From Guest Blogger Steven Clark: Reduce Your Heating Bills With Five Simple Energy Efficiency Tips
The energy used in your home is your responsibility, whether you’re a homeowner or a renter, and there are many ways that you can make use of the renewable energy that is free, and also control how much energy is spent in your home in order to benefit your heating bills. Here are five simple energy efficiency tips that you can use to your advantage.Use the sunlight as your asset
The sun is your best friend during a cold winter day, so make sure you keep your drapes open in order to let the heat in through your windows, while making sure you close them at night so they help insulate the room.Another smart solution for using sunlight is getting solar water heaters for your home, saving significantly on your heating bills. This is a modern and cost-effective way to turn sunlight into renewable energy for heating the water.
Cut the costs and stay warm
By turning your thermostat down by 1°C, you can save up to $75 a year. Switching the heating on and off for instant large amounts of heat is more costly than keeping it on constantly on low. Get to know the timer settings on your thermostat and use them to save the most energy you can. Instead of blasting the heat, wear warmer clothing and use extra blankets when you sleep.
Keep your fireplace shut
Your fireplace is a source of significant energy loss. If you aren’t using it, it is best to keep it closed, because it takes the heated air up the chimney and outside.You should also block off the chimney with rigid insulation. A cost-effective solution is installing a chimney balloon, which stops the draft and keeps the heat inside. The balloons cost about $50 but can save you up to $100 a year, so they pretty much pay for themselves.
Insulate your roof
Insulating your roof is an important step in saving energy, as up to 25% of the rising heat disappears into the loft space and is let out via the roof. Experts, such as a roof painting service from Sydney, can ensure the best energy efficient solutions using modern techniques for setting your roof’s insulation up. Your roof can be insulated from below, by fitting insulation boards between the rafters, or from above, with a layer of rigid insulation boardadded on top of the weatherproof layer, or directly on top of the roof’s surface with a new weatherproof layer to cover it up. Insulating your loft and roof ensures that the heat stays inside your home, and saves you up to $290 a year.
Use your appliances efficiently
Turn the pressure down on your showers and shorten your time showering. Showers account for 2/3 of your heating bills. Cut your showers in half and decrease the cost of your water heating by 33%. Know that high-pressure power showers use more water than a bath, so use low flow showerheads instead. When washing your clothes and dishes, do only full loads. Using the cold water setting on clothes is a very energy efficient solution as it reduces energy use by 75%, so use it when you can. Make sure to clean or change filters on your air conditioners regularly.
It’s all in the details
From smaller steps like taking care of sources of draught, to insulating your walls and roof, there are many energy efficient solutions you can apply to your home so you make sure that you stay warm during the winter, while keeping your heating bills as low as you can at the same time. A well-maintained home is a solution to both problems. And remember that green energy is your friend, so use the most of it.
Steven Clarke is a business consultant and a DIY enthusiast. He is interested in home improvement, design, new technologies and he likes to put his ideas out there. When not working on new projects, he likes to spend his time in the great outdoors.
From the article:
“When washing your clothes and dishes, do only full loads.”
The problem is that the garment care instructions specify how it is to be washed. Following the washing instructions generally makes full loads impossible. The solution is to buy only items which have exactly the same garment care instructions. Thus, saving wash water begins with shopping. Because garments must be washed only with other garments of like colors, it is important that all of one’s clothing, in fact all the clothing in the family, be the same color. If that seems boring and unstylish, remember that one must make some sacrifices in the pursuit of energy efficiency. Unfortunately, I cannot claim to be that committed.
Solar water heaters make sense. In fact, using solar panels for heat can be more than 60% efficient whereas PV panels usually do not exceed 16% efficiency. Considering that, it seems odd that there is so much emphasis on PB panels and so little emphasis on solar water heating.
Thanks for the comment, Frank. Full loads are quite possible when you have a big family and live with 5 other people, like I do.
But many of us do not live in a big family. In fact, many people live alone. Living with FIVE other people is not typical. What is a reasonable way to save energy in a large household can be very different from what is reasonable in a smaller household. Unfortunately, recommendations to save water and energy practically always ignore that important fact.
Having an efficient front-opening washing machine can save considerable water. The efficient ones adjust water usage to the size of the load. With them, the inefficiency of small loads is considerably reduced. Unfortunately, they generally cost more than a top opening washing machine and have a longer cycle time, but they do save water.
