So, first electricity. These are the things we have done to conserve electricity:
- Swapped out the electric tank water heater for an electric tankless
- Swapped out 75% of our light bulbs with CFL, the remaining with halogen
- Replaced all appliances with new more efficient ones
That got us from 900 kWh/month down to 500 kWh/month. The takehome point from the graphs below is that hot water is the single biggest energy drain appliance. In a year we use the equivalent of driving 2200 miles in a 30 mpg car, just to heat water; and thats after the tankless unit saves us 50%! We are looking into a solar hydronic system.
Next, heat. Our house had all new windows, doors, insulation, and siding installed right before we bought it. Then, we installed the wood stove. Because we burn so much wood we use only 500 gallons of oil per year. Not counting the BTUs from the wood (and someone please tell me why I should), we use 7 BTUs per heating degree day per sq foot of house. According to the table on this page, that means we are doing decent - better than with the electricity anyways. I will have to find a way to do better. Any suggestions?
How gratifying to be able to see the decrease! I'm sure out hot water heater is a hog too. In addition to remembering to turn it down when the weather warms up, we've got some pipes we really need to insulate to cut down some of the energy usage.
ReplyDeleteOur dryer is also electric, but I'm relying more on outside clothes lines in the summer and indoor racks by the fire in the winter.
I'm interested to do the calculations with Bill and see how we compare.
Regarding BTUs and the wood stove...I'm noticing a lot of anti-wood fervor among liberal, environmental types and find it perplexing. Wood was our primary heat source this winter - supplemented with propane and space heaters.
Propane - so far, our use this year has not yet reached 80 gallons (that's right - eighty) compared to 1800 per year by the previous owner. Through this long, cold winter the furnace has been set to 55 just to retain some heat while we are at work or sleeping (that is not tending a fire).
Space heaters are on timers in the bathroom (which was designed poorly and has no access to any other heat) and the kitchen. They turn on an hour before we wake up in the morning and get home in the evening and are only on while we are using the rooms. 1/2 our house is basically unheated in the winter.
All of the wood we've used is local energy. Mostly trees fallen in suburbia during storms and harvested within 50 miles of our house. They were cut with a gas chain saw, split with a gas splitter, and transported to us in the back of a pickup truck. However, I have got to believe that if you take the whole system into account, this is a more environmentally friendly way to heat our house than if we used a propane furnace powered by electricity from coal. I don't know of any sources of coal or propane within 50 miles of my house. And what is the environmental cost of extracting them? Is it really less than my wood guy?
I haven't heard anyone talk about energy in a full life-cycle kind of way, so I don't really know, but it seems unlikely.
How do you like the tankless heater? I've thought about that a few times, but have heard comments of dissatisfaction.
ReplyDeleteWe're actually using a fairly large amount of electricity with our 2 space heaters. If they are on 8 hours a day (sometimes less, more on the weekends) then we're using 24 KWH/day just with those. This makes economic sense since Indiana is an electricity producing state and coal fired power is a cheap $0.07/kwh. This for now is much better than the furnace, which uses as much electricity per day anyways AND a ridiculous amount of propane. BUT - we're using more electricity with our space heaters than you are using in your entire house.
So far it has been economics for me - We've managed to cut the costs of heating our home from about 800 per month (averaged over 6 months of winter) to ~150.00 per month by switching the burden from electricity and propane to wood and electricity while also increasing the comfort level.
We are using another 800 KWH/month on the remainder of the house - not much more than we use on the space heaters alone. This includes the water heater (doesn't help that the basement stays pretty cold without the furnace running...), the washer and dryer, the stove, and lights, fish tank, computer, and chicken water heater. Over the winter we switched out our CFLs and installed neodynium incandescent bulbs. More power use for those, but less making me crazy. We'll put the CFLs back in the summertime.
We've been using a ~100 KWH a month just to keep the chicken's water from freezing.
A soon as warmer weather arrives, I expect to see our electric bill drop as we shed over 1000 kwh of demand.
I think that counting the wood does matter from a sustainability point of view if we come to depend upon it. We are getting 90% of our heat from wood, and are paying a very hefty premium for that last 10% of heat in places that it is important for us to have heat but where neither the furnace or woodstove can effectively reach.
Given that that is only 10%, it wouldn't be the end of the world if it went away. It would be the end of the world if the wood went away though because we are setting ourselves up to be dependent upon it. I know that we currently have a 60 year supply of firewood standing on our property, but we have pre-paid for that fuel. If you're getting your wood from third parties (buying it), it should be considered exactly as you would consider anything else like oil or propane, because as the next energy crunch hits, the price and availability of firewood could go to bad places. At that point the criticism shifts from fossil fuels to deforestation and if you don't control a sustainable source of wood, you could find yourself up the creek.