PART II—How To Determine If You Live In An Energy Efficient Home
Some utility companies will audit your home utility usage and give you a read out of your use per month. PECO (Philadelphia Electric Company) for example may send someone out to audit your electric appliances, determine their energy consumption and the cost to operate them each month. Often times a utility company will conduct an audit of existing appliances and mechanical systems and give recommendations for ways to save on usage or conserve energy.
The Energy Efficient Home Team™ experienced such an audit with recommendations. PECO advised the replacement of an older side by side refrigerator with a new refrigerator at a $25 dollar per month estimated savings. They also recommended turning off a second old refrigerator at a monthly estimated savings of $50. Their advice was taken and they came very close to their projections. Saving more on other things as simple as light bulbs all add up to larger savings over the year and they do not have to take anything away from your level of comfort or style of living. More will be discussed about this later. What is important now to stress is the audit like an accounting budget gives a clear picture of ways to save on your home energy expenses. It will help you to eliminate unnecessary waste of valuable energy equating to more dollars in your pocket.
This same audit will help you to evaluate the need to replace your present heating, hot water, and air-conditioning equipment with more efficient units. The information obtained from your utility bills will enable you to determine the time it will take to recoup the cost from energy savings to pay for the new equipment. If your equipment is old and working fine it still may pay to replace it because of the savings you will realize. Older equipment becomes less efficient over time anyway. Greater increases in energy cost for petroleum this year (2006) has to do with the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina, the war in Iraq, and the economics of the oil industry getting the most out of the limited world reserves before the depletion of easy to pump oil occurs.
The systems you use for heating, hot water, and air-conditioning in your home is only as good as the space you put this into, the thermal envelope. The Energy Efficient Home Team™ constructed a 4163 square foot Ecobuilt Home™ in 2005 with 18 foot faulted ceilings in Chester County, Pennsylvania. During construction the home heated with only incandescent light bulbs when the oversized 50,000 BTU boiler short cycled and shut down. Could you heat your home with just incandescent light bulbs in the winter if your furnace went out? If you make your home tight, insulated, and provide a good wrap to stop air infiltration you could heat with a light bulb too. There are other factors you must consider for health reasons that will also be addressed later on. The point is that if you reduce the consumption of large amounts of energy you will reduce your overall utility bill or at least keep it the same while others pay much higher amounts.
We have covered some of the things you can do on a physical level such as changing light bulbs, replacing equipment; creating a thermal package all in a line of cheapest to more expensive. Another area that is harder is the human preferences. How high does one like the heat to be in order to feel comfortable while keeping in mind the comfort of the sick, elderly, and young? At times it may be worth it to install zoned heating and air conditioning units just to accommodate the smaller environment of those in need of the level of comfort they prefer isolating it to the space they use the most.
The Energy Efficient Home Team™ found that a radiant floor heat system requires a much lower heat setting to feel comfortable than a forced hot air heating system. The temperature in the room with radiant floor heat is much more evenly distributed. A 70 degree setting for forced hot air seems to be what many people think is most comfortable while a 68 degree heat setting for radiant heat still tends to be too warm. The Energy Efficient Home Team™ believes it has to do with the feel of the air flowing across your body making the need for less heat more desirable for our comfort.
The number of people entering and exiting your home and frequency are variables that affect the exchange of conditioned air on the inside of the home with the outside temperatures thus causing an interruption of efficient indoor operations. Each time the door is opened in the cold of winter it causes the heating system to run more in order to bring the heat back up to the thermostat setting. As the cold air comes in it cools the heated space and the heat within escapes out the top of the door opening.
Knowing all of the above factors one can chose the most important features and their priority in relationship to cost and comfort. The cost of comfort is determined by the dollars spent for that comfort feature. When you know the cost associated with the feature sometimes your importance attached to that feature changes. For some, the cost to not have hot dry air blowing from a forced hot air heating system in the winter is a health plus. Realizing reduced sinus problems is considered by some worth the investment for radiant heat. Also, the lower heat setting possible with radiant heat reduces energy consumption since the thermostat setting to feel comfortable is lower than that for forced hot air.