When only one or two people live in a house, it is not necessary to run the dishwasher every day; once every two days should usually be sufficient. An automatic dishwasher eliminates having dirty dishes visible and stacked up.
Another way to save water, which I have never seen mentioned here except in my posts, is to have a hot water recirculation pump. That eliminates the need to waste water while waiting for hot water to reach the tap / faucet. Running the pump continuously wastes heat energy because of the loss in the pipes. In my house, there is a hot water return line. When the pump is activated by pushing a button near the tap / faucet, the recirculation pump runs just long enough then turns off. There are also motion activated systems which activate the pump when one enters the bathroom or other area where there is a hot water tap.
A hot water recirculation pump can work even if there is no return line. In that case, the pump would be located near the faucet farthest from the water heater, generally in the vanity under a hand basin. When activated, it draws water from the hot water pipe and discharges it into the cold water pipe. As soon as the water begins to become warm, it shuts off. Check out the following link for more information:
https://www.energystar.gov/products/water_heaters/demand_hot_water_recirculating_system
Note that in some areas, building codes now require hot water recirculation pumps.
Unfortunately, a hot water recirculation pump is incompatible with most demand-type water heaters. The solution is to have a hybrid water heater which is similar to a demand-type water heater but which has a very small storage tank which is kept hot. Because the storage tank is small, storage losses are minimal. Hybrid water heaters which heat with gas and have a small tank are not common, are not widely advertised, and practically never mentioned in articles about energy efficiency.
It is a mistake to recommend a demand water heater for all situations. When there are only one or two persons in a house and hot water is not used in large quantities, a demand water heater can save energy be eliminating storage losses. However, while they are actually in operation, they are less efficient than storage water heaters because they have to heat the water extremely fast resulting in more heat being lost through the flu. Although a storage water heater does have storage losses because of the large tank and because no insulation is perfect, heat transfer from the flame to the water is more efficient which more than compensates for storage losses when demand for hot water is high.
Another energy saving device which I have NEVER seen mentioned here is a heat exchanger added to air conditioning systems. The heat exchanger is inserted between the compressor and the condenser. It pre-heats the water before the water enters the water heater thereby reducing the energy needed to heat the water.
Again, recommendations for saving energy often cannot be optimal for all situations. To achieve the best possible results, recommendations for saving energy must be tailored to individual situations. That important fact is generally ignored.
One way to compensate for not always having enough clothes to do a full load is to have more clothes. There is only my wife and I here and I manage to do a full dark load each week because pants and my flannel shirts make a greater volume. However, due to the smaller volume of undergarments I am able to do one load of whites every other week by having enough of those clothes to last at least two weeks.
As to the heat exchanger for the AC system, the company I represent which makes the drain water heat exchanger also makes an exchanger, basically a de-super heater, exactly as you mention for exactly that purpose. They also make a similar device that dissipates AC heat into pool water. Both of these devices make the AC system more efficient because it is easier to dissipate heat into water than the hot outdoor air.
A prison in Florida which houses around 2000 inmates installed one of the preheaters for the water heating system and saved $86,000.00 in the first year because the AC system didn’t have to work as hard and it did not require as much energy to heat the hot water. They are impressed and moving forward on installing more of these exchangers.
Again here I must make the recommendation to install a drain water heat exchanger where possible to recover heat in drain water that only gets used for a few seconds once it leaves the shower head or faucet before it goes down the drain and is wasted. This will make a big impact on the amount of energy and money spent heating water, prolong the life of your water heater no matter what kind it is and improve recovery time of tank type water heaters.
Dear Readers of 2GreenEnergy,
Today I received a link to an article about energy reduction for buildings. More and more buildings are constructed according to the Passive House standard. I want to highlight a few paragraphs and give you the link to the article.
Retrofitting buildings is costly and complex, so it is crucial that we construct new buildings to the best standards of energy efficiency as soon as possible. Every building built to suboptimal standards represents a 50-plus year liability in a world that needs to be almost fully decarbonized within the next 30 years.
The number of Passive House units in North America has quadrupled in the last year, from 500 to over 2,000 units, and a quarter of these are in Vancouver alone. Once the projects on the books are completed, North America will boast nearly 2 million square feet of certified Passive House buildings, three times more than in 2015.
