Where to start looking for Energy Savings

[sloeffle]

Update:

Installed the Nyletherm on Saturday. Our usage on Saturday and Sunday was lower than "normal" for a weekend day. But I am not sure if that is due to the Nyletherm or we just used less electric in general. The usage during the week should be a better gauge of what kind of impact the Nyletherm will have.

I also discovered yesterday that our low flow shower head is possibly not as low flow as I thought. My crude measurement show it using about 5GPM when you use both heads at one time. I have tried telling the wife to only use one or the other but it is generally set to use both. Off to Menards, Lowes or HD to buy a watersense shower head this week.

 

[Clarkbug]

I personally have the Delta showerheads with the H2oKinetic technology. Might just be marketing, but they work well, and dont feel like they are low flow.

And by that I mean it's not like you are getting spit on or freezing from the fine mist of other low flow heads.

 

[OhioBurner©]

A few years ago the electric coop came around and installed smart meters. I noticed last month that the email for my electric bill was different than before. So I opened up the link on the email and now it goes to a new web site where I can see the my electricity usage from month-month etc.

They also have an app on that you can download for your smart phone. I downloaded the app and now I can see my electricity usage for the previous day. You can also look at your weekly trends.

In my mind I have been keep tracking of days we have been home a lot and days we haven't. And the days we do laundry and run the oven. I then go back and look at my phone and think about how we could use so much electric for hardly doing anything some days.

The house is all electric.

• Geothermal Heating and Cooling ( 22A, 4 ton Waterfurnace 5 series )
• House is set to 70F in the winter and 76F in the summer
• Marathon Hot Water Heater ( 4500W )
• Hot water is set to 120F
• 1.5GPM Shower Heads
• LED and CFL lighting. The lights that are used the most have been converted to LED.
• 2 adults, 1 child
• House is about 10 years old with good insulation and windows
• City Water. We have a well for outside yard hydrants
• 250W Stock Tank heater is used approximately 12 hours a day in the winter along with 100W chicken water heater. 350W x 12hours = 4200W
• Energy Star refrigerators. Stand Up freezer is not Energy Star
• Energy Star washing machine. Dryer is not
• We run a Energy Star dehumidifier in the basement during the summer
• Wife and kid have been trained to turn off lights after leaving a room.

Here are a couple graphs showing our monthly and yearly usage:





As you can see in the beginning of September we were on vacation. My phone shows the graph a little better but my base line usage is around 7kw/h a day. That seems reasonable to me.The last day of October we were not even home most of the day and we used around 40kw/h of electric. That is almost 2000 watts of electric being used per hour. I bought a Kill A Watt tonight and was looking at Efergy's also. My gut tells me it is my hot water heater.

My electricity usage seems to be a lot higher than what most folks on the board usually say they use. My neighbor generally uses over 2000kw/h per month but he has more occupants and his house is lit up 24/7.

Thanks,

Scott

Hey Scott, do you have Consolidated? That's who I have in Morrow Co. Wasn't aware of any of these online or phone apps for tracking this data.

 

[sloeffle]

Hey Scott, do you have Consolidated? That's who I have in Morrow Co. Wasn't aware of any of these online or phone apps for tracking this data.

Yep, we have Consolidated.

Here is the new web site: https://consolidatedelectriccoop.smarthub.coop/Login.html. And the app is called Smarthub.

 

[OhioBurner©]

Cool I'll check it out. Oddly enough my phone crashed yesterday and I am in the process of a factory reset. But will check out the app too soon.

Also last nights frigid temps and high winds let me know about a few huge drafts my house has. I think it would be easier to tear this building down and start from scratch.
Had the pellet stove wide open for the first time on #9, white pine pellets, stove room mid to upper 70's, bedroom above it 58º. Running space heater in kitchen full on, and both bedrooms needed space heaters (but set on thermostat). I think my house is so drafty the heat doesn't even make it to the next room lol.

 

[sloeffle]

Update #2

Ordered a Efergy True Power from Amazon. Hopefully that will be here in the next couple days.

