one square meter in the front door. How do you know the plate gaskets are working? Prior to installation wet the back of your hand. Hold your hand up against the plate - and feel cold air coming in. After installation, wet the back of your hand and hold it up to a plate. No air infiltration = less heat loss.

 

Perhaps that's the most important aspect of "this time" versus the late '70's. There's a confluence of issues that is pushing quite disparate groups in the same direction.

how easy is it to regulate the house temps w/the pellets? Our next house will probably have heating along those lines as well as solar PV/thermal. I'm interested in the pellets. Seems like a good use of waste products.

 

How far are you willing to go with this? Is a remodel out of the question? How much energy do you use now? I don't mean dollars, but rather, Kwh, gallons or therms. What kind of home do you live in? What are your energy sources?

 

A few years ago I took advantage of a free energy audit offered by my utility company. Someone came out to the house and tested for air leaks around the windows, doors and outside wall plugs, checked my various appliances etc. and sent me a report on what I could do, how much it would cost and the potential energy savings.

See if your local energy provider offers such a service.

In addition, if you have an older house, evaluate your water usage and if putting in new low flow toilets will save water and money.

Springtime

 

Here is a good place to start. Download the software. You will need to do some measuring in order to input data specific to your residence, but you will get some meaningful information from this data + software.
http://www.energycodes.gov/rescheck/

 

Find the phantom loads in your home! Most electronic gadgets that are switched off, still consume significant power. Add them all up and you're paying a bunch for nothing. Put electronics on power strips and turn them off for real. Many TVs will consume 10-30W just sitting there "off" waiting for the remote control signal. Stereo, printer, scanner, fax... anything with a wall wart is consuming energy when off. It is easy to have 200-500W of constant "background" phantom loads in a modern house. Rid yourself of those, and you're a long way toward the solution!
Oh, and keep the refridgerator door closed.

 

One site that really helped me was http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/howmuch.html, which is run by Michael Bluejay. It gives a lot of good tips.

There are the major electric users in the house of A/C and Heat, Water Heater, and Refrigerator. Lighting is also significant. A pool pump, if present, is a huge energy consumer too. Obviously it is most important to concentrate on them first.

The suggestions about flourescent lights are 100% correct. That is a great place to start, and is what I have done. I actually started because I got a $50 gift certificate, and decided to spend it on flourescents. I then started using the savings to buy more flourescents. So at first concentrate on the lights that are on most often.

You can run the pool pump much less than most people do, especially in the winter.

For the A/C and water heater, here in Florida they have a system that ties them together to have the water heater take heat from the A/C. Both systems benefit. There is free heat for the water and the A/C is a bit more efficient. If anyone is interested I can dig out the information. If you ever need to replace the A/C check into the SEER rating.

 

It's actually been a fun challenge for us with this project. It's almost like hypermiling - how much can you shave and save!

We started with the lights - had loads of them. First ones to get replaced were the ones used most often. Then came time for the pool pump. Wish we didn't have this pool but my wife and inlaws (who bought the house for us) would disown me for filling it in. With the pool pump, we just shave an hour off both the beginning and end of its running cycle. That saved 2 hours per day.

All potential phantoms (or actual) were put on power strips.

Since this house was a custom made home and fairly new, it already has the double panes, and the insulation is double duty. In fact, in the summer, we rarely have to run the A/C and it stays cool in the house. There are trees planted in strategic locations about the home to shade it during the hottest portions of the day. The only thing bad about this is when it's time for the PV installation.

Funny story - my mother-in-law flew in from the UK 2 weeks ago for a visit. She would leave every light on in the house, and in every room. After the first night, I let her know that this will not happen any more. When I was through, during the next week, she was terrified to turn on a light. She thought I was nuts and the only one in the world who thought this was an issue to conserve resources, fuel, and energy. I explained to her that this is something we all MUST do and that it is a growing concern among Americans and others around the world. She didn't see the UK as having a problem at all and didn't need to bother with such silly things.

Anyway...I'll step down now. I'm just bored and needed to kill some time....

 

We put a pellet stove in the fireplace in the family room and one free standing one in the living room. Both have electronic thermastats that turn the on and off at a temp setting of your choosing. We placed two small electric fans in the walls venting heat into the two coldest rooms and we have been good since then. In fact my wife is now complaining that we are keeping the house too warm. Yesterday one of my son's friends came over and the first thing he said was how hot the house is. It is nice using compressed saw dust at $198 ton to heat the house.

Best of luck,
David

 

Thanks for the link to the RMI - I hadn't seen that. I think it will help me to prioritize some of my efficiency improvements, as opposed to my unorganized approach. It looks like a really good site. I have been looking at the Dulley stuff also for a while, and found that helpful as well. I've been reading his column for a few years now, and he's very thorough. The most helpful things are the info on the products, so that you know where to start looking and what may work best for your given situation.

 

I bought a kill-a-watt, then found this thread. Looking at various devices in the house & estimates of consumption from websites for the big devices like air conditioners, I was surprised to calculate up that my 5 computers (2 servers, 2 work computers, family computer) hubs, modems, etc are combined the 4th largest consumer of electricity in the house. about 600 watts average on all of the time, sometimes monitors on, sometimes off.