Steve Fractals
New Member
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- Sep 6, 2022
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Energy saving becomes addictive once you start getting it free from the sun 
What are you doing to save energy?
- Thread starter JJJJ
- Start date
They won't force you. They'll force the manufacturers to stop making inefficient stuff , to save 2 pennies
Q-Dog
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
We have a small house, small car, small truck, small RV ... so we use less energy than our neighbors every day. We have added insulation to the house and built porches on the south and west sides of the house to help cool the inside. Every year our power bills go down a little bit more even though the power company keeps adding fees and raising pricing.
This past summer we ran a Midea U off of excess solar once our backup batteries were full. That gave us 6 to 8 hours a day of supplemental cooling and our electric bills went down over last year even though we just had the hottest summer ever recorded here.
This past summer we ran a Midea U off of excess solar once our backup batteries were full. That gave us 6 to 8 hours a day of supplemental cooling and our electric bills went down over last year even though we just had the hottest summer ever recorded here.
Donny Hucklebuck
New Member
I am all for more energy efficient appliances I recently bought a new fridge it uses half the energy of the 20 year old fridg, but will the new one last 20 plus years. If not the resoureses used to make short lived products will null and void any energy savings Btw my old fridge would probably last an other 20 years
Is it a top freezer unit? Those have been out for forever and are the most energy efficient.
I think ceiling fans should have a pretty long lifespan and maybe life expectancy is something the govt should mandate - again to protect consumers from greedy corporations
That only works if you had a clue to start with that fans used so much power. I know I didn't before the emporia told me they did. Just never thought about it.and you wonder why ceiling fans are the new incandescent light bulb to be regulated fought over.
Ceiling fan efficiency rule draws ire of House Republicans
Republicans on the House Small Business Committee pressed Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm on Thursday for answers on proposed energy-efficiency standards for ceiling fans. The proposed standards…thehill.com
I can’t fathom someone not willing to spend a few % more that will pay for itself over and over again for the life of an efficient fan/fridge/TV.
We live in a naturally ventilated house, so the dewpoint is pretty much going to trend towards the outside dewpoint. The master suite is closed off, but not vapor sealed (louvered doors to be honest). Most of what we need the air conditioning for is to bring the room temperature down to outside temperature at night; the time lag is about 4 hours. Very rarely is the inside cooler than the outside.
I'm not a mechanical engineer, but know enough to be dangerous. The unit does nearly 80% latent cooling, which means it will over-cool to get the dry bulb down to where it needs to be for comfort.
Latent is related to humidity correct?(like latent heat of evaporation)
Do you mean sensible is 80%? This would be more typical. I've never seen latent at 80% ever.
And are you saying it overcooks to get the wet bulb to where it should be? Dry bulb is just regular temperature. Wet bulb is with humidity factored in
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Donny Hucklebuck
New Member
Yes a top freezer. As far as fans go I bought 3 Hunter fans for my three bedrooms in 2019 just had to switch the one in my bedroom with one of the others that don’t get used as much because it started getting a grinding noise. Can’t handle white noise my 20 year old fridge was a top freeze it used 6.8 amps new one 1.6 amps
only three years and already making noise? thats terrible
SparkyGage
New Member
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- Oct 3, 2019
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- 116
For reference, I am in Arkansas with high humidity year round. "Sauna" is the word I would use for summer. However, I am all electric at my house and the last two years, February has been my highest electric bill.
Bought this house in 2018 and done the following:
Bought this house in 2018 and done the following:
- Lighting: All LED lighting in both buildings. All bulbs are "dimmable" for operational life (brown outs are a problem in our area due to trees). Solar motion security lights on buildings.
- Insulation: Spray foamed the roof of the 800sqft shop and and had blower door test of the main house as well as added insulation.
- Humidity control: I run a dehumidifier in both buildings which has had the effect of allowing me to set the thermostat higher in the summer in the main house, and I can keep from using the AC in the shop until June (the last two years). Placement is a big part of it and putting it in the area of the house seems to be the most humid can be a big part of effective use.
- Fans: I use ceiling fans for comfort reasons and not energy savings. This is why I have ceiling fans on my back porch.
- Controlled ingress of air: We have a dryer like most folks. Fortunately, ours is located in a pantry off the kitchen with a window directly above it. We keep that window cracked with a baffle directing air to the back of the dryer. When the dryer is running and pumping air out of the house, it is sucking air from the outside and not the air that I am paying to condition.
- Kitchen & Appliances:
- Cook outside in the summer as much as possible.
- Got a large "pizza/toaster" oven to sit on the counter. Calculate that it uses about 75% of the power of the large oven and can handle 90% of the baking needs.