More about health considerations will be written in a specific health section that will cover different traits of various mechanical delivery systems. No system is without both positive and negative features.
Copyright © 2006, by Dennis Maq & Siti M Crook The Energy Efficient Home Team™
The Energy Efficient Home Team™ experienced such an audit with recommendations. PECO advised the replacement of an older side by side refrigerator with a new refrigerator at a $25 dollar per month estimated savings. They also recommended turning off a second old refrigerator at a monthly estimated savings of $50. Their advice was taken and they came very close to their projections. Saving more on other things as simple as light bulbs all add up to larger savings over the year and they do not have to take anything away from your level of comfort or style of living. More will be discussed about this later. What is important now to stress is the audit like an accounting budget gives a clear picture of ways to save on your home energy expenses. It will help you to eliminate unnecessary waste of valuable energy equating to more dollars in your pocket.
This same audit will help you to evaluate the need to replace your present heating, hot water, and air-conditioning equipment with more efficient units. The information obtained from your utility bills will enable you to determine the time it will take to recoup the cost from energy savings to pay for the new equipment. If your equipment is old and working fine it still may pay to replace it because of the savings you will realize. Older equipment becomes less efficient over time anyway. Greater increases in energy cost for petroleum this year (2006) has to do with the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina, the war in Iraq, and the economics of the oil industry getting the most out of the limited world reserves before the depletion of easy to pump oil occurs.
The systems you use for heating, hot water, and air-conditioning in your home is only as good as the space you put this into, the thermal envelope. The Energy Efficient Home Team™ constructed a 4163 square foot Ecobuilt Home™ in 2005 with 18 foot faulted ceilings in Chester County, Pennsylvania. During construction the home heated with only incandescent light bulbs when the oversized 50,000 BTU boiler short cycled and shut down. Could you heat your home with just incandescent light bulbs in the winter if your furnace went out? If you make your home tight, insulated, and provide a good wrap to stop air infiltration you could heat with a light bulb too. There are other factors you must consider for health reasons that will also be addressed later on. The point is that if you reduce the consumption of large amounts of energy you will reduce your overall utility bill or at least keep it the same while others pay much higher amounts.
We have covered some of the things you can do on a physical level such as changing light bulbs, replacing equipment; creating a thermal package all in a line of cheapest to more expensive. Another area that is harder is the human preferences. How high does one like the heat to be in order to feel comfortable while keeping in mind the comfort of the sick, elderly, and young? At times it may be worth it to install zoned heating and air conditioning units just to accommodate the smaller environment of those in need of the level of comfort they prefer isolating it to the space they use the most.
The Energy Efficient Home Team™ found that a radiant floor heat system requires a much lower heat setting to feel comfortable than a forced hot air heating system. The temperature in the room with radiant floor heat is much more evenly distributed. A 70 degree setting for forced hot air seems to be what many people think is most comfortable while a 68 degree heat setting for radiant heat still tends to be too warm. The Energy Efficient Home Team™ believes it has to do with the feel of the air flowing across your body making the need for less heat more desirable for our comfort.
The number of people entering and exiting your home and frequency are variables that affect the exchange of conditioned air on the inside of the home with the outside temperatures thus causing an interruption of efficient indoor operations. Each time the door is opened in the cold of winter it causes the heating system to run more in order to bring the heat back up to the thermostat setting. As the cold air comes in it cools the heated space and the heat within escapes out the top of the door opening.
Knowing all of the above factors one can chose the most important features and their priority in relationship to cost and comfort. The cost of comfort is determined by the dollars spent for that comfort feature. When you know the cost associated with the feature sometimes your importance attached to that feature changes. For some, the cost to not have hot dry air blowing from a forced hot air heating system in the winter is a health plus. Realizing reduced sinus problems is considered by some worth the investment for radiant heat. Also, the lower heat setting possible with radiant heat reduces energy consumption since the thermostat setting to feel comfortable is lower than that for forced hot air.
More about health considerations will be written in a specific health section that will cover different traits of various mechanical delivery systems. No system is without both positive and negative features.
Copyright © 2006, by Dennis Maq & Siti M Crook The Energy Efficient Home Team™
posted by Siti | 10:12 AM
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