Had some stratification issues with the Nyle. I worked with Tom and we moved the connections around and we were still unable to take two consecutive showers without running out of hot water. Shower heads are <2.5GPM. We believe the stratification issues are due to the long dip tube in the Marathon. Tom was great to work with and I would highly recommend the Nyle if you do not have a Marathon. It is built like a tank, good ROI due to cost, has a decent COP, and according to Tom parts can easily be swapped out. I was saving roughly 10Kwh ( $1.60 ) a day when it was running. Before summer of next year I will probably get a AO Smith Voltex 50 gallon HPHW and then hook my Marathon up to the DSH on my geo.

Wife was complaining about long drying times ( $$$$ ) for the clothes in the dryer. I cleaned out the vent going to the outside of the house. She said it improved but was not back to normal. Watched a Youtube video on things you need to check etc. I found the lint trap in back of the dryer completely full:



And I also found some firecrackers that the previous owners house sitter must of put in the dryer. Luckily the never caught on fire or exploded:



I also found the motor that runs the drum full of lint:



The joys of home ownership.

Scott

 

[maple1]

Firecrackers in a plugged dryer vent?

Holy moly - that would give me nightmares.

 

[sloeffle]

Firecrackers in a plugged dryer vent?

Holy moly - that would give me nightmares.

I wouldn't say plugged. Their was air making it outside. But it was definitely not running as efficient as it should.

I have added "dryer cleaning" to my yearly winter task list.

 

[johnny1720]

Sloeffle I have had the efergy for about 7 months. I think it has paid for it self already with the savings. It is fun to watch especially when the geothermal is running.

 

[jebatty]

An energy savings that I was not aware of relates to the wood stove in our living room which I noticed recently did not seem to put out as much heat and also was rolling out some smoke when the door was opened to add more wood. I discovered that the channel between the top of the firebox and the top of the stove where the hot gases exit the firebox on the way to the flue had become quite filled with fine fly ash. This proved difficult to access and clean, but I found a way to do it. I guess not too bad to have to clean this once in 24 years (will clean more frequently in the future). The stove is now back to its original efficiency, more heat and less wood burned.

 

[semipro]

I found the lint trap in back of the dryer completely full:

I've found similar things when cleaning out our dryer vent.
Apparently, dirty dryer ducts are responsible for about 1 in 22 house fires. ((broken link removed to http://www.nfpa.org/safety-information/for-consumers/causes/dryers-and-washing-machines))
This was one of several reasons we recently switched to an un-vented (condensing) dryer. It really felt goo blocking off the dryer vent in the outer wall.

 

[semipro]

In general I continue to be amazed how quickly things get gunked up somehow. We have pets and don't use AC in the house in summers so we collect a lot of hair and dust especially in any device that requires airflow and there are many.
I now view every device that with a fan as a potential air filtration device and install washable filters where I can. This includes computers, our fridge, the clothes dryer, etc.
I'm a little peeved that our new pellet stove is not well set up for installation of a filter as the convection fan moves a lot of air.
Same with the Geospring HPWH. Even if the filter is cleaned often the unit still fills up with dust and needs to be disassembled yearly for a real cleaning.

 

[sloeffle]

Sloeffle I have had the efergy for about 7 months. I think it has paid for it self already with the savings. It is fun to watch especially when the geothermal is running.

I got it hooked up to one ( geo, hot water tank, some of the house ) of my panels yesterday. I ran the wood furnace most of the day and saw a spike ( 4.6Kwh ) after I took my shower. This morning I woke up and the geo was running it was only pulling around 2.2Kwh. I was pleasantly surprised. I can handle the cost of heating my house for 36 cents an hour.

Does anyone know if one monitor can be linked to more than one transmitter ? I sent efegy a email but they never responded.

 

[sloeffle]

IThis was one of several reasons we recently switched to an un-vented (condensing) dryer. It really felt goo blocking off the dryer vent in the outer wall.

I never heard of an un-vented condensing dryer before. Can you provide some more info ?

 

[semipro]

I never heard of an un-vented condensing dryer before. Can you provide some more info ?

This is the one we got for $100 used on CL. http://www.bosch-home.com/us/WTE86300US.html
This is a pretty good explanation of how they work. http://ths.gardenweb.com/faq/lists/laundry/2004120958010854.html
They are more popular in Europe and Australia.
I actually am hoping to eventually preheat our DHW with our clothes dryer but for now I"m content to heat the basement with it. Since its in the same room as our HPWH (Geospring) we should be recovering some of the heat produced by the dryer to heat DHW already.

