Hi Guys,

I hope that you have had a good day.

As follow up to my previous two posts here are some more ways to reduce our energy consumption.

Remember every reduction has to pay for itself in the long run and that every reduction in my energy consumption that I can make reduces my future energy storage requirements when I finally go off grid.

And so without any further ado lets get on with it.

Today we are going to talk about keeping temperature loss to a minimum as well as temperature control.

Thermostatic Radiator Valves

Thermostatic Radiator Valves (TRVs) have to be fitted by Law on all new systems. TRV’s are cheap to buy and simple for a plumber to fit. The valves will soon pay for themselves in savings made on heating costs.

TRV’s let you control the temperature of individual rooms, so each room can be it’s optimal temperature and no more. TRV’s can sense the air temperature around them and regulate the flow of hot water entering the radiators to keep a set temperature within a room. They do not control the boiler – your thermostat does that.

They can help you save money and energy by allowing lower temperatures in some rooms than in others, and to provide background heating in rooms that are not used regularly or to even turn off the heating in rooms that aren’t used.

TRV’s, in the main, cannot turn off the boiler when the whole house has reached the right temperature. A room thermostat is normally used to control the boiler.

Radiators in the room containing the room thermostat do not normally have TRVs. But if they do, you should keep the TRVs on their highest possible settings, and set the room thermostat to the required temperature instead.

Prices for TRV’s, including VAT, vary between £9.00 to £23.00 per valve. And unless you can do the job yourself you will have to include the cost of a plumber.

Reflective Radiator Panels

Did you know that we loose nearly 70% of a radiator’s heat on warming the wall behind it. Reflective radiator panels are an ideal solution to help you to reduce your heating bills.

Reflective radiator panels consist of reflective material installed behind radiators to reduce heat loss through external walls. They generally come in two forms; rolls of foam approximately 3mm thick with a metallic film or more rigid profiled units shaped to provide turbulence to push air into the room rather than be absorbed into exterior walls.

If you have uninsulated exterior walls, the heat that would otherwise be lost through the walls, will be conserved within the property and will subsequently reduce your energy requirement.

The rolls of thin foam with a metallic coating need to be fitted with the radiator off the wall. The more rigid profiled variety can be fitted with the radiator in-situ. The panels are most effective when fitted behind radiators that are mounted on un-insulated external walls.

Each panel is 688mm high x 444mm wide. In general a standard sized radiator will require two panels. A pack of 10-panels will set you back approximately £40.00.

Homemade Fuel

An open fire is something I really enjoy during a cold winters evening. There is something magical in a fire, the red glow of embers, the crackling of the wood as it burns and a glass of wine.

A great way to quickly turn a portion of your household and garden waste into free fuel for your open fire or wood burning stove is through using a Logmaker. The Logmaker will produce compact newspaper encased logs in minutes. These can easily burn for up to 1-hour depending on their content.

You can turn up to 30% of your household waste and most of your garden waste into homemade fuel using the Logmaker. These include shredded paper, ripped up junk mail, ripped cardboard such as: cereal packets, egg boxes, toilet roll tubes (rip into small pieces first), teabags, nut shells, wood shavings and sawdust, dried leaves and twigs). The logmaker helps you recycle your waste while producing free bio-fuel for your fireplace.

A Logmaker will set you back an approximate £20.00.

Chimney Balloons

In winter, open chimneys, when not in use are a source of heat loss. A quick and effective way of reducing this heat loss is through the use of a chimney balloon.

Chimney balloons are a simple and effective way of blocking chimneys when not in use.

A room with a blocked chimney needs only about half the heat when compared with a similar room with an open chimney, so it makes sense to fit a chimney balloon in every chimney which is not in everyday use.

The balloon effectively stops cold draughts coming down your chimney and warm air escaping up your chimney.

The balloons are made in a special laminate to make them airtight, tear-resistant and long-lasting. It also has a special shape that allows a little ventilation on two corners to keep your chimney dry.

