Five Percent: Conserve a Little Energy

A while back, I had started a project of insulating the heating pipes that run through my basement — we have an old house that was designed for a gravity-fed hot water heating system — iron pipes and big old radiators.

Unlike a modern system, using copper pipe that run through baseboard radiators, we have a system that appears to be one step beyond the old steam-heat systems: big, heavy cast-iron radiators that take up a lot of space; and big, heavy cast-iron piping that runs through the basement and upon which I regularly knock my noggin.

Insulating my pipes was, to use an indelicate expression, like pissing in the wind. Or at least it was then. Today, I finished that job. But it took 13 years — insulating my heating pipes was probably the only thing I did that I should have done last. But I am getting ahead of myself. (more…)

In the Spring of 2009 I hired energy auditor Flemming Lund to do an energy audit on our house — I posted pictures and the full report — it was pretty amazing. I had some work done this summer (air sealing and insulation), and did some more on my own this fall — mostly caulking and stuff. Then I asked Flemming to come back and re-do the test. I told him he would have endless fame, fortune and that I would continue to refer customers to him, so he graciously waived the re-audit fee (thanks Flemming!)

And here are the results. Well, actually, the results are on Energy Circle — they have real editors and a wider audience than little ol’ Five Percent, and it was Energy Circle that helped me find Flemming and learn about a lot of this stuff from the start.

I hope you’ll take a minute to pop over and read my story. Our savings from the whole process, from an energy audit, air sealing, insulation, and good old caulk are pretty impressive, if I do say so myself. (more…)

I expected nothing less of Google PowerMeter — week by week, it continues to improve. Now the graph displays my usage compared to expected use, and includes a visual and numeric accounting of my baseline, “Always On” usage compared to total usage. Here’s what my graph for today looks like:

Three Great Things

The expected usage gives you a nice target, and the comparison to others provides a helpful benchmark.

But the new “Always On” measure provides two very helpful bits of information.

First, the darker bar helps isolate the spikes above. For example, the most obvious repeating spike above is the refrigerator — it cycles on about once per hour and runs for perhaps 25 minutes each time, running at a bit over 200W — it’s easy to see that pattern. (more…)

My cousin Alison wrote me an email this evening asking how she could stop her always-on DVR (the “not-a-TiVo®” things cable companies will rent) from gobbling electricity.

Here’s her email,

I am trying to do my next round of tightening up and have read all the stuff about turning off your “always on” appliances, but after much googling couldn’t find the answer to my real question: if I turn off my cable box, will my dvr stop recording?

So then I remembered—aha, my cousin Tom’s website.

And spent a little more time surfing around there, which was incredibly informative and pleasant BUT I still couldn’t find the answer.

So then I thought I’d take the lazy way out and just ask you.

Will it?

Your very very pale green cousin

alison

To which I promptly and thoughtfully replied

Yes, it will stop recording.

However, consider the following tip: if you have nothing to record between, say midnight to 4pm, you can do this:

1) Plug everything (TV, Cable Box, DVD Player, whatever) into a power strip
2) Plug the power strip into a light timer
3) Set the light timer to turn off at midnight and on at 4pm
4) plug the light timer into the wall

Then, not only will you miss little or nothing, you will get rid of the power of the cable box and the standby power of the TV and whatever else, and have the whole system off for two-thirds of the day.

Light timers and power strips can be bought at drug stores, grocery stores, hardware stores or online.

Your friendly neighborhood energy conservation cousin,

Tom

As I have often mentioned in these pages, we had an energy audit last Spring. The audit was a seminal moment in my understanding of our household energy usage.

Mission Accomplished! (Or Is It?)

I talk to a lot of people about their energy conservation measures. Naturally, not wanting to look uncaring, people talk about how they have changed and are going green. Perhaps a light bulb or two changed to CFL. Perhaps they a jacket on their water heater. Some weatherstripping on their door? A programmable thermostat?

These changes sound fine, and they may actually make a difference. But there are two ways that just making changes alone doesn’t really change things.

Perhaps your two CFL bulbs reduce your electrical use a little, but isn’t it important to know how much? (For example, the oft-repeated water heater jacket is of almost no value if you have a relatively newer one). So it’s possible that your changes haven’t improved anything. And the second way changes alone are bad: you may feel like you have “gone green” … mission accomplished.