- Replacing upright freezers with chest freezers. As we are prone to power outages, I always keep some 2-litre bottles of water frozen to put in the fridge during an outage.
- Stopped using my fireplace. I quit using my fireplace in my last house. Figured out that even if I heated the living room, the rest of the house was colder as the exhaust up the chimney required me to have a window cracked somewhere else in the house. Some experiments verified that is was less expensive to just run the HVAC and a couple of strategically places resistance heaters. I do use a pellet stove in my fireplace at this house. It has a thermostat to control it and can keep the "living" space warm. Sill working on the controlled replacement air going straight to it.
- Mini-split in the shop to replace the window AC (summer) and space heater (winter). Suspect it could replace the dehumidifier in that building as there is minimal sources of moisture other than environmental air and plants.
- Finish outdoor kitchen on the back porch. Have the grill, would like some electric appliances, but also want a sun oven and a wood burning stove/oven that can use the dead falls and other "free" wood that we get.
- Solar water (pre)heater.
- Mini-split the the kitchen end of the house to better balance the house over all. It currently is the warmest in the Summer and coolest in the Winter for a variety of reasons, and I feel the main system would need to run less to maintain the majority of the house. Sometimes when the kitchen is comfortable the bedrooms are too cool.
- Air duct systems for "replacement" air the dryer and bathroom vent fans pump out.
- I'm hoping to have an enclosed intake that pulls (hot) attic air straight into the dryer
- Another duct from the outside that goes directly into the return for the central HVAC through a filter. So instead of unconditioned air seeping through gaps and cracks, it would have a filtered "path of least resistance" directly into the HVAC system. Also looking to do this for my pellet stove that acts as supplemental/emergency heat system.
- Solar air heater for the shop: Run air through black pipes on the roof or south side for "free" heat. Would do for main house but the esthetic requirements would be an issue.
- Strategic landscaping on the south side (front) of the house.
- Considering a white metal roof to assist with summer cooling when the next roof is due.
@SparkyGage
I think the dehu would be replaced by the mini split since they can run at lower wattage but still keep the coil cold. most of this summer my indoor humidity was about 37%. a little too dry for me actually.
is Arkansas a heating climate or cooling climate? a white roof will help tremendously in the summer but could cost you in the winter.
I think the dehu would be replaced by the mini split since they can run at lower wattage but still keep the coil cold. most of this summer my indoor humidity was about 37%. a little too dry for me actually.
is Arkansas a heating climate or cooling climate? a white roof will help tremendously in the summer but could cost you in the winter.
.We built our house new in 2016. North Carolina so more heat problems than cold problems. Energy star rated, spray foam, all electric so we went with a heat-pump water heater...and it's "the tightest house I've ever built" according to the builder. We got a great rating on the Energy Star rating.
It's tight, but the half-buried/half walk-out basement was unfinished and only the ceiling was insulated (spray foam). Throwing insulation in down there cut demand in the basement (less need for a space heater in the winter, or a portable AC unit in the summer). I also have to run dehumidification down there...and I replaced the traditional dehumidifier that blows out hot air with a Midea "u-shaped" window unit that dehumidifies and dumps COLD air into the basement. I can run it 3 hours a day using 300watts/hr to handle all of the cooling/dehumidification over the summer. Huge benefits. Before I was pissing into the wind with a dehumidifier that was heating...then running a crappy portable AC unit that was struggling (and sucking in more humidity to make the dehumidifier work harder).
This winters project is building a few "beer can solar heaters" to throw in the south facing windows and see if I can bump the temp up a few degrees and run my space heater less.
Other than that, I can't bring myself to close down the hot-tub. It uses 7-10kwh a day...but after a day trenching the freaking yard there is nothing better than a hot massage.
It's tight, but the half-buried/half walk-out basement was unfinished and only the ceiling was insulated (spray foam). Throwing insulation in down there cut demand in the basement (less need for a space heater in the winter, or a portable AC unit in the summer). I also have to run dehumidification down there...and I replaced the traditional dehumidifier that blows out hot air with a Midea "u-shaped" window unit that dehumidifies and dumps COLD air into the basement. I can run it 3 hours a day using 300watts/hr to handle all of the cooling/dehumidification over the summer. Huge benefits. Before I was pissing into the wind with a dehumidifier that was heating...then running a crappy portable AC unit that was struggling (and sucking in more humidity to make the dehumidifier work harder).
This winters project is building a few "beer can solar heaters" to throw in the south facing windows and see if I can bump the temp up a few degrees and run my space heater less.
Other than that, I can't bring myself to close down the hot-tub. It uses 7-10kwh a day...but after a day trenching the freaking yard there is nothing better than a hot massage.
