So What Have You Changed at Home or the Workplace?

I've made my own solar hot water panels.
When I re-roofed an extension to the house I added some extra insulation board. Done replacement double glazing.
Replaced some non critical lights with 'twice as dim but blow as often' longlife bulbs . (I've tried plenty of brands but I still think they are crap...when I turn a light on, I like it bright and instant)

Del

Del,

Regarding the new light bulbs: 'twice as dim but blow as often' longlife bulbs. Wow! You nailed the correct name there. That's how they should be packaged.

Best to you in the New Year.

Yeah..I registered that name, hoping to sell it to the manufacturers, but for some reason no-one wants to buy it.

Del

Really nice job on the Solar Hot Water Panels Del! Definitely worth the effort I assume!

I agree with Del, great idea for cooling off the place particularly in your climate!

Is an excellent idea, even here in Phoenix it cools off at night *most* of the year. I had to toss the Trane guy out of my house when I wanted to discuss an integrated system that used air sources from solar heat as well as night cool air.

He wanted NOTHING to do with any such thing - they only dealt with *conditioned* air. Got a nice coffee cup tho...

Started looking for phantom loads.all those little transformers that get left plugged in. put tV's on power strips and shut off the strip.

use my pool cover pump to start a siphon rather than pump entire time.

We had already done the extra insulation in the attic, storm windows, butt did install new anderson high efficiency french doors with gas filled windows, git a nice tax credit.

milo

My wife and I live CA, 10 miles from the ocean 1000 ft elevation with a south exposure. Est. 3500 degree days heat requirement and summer daytime temps from 85F to 105F.

We've reduced our electric heat pump/AC use to a minimum due to 35 cents/KW-hour marginal electricity cost and now run a pellet stove in winter and a whole house fan most summer afternoons and evenings.

We use a lot of the tricks discussed in this thread; but a couple of new ones this year are a small electric blanket to keep my wife's legs warm evenings at the computer and watching TV and some careful attention by me to eliminating nighttime sources of radiant cooling by regularly closing window blinds, something she is particularly sensitive to. Net result a 4 degree F reduction in room temperature from 72F to 68F and significantly less use of pellets.

Another is replacement of incandescent bulbs with CF bulbs in a lot of places I wouldn't have suspected would be successful. Example in the overhead light in the kitchen. Two 23 watt CF's (equivalent to 2 100 watt incandescents) use 1/3 the energy of the two 75 watt bulbs they replaced and produce more light, even at startup. Another change this year was a project to do major maintenance and tuning of our drip irrigation system to deal with overuse of water in some places and inadequate use in others.

Yet another trick installed 2 years ago for reducing the discomfort of summer heat is a Sunsetter retractable awning covering our small deck on the south side of the family room. The cooling effect of the awning may be more due to psychological and radiant heat effects; but it is real enough to reduce the need for air conditioning to those days when outside temperatures get over 100F.

Ed Weldon

1. No car- I use public transportation when it is inconvenient to walk.

2. Compact fluorescent bulbs.

3. I live in a building constructed prior to the days of air conditioning- high ceilings, ceiling fans, open construction- no AC necessary, even here in the tropics.

4. I am actively promoting ocean energy systems here in Panama- a political pursuit primarily, because I have not yet figured out how my little engineering company is going to make any money from these efforts.

5. Promote appropriate applications of alternative energy with my customers (i.e., solar water heaters, remote solar powered water pumps, small free stream hydro systems, etc.). Note the modifier "appropriate"...

Over the past few years, I have installed a higher efficiency furnace and AC unit and am sealing leakages from the"seals" at the cross members on double hung windows. The later item, I am concerned about as it seems that I cant get a straight answer as to why they leak. Some individuals seem to believe they are meant to do so by design. My house is reasonably "tight". My fireplace wont burn well due to lack of excess air.

Check with Adobe Design and some other folks, the hot setup is to drill an airvent to feed the fire in the back of the fireplace. Presuming the house layout accomodates.

You may want to consider a fire place insert or stove that will draw outside air.

We have large soapstone stove upstairs that we burn nearly nightly during the heating season. I love the stove. It does not draw outside air and works fine. We also have a Lopi stove downstairs which I have to crack a door open to get it to draw when lighting. As it turns out it only has a 6" flue rather than an 8" which it should have. The previous owners had the 6" installed when they "fixed" the stove when we bought the house. I suspect that having the proper flue will cure the drawing problem.

Our house is fairly tight but could be improved here and there (under and around doors mostly.

I believe the soapstone stove is available with an outside combustion air set up. I burn a mix of cord wood and sawn up pallets (have a steady supply of pallets).

Travis

Well, now that this question has been bumped down the list it may not get as much viewing. I was hoping for more input as it is interesting to see what others are doing or have done. Less than 10% of those who've viewed the thread contributed, hmm.

It's easy to see how we loose efficiencies through the little "things" that can add up to one large change comparatively. It isn't always about the money we can save or are loosing but more so about the concept of making devices or working concepts more efficient. We can easily get conditioned into accepting and implementing similar ideas often negating the nuances that make it just a bit or even a lot more efficient. Sometimes it's easy to miss an idea that can make a significant difference due to conventionalism. I really like how some of you made small changes to make a rather large improvement to your home for heat, cooling or electrical savings. (ie: Vulcans, Ed Walden and Edignan's example) Some of you have made personal commitments to a life style change that also may not be viewed as customary. As with Edignan's experience, we too have service companies here still not remotely on the band wagon with simple, more efficient technologies. Cwarner7_11, I hope the best for you and your company in Panama!

