Comments on: Trimming the Average Budget: Home Energy Costs

By: Griffin

Griffin — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 14:50:50 +0000

LEDs are a great investment, especially if you get them at a reduced cost. There are also ways to make them yourself, but I’ve never tried it.

LEDs are the BEST WAY to light hard-to-read areas like over stairs because they last so long. I used to have a lamp that would get knocked down all the time and I got sick of the CFL cleanup. So, I switched it to an LED which worked GREAT!

Conversely, cheapo basic lightbulbs are the best for lights you rarely use (like the attic or a storage closet). Also, if there is a light that needs dimming stick to the regular bulbs.

By: SLCCOM

SLCCOM — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 05:41:12 +0000

In the summer we use our swamp cooler at night as an attic fan, to drive out the hot air and pull in the cool Colorado night air. Then we shut up the house for the day, use fans and only had to turn on the air conditioning for two days all summer.

By: SLCCOM

SLCCOM — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 23:22:24 +0000

If your windows are deep enough, you can put multiple layers of the plastic on them. We put plastic on both sides of the screen, another layer on the inside about an inch from the window and finally, another layer on the molding around the windows. That has made a HUGE difference. When spring comes, we just take it off, store the plastic that didn’t rip when removing it and replace it in the winter with new tape. That has been much easier than putting plastic on the outside of the windows (especially the ones over the rose bushes!)

We also leave most of the plastic up in the summer, except where we have windows that open. We never remove it from the kitchen or laundry room.

If you have to paint your house, buy some of those ceramic beads to put into the paint. They reflect infra-red heat and either keep it outside the house in the summer, or inside in the winter. It cost us an additional $500 for the beads when we painted last. I think, but don’t know for sure, that even if you paint over it with another coat or color later, you don’t need to get any more ceramic beads.

When you seal your house from drafts, keep in mind that you also seal IN all kinds of air pollutants. Don’t let anyone smoke indoors, or even smoke outdoors and then come it, as all that uh, stuff, will be trapped indoors. You may need to turn off the furnace and open the doors and windows occasionally to air it out.

And don’t even THINK of going without carbon monoxide detectors on all levels of the house. I assume I don’t need to mention the need for smoke detectors, and a plan to escape that you practice.

By: triLcat

triLcat — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 22:57:12 +0000

Remember that sometimes these things have hidden costs – we find that if we don’t keep our kids’ room warm enough, they wake up many times in the night. Warm pajamas only help so much. The AIR has to be warm for them to sleep really well. Our kids are still in diapers (the older one is 2), but other people have told me that their kids are much more likely to wet the bed if the room is too cold. Is it worth having to get up and change the sheets?

Hanging up laundry is a big money-saver, but it takes loads of time. Is your time worth money? Depends what you do for a living and how easily your time is monetized.

By: Paula

Paula — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 15:42:28 +0000

We live in Maine, so we focus more on cutting costs during the winter months. I live in a single wide 20 year old mobile home with my husband and son, so I have found that covering the older windows with plastic (the ones that don’t have storm windows) has drastically helped our gas heating bills (until we can afford the cost of replacing them) by reducing drafts. We also use weather stripping around doors and caulk outside windows, along with using insulated drapes. Our thermostat is set to 68 degrees during the day when we are home on the coldest of days, otherwise we turn it down to 55 when we are at work. At night, I turn it down to 62 (I would set it lower, but my son’s room is in the front of our home and gets chillier than ours). We have found that our small portable K-1 heater has helped keep our furnace from running constantly in the early evening when the temps outside are below freezing, so we supplement with that when we are all watching TV in the living room, as well as bundling up with a blanket on the couch. As a bonus, it runs on batteries, so it is our emergency source of heat when the power goes out as we do not have a generator.

By: Bill

Bill — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 13:39:15 +0000

Don’t just add more insulation, but first seal to prevent air leakage between conditioned space and the uninsulated attic.

Storm windows cost much less than replacing the main windows.

We added storm windows on the 1920s house where I grew up and they lasted over 25 years before the current owners replaced the main windows (custom-built with an installed cost of nearly $500 each!)

Many people use those temporary plastic wrap kits to add an air gap in the winter (the ones where you use a hair dryer to complete the seal)

By: KimC

KimC — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 07:28:40 +0000

We saved this year by:
1. Skip the a/c. We live in south Texas and the summer was brutal – but we did it, and probably saved nearly $1,000 in the course of 5 months.
2. Line dry laundry. Our dryer gave out last year and we decided not to replace it right away. Line drying is saving us an estimated $40-50/month (we have a very large family and lots of laundry).
3. Insulate. We replaced most of the missing insulation under our pier and beam home, and replaced the leaky front door. We put a homemade draft dodger in front of another leaky door. We covered northern windows with heavy blankets. There is more we can and should do, but these items made a huge difference in the cost to maintain a comfortable temperature during cold weather.