Using a chimney balloon is completely safe: if it is accidentally heated, it shrivels and deflates.

The cost of a chimney baloon is approximately £20.00

Loft Insulation

Loft insulation decreases the amount of heat escaping through the roof. It acts as a blanket, trapping rising heat from the house below. Without it, you could be losing as much as 15% of your heating costs through your roof. If you currently have no insulation and you install the recommended depth (270mm for mineral wool) you could save around £205 a year on your heating bills.

Installing loft insulation is relatively quick, clean and free or inexpensive to install. You can easily save money on a professional installation by doing it yourself.

It’s never been more important to think about insulating your loft. Without proper insulation a lot of the valuable, expensive energy you use to heat your home will be lost through the loft. The recommended depth for mineral wool insulation is 270mm however there are other materials which require different depths.

In fact, by not insulating your loft you could be wasting as much as 15% of your heating costs.

Loft insulation is an effective way to save energy and money at home. A well insulated house keeps warmth exactly where you need it – indoors.

So, insulating your loft – or topping up any insulation you have already – will help to heat your home more efficiently. By using less energy you automatically reduces save money on your heating bills.

Loft insulation is effective for at least 40 years, and it will pay for itself over and over again in that time. The better insulated your home, the less energy you need to keep it warm – the more money you’ll save in the long run.

Loft insulation generally comes in three types – blown material (mineral wool or cellulose fibre), mineral wool quilt, and loose fill. A specialist contractor must install blown material, but installing mineral wool quilt or loose fill is fairly easy to do yourself.

Spray applied foam insulation normally exceeds U-values (also known as the U-factor or coefficient of heat transmission, which is a measure of the rate of non-solar heat loss or gain through a material or assembly) and air leakages targets, is very cost effective and can can provides additional strength to your roof and increased sound insulation. Prices vary greatly between companies carrying out spray applied foam insulation. However, if you go the DIY route the lowest price I could find after a limited search was around £5.00 per meter.

Multi Foil Insulation products comprise a series of extremely thin low emissivity, metallic or metalized films inter layered with low thermal conductivity wadding, or foam of various types. The various layers are then welded, glued or, more usually, sewn together to form an insulating blanket. These include extruded polystyrene (XPS), expanded polystyrene (EPS), polyurethane (PUR), polyisocyanurate (PIR), multi-foil insulation and glass and rock fiber. The prices of multi foil insulation is approximately £5.00 per m2.

Glasswool, or glass mineral wool for thermal and acoustic insulation is manufactured from sand, lime and soda ash, with recycled glass added. Glass mineral wool is one of the most environmentally friendly, stable and sustainable insulants available. Its raw material is silica sand, the earth’s most abundantly occurring natural material. The prices of 270mm of Glasswool loft insulation comes to approximately £7.25 per m2.

Sheepswool insulation has a unique advantage, its breathability. That is it’s ability to absorb and release moisture from the surrounding air, without compromising it’s thermal efficiency. When wool fibres absorbs moisture, they generate tiny amounts of heat. This warmth acts to prevent condensation in construction cavities by maintaining the temperature above the dew-point in damp conditions. The prices of sheepswool varies considerably from approximately £6.30 per m2 to £14.50 per m2.

However when comparing loft insulation it is a bit like comparing apples with oranges. It is up to you to do your due diligence and decide what you want to spend to achieve a thermal conductivity value equal to, or better than, the recommended depth of 270mm for mineral wool.

In the UK, when comparing the thermal values of insulating materials i.e. U-values, U-factor or coefficient of heat transmission, it is important to remember that the best performing material is the one with the lowest thermal conductivity value

Draft proofing

If you can feel cold air coming in around the windows in your home it means warm air is escaping. In a typical home this heat loss can accounts for up to 20% of the total heat lost.

Draft proofing is an easy DIY task. Simply fill the gaps and use draft excluders for your external doors thereby decreasing the amount of cold air entering your home.

By draft proofing your home you could save around £30 a year on your heating bills.

