Make Your Home Energy Sufficient
In other words, we must all ask ourselves, “How much energy is enough to fit my needs?” Notice I wrote needs, not wants; how often people confuse the two. And this is, of course, all about saving energy and money, right?! Let’s start with size. Just like with automobiles, large homes are energy pigs compared to smaller homes. Heating, cooling, and lighting large spaces is pricey. So unless your family is big enough to start its own baseball team, you don’t require a 6 bedroom/4 bath house. You’re just wasting energy and money. But, perhaps you already know that and you can afford it because your house is more of a status symbol of your upward movement through society and a way to cloak inadequacies, kind of like the little red sports car you drive. But… that’s just a guess.
One of the best things we can do to save energy is Get Small! My family fits comfortably into our two bedroom, one bathroom house. We may bump into each other on occasion like when the bathroom is needed, but isn’t haggling about bathroom time part of the family experience? I would also be hard pressed to come up with reasons why I should get a bigger home because it would just mean more stuff needed to fill it up. But that has nothing to do with saving energy, I just hate stuff. But my favorite advantage to a smaller home, as mentioned in the original post: less time needed to clean a house means more time and energy for me!
Location... They say location is the key to success in business. The same applies to saving energy. The location of our home is by far the biggest reason why we are able to conserve energy and money. The house we live in is not modern and not even well insulated. It's more than a hundred years old! The location, however, puts us within a short bike ride or walk from work, shopping, groceries, church, library, farmer's market, school, town activities, parks, and sporting events. So, though our home may require a little more natural gas in the winter, we recoup our savings by not having to put a day’s paycheck in the fuel tank every time we fill up.
Heating & cooling.... Turning down the thermostat during the winter and up during the summer keeps money where it belongs, in the bank. Our home never reads room temperature (72 degrees Fahrenheit) during the winter. We keep the thermostat set between 68 and 66 degrees while we are at home and awake. It's a comfortable temperature and if one of us feels a chill, she can put on a sweater!* At night, we throw on an extra blanket and turn the thermostat down to 62 degrees.
To keep the house cool in the summer we go old school. Forget the AC (we don’t have it anyway), we just use fans and windows. This non-technology is as old as the term Indian Summer. We open the house up at night to let in the cold air and close it up during the day to keep the sun and hot air out. The ceiling fan really shows its worth during the summer and a couple of well placed fans in the bedrooms at night keeps the air circulating. The few hot days we experience in Montana during the course of a summer do not necessitate spending a grand installing AC.
Those are my thoughts. Feel free to share your own.
* Ha-ha. That’s a joke. I love you, honey!
Next time...
The 3 R's
Showing posts with label thermostat. Show all posts
Showing posts with label thermostat. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Common Sense Things We Can Do To Decrease America’s Reliance On Oil (and Save a Few Bucks) (Part 7 of 10)
Make Your Home Energy Sufficient
The previous posts in this series have focused on fuel-efficient methods of transportation. While greening up your commute goes a long way to decreasing America’s reliance on oil, most of us spend more time in our homes than in our car and the home is a perfect place to save energy and money. Let’s start with the basics, things you can do without demolishing a home and rebuilding or retrofitting an existing structure.
Before you buy, think smaller. In the case of energy efficiency, smaller is better. The economy of the 90s not only allowed us the ability to super-size our rides, but super-size our homes as well. And just like with larger vehicles, larger homes take more energy to run. Ya, ya, ya,… I know what you’re saying. I’ve heard the excuse before. “But my home is an investment.” Listen, you have to be able to afford your monstrous house before you can live in it. Or did you not learn your lesson the first time it was foreclosed on. One of the best ways to reduce your energy bill is to live in a home that fits your family’s size and needs. Not everyone in your family needs their own bedroom and bathroom. Less space means less energy necessary to heat and cool your home. My favorite advantage to a smaller home: less time needed to clean it. More energy for me!
People will tell you that success in business is all about location, location, location. This simple motto extends to your home also. To be energy efficient, start with a home that is near public transportation or places you frequent. You can jump on the commuter rail to get to work or walk to the store to pick up groceries for the day without firing up your car. By doing this alone you already have a heads up in the energy race.
