Flash-back...sealing my home

Ok...so I know I've promised this for a while and I've finally gotten my ducks in a row.   So...be prepared to go back in time and see some of my initial work sealing my home....scooby-doo style.  Key the wavy lines:

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So when I got my initial energy audit (a birthday present from my wife...she's awesome), there were a handful of key things that I needed to do.  Kudos to ProEnergy and Eric Wall for performing the audit.  And again to my beautiful wife for getting me an awesome present.  OK...below I'll discuss two fixes:

First up...I had no door sweeps.  Seriously...none of my doors.  When I got down onto the floor, I could look outside.  On one door...my backdoor...the opening had to be at least 1/4".  The fix was simple...install door sweeps.  Of course, only one of my doors as a standard sized...so when I bought the door sweeps from Lowe's, I had to do some sawing.  It was no big deal...but it wasn't totally painless.  For the majority of my doors I bought the door sweep that attached to the outside of the door so when the rubber wears out I can get at it easily.  Not surprising...it makes a big difference...and there's no highway for bugs to enter the house either.

The second big thing we needed to fix was found using the thermal gun.  And I kind of knew something was up in my bonus room (i.e. finished room above the garage) when it was significantly warmer (10F) than the rest of the house.  Well...apparently there was insulation missing in the ceiling of the bonus room.  And truthfully...the pictures looked as if a little kid grab random pieces and ripped them out.  On top of that, while there was insulation in the attic storage areas on either side of the room...that didn't stop the air movement.  So to fix this, I had an insulation company come in and replace the insulation.  They included a vent to maintain air movement when is good.  Then the fun stuff began.  Below is a pic of the bonus room attic space before:

The pic below is a picture of the work in progress with my wife.  What we did was install rigid styrofoam insulation on the outer joists and then seal the joints with HVAC tape.  What this did was provide another layer of insulation (this stuff is R5) as well as stop the air movement.   

Once we did this to the walls, I added insulation to the doors (there was none), put on weather stripped to the doors (there was nothing there either), and we installed radiant barrier on the opposite joists.  Oh yeah...I also had to do some caulking on the molding around the door to stop air leaks there as well.  All of this had a profound effect.   Oh...and I found my ventilation fan in the attic above the bonus room was broken too...I had to replace the motor on the fan.  And while I was at it I changed out the thermostat too.  OK...so the temperature in that room now is only about 2 degrees different from the rest of the house.  And when I had the energy audit guys back, they could easily see the difference on the thermal camera.  

This fix was fairly easy and took about a day to do...and I know it's paying dividends.  That's because when I walk the dog I see my neighbors with a window air conditioner sticking out of the window of their bonus room.  And talking with HVAC guys, they typically up-size systems or install dedicated units just for bonus rooms.  Yet...maybe all you need to do is some minor modifications and it'll do just fine.  

So for any folks out there who have a similar issue...try this stuff first.  It worked for me...

LED Light Bulbs

Ok...as I'm sure most of you may expect, nearly all my light bulbs in my home are energy efficient.  Nearly all are CFLs throughout the house....nearly all are 13W with only a couple being 23W (outdoor lights). There's only 5 lights that are not:

1)  Master Bedroom ceiling fan.  I have 1 @ 40W bulb here.  For some reason the CFLs flicker...and I've tried all the 'fixes' online and none work.  So I'm stuck with the 40W bulbs. At least I'm only using 1 bulb instead of 2.
2)  Dining Room chandelier.  It's dimmable and has 5 @ 40W bulbs.
3)  Breakfast Nook chandelier.  Same as #2, but has 6 @ 40W bulbs
4)  Kitchen track lighting.  It's dimmable and has 5 @ 50W GU10 bulbs
5)  Entry way chandelier.  3 @ 40W bulbs.

 Out of all these lights, the Kitchen and breakfast nook lights are what I use by far the most.  As I'm typing this I'm glancing at my TED5000 seeing the two lights...dimmed...still using about 350W.  Ugh!