So to my great chagrin, I realized recently that I had very little clue what my heating usage was, or for that matter what it should be. I had made lots of great changes. Mission accomplished? Not so fast. (more…)

In the summer, we use our whole house fan to stay cool — it draws cool, fresh evening air through the house making us comfortable enough that we never used an air conditioner this past summer. Our electricity bill was great.

But now that it’s fall, we might as well call it a “house hole” instead :-)

We have a 32″ square hole in our attic. We had an old mattress cover that was about the right size and we tossed it over the top every fall thinking, “close enough”. Then we had our energy audit last Spring, and this is what we found: the picture on the left is of the louvers that cover the fan opening when it’s not on; the picture on the right is an infrared photo of the same area taken (with our mattress cover installed). Blue is cold, and cold is bad.

Whole House Fan, or House Hole (click for full size image)

Blue is bad.

Since the energy audit, we have had the house insulation filled in where the first contractor messed up, and topped off the insulation in the attic. But I still needed to improve on the mattress cover. (more…)

My NStar bill came the other day, and it was the lowest bill I have ever had since moving into this house in 1997 — we used an average of 13.1kWh per day; last year for the same period was 14.5kWh per day. That’s a reduction of almost 10%, year over year. Yes, it’s true that we were away for 6 days, which is why this period is historically low, but last year we were away for over two weeks. The vacation is the main reason that our consumption fell from the prior month’s average of 16.8kWh/day.

What did we do? I’m honestly not sure. It was about a month ago that I installed the new TED 5000, but we still have been mostly using the PowerCost Monitor from the year before to keep an eye on our electrical use.

I guess all those little changes we keep making, even in our fifth year of working at it are still adding up. (more…)

Today researchers at the Scotland-Hapsburg Energy Engineering Partnership reported a breakthrough fiber that reportedly can save home owners hundreds of dollars on home heating bills. Being naturally skeptical of such claims, I checked it out, and I believe their assertions are valid.

This bio-tech innovation allows specially bred species to emit a fibrous substance having remarkable thermal insulating properties. Whereas most home insulation is done to create an envelope around the house, this material can instead be used to create an envelope around the items in the house needing the insulation, thus creating an order or magnitude or greater efficiency gain versus heating the air of the house.

Remarkably, this technology has been in use for thousands of years, and it is only recently that researchers understood how it could be used as an energy efficiency tool.

Of course, I am just being baaaad. (more…)

TED 5000 in my Hot Little Hand

I am waiting for a good time to turn off the power so I can install the little doohickey that makes it work. But there’s a lot more information about what it does available now. Here’s my summary.

First, TED is a home energy monitor, kind of an electricity meter on steroids. It can tell you how much electricity you’re using at the moment. The TED 1000 series did that, and is very similar in function to my PowerCost Monitor from Blue Line (same one as now sold on the Black and Decker label).

Knowing how much electricity you’re using at the moment is incredibly instructive, and has saved us hundreds of dollars in electricity by helping us identify and change a few things … and to keep us honest. I caught my wife using the dehumidifier in the basement last week, for example.

The TED 5000 gives you another feature, potentially more interesting than the real-time monitor, because TED 5000 remembers. (more…)

Philips “Halogena” bulbs are not CFLs — they are incandescent bulbs that use less electricity than standard bulbs, and they work exactly like the bulbs they replace. They claim to last about 20% longer, also. Halogena bulbs cost more, about $3 more, per bulb in my case.

I could see no difference in performance compared to incandescent: they start instantly, have nice bright light at full power, nice warm light as they dim, and they dim continuously with no buzzing, the bulb looks the same and fits.

I would have preferred to use CFL bulbs: compared to standard incandescent Halogena bulbs use about 1/3 less electricity; CFLs use 4 to five times less. CFLs also last a great deal longer, even than Halogena’s modest 500 hour improvement. So Halogena are an incremental improvement.

But as per the mission of this blog: saving energy and conservation is a matter of a lot of small steps that add up to big, big savings. (more…)

I smiled today when I saw Energy Circle’s new “Moolah Maker” — my 11 year old son is away at camp now, so his younger sister will get the jump on him: she’ll earn money by saving energy around the house.