By: Debbie M

Debbie M — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 02:38:32 +0000

Let me just say that when it’s boiling hot, I turn off the AC during the day and turn it back on (to 80 degrees) when I get home. In the meantime, the temperature may have risen to over 90 degrees).

For one month we just set it to 85 degrees while we were gone so it wouldn’t have to work so long when we came home. Our electricity bill increased dramatically that month, so I have an extremely hard time reconciling that experience with what Matt and Scott’s HVAC guy are saying. I know of nothing that could have messed up this data: the following month was even hotter and the bill went back down, we didn’t replace any old appliances during that time, etc.

@Scott, although your car does do best at a constant speed, that is only assuming that it needs to go a certain distance. I think that turning your HVAC system off or down for a while is like shortening the distance you have to drive.

By: matt

matt — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 22:23:53 +0000

Also would like to jump on the programmable stat discussion. In college I did a project which designed a thermostat that did just this, but the relationship to temperature and humidity is related in a human comfort index which can be found in ASHRAE standards. It has been proven that you can eek the most energy savings out by programming to a certain comfort level, and letting the thermostat control the heating and a humidifier to get to that comfort level with the least amount of energy. I would guess that this will be the future, though I have never seen a commercial system that did this. Additionally with data over power lines coming its possible to have a thermostat adjust temperature based on time of day pricing information which is also supposedly in the pipeline.

By: matt

matt — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 22:13:37 +0000

@MegB

If i only replaced them with basic models it would be cheaper but I was looking at pella double insulated with blinds, otherwise new windows wouldn’t be much better than the ones I have already.

By: Jill

Jill — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 20:29:04 +0000

The deal with heat pumps is that the geothermal part of the pump is cheap to operate from an electricity standpoint, but that the emergency heating system part is effectively electric coil heat, and that’s an insanely expensive way to heat a home.

And the typical heat pump is designed to cycle on the emergency heat when the thermostat set temperature is more than 2-3 degrees warmer than the ait temperature. So if you set up an ordinary programmable thermostat to have a 6-8 degree temperature gap over the course of the day, the emergency coil will cycle on when the system tries to bring the temperature up to speed, and that will cause an utterly huge spike in energy use and costs over the course of a month.

If you use a heat pump and want to go the programmable route, you need to get one of the thermostats that have a tiny little computer brain in them that works with a set of algorhythms designed to move home temperatures back up to the set point in a way that doesn’t make the emergency heat cycle on in the process.

In terms of whether the programmables work better or not, we’ve tried both steady temp and a heat pump specific programmable, and didn’t notice a difference either way.

By: MegB

MegB — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 16:20:02 +0000

@matt

Wow! $30k for windows? Mine were only about $6200 (for 16 windows), and they are fabulous.

By: Scott

Scott — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 16:09:40 +0000

Every blog post or article lists programmable thermostats, usually as the very first suggestion. However, when I asked about them from the HVAC guys installing the unit in our new home, they said that at every training session or convention they go to, they are told that programmable thermostats really don’t help much…that keeping at a sensible temperature constantly is much better, energy efficiency-wise, as well as wear and tear on the unit. They even said with a non-programmable switch, turning it down at night or while you are gone put more stress and burned more energy getting the house back up to the desired temp all-at-once when you came back.

I was confused about this at first, but the more I thought about it, it’s similar to gas mileage…we all know your gas mileage is better on the interstate where you stay at a constant speed vs in stop and go traffic…you burn more fuel getting to your desired speed, than staying on that speed constantly, especially if your desired speed is a sensible one. I would daresay a car that does all it’s driving on an interstate probably has less maintenance issues long term that a stop-and-go prone vehicle would.

Then, I realized that where I see the recommendations for programmable thermostats are mostly in blogs, online articles looking for content, and the very large marketing display at home depot, showing all the various-priced specialty thermostats, that make companies like Honeywell a new revenue stream that they didn’t have a few years ago…

I could be wrong, but sometimes I wonder if it’s mostly marketing hype, that’s just been regurgitated over and over because it sounds plausible at first.

Makes you wonder.

By: matt

matt — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 15:35:01 +0000

just wanted to pop on and disagree with trent, new windows would be a $30,000 investment, one that would never be recouped by the savings in my lifetime.