It all started in Canada
The origins of Passive House design date back over 40 years to the Saskatchewan Conservation House built in 1977 in Regina by a team of researchers from the National Research Council and Saskatchewan Research Council. The Saskatchewan Conservation House boasted excellent thermal insulation, an airtight building enclosure, and one of the first heat recovery ventilation systems in the world. Tested 30 years later, the airtightness had not changed significantly, and the walls showed no sign of moisture accumulation.
Her is the link to the full article:
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/karen-tam-wu/passive-house-building_b_13680788.html?ncid=engmodushpmg00000004
Mark
I wish that the article had included more information about passive houses. It would be helpful to know what the glass area was.
Regardless of how good they are, windows transfer far more heat than do walls of the same area. Thus maximizing the energy efficiency of a house requires limiting the glass area. My house has a view to die for. That requires a rather large glass area in the living room. If it were not for the large glass area in the living room, it would not have such a good view. I very much doubt that I am the only one who would prefer to compromise energy efficiency somewhat to have a larger glass area.
My exterior walls have 2″ x 6″ studs for better insulation, and I have high quality double glazed windows. But I would rather pay a slightly higher heating and cooling bill than have less glass area. If some people think that that makes me a bad person, so be it!
Dear Frank,
You should update your views. Technology not only advances for solar and wind, it also does for isolation materials and windows. Passive houses use very high isolation for walls and windows and an airtight building envelope. For fresh air an continuous running mechanical ventilation system with heat recovery is used. This provides an excellent indoor air quality.
In Germany, at 50° nord, the south facing windows used in passive houses provide more heat from the sun during the heating season than they lose. How is that done? Double glazed windows are normally not recommended (but technology constantly changes, so this is perhaps no longer true), but triple pane windows are used. These windows have 2 layers of coatings which keep the infrared radiation inside the house minimizing radiation heat loss. They use inert noble gasses like argon and krypton to minimize thermal conductance. They are also are made to provide maximum greenhouse effect. Some manufactures provide windows that block solar heat from entering the building as a way to avoid overheating in summer. That is NOT the type you want in a passive house. Solar heat in summer is avoided by external shading elements like building overhangs, external shading with trees or mechanical screens. It is not a function of a window to void overheating in a passive house. As heat loss is very significant reduced, solar gains from south facing windows, internal heat gains from people and domestic animals, heat from cooking and electronics (TV, computers, …) provide the bulk of the heat needed to warm the building to a comfortable temperature. It reduces the extra heating energy requirements by 70% to 90% compared to standard buildings. The high isolation of the walls and windows avoid the feeling of being surrounded by cold surfaces improving the comfort of the house. Walls of passive houses are much thicker than you are used to, 30 to 50cm (15 to 20 inch) is regularly used. Passive houses are on the more extreme side of isolation, but are in my opinion the way to go for a sustainable future. Passive houses are more expensive than normal houses but these are offset with reduced utility bills later. The economic assessment is difficult as these depend on the extra cost of the house (depends on the climate and location, houses without a big south facing sunny window are more difficult to build to passive house standards), future energy prices and the discount factor. Prices for high quality triple pane windows are coming down as they are produced in higher quantities. More builders are now able to provide the high isolation airtight walls needed for passive houses.
As the USA is a much bigger country than Germany with more variation in climate the the US institute is a better place to go than the international website as they more specific information. You do not build a passive house in the same way in Florida or California as you do in New York or the state of Washington. The climate in Germany is not the same as in the US as it has some influence from the warm gulf stream making it warmer in winter than the latitude would suggest.
Go to their website to find expert advice and people if you want to build a new house or plan a extensive renovation of your building.
http://www.phius.org/home-page
If your house is already build it is not easy to go to a passive house standard and as buildings last a long time we need to convince as much people to build to passive house standards to avoid as much heating related energy and carbon dioxide emissions in the future.
Other options to reduce your utility bills are the use of heat pumps (air or ground sourced) for heating or hot water. The use of solar panels (thermal or PV) for energy generation. The use of an “puits canadien” for cooling. The latter uses the temperature of the ground (1 or 2m, 3 to 6 feet, below surface) for preheating or precooling the air for the ventilation system.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-coupled_heat_exchanger
Mark
Mark,
I am very familiar with heat recovery ventilation systems and have one in my house. I designed my house with the help of a house designer.
