No more sugary soda and pop.

Two years ago I gave up Caffeine. Many of you may find that hard to do but it was easy for me. I only drank one coke a day. Still I had Caffeine withdraw for 4 days. All four days I had a headache and on the third day I had somewhat shaky hands.

I still would have a coke but I just drank the caffeine free kind. This past new years resolution was to not drink any sugary sodas. No coke or sprite. Interesting enough I think I had sugar withdraw. Reminds me of the headaches one gets when they have not had time to eat breakfast or lunch and now it is dinner time. That lasted on and off for about two weeks while my body adjusted to not having the quick rush of sugar into the blood stream.

I don’t fell like I have more or less energy. But I don’t have the ups and downs in energy like before. This is a good thing for me. I like a nice even energy level. I find I can get more done that way.

So If the government wants to tax sugary sodas, go ahead I won’t care at all.

Neighbors Heat Pump, wow they should have purchased the best not the cheapest.

My next door neighbor replaced his heat pump this past year. He replaced it with the cheapest one he could buy. (13 SEER / 7.8 HSPF) If he went with the highest rated model, (Goodman), he would have purchased a 18 SEER/9.5 HSPF maybe his electric bill would not have been so high. It was $339! By my guess, he used almost 4000kW Hours. Most of this was because it was so cold outside. I managed only to use 999kW hours in the same billing cycle with 136 Therms of Gas used. That total for the two was $237 , or almost $100 dollars less.

If he had installed the more efficient heat pump he could have reduced his electric bill by at least 20%. That is equal to almost $70. The summer bill should also decrease.  Winner every single month!

Solar Powered Pond, What would it take?

The nice thing about a solar powered pond is that the pond pump is off during the winter! I only have to design around the spring summer and fall.

First design thought, I will not run the pump at night. I would say I would run it from 9am until 6pm.

Second design thought, AC or DC? An all DC system would be good because of no inverter losses. Even so, inverter losses are only about 5% on average. Because of start-up currents I would have to oversize my inverter to compensate. That means more money for an inverter. I do like the keep it simple approach. One less item to purchase and maintenance. DC system it is.

Third design thought, 12V or 24V. This is a little harder. It really depends on total system wattage. I have been looking at boat bilge pumps. A 2000 gph pump draws 8.4 amps @12Vdc. That is only 100 Watts.  The same size pump at 24Vdc draws 4 amps. That is 96 Watts. This is a small difference of 4 watts but it is worth noting. Now comes the charge controller. I want to use a MPPT type controller. The Sunsaver MPPT controller has a better efficiency @24Vdc. It will do both voltages. So I could start at 12 VDC and upgrade to 24VDC later.

Forth design thought, No controller, No batteries? They sell linear boosters for just this, pumping water. At about $100, this would be cheaper then batteries and a controller. Since the units are sized in amperage instead of voltage, it is better to get the 24VDC pump. All pumps do the same amount of work so the 24V pump has half the Amp rating. P=I x V

What Have I come up with?

1. Rule 24V bilge pump – $125.
2. Linear Current Booster PPT 12/24 – 7V – $100
3. Solar Panel ~120W – $500? (Slightly Over sized) Still looking for a deal. Shipping is what gets you.

So for about $700 I cold have a nice pond setup. For reference, my father in-law has a small pond. He runs his pump 24/7. It adds about $20 to his electric bill each month. Another issue I had not mentioned, I don’t have to or want to run the AC line for the house up to the pond. No trenching or conduit or GFCI outlet or or or… Just a water fall and solar panel.

Thrilled with my latest electric bill.

Why would I be thrilled. I used almost 500kW hours less electricity then the same time last year. I only used 999kW hours this past bill. Last year I used 1528kW hours. Here is the special thing. I run two small space heaters during the night. Since the furnace does not heat each of my children’s room constantly, I close the vents and run the electric heater instead. My son likes it cooler (67) and my daughter likes it warmer (72). We also run an electric space heater in the bathroom when we shower. (No one wants to leave a warm shower for a cold bathroom)

For about ten days during the billing period the temperature were unseasonably cold. The Gas furnace seemed to run most of the time. (Gas bill was higher than last year) The furnace has an electric fan that draws a little over 500 Watts when running. The fan running 50% of the time for a month would be 180kW hours. I am sure it was less than that but may have been about 100kW hours or 10% of total usage.

