Are We Being Ripped OFF?

lpast said:

Theres new sprayed insulation that STICKS its not fluffy like balls of pink insulation they used to blow in...this stuff sticks to what it hits and yyou can move it and put it back and the R factor is very high...I just had 30+ rfactor blown in my attic and it covered the duct work also.
I put a timer on my hot water heater...my plumber tells me its a waste of time...I said why...he said savings are minimal if any.
Some of the biggest offenders...is leaky windows, most people buy a home and never re caulk around the outside of their windows to stop leaks... To my knowledge there is no way to route hot water pipes correctly...most dont insulate hotwater pipes running through your house because any on the outside wall have insulation already and inside walls dont really need it.
High R fact central AC and really efficient furnace burners help dramatically....one thing that I have that helps in fla...I have a solar powered attic fan that uses zero electric and keeps the temp down in the attic to 90 degrees...sounds like alot not in fla..lol

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I saved almost a $100 off my monthly electric bill with three changes. Smaller hot water heater, changed all light bulbs to cfl and bought an infrared oven to cook with. The new hot water heaters have two elements but only one stays heated, until there's a draw on the water then the other element kicks in. Also a timer cutting it completely off/on for bath times would save even more. Anything with heating elements pulls energy faster than anything else, except central air/heat. Extra insulation and caulking can help with that alot.

Infrared Oven - cooks most anything - cost $90.





Regular oven - cooks multiple things but is heating too much area for items that will fit in the smaller oven above.





Now I didn't get rid of my larger range/oven just don't use it, unless needed. Besides the smaller oven I also use many microwavable sides, like baked potatoes, rice, fettuccine, steamed veggies.
The microwave also uses much less energy than the range tops.

lpast said:

Theres new sprayed insulation that STICKS its not fluffy like balls of pink insulation they used to blow in...this stuff sticks to what it hits and yyou can move it and put it back and the R factor is very high...I just had 30+ rfactor blown in my attic and it covered the duct work also.
I put a timer on my hot water heater...my plumber tells me its a waste of time...I said why...he said savings are minimal if any.
Some of the biggest offenders...is leaky windows, most people buy a home and never re caulk around the outside of their windows to stop leaks... To my knowledge there is no way to route hot water pipes correctly...most dont insulate hotwater pipes running through your house because any on the outside wall have insulation already and inside walls dont really need it.
High R fact central AC and really efficient furnace burners help dramatically....one thing that I have that helps in fla...I have a solar powered attic fan that uses zero electric and keeps the temp down in the attic to 90 degrees...sounds like alot not in fla..lol

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Thanks for the example of what I was posting about. In the house I'm in today there is sprayed in insulation that does not stick as well as what you had done. In one large area it has stuck to structure, trusses, above the ceiling drywall. It looks like that area is insulated until I climbed around and saw that it wasn't touching the ceiling and had a large air passage under it near the eve, i.e. an uninsulated section of our ceiling. A plumber knows about timers on water heaters, sure. I'm just a retired engineer that was responsible for cooling large computer systems that has spent many hours in labs working on cooling and other issues. Yup, the plumber is the expert. Have you measured your attic temperatures? I've seen attic fans that exhaust hot attic air while pulling air from inside the house to replace the exhausted air. I had to install a vent that measured 22.5 x 48 inches in the carport ceiling to prevent my exhaust fan from sucking cooled air from the house. I started with a smaller hole, but needed it to be 48" long. I'm sure you detected airflow in your house when the fan is running. Thanks.

OhIsee.Then said:

In the house I'm in today there is sprayed in insulation that does not stick as well as what you had done. In one large area it has stuck to structure, trusses, above the ceiling drywall. It looks like that area is insulated until I climbed around and saw that it wasn't touching the ceiling and had a large air passage under it near the eve, i.e. an uninsulated section of our ceiling.

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You're not talking about the vent area for airflow are you?

grip said:

I found a 1175kw Westinghouse Solar Kit on Ebay for $4700, plus you get a 30% (-$1000) Energy Efficiency tax credit off from the Feds. Also about $200 for conduit, combiner box, wire for home run and AC disconnect. Installers can cost more than the system, so it's best to get a DIY type like this Westinghouse Instant Connect with 80% less parts than other systems. Something like this is a fully-integrated plug-and-play system that with the help of a friend or off work electrician could easily set up.

My house 1770 sq ft, averages between 1200 and 1500kw, so a system like the one above would save me almost the entire cost of my electric bill, paying for the system in about 2 yrs. Not as bad as some professional installers want to charge $30k - $60K.

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FYI, that is a 1kW (1175 watt) system. But I will give you some realistic numbers, your house is 1770 sq. ft. An industry standard is 40% of your roof you can use for solar panels, so you could install about 708 sq ft of solar panels. You can install about 1kW of solar panels per 72 sq. ft, so you could install a 9-10 kW system to use your entire roofs potential. This would cost at least $40,000 - $60,000, varies by location. With this you could produce roughly 12,000 to 15000 KwH/yr (varies again by location), but remember you have no way of storing this power so you may not actually have the power when you want it. That would just barely be enough to power an average household for a year though. It depends upon your local power provider if you can just put this into the grid or not though. Say you do install this big of a system, you will produce roughly $1000 - $1400 of electricity per year (assuming electricity costs $.09 per kW/hr, varies by location). Basically your solar panels will break even (not discounting at inflation), in 29 years (best case). Solar panels last roughly 30 years so it may pay for itself under ideal conditions and assuming nothing goes wrong and you don't care about inflation (so technically you would be losing money). What I am saying is unless your conditions are ideal, like you live in southern cali, solar panels would not be worth your investment.

If you want to run the numbers for your own place just go here:

http://mapserve3.nrel.gov/PVWatts_Viewer/index.html

FreedomFromAll said:

Either way you cannot produce more energy than what is consumed.

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Your inference is that I have suggested that more ernergy was produced than possible. Not so. I said a 5KWH generator would make 5,000 watts and waste the equivalent of 15,000 watts out the exhaust simultaneously and the figure is exact. The Internal Combustion engine is about 25% efficient. I only state that the 15,000 wasted out the exhaust should be collected in water for heating or potable use. This waste exhaust heat is also the problem at Utility scale generating stations and is the big reason your electric bills are high. Most people are deluded into thinking that our Centralized Energy Distribution System is a paragon of efficiency, and that is absolutely untrue. Energy efficiency is usually 8 times (8x) more efficient at a local generation level. Gee, do I mean we could cut our energy use by a factor of 8, and mitigate Global Warming significantly by localizing energy production. YES! Do the maths.