So changing these two lights out...11 bulbs...could provide some good savings.  However, I just can't stomach paying the high prices for light bulbs.  A non-dimmable Chandelier CFL light bulb is $4 each.  That's at least fairly reasonable...I could probably switch out the Entry Way chandelier with these.  But not my two dimmable chandeliers.  A 5W (25W equivalent) dimmable CFL light bulb is $8 each.  It's $15 for a LED version (4W) nondimmable bulb. To get dimmable...$23.  So, if I wanted to go LED, it would cost me $138 to replace the one dimmable chandeliers.  Seriously?!?  To replace my kitchen lighting with dimmable LED GU10 bulbs is $32 EACH.   That's another $160.  Total = $298....before shipping and taxes.  Adding in the other dimmable chandelier would add in another $115 for $413 total.

I just don't think I can stomach this.  I know there's the math that says they pay for themselves....but I just need to check for myself.

So let's take the kitchen light...5 @ 50W light bulbs = 250W when on @ full power (side note: with the dimmer I'm rarely at full power).  Talking with my wife...let's assume it's on 3 hrs/day on average.  That's 750Wh/d or $0.075/day at $0.10/kWh.  On average that's $2.28/month or $27.38/year.  A new LED light bulb appears to be 6.5W for a 50W 'equivalent'.  That equates to 97.5Wh/d or $0.00975/day or $3.56/yr.  So annual savings on this light would be $23.82.  Thus, my return on investment would be:  $160/23.82 = 6.72 years.  That's a pretty dang long time for a light bulb.  Now the dimmable LED light bulb claims that it'll last 25,000 hours (http://www.polar-ray.com/GU10-LED-Bulbs_c_159.html).  I've seen this before...my CFL's "claim" they'll last 12,000 hours....and I have yet to be convinced (I've replaced burned out CFLs).  OK...so 25,000 hours is equivalent to 2.85 years if run 24/7.  Converting to 3 hrs/day that's 22.83 years.  So, even cutting this in half to ~11.4 years still shows the bulbs will pay for themselves. 

Still...I think I'm going to wait until prices are more reasonable.  It's said that prices are falling rapidly...so maybe once my ROI is closer to 2-3 years will I decide to 'splurge'.  Until then...I think I'll just deal with my $2.28/mo....and truthfully it's going to be less than that because I use my dimmer...a lot.  I'm constantly turning the lighting down (with my wife doubling-back to turn it back up...and then I'm back...etc, etc).  It sure would be nice to not have to worry constantly about those lights...

Hot Water Heater

So I've been trying to figure out what else I need to do to reduce my energy usage.  There's things like:

1) Install high efficiency hot water heater
2) Replace siding on the house and put on house wrap
3) Install solar panels
4) Replace fridge
5) etc.

Well...I don't have a ton of money to spend so #2 and #3 are automatically out as those cost multiple thousands of dollars...if not above $10k.  That leaves me with the fridge and HW heater.  Well...at most the fridge might cost me $60-70/yr.  And while I could get a bigger fridge that is more energy efficient...I'd still only save maybe $5-$10/yr.  Yeah...that's not worth it.  So that really leaves me with looking at the HW heater.  I checked out TED from the last 48 hrs and it looks like the HW heater runs roughly 7x/day for about 10 minutes.   The Geothermal system is not operating...it's that nice fall weather so I'm not heating or cooling.   That also means the desuperheater is not generating hot water.  At 4.8kW, that means the HW heater is using 5.6kWh/day.  And I'm currently using 22 kWh/d.  Thus, my HW is accounting for ~25% of my current total daily electricity usage.  Obviously that value will change with increased HVAC usage...but its the numbers I have now.

OK...so one of those hybrid hot water heaters (http://www.geappliances.com/heat-pump-hot-water-heater/ claims a 62% reduction in energy usage compared to a standard hot water heater.   I verified this by looking at that yellow tag energy information.  My current 50-gal HW heater says it'll cost me $520/year and 4879 kWh/year.  The hybrid says $198/yr and 1856 kWh/yr.  There's lots of assumptions included in there (family of 4, using XX gallons per day, $0.105/kWh, yadda yadda)...but let's assume that this is relative and be scalable to my usage. I can't see why it wouldn't since it's based on usage.

This would mean I could expect my energy usage to reudce from 5.6kWh/day to 2.1 kWh/d.  From a cost standpoint, that's $66/year in savings.  My return on investment:   $1000-$300 (tax rebate) = $700/$66 = 10.6 years.  Not a great return, but it's a return...and its within a 'lifetime'.  I should note that next year my electricity rates are going up 15%.  And Dook Energy is trying to raise them another 15% the following year.  Using just the one rate increases bring my savings up to $76/yr and make my ROI to 9.2 years.

