In other articles I've discussed that the first step to becoming more energy efficient and planning for renewable energy system implementation is to know exactly what you are consuming.  Once you are able to fully understand your consumption habits, it's easy to "pick the low hanging fruit" and make some rather drastic changes that are better for the environment and your wallet.

In our home, we've made some changes to reduce our energy consumption and have seen some encouraging results.  Our second step is now to pin point exactly where our current reduced electric loads are coming from and to fine tune them before planning for a renewable energy system implementation.  This is where research on Smart Electricity Monitors came into play.  For us, it came down to 3 choices:

Kill A Watt from P3 International is a single plug monitor that you can use to monitor and bench mark each 110v outlet and do all the calculations manually.  Although the cheapest option, not really a candidate for what we wanted to achieve as there is not "total home consumption" real-time monitoring, history to run reports and trending and the biggest downfall being it could not monitor 220v large appliances.  We still may purchase a couple of these are they are very affordable, have great reviews and can give you "at the plug" readings.

Cent-a-Meter was a close second as it is a home energy consumption model that is connected to your entrance electrical panel via CT clips and monitors real time electricity used.  It has a nice wireless receiver that you can bring around the house if you wish.  The cons of the product is it uses batteries for the sending unit and the receiver.  It provided the real-time data I was looking for but no software for archiving, trending etc...

T.E.D, The Energy Detective is the unit we actually purchased.  This unit has great reviews and bundled with the Footprints software, does everything I ever wanted and then some.  It does not require batteries, however it does use panel electricity to operate.  About .08cents a month according to the site.  It also comes with CT clips for easy installation and the receiver unit plugs into any wall outlet.  I purchased the additional software package Footprints so I can connect the receiver to a computer via USB and see a real-time dashboard chalk full of information including 13 month historic data retention. 

Stay tuned for a full product review on The Energy Detective once I receive and set it up to see if it stands up to it's claims on their website.  In the meantime check out this video review from Mavromatic which is very well done and detailed.

What electricity monitor do you have setup in your home?  Has it been of value?  Has it contributed to reducing your energy consumption?  Has it paid for itself?  Questions i'll be answering myself as well...

Courtesy of The Energy Detective

In our quest to lower our energy bill and in essence reduce our energy consumption, we completed a few list items with regards to hot water.  We installed a hot water tank insulation blanket, lowered the preset on the tank and ran insulation from the hot water tank to the faucets.

I've read that if your water heater is new you may not need an insulation blanket.  Rule of thumb seems to be if you place your hand on the water heater and feel warmth, then you will save money using a thermal blanket.  For the minimal cost of $20-$30 dollars I think it's a wise investment either way.  Wrapping the heater with an insulation blanket can reduce heat loss by up to 45% and save you approximately 4% to 8% in electricity cost to heat your water.  We plan on also sitting the tank on a rigid insulation foam board which is supposed to further reduce heat loss through the floor.  Another item we're looking at installing is Anti-Convection Valves, but still researching these to see if it makes sense.

Before we put the insulation blanket on the water heater we turned the temperature down to 120F.  It was preset to 145F and so far showering has not been a problem ;o)  This move not only helps save on energy, but makes our taps safer for our young son, win-win.

Last thing we did in this project was wrap the copper pipes with foam insulation.  There are a few choices of wraps, but we went with foam pipe wrap simply for the cost and ease of installation.  We hope to see a substantial return on investment.  Total cost was $25 for the insulation blanket and $15 in foam insulation.  The insulation blanket went on pretty easy with minor trim for the power cable.  We used Tyvek tape usually used for house wrap vapor barrier to attach the blanket together.  Tyvek is by far the best adhesive tape for this job, which was also used to keep the foam insulation together as well.

If you have an attic, chances are you have a substantial heat loss if your attic door or hatch is not properly sealed.  For most of us, the attic and attic doors are not the first item we think of when we think of heat loss.  Usual suspects are windows, doors and outside facing walls.  How many times do you go up to the attic in your house anyways?

We had an air leak test in our 30 year old home and although our attic was rated above average for insulation, the attic hatch or better described in our home as the sheet of plywood held up by four latches, was just as effective as a 24 square inch hole in the side of the house.  During our EnerGuide test, our poor excuse of an Attic Hatch was the third item on the list of offending items to address.

I could have just worked with the sheet of plywood and some weatherstripping, but I wanted to address the size of the hatch as well so I opted for an engineered hatch from the local hardware store.  The pre-fabricated attic hatch is built with a sturdy structured pine frame, one and a half inch thick insulated door with magnetic strip that keeps the door air tight against the accompanying magnetic weather stripping on the hatch frame.  This system works like the seal on a fridge door.  The weight of the door sitting on the magnetic weather strip keeps it nice and tight, but also easy to remove for access to the attic.  For the price, ease of installation and piece of mind, you cannot go wrong with one of these pre-fabricated units.  All that was needed was to cut the existing hole to 32 inches and the attic hatch fit snug between the rafters.  I used caulk and insulation foam to create a tight seal around the frame and the rafters.

This is a pretty easy upgrade and good bang for your buck.  The entire process should take approximately 2 hours from start to cleanup.   Basic hand tools and handyman knowledge is required, but I would not consider this out of anyone's league.  If you own a saw, hammer, drill, 3ft level and a measuring tape you should be good to go.  Don't forget to seal the deal, pun intended, with caulk and insulating foam after the hatch is level and securely attached.

