Photo courtesy of PålLøberg at Flickr.com.
The cost of electricity is rising quickly due to increased demand. This summer, we can expect high bills from running the air conditioner and charging batteries. The best way to get on top of the problem is to get ahead of the meter reader by trading in your prehistoric stove for an induction stove.
Unlike other stoves, which cook using radiant heat from gas or electric coils, an induction stove cooks using magnets. It generates a magnetic field that rapidly heats up metal pots and pans, delivering heat right where you need it. In the process, induction stoves consume about half of the energy that conventional stoves use. They also deliver quicker results, heating up cookware in half the time because more of the heat is going where it should:
Induction cooking uses 90% of the energy produced compared to only 55% for a gas burner and 65% for traditional electric ranges.
Best of all, saving power in the kitchen has a multiplier effect! When heat is wasted, it has to go somewhere. With conventional stoves, the waste heat warms up your house (which isn’t great in the middle of summer) and then has to be cooled down with energy intensive air conditioning. When you use an induction stove, you save power twice!
As an added bonus, you can use all your steampunk cast iron and stainless steel cookware - aluminum and glass wont even heat up on the stove.
Photo courtesy of theTeaLeaf at Flickr.com.
Popularity: 7% [?]
2 Apr 08 |
It’s that time of year again - HGTV is giving away a custom built home with amazing features. This year, the dream home embraces a number of green technologies.
These features include:
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On the HGTV website, there’s an interactive map of the green home, video tours, and links to more information about energy and water saving innovations. Oh, and you can also enter to win the home. Good luck!
Popularity: 9% [?]
15 Mar 08 |
Photo courtesy of krstl_blu at Flickr.com.
Most of the energy our homes use is spent heating and cooling the air to a comfortable level. By some estimates, 50-70% of energy is used on HVAC systems.
So, one of the best ways to cut energy use is to add insulation and seal any cracks in the home. But, how do you identify where insulation is needed, or where a draft is sneaking in? Rather than use subjective means, it’s now possible to use a Thermal Imager to spot energy leaks. That way, you can apply insulation and caulk in only the places where it’s really necessary, and you can limit the use of more expensive housing improvements to the places where they’ll do the most good! Here’s an example of what a leaky door looks like:
Photo courtesy of CBC || Thermal at Flickr.com.
If you don’t have a thermal imager hanging around in your closet, your friends may have one you can borrow. Alternate places to check include your local fire station, housing association, or community college. Many such organizations have equipment available for check out or rental. If nothing else, you can buy a camcorder with a thermal function from an electronics store, use it for an energy audit, and then pay the restocking fee to return the camcorder. Not that we recommend such shifty behavior, cheapskate.
Photo courtesy of CBC || Thermal at Flickr.com.
Popularity: 7% [?]
Photo courtesy of M.Roemer at Flickr.com.
As the housing bubble continues to burst, it turns out that there’s an unexpected silver lining in the economic downturn. The sharp decline in property values may lead to reduced development in environmentally sensitive areas, and fire sale prices are making it easier for conservation groups to buy tracts of land on the cheap.
There’s not a whole lot of good news coming from the housing sector right now, but this is at least one small ray of sunshine to hang onto.
Photo courtesy of ACPinho at Flickr.com.
Popularity: 4% [?]
Photo courtesy of Miguel Mc Conell at Flickr.com.
A resort in Chile just finished building the biggest swimming pool in the world- it’s a kilometer long and big enough for sailboats! The crazy thing is that it’s only about 100 feet away from the ocean. If somebody wants to go sailing, why not walk down to the beach and do the real thing?
Photo courtesy of Miguel Mc Conell at Flickr.com.
The environmental impact of swimming pools is stunning, and mega-pools are only the tip of the iceberg. Sure, they’re not as easy to see from orbit, but the volume of water in backyard pools adds up too. More and more people are moving into homes with pools our adding pools to their existing homes. “In 1950, Americans owned only 2,500 private residential swimming pools; by 1970 they owned 713,000.” There are more than 7 million private swimming pools in America today.