One thing I should also note is that the hybrid HW heater is essentially an air source heat pump (ASHP) attached to a hot water heater.  So when it runs...it's essentially an air conditioner.  It's taking the heat from the air and transferring it to the hot water.  That means my crawl space (where my HW heater is located) will become 'conditioned'.  So no more dehumidifier needed (that's an extra 3 kWh/d minimum which isn't included here).  So that's cool.

However, I'm a little worried if there's enough 'heat' down in the crawl space during the winter.  I know last winter, the crawl space hung around 68F...and I had crappy vents in there.  I know i probably had duct leakage...but it wasn't too signficant as I had the energy audit guys down there and I fixed the places that had bad leakage.  I was reading online and some folks saw the unit drop temperatures down to 45-47F in their basements....which required them to drop a duct to give it some heat. 

So I'm thinking what I'll do this winter is I'll insulated the door to he crawl space and then monitor the temperature in the crawl space to see what happens.  If temperatures stay fairly warm, maybe I'll swap out the hot water heater...

Any thoughts out there?  

UPDATE:  Now there's always switching to gas to save moeny.  But that's not cheap either.  First, my hot water heater is in my crawl space.  And I'd need to vent the exhaust....which I doubt I have space for.  So for a standard gas hot water heater, I'd probably have to move it someplace else (garage?)...and I'd need an electrician and plumber for that.  And that isn't cheap.  I could go tankless and gas.  Again I'd need to move things around...and that unit is ~$1500.  And a 7.4 gpm unit ("2 uses") would still cost $223/mo @ 1.22/therm (using the Energy Guide).  So its still not better than the hybrid uni...not to mention it'll be more expensive to purchase and install.

UPDATE 2:  I just found this in the WaterFurnace Desuperheater User manual.  Apparently, it's more efficient to install two HWs in series to allow the first one to be a preheat tank to maximize the desuperheater usage.  I'll definitely have to think about this...

TED is back

Woohooo!  It ended up being a broken daugherboard.  But it's all fixed and my display is back.  Now back to being informed and nit-picky about where my electricity is being used...

September Duke Energy Bill

Yes folks, yet another month has passed and I was waiting at the mailbox eager with anticipation...for a bill.  This month's electric bill came in and showed continued fantastic results:

Electricity Usage:  941 kWh
Days:  31
Avg Usage:  30.3 kWh/day
Comparing versus 2010:  37% savings (aka reduction in energy usage)
Comparing versus townhome of less than half this houses area (2009):  6% higher.

I'm thrilled.  It appears that we've had a consistent ~40% reduciton in energy usage.  And, I'm using about the same amount of total energy as if I were still in my former townhome.  Just sweet!

I would expect the savinsg to be more if I can figure out where the humidity is coming from in my crawl space.  I have the dehumidifier running 6 hrs on/6 hrs off.  During that time, the humidity drops to 45% when on...then raises to about 55-60% when off.  I'm not sure but it might be hitting the 45% humidity mark and turning off.  I need to check the manual to figure this out.  UPDATE:  Yes, I verified this and once it hits around 45% (the setting on the unit is 50%), it turns off....and then restarts again when the humidity increases. 

UPDATE on TED:  Energy Inc (the MFRs of the TED unit) sent me a new display.  Well, that one didn't work...it wouldn't connect to my gateway.  After discussions with tech support, apparently they sent me the wrong model (there is a series 21 and a series 20...I have a series 20).  That should arrive today.  It'll be nice to have the ole' TED display around again...

UPDATE 2:  FYI, my TED unit had 993 kWh for the month vs the 941 for Duke Energy.  That's a ~5% error difference.  I think the # of days was the same...but I think TED is setup to record from the 2nd to the 2nd, while Duke Energy this month went from the 6th to the 6th. 

UPDATE 3:  Well, the TED display arrived and this time it showed it was picking up a wireless signal, but again, it was not showing the data.  Hrmmph!  We'll see Tech support says this time.  I have a feeling it's a firmware issue.

UPDATE 4:  FYI...I have no idea why my August post is in front of my September post.  Maybe once I update this post it'll move it ahead...maybe...I hope... 

UPDATE 5:  I finally fixed that August post...someone is double-posted...so I just deleted it.  So very odd...