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”.

TED 5000, I think I am going to upgrade.

I currently have the TED 1000. I is very good unit and has served me well. But… in order to log data I have to leave a computer on all the time. This, in turn, uses electricity. I am trying to reduce my usage not increase it. So for the last few months I have not been logging any data. Being an engineer, I like data.

Enter the TED 5000. Plugs into the wall and then plugs into the home network. Perfect for me. But the best part is that you can use it with Google PowerMeter. No more bland TED footprints.

After reading some reviews I may not get the wireless display. Some say it only works a few feet from the gateway. Not very good or useful if you ask me. It only cost $40 but if I have to keep it in an out of the way location, I will keep the $40. Now I just need to shop around for a good price an then wait. (They have been back-ordered since the Google announcement.)

New Kill-a-Watt Meter, Timer / Surge Protector / Meter.

I am going to use this with my heat pump water heater. Since I already had a surge protector and a Kill-a-Watt meter, why not add a timer that does all three.

Kill A Watt GT 4480

I thought it was easy to set up and easy to use. Just like the regular kill-a-watt, it tells me how much electricity I have used and the total time. The nice thing is it has both on the same screen. My current setup is; on all the time for the weekend. Weekdays, on from 2am to 9am and 7pm to 9pm. I think I will tweak this as time goes on but the reason for the early morning is to provide the hottest shower for my wife. (That what she wants and that what she will get)

The three buttons on the top are ON, OFF and Auto. Just like a regular timer would have. Programing is done in 15 minute increments. This device is perfect for what I am doing. Now if my local utility ever does Time Of Use billing I am set.

Small Wind Power in Action!

15 kW may not be small to some but if you are really serious about wind power then that is in the correct range for most people. This wind turbine is owned and operated by Hoosier Energy, Inc. in south central Indiana. Here is a link to the wind turbine website.

Conditions were perfect for this location. The wind was blowing steadily at over 25mph for hours on end.

My observations; The wind starts on the 9th @ 2am, it does not stops until the 10th @ 6pm. Toward the beginning, for almost 18 Hours the turbine appears to be at maximum output. (about 11kW) The turbine is rated @ 15 kW, this would make system losses at almost 25%. Since I don’t know much about the design of the system it is hard to tell what may be contributing to the losses. Remember that when designing for a solar system, total system AC conversion efficiency is on the order of 77% to 80% of rated name plate DC output. If you add the two days together you have over 325 kW hours of electricity from this on major wind event. That would have been over 50% of my electrical needs for the month.

One other thing to note. If the turbine was higher in the air the power produced would have been greater. I read somewhere that, “Placing a turbine on a short tower is like putting solar panels in the shade.”

Rain Water Collection, Hopefully one of my spring projects.

Where to start? Let’s start with my average water usage. Lasts months water bill came in at 2400 Gallons. This was from the month of November. (No watering outside!) This would be equal to about 80 gallons a day. For a family of four, that is really good! The average water usage in the US per person is about 70 gallons. We are well below that average during the cooler months when I am not water outside. I would like to keep it that way.

Rain water collection, my next spring project. During my Internet research I found a great product. RainXchange. I looks perfect, but has some flaws. #1 cost. for a 3000 gallon system it costs close to $5000. And that is if I install it myself. I don’t think I need a 3000 gallon system but the 1000 gallon system costs about half as much. #2 From what I can tell, the pump must run 24/7. So the money I save from capturing rain water will be chewed up in extra electricity costs. (Note: I am not wanting to do this to save money, but it would be nice!)

Option two, big tank of water. I don’t want one standing next to the house. Just too ugly. I could bury one but that cost money too. (Less then the rainXchange) One idea I had was to half bury a tank in the side of my small hill. But then I have to run a water line over 50 feet to it and add a transfer pump. The last option I have is to purchase a low profile tank and make a raised deck over the top of it. While this sound nice I don’t know about the added costs of the deck.

Moving on to sizing the tank. (I will have to think about location over the next few months.) After looking at my water bills, I figure I need about 3000 gallons “extra” in the summer months. Rarely do we go more than two weeks with out some significant rain fall. he system do not need to be available all the time. I can always use city water.  As an example, I want to water only the front yard. Let’s say it is 2000 square feet. If I need to water it with an inch of water every week then I need about 1200 gallons of water in the middle of a two week dry spell.

No mater which way you slice it. This will cost over $1000. Maybe I should just go back to driving a well? I did do some experimenting with water jetting but that was it. This past summer was a good one for rain so I lost my motivation. But I have plenty of time now to think of new crazy ways to save water.

Reflective film window treatments

I read somewhere that these films can damage your windows. But if it means I can delay replacing them for a few more years than it would be worth it. My windows are construction grade windows. My guess is the minimum allowed by law at the time. (Like everything else) So if I can get more usable life from them then I am going to try. I don’t want to spend too much but I also don’t want to buy junk. After reading around on the Internet, I have decided on Gila window film from Lowes.

