Smaller house = forced savings
 

...cuz we had to leave the freezers outside on the porch... and since we live in a trailer and don't cool it, having them outside means they'll run less often [and not at all here shortly], so we're saving money on our food storage requirements. :)

They're under a carport that covers the front patio area of our house, against the wall as you walk out the door. They're shaded, in an area with plenty of airflow, and as cold as it gets here during the cold months, they'll pretty much just quit running for a few months once winter actually sets in.

Granted, it doesn't cost that much to run two freezers [one upright and one chest], but I'll be dad-gummed if I'm gonna pay for stuff I don't have to.

Eating fresh food or growing your own out of the question? Growing your own you can compost, recycle your water with a grey water setup.

Trailers arent necessary insulated that well depending model and up keep.

That's pretty awesome actually, but I'm not sure I'd want to step outside in my pajamas to get some ice cream on a cold January night!

Taking the small house thing even further, people like me who live in second floor apartments can sometimes save on heating because the first-floor people's heat rises right into my apartment. I don't even have to heat the place until late December. $15/mo electric bills. :thumbup:

"A penny saved is a penny earned."

Benjamin Franklin

;)

>

1. A penny saved is usually much more than a penny earned, because of taxes.

2. Growing your own veggies almost always produces a glut of excess food that would be impossible to eat at the time. Freezing is the fastest and easiest method of food preservation, with dehydration a close second. Canning is more work, but lasts a lot longer and doesn't care about the electricity going out. Losing all your food in a blackout sucks...


3. On the third hand, if you keep the freezers inside, the "waste" heat helps heat your house. So yes, you now have to pay for electricity, but none of the electricity is "wasted" so to speak.

Did you know that at least 6 groups of people and a bunch of machinery touch your raw vegetables before you eat them?
I am shocked a lot more people aren't sickened by them.

One of the nice things about living in central Florida is that I'm just getting ready to plant my winter garden, which will produce all the way through until March, when I plant my summer garden.
Summer was rough this year, I didn't have much time to work in the garden, and it got burnt pretty bad.
But my winter garden will have tomatoes, cucumbers, broccoli, peppers, green beans, lettuce, onions, carrots, squash, maybe corn if I feel like fighting the caterpillars, and winding throughout will be cantaloupes and watermelons. I still have some green and red peppers producing from the summer planting, although they're looking pretty scraggly.
My garden is 16' x 28', and I am getting ready to cover it with shade cloth this season, so I'll be able to grow year round, and it supplies us with most of our veggies.

I also have a grove of bananas, which produces more bananas than we can eat.

Nobody touches my veggies but me and my wife! Gotta save money where you can!

Another advantage of growing your own veggies is you know exactly what chemicals (pesticides, fertilizers, etc.) your plants were exposed to. Also you can build up the micronutrients in your garden's soil so the veggies growing in them will be nutrient dense. Most store bought veggies are grown in soils that haven't seen anything except NPK synthetic fertilizers since the 1940's and modern veggies have been documented by the USDA to be much lower in vitamins, etc. than similar veggies grown in the 1950's.

I've thought about this, quite often... and it's really not worth the extra expense.

See, your house will /always/ be warmer than the freezer, which, in turn, makes the freezer not as efficient at cooling it's interior, and also makes it run more often.

So it's running longer, and more often inside the house, almost regardless of the outside conditions [unless you live in the Mojave, perhaps].

Now, for the few bucks a year difference, it probably doesn't make any difference to even some savings-minded individuals, but I prefer to leave them outside for the cost savings and life-extension of the units.

This place isn't the greatest insulated, but heating shouldn't be too bad... maybe $200/month in gas for the 3 worst months, less so if we focus more time on cooking at lower temperatures and using the oven more frequently, which helps to heat the living space. I don't bother heating the bedroom fro the most part because we're sleeping and don't care about what temp it is.

Yes, it gets a bit complex.

On a similar point, if your house is air conditioned, a dollar's worth of "waste" electrical heat (like from a freezer, or incandescent bulbs) take 2-3 dollars worth of AirCon electricity to remove.

But on the third hand, it's hotter outside in the summer (vs aircon indoors) , so the compressor has to work a bit more compared to being inside.

On the whole, I think your solution is the best, but having them indoors does come with some not-so-obvious advantages.

When I finally own my own home, I want to learn the point of diminishing returns on insulation. I remember doing some math and if I put a foot or two into my parents' attic, their utility bills were supposed to go down, but there was still a long ROI. In the Phoenix area, I think that it would make more sense to put 8" batts on the inside of the roof, if you keep the heat from getting in, you never need to cool it.

I am trying to remember something else... an underground heat pump. In the winter, it brings forty-six-degree air from underground to heat your home, and in the winter, it cools your home.

Dad wanted solar. He had big dreams.

When I end up in a more or less personally owned space and can do whatever I want, I"ll be using solar thermal coils to heat bulk and personal use water. Bulk water heats the house, personal use water is... well... yeah.

I would also really like to build a parabolic outdoor oven and figure out a way to regulate it's temperature somewhat precisely.

And of course, solar/wind energy or some mixture of both, more likely.

...but it all takes money.

I've often thought about building a "freezer" / refridgerator that would be on the inside of the house but have appropirate venting to use the "outside" whenever possible to cool its contents, then in the summer months switch to traditional means.

Would work in reverse of what an air powered solar collector operates

That's a step closer, but you've still got the heat contained in the house acting against the interests of the insulated compartment of the freezer. Unless your home is generally cooler than outside temps [ours typically is not], it's still better left outside, even if only for a few degrees.

AllenK did a good job looking at that:

Insulating the fridge yourself and cutting down energy consumption down to 50%

If you have an upright, one of the quickest things you can do with it, at the cost of space, is to fold up an old blanket so that it fits perfectly in the bottom area below the last shelf [typically drawer space in a fridge] and lay the blanket into that well, at least covering the odd shaped area where the compressor is usually placed.

In the case where your cooling coils are inside the walls of the unit, insulating inside it [but not outside] can still increase it's efficiency, at the cost of a little space.

If it's a really old one with the coils inside, you can also simply find out where the coils are and remove that entire panel, exposing them.

radiant barrier foil
 

Insulation doesn't keep heat from getting in, but absorbs it, then releases the heat into the house through the night. The result is that the house stays hot and uncomfortable through the night.

A much better alternative is radiant barrier foil, stapled to the rafters. It is inexpensive, quick and easy to install on one's own. When the temp was 112 here a few years ago, the house got up to a comfortable 83 inside, but is usually in the mid 70's in the summers, and I never use any a/c.

Another advantage is the foil reflects internal heat back into the house in the winters, keeping the house cooler in summers, and warmer in winters. I only had heat from the fireplace insert 7 times last winter, compared to 45 times a few years ago.

I guess that all depends on where you are... it's already steadily below 70 here during the day, and it's only gonna get colder in the next month or so. There's a portion of the winter where it's pretty steadily under 30 degrees for a couple weeks or longer, too.

During that portion of the winter, the freezers won't even run, and for the months surrounding them, it'll more than likely only run once or twice a day.

For that entire period, there's almost nothing I could do that's more efficient than having them outside, because even letting the 'waste heat' from the pump and cooling coils heat the house, the house being warmer than the intended temperature of the freezer means it has to run more often to keep it's contents cold, and reduces the coils' cooling efficiency, making the pump run longer per cycle as well.

Even super insulating the freezer would still allow this to happen, although it may run less time per cycle and less cycles, it won't be as 'good' as it not cycling at all or cycling once-twice per day.