Perhaps you can locate the windows for maximum energy efficiency if that is your only criterion. However, it was not my only criterion. I wanted a nice view and designed the floor plan and window locations accordingly. Of course triple glazed windows are somewhat more efficient than double glazed windows, but that is not the only criterion for selecting widows. Triple glazed windows cost more but probably would not increase the market value of the house. That, plus the percentage return on the additional investment, must be considered. I chose crank-out windows because they seal better making them somewhat more efficient. I also chose a low emissivity coating to improve efficiency. So, although efficiency was a significant criterion, it was not the ONLY criterion when selecting windows and where they were located.
I also know about argon to improve the efficiency of poly glazed windows. Whether argon makes sense is unclear. There are debates about how long the argon actually stays in place. It is unclear why argon makes windows significantly more expensive since argon, unlike krypton, is neither rare nor expensive; the atmosphere is about one percent argon and argon is commonly used in arc welding. Xenon would actually be the best gas to use, but because of its extreme rarity and cost, it would never be considered.
There was no way that I was about to consider a totally passive house. EVERY house that is built is eventually sold so every rational person who is designing a house for himself will consider market value. It is unlikely that a totally passive house would make economic sense. To make economic sense, it would have to be proven that it would provide an adequate return on the investment and would also improve the market value of the house by enough to recover the investment. When a house is appraised to determine market value, fenestration is one of the things which determines market value. A small window area results in lower market value and that must be taken into consideration.
I actually considered insulated concrete form construction; it would have improved energy efficiency. However, I rejected it because it was too expensive and probably would not have made economic sense since the interest on the investment would most likely have exceeded the amount saved on energy cost.
My lot width is only 50 feet which, because of setback requirements, limited the house width to 40 feet. Extra extra thick walls would have made the house narrower inside which I would have found unacceptable. The fact that the lot is only 50 feet wide also made building overhangs impractical.
At the time I had the house built (it was finished in 2009), air source heat pumps were not considered practical for this climate and ground source was too expensive, so I have radiant floor heating with a 95% efficient boiler. What is available has changed since then so now it might be practical to use heat pump heating, but whether it is readily available for radiant floor heat I don’t know. Radiant floor heating does have advantages. It will operate at a lower water temperature than either radiator heat or baseboard heat thereby increasing boiler efficiency. Also, it requires less power to circulate warm water than to circulate warm air. In addition, radiant floor heat is totally silent and draft free.
I also have known about heat pump water heaters for about 25 years which was years before many people had ever even heard of them. Whether one would have made sense in my house is unclear. I have an indirect water heater which gets its heat from the 95% efficient heating boiler. My on-demand hot water recirculation system saves water.
I would consider solar for heating domestic water or space heating. Solar would actually work well with my radiant floor heating, but it would require a large storage tank. Whether it would pass the return on investment test I don’t know; that is exceedingly difficult to determine. For electricity, I would not consider solar. It pays only because of tax and other incentives. If it really made sense without those incentives and without being connected to the grid, I would consider it.
I can assure you that I did plenty of research before the design phase and am about as well informed as possible considering the inadequate knowledge available, especially the difficulty of determining the return on the investment and effect on market value of extreme efforts to maximize energy efficiency; those are factors which all too many advocates of energy efficiency ignore. Energy efficiency was important, but so too were over things. I wanted a house which was comfortable and pleasant to live in and was not about to make compromises only for the sake of energy efficiency.
Your post does not provide any quantitive financial information to determine whether various energy conservation methods make economic sense for homeowners. Nor does it consider lot size, convenience, view, or really anything important to home owners except for energy efficiency. The way your post is written it assumes that I personally know nothing about energy efficiency whereas I am actually quite well informed.
Frank,
You said:
windows transfer far more heat than do walls of the same area. Thus maximizing the energy efficiency of a house requires limiting the glass area.
While I agree that windows have more heat loss than a wall, windows have also solar gains. Depending on the balance of both, depending on climate, orientation and type of window, a bigger window can sometimes increase the energy efficiency of your house, not lower it. That goes against popular wisdom. What type and size of window you install is a decision of the owner. I have no comment on your personal choice. I do agree that windows are an expensive part of the building envelope.