Photo courtesy of nina_theevilone at Flickr.com.
As you may know, pools use a lot of water to fill and maintain. For example, the typical uncovered pool in Arizona loses 4 to 6 feet of water a year to evaporation. Since water supplies are running low throughout the country, it would help if more people used pool covers to reduce evaporation and conserve water. Chemicals also evaporate away and pool covers reduce the need for additional chemicals too.
Pool covers reduce the amount of make-up water needed by 30 to 50 percent and reduce chemical consumption by 35 to 60 percent. Reflective pool covers can also be used to reduce the amount of light reflected by the average pool (a significant factor in urban heat islands). In cold areas of the country, dark pool covers are useful in reducing heating costs (because they warm up in sunlight). Oh, and properly designed pool covers can even prevent children and small animals from drowning in the pool!
If you have a pool, here are 8 ways to conserve water and electricity:
1.) Install a pool cover. As much as 70 percent of a pool’s heat loss is caused by evaporation. It also will keep your pool or spa cleaner and reduce the need to add chemicals.
2.) Reduce your pool’s water temperature and the number of months you heat your pool. This lower energy use will reduce your carbon footprint and cut your bill down to size.
3.) Keep your pool’s cleaning and heating equipment clean and lubricated . Well maintained equipment is more efficient and will last longer before it needs to be replaced.
4.) Switch your pool filter and sweeper operations to off-peak hours. When it’s hot outside, air conditioners suck a lot of power out of the grid. During these peak times, many electric companies have to run dirty backup generators and they also charge higher prices. If you have a time-of-use meter, running your pool equipment only during off-peak hours can save you money. Off-peak times are generally between 6 p.m. and noon weekdays and all day Saturday and Sunday.
5.) Install a new water-saving pool filter. A single backflushing with a traditional filter uses 180 to 250 gallons of water.
6.) Shorten the operating time for your swimming pool filter and use the automatic cleaning sweep. In the winter, two hours a day of filtering could cut your filter’s energy use by 40 percent to 50 percent, without any noticeable difference in clarity or sanitation.
7.) Create a windbreak around your pool with native plants and shrubs. This wind break will prevent breezes from reaching your pool and keep hot, dry air from sucking away moisture. It also makes the pool a more attractive and enjoyabe place to relax.
8.) Use a “green” pool cleaning service. The traditional way to clean a pool is to drain all the water, acid wash the lining, and then refill the pool with thousands of gallons of additional water. In drought stricken Phoenix, a company came up with a way to save water during the cleaning process! Calsaway Pool Service pioneered a cleaning method that filters the pools contents and then pours the water back in! Their process also takes less time, and because it conserves 10,000-30,000 gallons of water per pool, it offers massive cost savings too.
There are even bigger changes you can make to you pool to save water, reduce chemicals, and minimize electric costs. Salt water pools are one option - they have slightly lower evaporation rates and use fewer chemicals than other pools. Whenever I use a pool with heavy chlorine, I always have to go take a shower to keep my hair from turning green. So, salt water pools reduce water use in that way too!
Photo courtesy of milksss ×Þ at Flickr.com.
You can even do away with your pool altogether! Drain that pool, and you’ve got a half-pipe for skateboarding…
Photo courtesy of db_cooper at Flickr.com.
…or an oversized planter for gardening! If your yard doesn’t have room for a vegetable garden, think about streamlining by filling your pool with soil. You don’t even have to tear out the concrete lining, just add dirt and - viola! - you’ve suddenly got the biggest planter on the block (although you may want to layer the bottom with crushed rock to ensure proper drainage)!
Photo courtesy of larry st at Flickr.com.
Popularity: 11% [?]