SparkyGage
New Member
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- Oct 3, 2019
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In the summer the MASS of the house gets heated by the sun. In the winter, there is not enough sunshine most days to heat that mass to any useful extent. It is also heating the attic space that I am trying to isolate the living space from. If I could absorb the heat from the roof and transfer it to the floor in the winter, I would do black or a darker color, but I can't, so I won't. Same reason you don't want a dark colored ice chest and the lids are almost always white. What I really need for the winter is a thermal floor! For now, I'm just glad I'm on a slab foundation.
What part of Texas are you from? Our ambient humidity is high year round as the typical weather pattern is air from the gulf blows into southeast Texas then up into Arkansas. In my shop, if I can keep the humidity below 45%, I can tolerate temps in the 80's (85 feels pretty good when It's 105 outside.) So if the spit can keep it below 50% at 78F, I'm "golden". (I'm getting old and liking the warmer temps I hated when I was a fat kid.)
solarhombre
New Member
I installed emporia Vues about 2 years ago. The first thing that popped out was the pool pump (FL, it runs the entire year). I replaced it with a variable speed pump. We went from $65/mo to <$30. After 18mo it has paid for itself. Now the price for the same unit has gone up almost 50%!!! The other shocker was the old TV: it used 40W when off and 200W when on. The new TV doesn't even show up in my radar.
Our heat pump water heater is using 25%-30% of the energy used by the old one. The old one used about 1500kWh/year (more than an average month for the whole house).
Also got a new variable speed AC system, but I think the most impactful change there was adding more insulation in the attic and replacing the 25+yr old ducts in the attic, which provided improved air flow and better insulation.
All LEDs is a no brainer. Garage and laundry room have motion sensor switches, always on mini PCs being replaced with modern Intel N100 based (6W TDP vs 15W+ for the old ones), smart switches to turn off TV and other equipment at midnight...
The end result is that during the night, we use 300W/h and during the day about 500W/h (excluding AC, cooking, etc, using 2 laptops+monitors).
HalfBaked
Ever the student
Cook outside as much as possible, especially in the summer, as it's ridiculous to add heat to the house while trying to cool it. Added bonus, my cooking fuel regularly falls from the sky for free, in the form of sticks/limbs.
I built my house facing south, all windows on the south, from floor to ceiling. But the summer sun never comes inside due to appropriately sized roof overhang. In the winter when the sun is arcing lower and the trees lose their leaves, the sun comes 20' into the house to charge my thermal mass - concrete floors, limestone walls covered in 3" of cob that also mitigates any condensation even in our 95% summer humidity, painted with homemade lime paint that excludes mold and bugs.
Our dryer uses zero watts. A lovely outdoor rotating carousel.
Although all of the bulbs are led, we like to catch light during the day in little solar lanterns and bring them in for light later. In the winter, we can just leave them in the window. But the biggest light savings is to tune your life to the sun. We go to bed shortly after sunset and wake at first light. Having a 50' wall of south facing windows just has that effect.
I built my house facing south, all windows on the south, from floor to ceiling. But the summer sun never comes inside due to appropriately sized roof overhang. In the winter when the sun is arcing lower and the trees lose their leaves, the sun comes 20' into the house to charge my thermal mass - concrete floors, limestone walls covered in 3" of cob that also mitigates any condensation even in our 95% summer humidity, painted with homemade lime paint that excludes mold and bugs.
Our dryer uses zero watts. A lovely outdoor rotating carousel.
Although all of the bulbs are led, we like to catch light during the day in little solar lanterns and bring them in for light later. In the winter, we can just leave them in the window. But the biggest light savings is to tune your life to the sun. We go to bed shortly after sunset and wake at first light. Having a 50' wall of south facing windows just has that effect.
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myles
Autonomy Expert
- Joined
- Jan 24, 2021
- Messages
- 288
Sounds alot like our house, concrete radiant heated floors, lots of south facing floor up glass 8' tall, only egress windows on north walls, in winter it heats up about 20' of floor space, but the long cold nights here in canada I have to supplement heat the floor with our boiler, and we keep the blazeking catalyst woodstove chugging whenever I am home for the top up comfort dry bone warming heat of the fire!
Kiwi2000
Solar Enthusiast
I'll start at the biggest energy savings from my home.
Stayed single.! Purchased a small modest but well insulated house. No spar pools or swimming pools. Do all my laundry in cold water and dry outside on a clothesline. I just couldn't imagine running a 4kw clothes dryer when free solar drying is available in the backyard.
Big fundamental things make a large difference to how much energy your house needs.
Stayed single.! Purchased a small modest but well insulated house. No spar pools or swimming pools. Do all my laundry in cold water and dry outside on a clothesline. I just couldn't imagine running a 4kw clothes dryer when free solar drying is available in the backyard.
Big fundamental things make a large difference to how much energy your house needs.
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