how I reduced my heating bill by 60%

[khabe]

  no normal family.I use a trick i say they can spend the money we save on something else,it works fine so they start to think about the clothes and so on,of course by the time i get the year correction in bills they already forgotten my proposition
just give it a shot.

u can set the timers on devices as i did,they won't work before desired time,so u can enforce ur statements

Ur situ looks like my starting point .Now i am down to 220â,¬,that is an overestimate from the energy supplier.As i calculate i m still under this by 5-7%

I can help u with some of ur problems.What kind of heating system do u have?

I have explaned my "system" in « Reply #3 on: November 20, 2008, 12:37:34 PM »
cheers,
khabe

[Creativity]

I have explaned my "system" in « Reply #3 on: November 20, 2008, 12:37:34 PM »
cheers,
khabe

ups my fault if u already have heat pumps there is no direct saving on home central heating u can get with the gas IHMO.
Although i see it could payoff to have cookplate or water heater running on LPG from the tank in the back yard or the small 12 to 30 kg exchangeable tanks.I lived in Poland before and we were also not connected to the gas pipe,but this 12kg tanks were reasonably priced and exchange point was in many places in the city+ i love to cook on gas it is so much better

One thing is cool.I was wondering not so long ago about the possibilities of storing night tariff electricity and use it during the day.Deep cycle batteries bank is way to expensive investment for me and also long time to pay off+u have to change batteries time to time :|
Two alternatives came to my mind.One is to store electricity in the form of compressed air in the tank.By night a compressor would pump the tank and by day generator would run out of this compressed air.Total system efficiency could be somewhere near the 60-70 % so comparable with lye deep cycle batteries system.Obviously there would be no need for exchanging the batteries.
Second came to me because i wasn't very satisfied with the efficiencies of pneumatic system.I came with very simple and robbust solution.One drawback is the space required,but this in ur case is not a problem.

The idea is to use electric motor by night to elevate heavy weight( tonnes) by a gear system.The higher the elevation and the more of the weight the more potential energy stored in the system.Beauty of the idea is that the efficiency of the electric motor and the generator is quite high and only a small inefficiency comes from the gearing system and the brake.This system would work good also with solar and other renawables.

Further it seems u have a lot of inductive load in ur home grid(motors/pumps).I don't know if u r aware but this introduces a shift in power factor across the ur home grid.By this u get out of phase current and voltage waves resulting in electrical appliances using more power than they need(efficiency drop!).This can be even up to 30% losses man.
This is new idea i my arsenal and i am investigating some inexpensive patents to solve this problem,as i live next to the butchery shop and their fridges use 3 compressors of 7kW not counting freezers...it surely affect my network also.
check this one:

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6801022.html

i hope we can cooperate on this idea and check the results.

[Creativity]

Hey again today about the water pipes  and no not shisha pipes.

As usual i start with the situation as it was.There is like 21 meters of pipes from the heater to reach the house and another so much in other direction.5 m of the pipes run under the ground,4 meters in the basement and the rest on the walls and ceilings of the garage and house.Those r steel pipes of 1 3/4 inch in diameter(main pipe) to 1inch (side branch).

Interesting was fact that those were uninsulated in the space that was not part of the house  serious crime against ur wallet as i felt.

First i took some measurements on the main branch of the system.At the heater outlet water had the temperature of 57-58 deg C.At enter to the house the temp was 52-52,7 deg C. Nice loss... this all was obviously not heating the living space.
After the water went through the radiators (at the exit of the house) temperature was in a range of 43-43,6 deg C.When reaching the heater it droped to 40,3-41 deg C.

Some observations showed that, the warmer the pipe the more heat it looses.Also pipes under the ground had about the half of the heat loss rate per meter,than in air.It gave me a priority of insulating.

So what could i do? i went to the do it urself shop and found some insulation in form of styrofoam pipes.those r cut through the length and can be put on a pipe without dissasembling of existing piping.
I had a choice between 9mm thickness and 16 mm thickness insulation.I would go for 16 but price was almost 4 times higher(because of the brand name i guess),if they had it from any cheaper brand i would go for it .Cheaper pipes were about 0,2 to 0,43 â,¬ per meter,depending on the diameter.
Total investement of around 16â,¬ in my case.