24 Dec 07 |
When I struck out on my own many many years ago, some friends and I got the bright idea to rent this big old arts and crafts era house in the middle of what is now called an historical district. It was called a war zone back then, but we were young and immortal and knew everything; that’s why we were getting out of parent’s houses right? Then things got cold and we started looking for the thermostat on the wall to turn on the furnace; you know like we had back home. Someone finally figured out that that thing under that big grate in the floor was where the heat was supposed to come out and it burned oil. I lived in that house over a year and we never did figure out how to light that thing. Oil burning furnaces aren’t really that common in the neighborhood I grew up in, but in a lot of places in the country they are the standard - so I’m told. According to an article in the Register Guard:
Heating oil “is simply off-road diesel,” according to SeQuential Biofuels, one of the major suppliers of biodiesel in both the Eugene and Portland areas. “Any heating oil furnace can use a B20 biodiesel blend without modification,” the company’s Web site says. Blends of up to 99.9 percent biodiesel and 0.1 percent petro-diesel can be used if approved by a certified home heating technician, SeQuential says.Both Oregon homeowners and drivers who use biodiesel with a rating of B20 or more for home heating or personal vehicles now qualify for tax credits of up to $200 on their state tax returns, under a bill adopted by the 2007 state Legislature.
So Oregon home owners are starting to make the switch to biodiesel based heating oil. The paper went on to talk to a local heating contractor:
Automatic Heat serves about 2,000 customers with oil furnaces, “and about 85 percent are using biodiesel - it’s pretty much clipping right along,” Schilling said. “We offer our customers a B20 blend of 20 percent biofuel and 80 percent low-sulfur (diesel). We don’t go higher because, like cars, some fuel systems can’t handle more than that without modifications.”Even at that level, the blend “makes a huge impact on emissions,” he said. Eventually, when heating systems that can run 99 percent biofuel become readily available, “if customers are educated about biofuel, I think they’ll want to change,” he said.Before Automatic Heat began offering biodiesel heating oil two years ago, “we polled our customers and told them we were considering it,” Schilling said. “At that time, about 70 percent of them said they wanted it, even at premium prices.”
So if you have an oil based furnace do yourself and the environment a favor. Look into whether or not you have a local heating oil supplier that you can get biodiesel from.
Popularity: 7% [?]
19 Dec 07 |
Coober Pedy Australia is a rather hot and forbidding place to live. Temperatures in the summer hit 114 degrees and the first tree in the town history was welded together out of scrap steel. The town industry is primarily opal mining with a sideline of providing alien deserts for the movie industry; abandoned space ships litter the country side. But the opal miners figured out quite quickly that it was reasonably cool in the mines and expensive to air condition houses on the surface; so houses, churches, hotels and business often are mined right into the rock to take advantage of the stable temperature of the earth.
You see, once you get down a ways into the earth the surface temp doesn’t matter. Freezing or frying, the temp below remains a constant year round. It’s why well water tastes cold on a hot day, and miners in Coober Pedy stay cool beneath the surface, and it’s why pipes when laid below the frost line don’t freeze in North Dakota. It’s also the fundamental principle on which geothermal heat pumps work.
Heat pump technology is not new by any means; it’s how a refrigerator works. To oversimplify greatly the heat pump takes the heat from the inside of the refrigerator and transfers it to those coils on the back of the unit. Traditional home heat pumps do the same thing on a big scale. They take the heat from within your house and transfer into the air outside. When reversed it takes the heat from the outside air (I don’t care how cold it is, there is some heat) and concentrate it into the house to warm it. Heat pumps are not so efficient in very cold climates for obvious reasons.
What is relatively new is that the Geothermal Heat Pump (purists cringe at this name because geothermal properly refers to taking heat from the earth’s core) instead of trading heat with the widely varying outside air temperature exchanges heat with the more stable temperature of the earth. To accomplish this in a closed loop system pipes are placed underground, either vertically or horizontally (depending on the available space and environment) and the heat pump is attached to pump liquid through these 
pipes. The heat pump then distributes the (or pulls the heat out) by way of air or water circulation through the stricter. In a open loop system pipes are sunk deep into the aquifer and water is pulled from the ground, through the system then returned; using the water in the ground as the transfer partner. In some situations a closed loop system can be placed at the bottom of a pond.
