How does driving an unsustainable fuel hog around contribute to the adoption of solar power? While some purists might point out that RVs are great fuel hogs and a waste of energy, nevertheless, they do offer an educational opportunity to help spread the acceptance and familiarity with solar power.
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Author’s note: the following article on home heating is the sixth in an eight-part series.
Metal woodstoves are a significant improvement over open fireplaces from the standpoint of producing more usable heat. They limit incoming air, thus avoiding heating air not needed for combustion. Another improvement: they use a lengthened heat exchange pathway to improve heat transfer from the heated combustion gases before they exit the chimney.
Unfortunately, metal woodstoves must operate at low, inefficient, and polluting combustion temperatures. Why? Because wood combustion requires high temperatures to be clean and efficient. Wood burns starts to burn cleanly at around 1200 degrees Fahrenheit, with continuous improvement up to about 2000 degrees. Cast iron begins to glow red and fail at about 1200 degrees. See the problem?
I don’t know how you spent your weekend, but we spent ours with hands outstretched, feeling for hot, attic air shooting out of electrical outlets, ventilation fans and air vents. After months of crazy-high electric bills, we decided to get to the bottom of why it was costing so darn much to cool our rather small home.
Enter the HERS Rater (Home Energy Rating System).
It turns out there are wonderful people who will come to your home, put up a strange looking contraption called a “blower door” on either your front door or entry to the attached garage. A fan is turned on, the pressure is measured (our house was brought to -50 Pascals) and the cubic feet per minute of air that is rushing out of the house is measured.
As part of their year-long “Change the World, Start with ENERGY STAR” campaign, EPA has launched a website to help you save money and and energy with your programmable thermostat. A programmable thermostat properly programmed and used can reduce 1,847 lbs of green house gas emissions a year. According to the EPA, maximizing household energy use through serviced heating and cooling systems, leak-less ducts, and thermostats that are programmed to save energy at night or when residents are away, would prevent 169 billion lbs of greenhouse gas emissions per year. To those who are more swayed by the impact on their wallets, programmable thermostats can save about $180 a year. Find valuable tips and resources, including tutorials and a video podcast, on their new website www.energystar.gov/programmablethermostats.
Some of the helpful tips include lowering the temperature setting by 8 degrees when you’re away or asleep in the winter, or raising the temperature setting by 7 degrees when you’re away and 4 degrees when you’re asleep in the winter. Take advantage of the “Vacation” and “Hold” features to manage temperatures while you’re away from home for an extended period. More helpful tips from the EPA: Read the rest of this entry »
Renovating and ‘re-using’ older homes may be one of the greenest forms of construction. But fixing up an old house tends to be a highly individual endeavor, and the lessons learned while retrofitting a single home are difficult to adapt to larger-scale applications.
In spite of this, Lorraine Gauthier, co-founder of the socially-conscious Toronto design studio Work Worth Doing, has identified a housing type which offers a high degree of consistency across a large number of homes: post-war housing. Post-war homes, built to accommodate returning WWII veterans, are still a part of the landscape throughout Canada and the United States, and many of these aging homes have poor energy performance. By assembling a team of designers and other sustainable building experts to retrofit a single home in the Toronto area (as part of an undertaking known as the Now House™ project), it is hoped that a formula can be created and then applied to literally millions of homes. Read the rest of this entry »
Author’s note: the following article on home heating is the fifth in an eight-part series.
Open fireplaces have a reputation for polluting air. Actually, a fireplace, when burned hot and fast, creates very little pollution. The trouble is, a hot fire in a fireplace sometimes yields less heat than a smoldering fire. Where does the heat go?
The optimal amount of combustion air contains just enough oxygen to burn all combustible gases liberated by the heat. Any additional air grabs heat and sends it up the chimney. Under some circumstances, fireplaces can so far exceed this air-to-fuel ratio that they suck more heat out of a house than they radiate back into it. The fire actually makes the house colder!
Let me first preface this post with the following: I’m not a construction professional. I’m just a curious homeowner seeking out the best building materials for my home. With that said, I was familiar with three options in residential construction - concrete block, wood frame or the super green alternative, rammed earth.
Turns out there are new options that combine the wonderful qualities of Portland cement with recycled post-consumer plastics (Rastra) or recycled wood fibers (Durisol).
Usually when we are talking about plumbing fixtures for green building we are dealing with something that conserves water. But some plumbing devices can contribute to energy savings, as well.
When you are in the shower, the hot water from the shower strikes your body and transfers some heat before it falls away. But most of the heat in that water simply goes down the drain. Reportedly, 80 to 90 percent of the energy used to heat water for the shower is lost down the drain.
A drain water heat recovery unit (DWHR) transfers heat from water running down the drain to cold water going to the water heater. This preheats the water so that the heater is starting with warmer water, and thus needs less energy. A DWHR unit can save as much as 25-30% of the energy used for water heating, and payback periods range from 3 to 7 years, depending on use patterns.
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Editor’s note: This short post from our friends at Low Impact Living points you to a (literal) gold mine of information on incentives for greening your home. Check it out: that energy-efficient upgrade to your home may be even less expensive than you imagined. This post was originally published on Monday, May 19th, 2008.
We want to let you know about an excellent new resource available to you– GreenMadeSimple.com. This site has created a very comprehensive database of green rebates, tax incentives and free offers across the US.
Their zip-code guided search allows you to find incentives and deals related to energy-efficient appliances and lighting, solar power, hybrid and alt-fuel vehicles, and more. The database includes federal, state and local incentives. Just put in your zip code and prepare to go green and save money.
Here are some examples of the jewels you’ll find:
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Author’s note: the following article on home heating is the fourth in an eight-part series.
The previous article discussed the disadvantages of using forced air to heat your house. Another approach is, literally, to heat your house –- not the air cycling through it. Why would you want to do this?
Well, for one, when you heat the building itself, you can open all the doors and windows, let all the warm air escape, close everything back up, and, instantly, be warm again – without having to add more heat.
Warm masses heat you like the sun does: by sending you radiant heat. As I explained in Heating Your Home: Heat 101, heating and cooling differ only in perspective. If you can get your head around that, then the Empty Refrigerator Effect explains why heating air is an inefficient way to heat a home.
Like it says in the fine print, refrigerators achieve their rated efficiencies only when they’re full. Every time you open the door, warm air enters. If the fridge is empty, the inside temperature may go up five or ten degrees. Read the rest of this entry »
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