It went fast and painless,system is easy.. just slip it on.Easy to cut with a nife.3h of work.One drawback were bendings in plumbing,second the gaps between insulation.To keep it air tight i decided to use a ducktape on every gap,in this way insulation lets no air to circulate through the gaps.
Bendings were more problematic.This slip on foams are not easy in this subject, i decided to recycle some of the plastic bags,newspapers(it is very good insulator too!) and old tshirts to insulate it.Ok not the winner of beauty contest but does the job..
And it works! temp on the home entrance is now in range of 56-56,4 deg C. As for returning water the temp is now around 42 deg C. 16 mm insulation should be better in cutting existing loss by some additional 30% .So if u see good priced 16 mm go for it!

My case was kind of radical in the lenghts of the pipes.However keep in mind that water heaters and airconditioning pipes(hot side pipes inside of the house only,cold pipes all the way) are also a nice candidate for extra insulation work and bill savings!.Especially copper plumbing of small diameter because of excellent copper heat transfer rates!
Next to  it all cold water pipes insulation is an option too.In the winter,cold water in ur pipes gets heated up by the house heat..the same heat ur paying for.Next to it nasty moisture condensation problem can be avoided.

untill the next one!

[Creativity]

heyo,
today some info about the radiators.

Radiators work in two ways,they heat up the air that passes though them(convection) and they emit infrared waves heating surfaces of the objects in the radiation range(radiation).Both mechanisms are taking active role in human comfort perception.
Some studies has been made and those show that not only the temperature in the room is what is needed for comfi feeling.

here is a link for interested ones:
http://www.homeenergy.org/archive/hem.dis.anl.gov/eehem/94/940312.html

in a nut shell we can substitute temperature by radiating heat sources.To see it more clearly just imagine gas/infrared radiators used in outdoor evenements (in Europe).It is also very handy in garage or big volume working spaces where heating costs would prohibit using of conventional systems.
I mean something like this:
http://www.lpg-portable-heaters.co.uk/
it mainly radiates heat and does not heat up the surrounding air.But even in the winter,u can quite comfortably stay warm next to it.One of those was used by us during the night pickninc

Another analogy is a fireplace.It mainly radiates heat (u can feel it on ur face ).This effect should not be underestimated in radiators also.

Thus coming back to the home heating system.We want the heaters to be as effective&efficient as they can be.To achieve this we would like them to be good convectors and radiators.The hotter the radiator the more heat it radiates and allows more air to pass through it and warm up.The bigger the surface the better the heat exchange.Knowing this simple facts let us see a classical counterproductive don'ts:

1) imagine what happens when u put clothes to dry out on ur radiator(towels in bathroom)?

The surface of the radiator is then reduced so less heat waves are available to heat up the people and objects around it.
Also warm air that normally leaves the radiator at the top,has now restricted flow.It means the less air gets heated up.In fact u can compare this situation with the radiator of the smaller size...it won't get u the comfort u want to have.Also some nice psychology here when u feel cold u tend to make longer/warmer showers...so there is a trade of lower temp in bathroom vs. higher water/electriicity bill

A simple solution is : don't put anything on the radiator! if u want to dry something let it hang above the radiator .Warm air will circulate around it turburently and this will efficiently dry ur things up.This tip is very usefull in the bathroom where u have always some towels to dry out.

2)lang curtains hanging on the radiator top.

This is another classic.If curtains are too long they will block the radiator,again making it less effective in warming up the room and less efficient(it will cost u extra money as i will explain in a moment).
By all means try not to block the top of the radiator with curtains or even worse close it behind the curtains..Let the curtaing lay on the window tablet instead or adjust their length.

3)british style radiator covers.

For example :
http://www.woodysworldof.com/
It is a fact thet most of the radiators are so damn beautifull! of course i m joking. Unfortunately the cover will just make things worse for ur pocket.It only blocks the heat exchange process.Infrared waves are stopped at the cover walls.Also air has more restricted flow to get heated up.
Still one can put a tablet above the radiator, but in a way that it is not laying on the radiator top!.This should insure air flow is not restricted.

4)many layers of paint.

Paint is not a very heat conductive material.After many years (repaintings) the paint can be as thick as 1mm!.I just advise u to use sand paper and remove old paint befor eputting a new one.I also use airbrushing in place of brush or roll.It makes the paint much thinner and allos for better heat conduction.