By: Ellen

Ellen — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 15:31:27 +0000

Also, landscape to strategically provide shade in the summer & sun in the winter. We live in the central valley (i.e., desert heat in summer, cold & cloudy/foggy in winter). Our first move when buying a house with a lot of western & south exposure was to plant fast growing deciduous trees on those 2 sides of the house. Added in a whole-house attic fan (which is automated to turn on when the attic reaches a certain temp) & it made a HUGE difference in the summer. They drop the leaves in the winter so we get the sun in the windows then.

Our attic insulation was upgraded to include not only batting along the ceiling, but attached to the actual roof on the inside as well – which helps keep the heat from getting into the attic in the first place. Better attic insulation also helps keep the heat in during the winter.

We heat with a new efficient wood stove (& very occasionally with a small electric portable) and cool with ceiling fans & an evaporative cooler – our energy bills never total more than $100/month, even factoring in purchasing wood for the stove (we get ours free).

By: Evita

Evita — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 15:24:44 +0000

The best tip is not in Trent’s post but in Steffie #11 comment. Insulate the attic the best you can! the house will be cooler in summer (the sun literally bakes the attic) and warmer in winter (insulated from the accumulated snow). Many houses older than 20 years old can benefit from additional insulation.

By: Sandy

Sandy — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 15:02:12 +0000

A few things we’ve done to keep utility bills low:
1)We live in Ohio, and have all 4 seasons. We have an all-electric house, but we have a heat pump. We utilize the shades, screens, and fans in the summer to keep cooling to a minimum. In the winter, to keep the heat pump from going into overdrive (which it does at really low temps)we installed a fireplace insert. The heat pump hardly goes on at all during the day, and the house is really toasty warm. We have a 2 story 2000 sq. ft house, and our average bill for the year is about $125/month. Plus $200 for firewood delivered in the late summer. In the summer, it’s about $85/mo and in the winter, more like $150/mo
2) we do a lot of smaller energy efficient things. I hang out 3/4 of our laundry in our upstairs office. It gives the upstairs humidity and keeps our elec. bills down. We’ve changed out all our light bulbs, but not sure how much that is saving. We use cold water for all but whites, sheets and towels. We use a programmed thermostat, also.
3) I actually called our elec company to find out if our family was eligible for any of their budget plans, and when the rep looked at our usage history, he laughed and said that there was nothing he could do for us, as mine was the lowest that he’d ever seen for our size house. I guess we’re doing the right kinds of things!
Stay warm everyone!

By: prodgod

prodgod — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 14:39:55 +0000

@Sarah: That makes perfect sense. I hadn’t considered how low the inside temp could go in a very cold region.

@Ryan: I get what you’re saying from a comfort standpoint, but I still question which costs more. For instance, I turned the heater OFF last night before bed. This morning, it’s 58 inside; not too bad for me, but I kick it on to 62 as the family gets up. Had I left it set for 62 or even programmed it to drop as low as 60, it still would be running off and on all night long to maintain that temperature. I’m not sure that saves me any more than just heating it up in one fell swoop in the morning. But I could be mistaken.

Another aspect to consider is the relative comfort of various temperatures. For example, if I had left the heater on all night, set for 62, it would most likely still feel rather cold in the morning, causing me to boost it to 65. Whereas the increase from 58 to 62 feels quite warm and comfortable. I’ve noticed that if we get too used to 62, then we have to bump it up to 65. Then, pretty soon 68 is necessary to feel warm, etc. Does that makes sense at all?

I think if my house temp dropped down to 40 overnight, then it would makes sense to use my programmable thermostat to maintain at least a healthy temperature. And I could certainly see how expecting the heater to go from 40 to 62 would probably cost more (although, I’ll bet 58 would then feel toasty by comparison!)

And running the heat doesn’t cost a mere $50 more a month in this house – my energy bill triples every winter.

By: J

Fri, 08 Jan 2010 14:33:11 +0000

I’m with you, Trudy. Dealing with winter’s short days, cold, precipitation and overall level of gloom isn’t helped when you have to keep your coat on as well as gloves and multiple layers of clothes in your own home! We don’t keep things tropical in the house, but we certainly keep it warm enough to only need one layer of clothing on!

By: Kami

Kami — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 14:26:22 +0000

I got new windows in the front of my house a couple of years ago and it made a big difference. For the windows in the back of the house, I put clear plastic sheeting over the windows to block out the air (until I can afford to replace those also!).