Mark
Frank,
Thanks for looking into all the different technologies of energy efficiency. It is the only way to make an informed decision. Furthermore even in the 8 years that have passed things have changed.
Prices come down and specifications go up. I would not be surprised if you would build differently now. Building your own house is big decision and involves many compromises. From a financial point of view things are not clear. We do not have a crystal ball and energy prices, inflation and market prices are somewhat uncertain. If global warming becomes a problem, governments (but not the Trump administration) could tax fossil fuels forcing people to choose energy efficient houses and transportation. High energy efficient houses like the Passive House standard could be considered an insurance policy against those situations. The return on investment for Passive Houses depends on the energy efficiency of the standard in your region, the energy prices, the technology used (timber frame, brick and mortar or other construction methods), the appreciation of energy efficiency by the general public, subsidies, the local climate, orientation and lots of others factors making it difficult to make general statements. Passive House institute has created a complex spreadsheet to calculate the energy requirements of a house (Passive or not) and allows you to compare the energy savings of a high isolated and less isolated building. Put in the energy prices you expect and add inflation (your decision) and you can calculate the expected monetary savings from a high efficiency house (the passive house is on the more extreme side of energy efficiency). You need then to compare the extra costs for building the passive house. Only then you make a informed decision. Dr. Wolfgang Feist the founder of the Passive House institute in Germany did not claim it was the economic best solution, but he made it clear it was affordable for the majority of people. Passive Houses are more, but not extremely more expensive than standard houses and the prices for the special equipment like triple pane windows, ventilation with heat recovery are coming down. In Europe we see a fast trend in better and better isolated buildings leaving less isolated buildings a less attractive option in the nearby future.
The European commission has made it mandatory in all countries of the European Union to provide a detailed energy label for each house that is sold or rented. This makes the energy efficiency of a house a more important value for the market value of a house.
In Europe, in less than a decade, all new buildings need to be energy neutral, meaning that all new buildings need to create as much (renewable) energy themselves as they need for heating/cooling, hot water and lightning as they consume themselves. The higher the energy consumption, the more energy production that needs to be installed.
It is not clear (and certainly not during the Trump administration) if America will follow this trend. As higher energy efficiency is a fast moving trend older buildings could lose market value if less isolated.
From a climate change perspective, Passive Houses are the best option as fossil fuels are mostly used for the the missing energy requirements in winter, which are difficult to offset with solar panels.
For thin high isolated walls, I expect vacuum panels to be a possibility in the next 20 years. They were not an option in 2009 and now they exist but their reliability in the long time and price make it not a smart choice.
If you are not aware of what is possible with Passive Houses, you are not well informed, but it is up to the home owner to make his own choices. Building a house is in most cases a question of making compromises. Everyone must make his own and live with it afterwards. If it is the best choice, only the future will tell.
I believe that by 2050 our carbondioxide emmisions have to be reduced with 80 to 90%. Energy efficiency will play a big role in that. The residential and commercial building, industry and transportation are the big users of energy. I expect energy efficiency rules to get stricter everywhere in the world in the next decades.
You seem to have done your homework when you build your own house and I will respect that.
Mark
Mark,
Yes, probably I’d do a few things differently than I did when planning my house almost 10 years ago. It might now be more reasonable to use mini split air conditioners rather then two central systems (one for downstairs and one for upstairs). Mini split systems have been around for about 30 years that I know of, but for some reason, have been almost unknown here in the U.S. until fairly recently. They make zoning easy which has efficiency advantages and even without zoning tend to be more efficient than central systems. Also, air source heat pumps were not good in this climate 10 years ago but now they are.
In Europe, some buildings are cooled by chilling the ceiling. That can be somewhat complicated because, for obvious reasons, the sensible heat has to be decoupled from the latent heat, but that approach is more efficient. I was not even able to consider it since local contractors were not familiar with it.
My house has mostly indirect fluorescent tube lighting using fluorescent tubes with a CRI > 90 and a color temperature of about 6500K. Now I might use LED lighting instead, but 10 years ago LED lighting would not have been practical.
Even though it is unlikely that I will ever again have a new house built, I still make a point of keeping my knowledge up to date.