I will be very interested to see what spring brings. Not running the AC or Heat should make for some low bills. Even lower than last year. Just remember, all of my reduction have come from the awareness that the TED unit has given me. Without it I would be in the dark so to speak. I think everyone should have a TED or something similar. Smart Grid anyone?

I want a car that gets 30MPG+ on the highway. Harder then you think.

I want a reliable family car that gets 30mpg+ on the highway. My current SUV gets a wonderfully dismal 22mpg on the highway. But when I bought it used four years ago I wanted power and handling. If the V8 was to be had cheap, I would have purchased that instead. (I guess it was a good thing.)  Now, I love my SUV but it is all sport and no utility. I would have been much better off with a sporty car instead. Then maybe I would not be looking for a replacement.

Reliability is the first concern. According to the wife that means no GM or Chrysler. A long shot is Ford. But for sure a Honda or Toyota. Then you have all the other that are slight maybes. She is does not look favorably to the Euro brands because of their reliability issues. Personally, I would love to get a used diesel. And who makes diesels, the Europeans.

Fuel Economy is a distant second. In case you did not know, fueleconomy.gov is a great site to find and compare cars by MPG.  What did I come up with Honda Accord, Toyota Camry, and Ford Fusion. Sure they are all nice cars. But if I had it my way, give me a diesel AWD  that gets 40mpg+ on the highway. BMW, Mercedes and VW/Audi all have a model or two that would fit the bill, in Europe. A BMW 320d ­EfficientDynamics Edition with AWD. Without AWD it gets 57MPG. I would have to think AWD would not reduce it to below 50MPG on the highway. One can dream anyway.

Chinese Consumer Product Safety

SO I was reading the news report about Wal-mart pulling children’s jewelry from the shelves because of high Cadmium levels. I then recalled that China had a problem with high Lead levels a few years back. But the thing that I find most disturbing is that  every bit I hear about Chinese product problems are an involuntary action. That is to say, someone caught them red-handed. When is China going to police themselves? Are they incapable of regulations? Maybe they are? Corruption, I hear is very high in China. This is not Drywall. This is children’s Jewelry! What about jewelry for adults? Does that have heavy metals in it too.

One would think that with capital punishment more prevalent in China that people would use their heads. I am all for buying and shopping local. I always have my wife buy eggs from the local hatchery. Even if they cost $0.50 more a dozen. Have you tried to buy only domestic products. (I can’t imagine what others do outside the USA. It is bad enough here.) But we will never get away from China. Labor is just to cheap and plentiful. I just hope they get on the quality/safety bandwagon. And soon.

P.S. in that article, A cadmium specialist from China told the AP that cadmium is normally directed to the Chinese domestic market. Who cares where it is going. Don’t use it!

Hot Water Heat Pump. Winter Update.

So I would say it is the middle of winter. Maybe not by the calendar, but the thermometer says so. From my observations, the electricity usage for the hot water heat pump have increased from 3.33kW hours to about 4kW hours per day on average.  This increase can be attributed to three factors.

1. The incoming water temperature has decreased because of colder ground temperatures.
2. The heat pumps ambient air temperature has decreased.
3. The shower “anti-scald valve” has caused me to increase the tank temperature.

Factors explained.

1. This is easy. Colder air temperatures cause the ground temperatures to go down also.
2. I would say the air temperature in the summer for the heat pump was about 80 degrees. Now it is around 60 degrees.  This makes the heat pump work heard to get the tank back to the set point.
3. The shower fixtures in my house have a anti-scald valve. This is for safety. This means that cold water is always mixed with incoming hot water and that comes out of the shower head. I use to have the tank set at 120 degrees. Now I have to have it set at 125 degrees to get the same hotness of water at the head. I was also informed today that “my shower was not hot enough”, so I may have to increase the tank temp. again.

If I had my old gas tank, I would only have to deal with 1 and 3. Personally, I think it is 1 and 3 that are causing the biggest increase in energy usage. This means I am still money ahead in using my hot water heat pump.