I will wait a few months, right now I want to sun to warm the house. Hopefully, for about $60, I can reduce the amount of heat gain on the south side of the house. This film will also reduce heat loss. Maybe I will buy a roll now and apply some on the backside windows. As inexpensive as it is, it is worth a try.

According to Gila’s website it is safe for double pane windows.

My new “Base Load”

While visiting my in-laws for the Thanksgiving holiday I came back to a nice surprise. Well, I had a good idea what it was going to be but it was still nice. My TED unit reported that I had only use 8 kW hours while I was away for Thursday.

Here is the breakdown as best I could manage.

• Phantom Loads – 50 Watt /hour                                          600 Watt Hours
• My DVR – 90 Watts for 2 hours                                          180 Watt Hours
• Furnace Fan – 500 Watts for 6 hours                              3000 Watt Hours
• Fish Tank Lights – 50 Watts for 10 hours                          500 Watt Hours
• Fish Tank Heater 200 Watts for 2 Hours                          400 Watt Hours
• Light on Timer 25 Watts for 8 Hours                                  200 Watt Hours
• Refrigerator                                                                     2000 Watt Hours
• Outside Lights – 45 Watt for 14 hours                                600 Watt Hours

Add this up and you are left with about 600 Watt Hours not accounted for. But the furnace could have run an hour longer I just don’t know. This is my best guess. One thing I noticed, is the fridge use about 25% of the total power. I would like a new one, so if I were to buy one I would hopefully get one that uses about half as much. The furnace uses about a third of the total energy. When I replace this I will look for the most efficient fan I can buy. I could move the fish tank to a sunny location. But that would mean I have to drain and clean it. That is a lot of work. Honestly, I may be done trying to reduce my load. I will have to look at a few minor things, then I can see how my utility bills look for the winter months. Maybe in the spring I can think about some solar options.

The Power of Thanksgiving!

This year I had my side of the family at my house for Thanksgiving. Now for some power usage background. For the last four weeks or more I have averaged 15 kW hours a day. This would be a little under 500 kW hours for the month. (This is very good!)

Enter Thanksgiving feast. It was a wonderful meal for the nine of us. What did the TED unit read at the end of the day? 30 kW hours. Basically, the cooking and extra people doubled my daily usage. Since we have an electric oven that ran for five hours, that pretty much explains the increase.  Well worth it in my book. If you think about it, the number of kW per person was less than normal. But then again, Thanksgiving only happens once a year. Twice for me because this Thursday I get to go the other side of the family for another wonderful meal! Yum. I think I will go make a turkey sandwich.

That darn fish tank!

Like I said before , if I knew that fish tank was going to use so much electricity I would have never purchased it. But the kids and the cat like it, so it has to stay. Here is the current situation. The tank has two lights and a filter. When they are both on the combined total is 50 Watts. I run them for 10 hours. That equals 50 Watts x 10 hours, 500 Watt hours or 0.5 kW a day. I mean, that is only $2 a month. Now we all know this is not about the money. But, I can live with 500 Watt hours. What I can not live with is the tank heater. I have a 200 Watt heater. The fact that it is a 200 Watt heater means very little. How long it is on mean so much more.

Kill-a-watt to the rescue. After 12 hours, I had used 0.68 kW hours. WHAT! At that rate I would use almost 40 kW hours for the month. My refrigerator uses 60 kW hours a month! This will not do.

So what did I do. Well, I could not just turn it off. The fish may kick the bucket. So I researched the lowest livable temperature, which happens to be 68 degrees. That is better than the 73 degrees that is was set at before. The basement temp is around 65 right now. I hope that the heater will run very little since I have 50 Watts of possible extra heat from the lights and filter. I reset the kill-a-watt and will check back another day.

Vinyl Clad Foam Siding, Improving my R-value.

So I know, one of the best places to spend money is on improving the energy efficiency of your home. When I had the house built eight years ago, I was told the walls of the house were R-19. At the time, that sounded pretty good. Not that I plan on replacing my siding anytime soon, I just wanted to know what options I had to improve my R-value. Insulated Vinyl Siding is one such option. It costs about 30% more than regular vinyl siding. The benefit is greater impact resistance and the addition of R-4 to R-5 to the building walls. For me, this would be about a 20% increase insulation value. Since up to 40% of your home energy is lost thru your walls. 20% of 40% is 8%. This is why I would not be doing this until I needed to replace what I have. On the other hand, this “upgrade” does qualify for a federal tax credit of 30%. (for USA anyway) So now maybe a better time than I think.

What is 8% in my dollars? If I estimate $1500 for heating and cooling. 8% is $120. Not very much but we all know that utility bills will only go up. Since the regular and insulated siding cost about the same after tax credits. (No price quotes or concrete numbers, just the internet?) It would be a no brainer to install the better insulated product. Toolbase has a list of manufacturers if you are interested. They also have some helpful information.