If you are wondering what the number 1 and number 2 items on the EnerGuide to do list where: Basement insulation and replace old leaky windows and doors.  Windows and Doors have been replaced and we hope to move on to insulating the basement before Winter comes to Atlantic Canada ;o)

Until the next time... Keep it Green!

There are government programs out there to help cover the costs of completing major energy savings retrofits and completing some sort of Energy Efficiency Evaluation Report. Here is a list of Energy Savings Tips that although are not usually covered by such programs, can greatly reduce your energy consumption and help make your home more energy efficient:

1. Replace your light bulbs with energy-efficient ones, such as compact flurescents (CF). They last longer and reduce electricity consumption.
2. Insulate the first two metres of the hot and cold water pipes with insulating foam sleeves or pipe wrap insulation. By doing so you will save on your water heating costs and will reduce your water consumption. Besides saving energy, water will arrive at the faucets warmer or colder. Insulating cold water pipes will also avoid condensation from forming on the pipes. This prevents dripping on ceiling tiles or the basement floor.
3. If you do have a pool, install a timer on your pool pump.
4. Use a timer for your car's block heater. Set the timer so that it turns on two hours before you start your vehicle.
5. Install an Energy Star qualified kitchen or bathroom exhaust fan.
6. Install a timer on your bathroom exhaust fan(s).
7. Install low-flow shower heads (rated at less than 9.8 litres per minute and faucet aerators.
8. Fix leaky faucets and outside hose bibs.
9. Install and use a programmable electronic thermostat (set the heating temperature to 20c while you are at home and 17c at night and when you are away). For each degree of setback, you can save up to 2 percent on your heat bill.
10. When replacing lighting, appliances, electronics and office equipment, look for Energy Star labelled products. Energy Star labelled products use less than half as much energy in standby mode, when turned "off".
11. Plug your home office equipment into a power bar that can be easily turned off when equipment is not in use.
12. Install motion sensor light switches.

There are also more expensive projects such as replacing your current toilets with low-flush toilets and installing a Drain Water Heat Recovery system (DWHR), which in itself can save you up to 30% on your water heating.

Of course there are also the major retrofits:

• Install a wind-powered generation system, which will supplement your energy use with an environmentally friendly source of electricity.
• Install a solar wall system to supplement your space heating, which will ease the load on your primary heating system.
• Install a photovoltaic system, which will supplement your energy use with an environmentally friendly source of energy.
• Install a trombe wall if the means are available to reduce heating and cooling via thermal mass.

That's it for today... I'd be interested in hearing what other low costs energy savings tips people have come up with and will share.

Keep it Green!

So you are thinking of introducing some sort of Renewable Alternative Energy into your plans for a more Sustainable Living. Before you try to size your system you must begin with energy efficiency. Just as the government realized it is cheaper to invest in energy efficiency then energy creation, so will you as you run through your project.

More with less is the theme here, but do not think you have to revert back to oil lamps and cooking over campfire. There are lots of energy saving tips to make your home more energy efficient and best of all most governments in North America have millions of dollars in grants to help you reach your goals.  Once you know exactly what you are wasting energy on you will be happy and most likely make it your personal mission to reduce your energy consumption and monthly bill.

Here are a few examples:

• Swapping out old light bulbs to CF (Compact Flurescent) will reduce energy consumption by 80%
• Installing on-demand water heaters will reduce hot water energy consumption by approximately 50%
• Turning down the thermostat and putting a water heater blanket will reduce your energy consumption by approximately 20%
• Low-Flow shower heads and aerator faucets will reduct water consumption as well as energy consumption used to heat that water
• Replace old appliances with Energy Efficient appliances
• Get a leak test done in your house and follow the recommended remediation steps could save you up to 50% of your heating costs
• Adding Solar Water Heating system can save you approximately 50% of the energy used for heating water
• Install a home power meter like the cent-a-meter to precisely monitor your energy consumption and take action appropriately like reducing Phantom Electric Loads

These are just some of the examples of what you can do. A quick Google search on home energy efficiencies will give you more information then you can handle and as mentioned above, make some calls into your local and federal/state governements to see what programs they have available for energy efficient retrofits.

These action items can be done over a period of time and most are not that expensive to accomplish. Here is the list of items we've done or are planning to action by the end of the year:

• Bought bulk CF bulbs on special and replaced in all fixtures. Some local government have give aways for CF bulbs to promote use, so be sure to check that possibility.
• Installed a water heater blanket and foam insulated all hot water pipes
• Installed low-flow shower heads
• After having a Leak Test done, we've replaced all windows and doors. Needed to be done anyways with 25year old wooden frame windows
• Installed foam gaskets in all electrical outlets to reduce draft
• Installed child safely plugs in unused electrical outlets to further reduce draft

The Leak Test was an eye opener for us and the follow up report was great. It detailed what action items would give us the biggest bang for our buck, literally. We are expecting a nice grant for our energy efficient upgrades so far. Before we call them back to do a second test and submit our paperwork for the grant, we will also replace the attic door with a new efficient, insulated attic door.

Living on the East Coast of Canada we have long cold winters so every bit insulation and reduced heat loss helps and equates to electricity and dollars saved.  Over the winter we also plan on purchasing and installing the cent-a-meter home metering system.  This will allow us to monitor, identify and reduce energy consumption during the heavy heating season and give us good numbers to work with for planning our hybrid renewable energy system.

That's it for now... Keep it Green ;o)