Those were some common mistakes made by most of us.If we reduce the radiating surface we will feel colder and need to put thermostate to higher setting.This results in higher bill..(check the link i posted above).
Also if the airflow is restricted it takes longer time to warm up the house and takes higher thermostat setting to keep the house warm.Why? because we have a radiators that r small and to make tham compensate for it u need them to be warmer...

Not only comfort goes down but also pocket suffers.

Now few more advanced topics.

In the house i live in the radiator at the converted attic is too small to heat the whole space efficiently.It is not my house so i didn't wanted to invest in  the bigger radiator,i had to make a way around this problem.it took me some thinking to find some solution  :)It came by reconnecting ot the radiator.
Most of the radiators are connected in two ways:
1) upper corner/lower corner the same side of the radiator (many new radiators come with this as a default) as on the -as on pic 39 in the link.
2)upper corner/lower corner diagonally -as on pic 40.

to visualise it better i found a link:
http://chestofbooks.com/home-improvement/repairs/Mechanics-Household/Radiator-Connection.html

In my case it was the option 2.In this connection style the radiator was hot only on the top and hot water side.It was like if only the half of the radiator worked.
I visualised the water flow.Water when it is hot goes up and when cold it goes down(convection).Also it would be best if the hot water stayed as long as possible in the radiator and only the cold water was removed.This conditions would be meet in the connection style on the pic 38(both pipes on the opposite sides at the bottom of the radiator)!
In this style warm waters comes at the bottom of the radiator and by convection goes up,so it travels along the both sides of the radiator as well as the top of it.
It was a straighforward modification,i just had to cut the longer pipe and reinstall the valve to the bottom.It was a 0€ cost modification

It did improved the situation.Now the radiator is warm on the whole surface.As a bonus the radiator outlet temperature dropped by 1.4 degC in comparision with previous connection style.The average temp drop across radiator before mod was 7,8degC.It was thus an improvement of 18%!not nothing i would say..It means that more warmth was given out to the room by making this radiator more efficient

Room temperature rised by average 0.4 degC and losses in the return pipe were also reduced (see previous topic about pipes) due to the lower water temperature (by 0,2 degC).

Following this good result i modified the other two radiators.One was very long one(i have a big window of 4m length) and connected in the top/bottom-the-same-side style(pic 39).It took very long time to warm this one up because the water circulated in the small cycle between the two pipes ...as long as 13 min waiting untill whole radiator was warm.
Here reconnection resulted in 4 min to warm the whole one this really gave me good mood and encouraged me for further work  not to mention over 2,7 degC in outlet temperature drop!
Modyfication was more difficult.i had to cut one of the pipes and extend it.Then one extra bend and valve reconnection.I payed 23€ for the materials.

Last radiator was straightforward mod after the experience i build up

As the result the whole home outlet water temperature dropped by 1,3 degC! very nice.

But why is this outlet temperature so important?well as i see it (backed up by basic thermodynamics) the bigger the difference of temperature between two bodies the higher the heat exchange rate.
On the return water it means that less heat is lost to the outside of the house (or in the walls).This heat is non recoverable.
On the other hand the colder the water in the return ,the more efficient the flame is in giving away the heat to it.The flame in the burner has a colder surface to warm up,it means the heat exchange is more compete and efficient.As a result More money/gas saved!

There is also a nice trick,not widely known maybe.Because we want to warm up the room and not the wall,what can be done to recover the radiated heat lost to the wall behind the radiator?
A simple and chep solution is to attacha reflective surface behind the radiator.I found in the do-it-urself shop rolls of expanded polietylene foil.From one side it is relfective.This side goes in the direction of the radiator.The foils is 2mm thick and costs about 6€ for 3m2.
At the attic i could not measure the difference in the room temperature after installing it.But i would expect it..come on 18% of radiator efficiency increase accounted for 0,4 degC rise in room temp.With my termomether i could measure only +/-0,05 degC it is then +5% in radiator efficiency per every 0,1 degC.Foil is thus not more than 5% an improvement.

In fact it is around +4%,because other room reacted to it more visibly by +0,2 degC temp rise.

well every percent adds on to become a bigger total percent


hope u enjoyed it!
till next one,
C.

[arhitrade]

The real design of the heater with savings of up to 30%  http://gorchilin.com/articles/coil/magnetic_wave_4?lang=en
Really - more