So, while this system costs several times the amount of your average traditional heating and cooling system the typical payback period is under five years. Energy usage is reduced anywhere from 30 to 70 percent overall. The systems are smaller, quieter, and last considerably longer than traditional home heating and cooling options. If you want to learn more about geothermal heat pump options, visit the Geothermal Heat Pump Consortium.
Popularity: 6% [?]
18 Nov 07 |
Our quest for unique eco-friendly gifts continues as the holidays grow near! Ok, sorry to even mention Christmas in November, but if you’re like me, you’ll be too dang busy over the next few weeks to do a good job looking for unique gifts, so we hope to do some of the work for you.
First on the plate this week is this cool recycled wine barrel lounge chair, available from UnCommonGoods.com for around $165.00. It’s made from salvaged oak wine barrels and works great indoors and out. I’m getting drunk just looking at it!
Makes a great gift for the eco-friendly friend or for yourself!
Popularity: 10% [?]
Flickr photo courtesy of Clean Wal-Mart.
Talk about a mind boggling number of light bulbs! Wal-Mart announced a while back that they were going to push hard to sell more compact fluorescent lightbulbs, with a goal of selling 100 million of them per year.
It’s only the beginning of October, and they’ve already hit their goal for the first year. Not bad.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. reached an annual target of selling 100 million energy-efficient light bulbs ahead of schedule after heavily marketing them as a way for consumers to save money and fight global warming, the retailer said Tuesday.
The world’s largest retailer set the target, which roughly doubled its previous annual sales, late last year as part of a series of green policies. It expanded shelf space, cut prices and ran ads for the swirly compact fluorescent bulbs, or CFLs.
Environmentalists and manufacturers said Wal-Mart’s push has helped boost national demand for the efficient bulbs.
Backers including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency say CFLs use one-third the energy of a traditional incandescent bulb, last up to 10 times longer and save $30 or more in energy costs over their lifetime.
Last year, an estimated 150 million CFLs were sold nationally, and the number may be twice that this year thanks to Wal-Mart’s contribution, said Noah Horowitz, senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Popularity: 4% [?]
A Wall Street Journal Energy Roundup blog post points out a new study showing that consumers are starting to become skeptical about the concept of going green.
“Even with all the talk today about consumers seeking to save energy costs and help the environment, the shaky housing market and other recent economic uncertainties prove that wallets are still driving many Americans’ green purchase decisions,” Shelton Group CEO Suzanne Shelton said in a press release. “As it stands, ‘energy-efficient’ is consistently equated to ‘more expensive’ in the minds of consumers for products across the board,” Shelton said.
Consumers want proof that an energy-efficient home will save them money in the long run in order to justify the generally higher cost of such a home, Shelton claims. Otherwise, according to the survey, consumers would prefer to spend their money on aesthetics. When asked what they would buy if given an extra $10,000 to build a new home, 26% of survey respondents chose granite countertops, compared with 24% who favored an energy-efficient HVAC system. Twenty-one percent chose “additional tile or hardwood,” the same percentage who favored “upgraded or additional energy-efficient kitchen appliances.”
When asked how they would spend an extra $10,000 to improve an existing home, most respondents preferred to upgrade their flooring, kitchens, bathrooms and paint. Replacing windows, which might improve a house’s energy efficiency, was only the fourth-most-popular choice.
Frankly, this doesn’t surprise me, even though it does disappoint me.
I can only guess that it is a rational economic decision based on that fact that the average American only lives in particular house for 5 years or less. You can buy granite countertops that would impress your friends and neighbors and make your kitchen look nice and help sell your home when you move, or you can put in new windows that might pay you back in 6 1/2 years in increased efficiency – 1 1/2 years longer than you’ll probably be in the house. And since no one appreciates energy efficient windows, it wouldn’t help you resell the house later either. (Don’t believe me on that one? Ask your real estate agent.)
It’s a bit frustrating to me, because you can’t even get most people to take the easiest step of all in energy efficiency: changing out a few light bulbs from incandescent to compact fluorescent. The payback period for that is in mere months.
Anyone out there who has made an energy efficiency upgrade to their home lately besides me? Tell us what you did, and why!
Popularity: 4% [?]