Thanks for the participation as I hope it may have helped the other 90% of the viewers to be a little inspired.

Hope you all have a great new year.

Tim

Hopefully this thread hasn't bottomed out yet - there is more to be discussed!

In fairness, my experience with Trane was localized, when I talked with them in New Mexico I got entirely different answers - much more flexible and cooperative.

But in general I have found even the "energy survey" groups to be a bit weak. They are supposed to advise you on thrifty ways to improve your energy usage, and I was (not bragging) much more creative than they.

I have posted about my main residence before - huge old ('70s - not so old) adobe in New Mexico. Sits at 7,000 feet and was generally cold!

Was not laid out to take advantage of solar AT ALL. Leaky doors and windows, ineffective ducting in the slab for a forced air system run off propane ($$$$). Multiple fireplaces mostly designed for looks. Rooms broken up for informal zoned heating by fireplace. Roof is built up plank/foam(1")/composite roll asphalt.

My first assessment at making it more livable and efficient was put 4" more foam in ceiling, replace doors and windows, solar collection distributed to radiators in every room. Ballpark $100,000US.

Time, money, etc forced other choices.

We removed two dividing walls to open the central part of the house for free air flow. We relocated an old '70s fan-distributed wood burning stove to this central area. We put a bay window in the east wall for early morning sun. These are the things we could afford initially. We burn local scrub oak and pinon.

While we are majorly adding to pollution in our valley - we are roughly carbon neutral. We haven't had to use propane at all this winter. There are only two areas of the house where natural circulation of air isn't serving to keep them warm enough.

A vast improvement on where we stood. I forgot to mention it also gets hot in the summer! We installed two evap coolers and dropped the place to icebox temps!

As an aside I was talking to a geothermal outfit one day, I am in a geothermal dead zone by the way, and the couple was from Sweden. One of the comments they made was that New Mexico has heavy, near-surface coal deposits - and yet we burn trees. Confused them to no end. You could truly get enough coal for the winter from any given highway cut-bank, and yet we all drive by it.

As you've noticed from where I live, I'm quite familiar with buildings of your type. My wife being a residential broker we find many homes today are still lacking many "green" friendly improvements. Thus maximizing efficiency starts when the home is being built. My frustration with subdivision multi home builders is marketing their home because they added some nominal "energy saving improvement" yet the uneducated public thinks it so great. When in reality the home is down right awful from true energy efficiency standards scientifically. Congrats on bitting the bullet to bring your home a little closer to your meeting your energy efficiency goals!

Coal is rather in abundance here and really isn't used much agreed. Here is a link to great information related to just lighting coal. http://hearth.com/econtent/index.php/articles/coaltips

Without a good coal stove, it's a pain in the arss. We lived in an area where you could walk a few feet and put some in a bucket and run back in and put it in the cast iron wood stove. Coal requires large amounts of oxygen or good moving air through the system. It can burn very hot although without much flame and the unspent gases can create problems. Coal contains sulfur, with the highest grade of coal being Anthracite, which is a hard shiny rock that is almost pure carbon. With more metamorphosis it recrystallizes to graphite. It also doesn't smell as bad. There are however stoves made especially for burning coal very efficiently and are very safe when operated correctly with very little smell upon burning. Bottom line, with the proper set up its heat out put per fuel load, is more efficient than burning wood.

Just a note: we have quite a few private contractors who are learning and implementing some great efficiency building ideas and bringing them to their customer base.

There was a builder here in Phoenix doing much the same. Hard to tell the difference from the outside, but get him going and he would tell you about air to air heat exchangers, damn near hermetically sealed homes, low-outgassing materials, etc.

I should look them up.

As for my place outside Edgewood, one of the thoughts I have been entertaining (after we re-stucco the exterior to keep the weather out) I have exposed beams throughout the house, most of them 14" exposed with the plank on top.

I was considering stealing an idea from some homes I saw in a book about Seville - they had arched plaster between the beams.

I was thinking I could do the same thing with building foam. 14" at the beam edge, maybe 7" (I haven't run the numbers) at the center of the span between beams. Anchor it properly and cover with plaster.

and then there is the need to replace almost every door and window in the place...

Thoughts?

I'm assuming the beams are square or are the round viga type. No matter it sounds like a viable idea for the extra insulation without much in heavy expense. I'm in the Ceder Crest area by the way. The winds and cold are heavier in Edgewood than here. Air tight with any passive solar helps immensely with emphasis on air tight. Any solar panels for water or even solar for electric seem to do well here. With our area being windy, I've been trying to develop as many different means in which to capture the winds energy without necessarily using the typical wind mill or prop driven generators. I find them quite unsightly when there are other means to use that are far less annoying and just as efficient. The new designs can be built into a structure thus camouflaging the system entirely.

edignan, also look at the off topic below, I entered it wrong to post. I give you a link.