Pellet Stove Electricity usage? A cost you may not have thought about.

Tonight it is going to get down to 5 degrees. Not unheard of in Indiana but it is still cold. My furnace will run all night to keep up. I have thought about pellet stove on and off for the past four years. I do like the ones that can burn or bio-mass products, such as corn. Now the furnace running for 12 hours will use 6 kW hours for the blower motor. (In any new house I would build I would have radiant floor heating. The water pumps use much less than that.)

I have been able to gather that a typical stove uses about  150  Watts while running. This is an average, so for this night it would be more. 150 W x 24 hours = 3.6 kW for the entire day not just the 12 hour night. With my current furnace setup I figure the corn stove/pellet stove would use have as much power.

So if the stove use 3.6kW a day that would be 100 kW hours. Not that the stove would provide 100% of my home heating needs. (maybe?) 100 kW hours is equal to about $10. If one burns for 5 months a year that is $50 added to the pellet stove operating costs. For most, it may only be an additional 10%. But it is something to remember.

Reverse Cycle Chiller, Geo alternative?

That is what they are saying. Personally, I don’t think so but it is hard to find evidence either way. What is a Reverse Cycle Chiller (RCS)?  The product is mainly sold by one vendor, Aqua Products. From what I have gathered, it is a heat pump that is used to heat and cool a water storage tank. This storage tank acts as a buffer so that the heat pump is filling the demand of the water storage tank and not the house thermostat. It is like two separate systems, the heat pump fills the water storage tank with energy and the house takes is away. The biggest advantage to a RCC is that the heat pump is sized to the heating load and not the cooling load. With the water storage tank as a buffer this ensures the heat pump won’t short cycle in the summer.

I was interested in a Heating Fuel Comparison Calculator. This link is for a US federal government spread sheet comparing the different cost of different heating sources. i modified it for the costs that I am likely to pay. The big ones being NG costs and electricity costs. I used 3.8 for Geothermal, water furnace, and 9.7 HSPF for a york heat pump.) Currently, I spend about $19 per million BTU for Natural Gas. For geothermal I would spend $8. For a heat pump I would spend $10. For the 80 million BTUs I used last year it would be, $1520, $640, and $800 respectively.

Now here is the interesting dilemma. If you use the “adjusted HSPF” at the bottom of the spreadsheet you should be using a HSPF of 6.3. This is because the auxiliary heating will be used during the coldest parts of winter. The RCS does not need to use the auxiliary heating nearly as much. How much? I don’t know. But I would guess the RCS would be running the vast majority of the time. If  conventional heat pump auxiliary heating runs for 200 hours a season, then a RCS auxiliary heating would run maybe 30 hours a season. (This is a wild guess but I am thinking of my location and how cold it gets on a regular basis.  Single digits only a few times a year.) If you use the HSPF of 6.3 you get almost $16 a million BTU and 80 million BTU cost you $1280. That would be $480 more than before. I will estimate $900.That is only $300 more a year then a geothermal system. And Geothermal has its own unique design aspects.

Since the RCS is designed for Heating, I have no doubt that it will be able to cool the house during the hottest days of summer. (My current unit has a hard time keeping up.) Additional, I want to have a dual zone system with two separate air handlers. This would be much easier pumping hot or cold water instead of multiple refrigerant lines. As with all of my new and crazy ideas, I have to find someone close to me that does this kind of thing. I need to make a few emails and see what I can dig up. The savings of almost $600 a year make it a very good use of my time. Did I forget to mention that I would save on my cooling too. The SEER rating is 18, my current AC unit is 10.

TeraCycle, not just poop anymore.

This has got to be the coolest thing I have seen in a long time. I remember terracycle from a few years ago. They were getting sued by Scotts Miracle-Grow for the colors of there packaging.

Now they have moved into reuse. From drink pouch backpacks to candy wrapper holiday bows. The best thing is that you get paid to send in items for reuse. Well, you don’t get paid but local school do or other charities.

I am not going to go into all the details. Terracycle does a great job with that. All I am going to say is find a brigade and start saving your “trash”.