Moolah Maker is as simple as pie, and kids love pie. Make a contract with your kids — they get half, or maybe more (or less, Scrooge) of the savings. Enter this month’s electricity bill. Wait until next month, then add that bill. Moolah Maker creates an invoice you pay to your kids.

Anyone with kids knows the main method used by most of us parents to get children to do something is one of (and I quote),

• “Carter Christopher Harrison, did you leave the light on again???”, or
• “Charlotte, if you leave your computer on again, there will be no ice cream on ice cream night!!!”, or the time honored,
• “I don’t know who left that light on, but if it’s not off in one minute, no one’s getting birthday presents this year. One, two, three…”

Personally, I don’t understand why these don’t work. Sure, they just made me angry when my father uttered them, but I am so much nicer (when I yell at the top of my voice). Kids these days — it’s all about money. And video games. And texting.

So maybe Energy Circle has the right idea. Pay off the little munchkins.

And why not? If they are the ones saving the energy, shouldn’t they get a piece of the action? Shouldn’t they get a sense of how much money there is in making a small change like changing a bulb, or air-drying your laundry, or using a Smart Strip? Oh, and by the way, did you know that a computer left running all the time can cost around $100/year in electricity bills? Of course you did — you’re the Dad/Mom — parents know everything-ing-ing.

And, coincidentally, Energy Circle seems to sell just about everything you’ll need to make those energy savings come to pass. I have saved several hundreds of dollars with my Smart Strip power strips, for example.

Have fun — we will. And maybe I won’t need to remember my childrens’ middle names any more.

It has been hot and muggy here in the Boston area for the last week, with more to come, but we’re still not using our air conditioner.

We’re not martyrs, cheap, or holier than thou. OK, maybe cheap, but that’s really not it. We’re quite comfortable in our un-air-conditioned house, in fact.

[Update, August 23rd. We caved. It has been miserably humid, still, and hot and has been for a week or so. We both agreed on Sunday to put in one of our two window AC units. But it was too hot, so I didn't. And then it cooled down a little. We survived.]

The main contributing factors to our comfort are:

• Management of Sun
• Management of Air
• Our Recent Trip to Europe
• Proper Attire

And these things have also worked in our office space. I am proud of my company and of my co-workers for embracing a few changes that make this possible, and seen how much nicer life is without A/C. (more…)

After our recent energy audit found drafts in a number of places in our house, and even though the damper was closed, one of the biggest was the chimney — the auditor recommended a “chimney balloon“. It’s a good, simple product, and I can tell that it works beautifully. The maker claims that you can save almost twice it’s cost annually: a good way to reduce heating bills.

The chimney balloon is an inflatable bag, available in various sizes to fit inside your chimney. A tube and valve on the bottom allows you to inflate it so that it conforms to even the roughest, oddest shaped chimney interiors. The inflating tube is detachable, so there’s nothing visible when installed. The balloon is made of a tough, durable plastic. It can be easily removed as needed (but don’t forget to before lighting a fire!) and just as easily reinstalled. The cost is under $50, and their web site has a lot of great and helpful information on how to choose the right size.

I can tell that the chimney balloon works because it has solved an annoying problem for us already this summer (more…)

The Green Inc. blog had a good post today about building codes that require energy efficiency, along with the idea that there should be a national standard. In my former life, I worked in the building trades, has a builder’s license, and know that the idea of being an effective builder is to either a) build pretty close to the code, and no more, or 2) bribe your local inspector as needed. In either case, the building code set a standard, and most of the violations I saw were minimal — building codes work. (more…)

I just spent an hour (while on my vacation) entering home energy data for my house into Microsoft Hohm Energy Usage site. I provided a great deal of home data — items like square footage of windows, BTU/hr for my furnace, R-values of insulation in my house. After finishing this part, I was told that my energy providers are not yet Hohm partners, so unless I enter my energy use data manually, I get pretty much nothing other than a breakdown of energy use in a pie chart (which, since I have done this myself, I know is inaccurate).

In the end, they provide a list of recommendations — many were ones I had already done (and said so in the survey) such as using a programmable thermostat. Come on — that’s lame.

It is true that Hohm is not the same thing (in any way) as Google Power Meter. (more…)