how i reduced my energy bill (part 2)

[Xaero_Vincent]

Pirate,

What do you think of my idea?

Sterling Allan seemed to think that its plausible.

http://www.peswiki.com/index.php/Talk:OS:Sterling_Allan%27s_Sustainable_Home#Stirling_Engine_backup

[Creativity]

Hello all,

Thx for an input! I hope many of us will read and implement what they can in their specific situations..well that was my purpose anyway, kind of back door fight we can do in between our FE research. With money we save we can fund the progress! But watch out, once u have started with optimizations it gets addictive, just ask Pirate

Pirate is a good fighter, but u live alone as i remember Did the power company came to change ur meter already ?

About the warm water supply.. in the kitchen i just have electric boiler, but otherwise the idea to connect washing machine to the hot water seems really good but to take into account the new generation washing powders that r already doing a good job at 30 deg C i would place a tap to premix the cold and warm water before entering the washing machine. In this way we would not have to wash all the time at say 60 deg C. Dishwasher would get the full hotness

Ahh, washing machine! Good u brought the subject up Washing powder producer put a lot of effort to develop a good product.I do the washing in 40 deg C on the short program, towels and bed sheets 95 deg C. 2 years ago we did normal washing at 60 deg C, who knows maybe in 2 years time it will be 30

About gas vs. electric. Yes i do agree, in a long term electric would be great (possibly induction plate to reduce the heat mass). However nowadays we burn coal or gas to make electricity, transport it and then use at our oven :| much loses here. If one has a homemade electricity the electric plate is the green solution

I was looking for some inspiration around, look guys what i found :

http://www.popularmechanics.com/footprint/

If u follow the links a lot of nice stuff there.

I will stay for a moment in the kitchen subject. Still so much things to say about it!
As in part 1 of my story, it came with no surprise that the kitchen exhaust hood was also a big hole to let the cold air in. During cooking i use the electric fan to suck out the bad smells and damp. It is only 2 h per day that we cook, all the rest of the time the vent should be closed somehow. This time the ventilation pipe ends in a duct leading to the chimney on the roof. I attached a pic about the situation. I will have to cut in the aluminum pipe and fix a simple one way valve in it. It will only open when the ventilator is on I m still searching for a one i can install as a cut-in.

If the exhaust is on a reachable height, u can use the one way valve (attached picture). It is cheap (around 5Euro) but it will make an impact in the winter. Just imagine u have a hole like this in the middle of a wall... its not good for energy savings.

The exhaust hood has build in lamps (2X 40W incandescent). It gives not that much light, because most of the light never leaves the hood. I fixed it by opening the hood (easily done, because the fat filter is removable for washing) and by using some hot glue i fixed an aluminum foil (kitchen ware) to reflect the light to the outside where it belongs. In a next step I took out one of the lamps. Now it gives comparable amount of light with the half of the energy usage. best way to check it, is to let the unaware kitchen user to do his/her stuff. Afterward u ask if they noticed anything. no? then u have a success .CFL would not fit in the hood and i m not sure it would live long in the hot and humid conditions in there. Led lights would do the trick but are not paying itself in a reasonable time in this location.

Here we r done with the ventilation system.

As mentioned, i have a small flow-through electric water boiler to supply the kitchen with warm water. It has a capacity of 5-10 liters (?). The one who read part 1, would not be surprised yep I m going to use a clock to regulate the heating time. Here is how it goes:
When r we using warm water? hmm.. during the day! So why would we let the heater to constantly keep the water warm at night? We simply won't 

First of all we need to measure how much of energy does the boiler consumes. I use a kill-watt kind of device that u can plug in to the wall outlet:

http://www.p3international.com/products/special/P4400/P4400-CE.html

Why? because if we want to improve we should measure before and after to see if we gained anything. Not always possible, but here it is very simple. I think that averaged week consumption is reasonable, that way we catch the whole week cycle of living. My results will come in 2 weeks, but i can already say what is the plan

I plan to set a timer, looks the same as the kill a watt device but u can set the time when the connected device is on and off with the 15min intervals all around the 24h. I will set the timer to switch off the boiler from 24.00 until 6.00 am. It will assure that boiler will work from 6 till 7 am(water will be cold by 6am) and the warm water will be ready in the morning when i get up to work. It takes around 1h 10 min to warm my boiler. During the day nobody is at home (usually) till 15.00. That's another interval we can set up. I would say from 10.00 am till 14.00 the boiler can be switched off again. In total i hope to save 10-20% of its energy consumption. Stay tuned for real results!

Ok, so we have warm water. Now don't let us spoil it too much. Most of the time the warm water pipes are not insulated, why? I have no idea, it is so striking loss of energy. Especially nowadays when all of the plumbing is done in copper. Inexpensive extruded polyethylene insulating pipes r really cheap and very effective. Don't be surprised to get a temperature drop of 2-3deg C on the first meter of a pipe at 50 deg C water temp.In part 1, I wrote a bit more on the subject. If ur cold water supply is at 15 deg C it means u have to warm the water from 15 to 50 deg just to loose 2/(50-15)*100%=5 % of the work u put in to do so. Install the insulation on the warm pipes all over ur home, this especially on the heating system pipes (those are long ones). Once u there u can put the boiler this 2degC lower and feel no difference in comfort, still saving money.

Situation is a bit different if the pipes are made of PCV. Plastic pipes r giving less loses, unfortunately it is relatively new tech and not to find in old houses.

This much this time  have fun energy hunters and  c u in the next episode.

[Pirate88179]

Pirate,

What do you think of my idea?

Sterling Allan seemed to think that its plausible.

http://www.peswiki.com/index.php/Talk:OS:Sterling_Allan%27s_Sustainable_Home#Stirling_Engine_backup

That is very interesting.  I have never heard of doing that before.  I built a small Sterling engine last year and it worked fine but, no torque, of course it was a small one.  (I used soup and tuna cans)  I didn't know you could use nitrogen like that.  have you tried a prototype in smaller scale yet using that gas?  I would be interested in hearing how much more efficiency you really get from that.  Good idea for the water pipes too for cooling and then using the heated cooling water later.

Bill

[Pirate88179]

Creativity:

Wow, you can tell you have been giving this some thought over there.  I agree 100% about the flatness of the pans on the electric range and also, my ex-wife used to fire up the biggest burner to heat a very small sauce pan.  Matching the burner size to the pan is always good.

Very good thought on the range vent.  Mine goes out through the ceiling and, I never use it ever even though I cook every day.  (Yes, I do live alone...well...with a cat)  I may look at rigging up a temporary "insulation plug" for it.  I missed that one for sure.  Since mine is vented straight up, no telling how much of my heat races out through the roof.

Also, in the new electronic goldmine catalog they offer led light bulbs (Edison base) equivalent to a 30 watt bulb for $8.00.   This may be a great application for those as they are not much more than a CFL and, I agree, the cfl's would not take the abuse in that location.  heck I have burned out about 6 of those damn things last year in different location in my apartment.  I don't like them and they do not last longer than a 50 cent incandescent if you ask me.  Plus, 2 of mine actually caught fire.  I never burn those when I am not here.

Google electronic goldmine to see the bulbs I am talking about.  This is the cheapest I have ever seen decent led bulbs.

Bill

[the_big_m_in_ok]

Hi Lee,
See this link: http://KB.IOU.Edi/data/adkc.HTML  where you can find what IMHO means.
rads, Gayla

Hi Gayla,
I decided to look it up on the Internet earlier:

In My Humble Opinion (IMHO)

NOTE: Without my Mandriva disk, the site you list would come up.  I'll have to look at it later.

--Lee