hypermiling the house

[MetroMPG]

Some Ontario electricity utilities are having a promotion this summer: reduce your consumption by 10% in July & August and you get a 10% credit on the next bill.

Other than trying to remember to shut off lights, I haven't put much thought or effort into reducing home consumption.

My bro in-law bought a kill-a-watt to help him figure out how much he was using/saving.

Prompted me to try a few simple things, and the results were amazing. First I established a 22 kwh / day baseline (over 3 days) by going outside and checking the numbers on the meter at the same time each day. Did this before making any changes. Then I went to town:

• unplugged a second fridge (it's never very full anyway, just moved most of the stuff to the main fridge)

• unplugged everything with standby modes when not in use: cell charger; laptop power supply; modem; router; 3 tv's; DVD; VCR; garage door opener; probably other stuff I can't remember. I was surprised how many things fell in this category.

• got far more hypermilish with the lights switches.

Other than that, didn't do anything special. Still ran the computer, dishwasher, battery charger (running load tests) etc. Pretty much didn't require any sacrifice to my routine.

Results over the next 2 days: 8 kwh; 7 kwh. Wow.

[MetroMPG]

Turns out that at 22 kwh we were already "beating the EPA" too - the provincial average is 30 kwh / day per household! (900 kwh/mo. - http://www.hydroonenetworks.com/en/e..._MeterRead.pdf )

[bennelson]

My wife and I use about 300 KWH per month.

That means we use about a third of the average home. It's not hard. Use compact fluorecent lights, turn off lights when not in room, unplug items when you don't use them.

We aren't exactly off the grid or anything, but I like not paying too much for electricity.

We had our bill at just over $30 monthly. It is about $36 now that we pay for renewable power.

At least if I leave a light on, it's coming from a windmill instead of a coal plant.

[newtonsfirstlaw]

I think with most of our lives there is at least the potential to reduce usage of things by an order of magnitude. But doing so requires a lot of attention to detail, a lot of little changes.

I keep thinking that I should build my own house and put a water tank right in the center of it to use as a big thermal mass, while insulating the rest of the house. Maybe burying another tank deep in the ground and pumping between the two would be all that's needed to cool the house, otherwise you could just pump air through the house on cool days or nights to cool down the thermal mass.

It's very, very analogous to pulse and glide. Or, a bit like pulse and glide but adding a big lead weight in the car that had no additional effect on rolling resistance.

The insulation is lowering the drag coefficient, which halts energy loss. The thermal mass is like the lead weight that makes the car coast forever.

The other thing I must do is buy some insulation and make outside panels for the fridge or freezer.

Fridges/freezers are designed so screwed up from the point of view of efficiency. If they were designed correctly, the condenser would be outside the house, or at least on top of the fridge somewhere. And there would be a crapload of insulation, say 6-12 inches thick. And then they'd use next to no electricity.

[newtonsfirstlaw]

Note that this seems to be a similar idea, but instead of using water they are using air.

It's a lot cheaper to just pump a fluid than to "pump" heat by means of compressing a refrigerant.

[trebuchet03]

My electric consumption has sucked in my apartment.... I don't think we've ever gone below 1000 kWh in the past 6 months... why:

1. Electric Heater, Range, Oven
2. Old: Refrigerator, A/C <-- cant change - apartment
3. I'm willing to bet walls are poorly insulated <-- can't change - apartment
4. The weather has been abnormally hot (It's not even 11am and it's 73.6)

I'm on the second floor of a three story building - not sure if that means anything...

What I do to lower consumption
1. I don't use the dryer (my 2 room mates do)
2. Open windows/doors at night when the temp is cool enough (humidity requires it be extra cool)
3. CF bulbs throughout - even in refrigerator
4. Shut things down when not using them (TV, fans, computer)
5. I generally unplug phantom loads (it takes over 200 hours for my cell phone charger to register .01kWh on the kill-a-watt... and something like 175 for my laptop charger)
6. Insert something I'm forgetting...


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I'm curious of the 10% off deal will promote consumption... Kinda like the daycare that charges $5 for late pickup (the fine lead to more late pickups).

[Who]

Wow... we actually got that 10% check... a whopping $16.21 and that was before the electric water finally got retired and switched over to an indirect off the boiler, should have done that before November I guess. I'm not sure what we did, because outside of the domestic hot water changeover, I went on the hunt for stray zap juice several years ago.