I hope that I’ve given you something to think about. As I’ve said before, if your home consumes less energy you will be able to reduce the amount of energy you have to generate as well as store.

Save on your energy bills by generating your own power at home with solar and wind energy to reduce or eliminate your power bill. Get our complete guide at DIY Power System

As always, I wish you everything I wish myself.

Until the next time.

Alain

Check out my review of the top 3 products for renewable home enegy solution
Check out my review of the Home Made Power Plant product
Check out my review of DIY Power System product

Hi Guys,

I hope that you have had a good day.

I did not include lighting as a way of cutting down on your energy consumption in my previous post as I felt that it was best to look at it as a subject on its own.

Lets face it if you are planning a new build you would be looking at day lighting, sunpipes and rooflights. Measures to bring in as much natural light into your home.

You will also be looking at the function of each room in the house as each has its own particular lighting need or requirement.

You would consider: -

• The general lighting of a room;
• Localised or task lighting i.e. concentrated light for activities such as reading, sowing and cooking
• Accent or mood lighting to create atmosphere or to focus attention on certain objects or areas;
• The type of lighting best suited for the task;
• The type of light bulbs required for the job; and
• The energy requirement for the lighting.

Light bulbs:

What can I say about light bulbs without opening a can of worms?

As I’ve mentioned in a previous post I have installed LED light bulbs in some areas of the house. I have also replaced some 60W incandescent light bulbs with 11W energy saving light bulbs. However the energy saving light bulbs come with all sorts of restrictions one of which is that it cannot be used with a dimmer switch. I also have a compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulb in one room. CFL’s are being pushed as the lifesaver when it comes to saving energy.

I find myself at odds with governmental policies to ban the energy-inefficient but electro-magnetically clean incandescent bulb in favor of the energy saving light bulbs, CFL’s and LED’s. Surely it should be up to you to choose what you use. But then we live in democracies don’t we?

If energy-inefficient but electro-magnetically clean incandescent bulbs are to be banned surely they should also ban light bulbs that produce radio frequency pollution and high frequency radiation.

Some CFL packages have a warning about the radio frequency pollution of these lights saying that the light may interfere with radio reception.

This is something that you can test with a portable radio on AM. As you bring the radio close to an energy efficient bulb that produces radio frequencies the radio will begin to buzz. This electromagnetic interference (EMI) will be of concern to anyone using wireless technologies such as mobiles or wireless computers.

CFL’s have also been found to produce high frequency radiation, which travels around household electrical systems and causes radiation throughout homes (and other premises). Because the high frequencies travel along the wire you can can also be exposed to them in other rooms of your home including the room that contains the CFL.

However, the real problem is that these frequencies are making people ill. Three independent organization in the UK that include the British Association of Dermatologists, the Migraine Action Association, and Epilepsy Action, have all reported illness among their members who have tried CFL’s. The most common symptoms are headaches, including migraines, fatigue, confusion, dizziness, ringing in the ears, eyestrain, nausea and skin irritations.

Not only do we have human health problems associated with exposure to these compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs)there is also the environmental problems these bulbs pose due to to the fact that they contain mercury, a neurotoxin that can cause kidney and brain damage.

As long as the mercury is contained in the bulb, CFLs are safe from the environmental aspect. But eventually, any bulbs – even CFLs break or burn out and most consumers simply throw them out in the rubbish where they will end up in landfills and this poses a huge threat to the environment

And its just too bad if you should accidentally break one these new eco-bulbs. One study in the USA found that “immediately after the bulb was broken – and sometimes even after a cleanup was attempted – levels of mercury vapor exceeded federal guidelines for chronic exposure by as much as 100 times.

So much for eco-bulbs. Obviously those legislating are unaware of the ecological and environmental problems associated with these bulbs or they are part and parcel of the climate-industrial complex and care more about money than the lives and environment of those that they represent.

This is not to say that you should reject CFL’s out of hand but rather be aware of the risks associated with some of these light bulbs.

