Last year I went to get a level pay payment on my utilities. Our town does all the utilities on one bill, except for phone/cable/computer. Since I had been at home only on weekends for 6 months and had turned the heat way down & not used much water, sewer, etc. we set my payment at $52 more a month than they had suggested. April 1st of this year was time to reset. My bills last year had averaged $178 a month, but I now had a $1110 credit. I divided it by 12 and subtracted it from the $178. I have been paying $90 per month and to date (11/30/09) I have only used about $85 of my credit. Seems my new stuff has really proved fantastic in conserving energy. I also got a new thermostat about 2 months ago.

I will see if I can find someone who will clean the ventilation system on my trailer. Wish me luck.

Henry, try thinking happy thoughts. It is so much more fun. I know – I’ve been practicing for 72.5 years.

I think he’s mentioned installing things similar before. And he’s mentioned his degree in mathematics (or was it computer science?) which leads me to believe he’d be very competent in matters of computers and electronics.

Comparing a possibly dangerous medical procedure to an “untrained” homeowner doing some maintenance is so apples to oranges it’s not even funny.

Maybe Trent never got around to it. It doesn’t mean he doesn’t have the right to say they save money. It does seem surprising I guess…but overall not a big deal.

And taking jabs at his full time blogging is just low.

So people shouldn’t do anything themselves because it hurts local businesses… Really?

Thermostats use a few low voltage wires. It isn’t exactly hard to install one.

For lurker Carl, the idea is this: you should let your house cool if you’re not going to be in it for long periods of time (say, at work) or sleeping. You save energy as the house is cooling, and it takes less energy for the house to maintain a lower temperature. Yes, you lose energy when the house warms back up again. Your period of energy savings comes during the amount of time your house maintains that lower temperature. If your house is so efficient that it takes 8 hours just to cool down to your lower temp, then you won’t save any money with a programmable thermostat. But, in my experience, I did save money because my house would cool down to that lower temp (usually 60 from a typical 65 when we’re home) in an hour or two. I set the thermostat to go back up an hour before we got home. It worked well for me.

John DeFlumeri Jr.

Really? All of that advice, on a device that will
cost only $30, and save you so much, and Trent has not bothered to install one until December 2009?

Or is it that the same thing is regurgitated here day in and day out for the sake of ad revenues so someone doesn’t have to have a real job?

Would you do the same thing for a car? If a recommended mechanic told you that 2 of your 4 tires are approaching needing replacement, and that you will need an alignment too, you’ll say no?

The same could be extrapolated to doctors, dentists, etc. When do you draw the line on am I getting jipped vs. getting someone who actually cares.

I think you wrote an article not too long ago about all this, but still, what the heck?

I have found that there is very less we could do to make our rental apartment more energy efficient.

The maintenance people in the apartment are very helpful, but they draw the line at some things.

They would not clean our ventilation system, or repair pretty much anything else as long as it appeared to be working.

Makes me think I need to take an axe to the appliances that are not very efficient, so that atleast they will replace it when it is broken :-)

Oregon has something called the Energy Trust that does a free energy audit and gets you lots of rebates for insulation, windows, etc. along with state and federal rebates. They do a free inspection after the work is done and worked with the contractors when the auditor noticed a few things that could have been done better. We noticed a huge drop in our heating bill once we completed all the projects. I was bummed when we moved to another state that doesn’t offer the same kind of thing.

An unbelievable amount of dust and crud is sucked into the ductwork. Keep your ducts clean from now on by putting a filter over each cold air return.

I have yet to see any studies that show how to effectively program a thermostat in order to acheive realistic energy savings in a typical residental setting. And Trent will never know the actual savings because he had a pre-existing air flow problem resolved along with the thermostat replacement.

i highly recommend calling your gas company and asking about energy efficiency and energy auditing!