 

[semipro]

As a follow up there are new Whirlpool and LG heat pump clothes dryers available in the US. A review of the Whirlpool unit is featured on greenbuildingadvisor here:
http://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com...r&utm_campaign=green-building-advisor-eletter

 

[maple1]

As a follow up there are new Whirlpool and LG heat pump clothes dryers available in the US. A review of the Whirlpool unit is featured on greenbuildingadvisor here:
http://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com...r&utm_campaign=green-building-advisor-eletter

That is very interesting, and is now on my radar as we have been contemplating a washer & dryer replacement for a while now. Europe is so far ahead of us on this side of the pond in so many ways, makes ya wonder why tech is sometimes so slow to make it here. Wonder what else is on the horizon?

 

[moey]

If you paid what they pay for electricity in Europe youd be hanging your clothes and using your dryer as a shelf.

 

[sloeffle]

Update #3

I hooked the Efergy up to only monitor the Marathon. Last month we spent $59.70 just to make hot water. Approximately one-third of my electric bill for the month. Incoming water temps are in the 40's so that probably doesn't help either.

Also did some number crunching on my electric bills from last year and kept coming up with .12 kWh. Called the electric company and lo and behold our rate is .12 kWh vs the .16 kWh I was told earlier in the year. I guess that is good news.

 

[TradEddie]

Update #3

I hooked the Efergy up to only monitor the Marathon. Last month we spent $59.70 just to make hot water. Approximately one-third of my electric bill for the month. Incoming water temps are in the 40's so that probably doesn't help either.

Are you sure? That's almost 500kWh in a month, enough to heat about 100 gallons from cold, every day

TE

 

[sloeffle]

Are you sure? That's almost 500kWh in a month, enough to heat about 100 gallons from cold, every day

The Efergy says I used 455.4kWh last month. It says we average anywhere between 90 - 100kWh a week and 13 - 15kwh per day. Our last billing cycle ( Dec 22nd - Jan 22nd ) we used 1758kWh. House is all electric. The average outside temperature was 27F according to my electric bill. Measured the our incoming water temp and it is 50F right on the money. I sure feels like it is in the 40's. According to this chart I found it takes approximately 12.8kWh to raise 60 gallons of water 80F. Our hot water tank is set around 130F.

 

[maple1]

Our 80 gallon water heater costs about $25/mo @ 0.18/kwh. Family of five.

 

[TradEddie]

According to this chart I found it takes approximately 12.8kWh to raise 60 gallons of water 80F. Our hot water tank is set around 130F.

But you're using even more than that every single day. I've got a family of four, everybody loves long showers, no no-flow heads, lots of laundry and our combined usage of hot water and clothes dryer has never exceeded 500kWh. Something is wrong with your system.

TE

 

[sloeffle]

We are using on average 13 - 15 kWh per day to make hot water according to the Efergy. The Marathon energyguide estimates yearly usage at 4671 kWhr. That equals out to roughly 12.8 kWh per day. So we are not too far off.

My plan is to get a AO Smith HPHW and hook the marathon up to my geo to pre-heat the water.

 

[woodgeek]

We are using on average 13 - 15 kWh per day to make hot water according to the Efergy. The Marathon energyguide estimates yearly usage at 4671 kWhr. That equals out to roughly 12.8 kWh per day. So we are not too far off.

My plan is to get a AO Smith HPHW and hook the marathon up to my geo to pre-heat the water.

No need to get too complicated with the HPWHs. I'd nix the preheat idea. If you look up the COP versus tank temp data, the COP is super high (4+) when the water is cold. Most of the energy goes to 'finishing' the hot water...the last 20°F or so the COP plummets.

Bottom line, a geo preheater is unilikely to save you a dime (if I understand your idea).

I was thinking about getting a HW recovery unit to feel my HPWH, but when I penciled it out, I realized it would save an almost trivial amount.

To save $$ on the HPWH, run the temp as low as you can stand. In my case 120°F.