After all, not all energy efficient bulbs are the same. They do not all contribute to dirty electricity and produce radio frequencies. Those that don’t include some CFL’s, some LED’s and some halogen bulbs.

Unfortunately a considerable number of bulbs on the market will make people sick.

So before replacing your old incandescent bulbs for energy saving ones consider your lighting requirements and spend a bit of time reading about the replacement bulbs you want to use and before buying the product read what it says on the box.

I hope that I’ve given you something to think about.

Save on your energy bills by generating your own power at home with solar and wind energy to reduce or eliminate your power bill. Get our complete guide at DIY Power System

As always, I wish you everything I wish myself.

Until the next time.

Alain

Check out my review of the top 3 products for renewable home enegy solution
Check out my review of the Home Made Power Plant product
Check out my review of DIY Power System product

Hi Guys,

I hope that you have had a good day.

If you are like me you probably would like to reduce the size of your energy bills. After all the less energy we consume the less we pay.

However there is also another reason I would like to reduce my energy consumption and that is to reduce my energy storage requirements when I finally go off the grid.

And so today I would like to discuss ways to reduce our energy consumption.

The world is faced with an energy crisis now and none of us remain unaffected anymore. I personally think that this crisis is artificial in order to force up the prices of energy and to exert control over us.

I don’t think that we can expect anything from governments expect lip service. Government is more often than not part of the problem; for instance to tax component for a litre of diesel in the UK is 65%. The higher the price per litre of fuel the more money enters government coffers.

Ultimately it is up to us to do something to reduce our energy needs and to generate our own energy to power our homes.

It costs me on average £45.00 to fill up my car on a weekly basis. This means that my weekly contribution to government coffers is £29.25, which comes to £351.00. With three cars at home, as a family we contribute around £1053.00 to government coffers to get to work.

Once electric cars have become efficient and are able to travel longer distances than they can at present without the need for constant charging and no longer cost the earth, I will definitely get one. Who knows we may even have cars that recharge themselves with solar cells incorporated in the body of the car.

But what happens to our energy tax contribution to government coffers if this were the case. It probably explains their plan to try to charge us for every mile we drive instead of charging us road tax.

So what can we do, if anything, to reduce our current level of energy requirements?

There are some relatively easy steps can be taken to reduce our energy needs. However, we do need to consider the benefit of carrying out such energy saving measures. After all what good are they to you if you land up paying more than what you are already paying.

One must balance the cost to benefit requirements for each element of our energy reduction programme.

Quite a few cost saving measures mentioned below are associated to standby power. Standby power is also known as vampire power, vampire draw, phantom load, or leaking electricity, and refers to electric power consumed by electronic appliances while they are switched off or in a standby mode.

So let us look at how you can save power at home.

Computers:

At the vary least you should set the power settings on your computer to automatically go into Sleep or Standby mode after 15 minutes or so of inactivity.

Turn your computer and its monitor off when you’re done for the day.

If you use a desktop, use an LCD monitor. They use lots less energy than CRT’s.

You could always use a power strip so you can easily turn off all your computer accessories at once.

I personally turn off my laptop along with all accessories off at the wall switch when I’m done for the day. As everything is connected together through a power strip I know that everything is switched off at the same time.

Air Conditioner:

Set the temperature at the maximum or minimum you are comfortable with, depending on the season. The operative word here is comfortable.

Try not to set it at too high or too low temperatures. In our house I’ve got to keep checking the thermostat as our teenager keep changing the temperature settings.

Setting the air conditioner at reasonable temperatures helps save a lot of energy.

Unfortunately for me, I’ve got to keep checking our thermostat as our teenagers keep changing the temperature levels to what they feel is right for them.

Washing Machines:

Minimize the number of washes by washing full load of clothes every time. Also, if washing machine packs up you could buy a new machine with a better energy rating than your old one had.

You could also try to wash your clothing at a lower temperature setting or on a reduced wash cycle.