[bennelson]

Hey Trebuchet,

Apartments are notoriously bad for electric bills.

The are designed to be cheap to build, but not to run. If I built my own house, I would go the opposite - put in good materials and design, and reap the rewards for years.

When I was in an apartment, it was electric everything. We were in the lower unit. It was split-level with another apartment above it and on the end of the building.

I think our upstairs neighbor got all our heat. We were on the north end of the building (where the winter wind comes) and even though we were on the end, there were no windows on that wall, so light was terrible.

Just do all the little tricks you can to cut down on electric use. At least in our apartment, the electric heat was individually controllable in each room, so we could turn it on and off as needed.

[stargazer]

If you have your computer charged into a surge protector, does that cut electricity if you only shut off your computer? I mean do I have to turn of the surge protector also?

[ebacherville]

my uncle lived in a apartment and turned off his heat the other apartments around him kept his apartment at 56 or warmer all winter.. he did this out of cost savings as he was out of work this winter.. saved him hundreds of bucks every month.

[NoCO2]

I can't really judge my actual consumption because of how the apartments where I live are setup, it's hard to tell who's meter is who's (unless of course you're the power company). However, as far as hypermiling my "home" I haven't done too much. I just replaced all the lights in the place with CF lights as the old ones died out and I have everything attached to a surge protector so disconnecting, say my entertainment center which I'm sure uses hundreds of Wh every hour, is just a flick of a switch away. My main problem is my computer habit. I run a home server, my desktop almost 24/7. My desktop I put into suspend when I'm not there, but because of how it is, it's pretty much still on (it's weird) and the server has to be up 24/7 because I haven't figured out a way to make it go to sleep until it's needed (It holds my sensitive personal data, movies and music accessible from my entertainment center and laptop).

I'll have to see what my consumption is at my new place when I move in. Sense they are condos, they are basically setup like homes and they are very well built (insulation and all) so monitoring VIA meter should be easy and efficiency should be high.

[RH77]

Originally Posted by NoCO2

I'll have to see what my consumption is at my new place when I move in. Sense they are condos, they are basically setup like homes and they are very well built (insulation and all) so monitoring VIA meter should be easy and efficiency should be high.

I agree -- apartments are notorious for poor insulation and cheapy-grade appliances.

My last place was a small Townhome -- kinda like a condo (first actual place of my own). It was a sandwiched strip between 2 larger units on the North and South (really inexpensive, and new to boot). Build quality was much better, and the bills were very reasonable (heat pump w/gas backup). I'm pretty sure there was some convection between the walls in the Winter. Selling it was an utter nightmare. After 2-3 years, that style was way overbuilt in that locale.

The biggest problem I found with apartment living, was sealing it up. The sliding glass door leaked, the front door had daylight on the bottom seal and cold air blew through it. ...And good luck getting any assistance from the landlord -- so it became a do-it-yourself'r.

I wonder if it's possible to do something with the hot water tank to have it go dormant at night, but heat the water in time to get up in mornings...?

RH77

[ttoyoda]

Fridges/freezers are designed so screwed up from the point of view of efficiency. If they were designed correctly, the condenser would be outside the house, or at least on top of the fridge somewhere. And there would be a crapload of insulation, say 6-12 inches thick. And then they'd use next to no electricity.

Welcome to 1927
http://www.antiqueappliances.com/mon...rigerators.htm

[NoCO2]

Originally Posted by RH77

I wonder if it's possible to do something with the hot water tank to have it go dormant at night, but heat the water in time to get up in mornings...?

You would have to see how things are hooked up to your water heater (IE: valves and what not). But the idea would be pretty simplistic. You make a servo controlled by a timer, set the timer to turn the servo one way say...1 hour before you plan to getup/shower (your shower would have to be planned and consistant) and when the temperature hits the right level in the tank, it will shut off the gas/electric/etc. and the timer will start over again...the only tricky bit would be linking the tanks temp control to the timer, the timer by itself wouldn't be too hard.

[ajax_6531]

Somebody said something about efficient fridges? See-through doors. This one thing would save just because you wouldn't have to stand in front of an open fridge to decide what you want. Just like the freezer section at your local grocery store.