Turn it up in the summer and down in the winter. It’s just common sense. Turning down your thermostat during the winter and putting on an extra layer of clothing saves you money. Turning down your thermostat six to ten degrees when you are away from the house and at night when you’re underneath the covers will also save you a chunk of change also. Another benefit, you get to wear more of those fashionable winter sweaters. Did you know it costs more energy to cool a house than to heat it? By turning up the temperature on your thermostat in the summer you can save 5 to 10% on the operating cost of your air conditioner for every two degrees of cooling you are willing to give up. Use a programmable thermostat instead of a rheostat. It will take all the thought process out of remembering to adjust it manually and increase your overall savings.
Don’t be a dim bulb. Use energy efficient fluorescent light bulbs. A 15 watt fluorescent bulb lasts 10,000 hours compared to 500 for a 60 watt incandescent and uses one quarter the energy. Yes they’re more expensive, but they pay for themselves in the long run.
Use energy efficient appliances. For example, front-loading washers use 40-60% less water and 30-50% less energy than typical top-loaders. Your clothes will last longer with a front-loader also, because they gently tumble your clothes instead of jerking them around with an agitator. Couple the front-loader with drying your clothes on a line during the summer to further reduce your energy consumption. Look for appliances marked with the Energy Star label.
If you have forced air, clean or replace air filters as recommended. Energy is lost when air conditioners and hot-air furnaces have to work harder to draw air through dirty filters. Cleaning a dirty air conditioner filter can save 5 percent of the energy used. That could save 175 pounds of CO2 per year.
Wow, that was easy. We didn’t even have to knock down any walls. I’ve saved the dirty work for tomorrow.
The previous posts in this series have focused on fuel-efficient methods of transportation. While greening up your commute goes a long way to decreasing America’s reliance on oil, most of us spend more time in our homes than in our car and the home is a perfect place to save energy and money. Let’s start with the basics, things you can do without demolishing a home and rebuilding or retrofitting an existing structure.
Before you buy, think smaller. In the case of energy efficiency, smaller is better. The economy of the 90s not only allowed us the ability to super-size our rides, but super-size our homes as well. And just like with larger vehicles, larger homes take more energy to run. Ya, ya, ya,… I know what you’re saying. I’ve heard the excuse before. “But my home is an investment.” Listen, you have to be able to afford your monstrous house before you can live in it. Or did you not learn your lesson the first time it was foreclosed on. One of the best ways to reduce your energy bill is to live in a home that fits your family’s size and needs. Not everyone in your family needs their own bedroom and bathroom. Less space means less energy necessary to heat and cool your home. My favorite advantage to a smaller home: less time needed to clean it. More energy for me!
People will tell you that success in business is all about location, location, location. This simple motto extends to your home also. To be energy efficient, start with a home that is near public transportation or places you frequent. You can jump on the commuter rail to get to work or walk to the store to pick up groceries for the day without firing up your car. By doing this alone you already have a heads up in the energy race.
Turn it up in the summer and down in the winter. It’s just common sense. Turning down your thermostat during the winter and putting on an extra layer of clothing saves you money. Turning down your thermostat six to ten degrees when you are away from the house and at night when you’re underneath the covers will also save you a chunk of change also. Another benefit, you get to wear more of those fashionable winter sweaters. Did you know it costs more energy to cool a house than to heat it? By turning up the temperature on your thermostat in the summer you can save 5 to 10% on the operating cost of your air conditioner for every two degrees of cooling you are willing to give up. Use a programmable thermostat instead of a rheostat. It will take all the thought process out of remembering to adjust it manually and increase your overall savings.
Don’t be a dim bulb. Use energy efficient fluorescent light bulbs. A 15 watt fluorescent bulb lasts 10,000 hours compared to 500 for a 60 watt incandescent and uses one quarter the energy. Yes they’re more expensive, but they pay for themselves in the long run.
Use energy efficient appliances. For example, front-loading washers use 40-60% less water and 30-50% less energy than typical top-loaders. Your clothes will last longer with a front-loader also, because they gently tumble your clothes instead of jerking them around with an agitator. Couple the front-loader with drying your clothes on a line during the summer to further reduce your energy consumption. Look for appliances marked with the Energy Star label.
If you have forced air, clean or replace air filters as recommended. Energy is lost when air conditioners and hot-air furnaces have to work harder to draw air through dirty filters. Cleaning a dirty air conditioner filter can save 5 percent of the energy used. That could save 175 pounds of CO2 per year.
Wow, that was easy. We didn’t even have to knock down any walls. I’ve saved the dirty work for tomorrow.
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