Television:

Switch off your television at the wall plug when not in use. Take off the power plug of your television set when not using it. This may not sound a big deal but this tiny step will help save power.

Power adapters:

Power adapters are very common “electricity vampires” as they have no power-off switches. These include mobile telephone chargers, electric toothbrush chargers and the like. I am quite sure that you may have touched one of these adapters when not in use and discovered that it was warm to the touch. Switch them off at the wall plug. Better yet, keep them unplugged until you need them.

Geysers:

Keep the geyser thermostat at the minimum heat. You do not need to heat the water at a very high temperature or for too long.

Refrigerators and freezers:

Bring hot food to room temperatures before putting it into the refrigerator. You can also save power by taking cold or frozen food out of the refrigerator much before the mealtime, thereby saving power in heating it.

Car:

For an air-conditioner equipped car, pull up the windows of your car before switching on the air-conditioner.

Save on your energy bills by generating your own power at home with solar and wind energy to reduce or eliminate your power bill. Get our complete guide at DIY Power System

As always, I wish you everything I wish myself.

Until the next time.

Alain

Check out my review of the top 3 products for renewable home enegy solution
Check out my review of the Home Made Power Plant product
Check out my review of DIY Power System product

Hi Guys,

I hope that you have had a good day today.

Today I’ll be looking at calculating the cost of your existing energy consumption as an initial step to design your renewable home energy system as well as reducing your current energy needs.

If we wish to use renewable energy for our home then it would be a good idea to know what our current energy usage is. Basically carry out an audit of your energy usage in order to establish a base point from which to calculate your load requirement for your solar panels and wind power.

Consider each appliance in your home and its energy use. Some appliances like kettles, toasters and the like draw a considerable amount of power when used but at the same time are used for a short time each day.

Once you know what your current energy usage is you can take steps to start reducing the amount of energy you use.

For instance, I know that it’s a lot less hassle to dry our clothing in a tumble dryer than on a washing line. However to dry a single load can take up to between 70 minutes to 140 minutes. Assuming that, like us, you have on average of 7 loads in a week, therefore with a 3.3 kWh/cycle (my current tumble dryer energy consumption), assuming a 12-hour constant tumbling time per week, you will be using an approximate 2059.2 kWh a year. This costs me around £186.77 per year.

I can probably save up to half the cost by putting the washing on the washing line and spend the money on myself instead.

One of the changes that is relatively easy to make concerns the illumination of your home.

When considering the illumination of your home you should consider the following:

• The general lighting of a room;
• Localized or task lighting i.e. concentrated light for activities such as reading, sowing and cooking; and
• Accent or mood lighting to create atmosphere or to focus attention on certain objects or areas.

For instance I in parts of my home I initially reduced eight 50-watt lights to 25 watt and then reduced them even further to 2-watt LED lights. For one thing the 50 and 25-watt lights needed replacing regularly whilst I have yet to replace a single LED light.

A simple calculation shows the savings made by doing these changes:

Running the 50 watt lights for 3 hours a night I would be using 1200 watt hours per night i.e. 438 kWh per year. Using the 25-Watt bulbs I automatically halved that. However, with the 2 Watt LED light bulbs my energy use for this room has dropped to 17.52 kWh a year; a cost saving of £38.14 at current electricity prices i.e. £0.0907/kWh. Now it might not sound like a lot but one should bear in mind that this was for just one room.

As appliances need replacing they are replaced with appliances with better energy rating. I look at the energy rating of the appliances as well as the price when comparing new appliances. For instance I had to replace our condenser tumble dryer and I opted for a vented tumble dryer as there was a 0.5 kWh difference per cycle.

Each of these small savings add up in the end and can make quite a difference to you pocket over time.

Each small saving made this way reduces the load requirement of your renewable energy, which in turn means less solar panels, and energy storage requirements.

As always, I wish you everything I wish myself.

Until the next time.

Alain

Check out my review of the top 3 products for renewable home energy solution
Check out my review of the Home Made Power Plant product
Check out my review of DIY Power System product