Kitno455

[shadowwalker]

Okay we live close to the coast, morehead city NC is  about 15-20 miles, we are inland from the ocean, but wind maps say it is no good for windpower. Solar maps say it gets 4500 watts per day sunlight, unless I am reading these things wrong. Home is a 2000 redman so it is well insulated lots of Open space and "supposedly" energy efficient (bull). The last bill was for a twenty eight day period and to the tune of like 260. Our budget only alllows for 150, so that was a system shock. Oh well needed to lose some weight anyway.

The house has been converted to 110v for everything except the heatpump which we are looking into alternatives here too. I guess the biggest consumption right now is the heatpump. We have the therm set on 75 all the time.So I have no idea why the large bill. I did call and they cried the blues about "it has been hot and gas prices are rising" is all I got from them. Go figure. I have not at present figured out what wattage demand the house has but also looking into the lower wattage flourscent lights I have been told about, what watt would i buy to equal the 60 watt bulbs we now use? We have very little shade around the house so that does not help either.

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[kitno455]

i know morehead city, i grew up in central NC, though this may be the first time anyone has ever written a diary with my name on it....

conserve first, generate second.

random ideas:

build a second, 'fake' roof over your home. i have seen it done with sailcloth. can look sort of neat and tropical that way. if you cant do that, then next time the place needs new shingles, dont strip the old ones, just lay up a 2x4 truss with new sheathing, right on top. enclose eaves with aluminum or fiberglass screen, to keep the wasps out.

13 watt CFL's are similar to 60W incand.

open your darn shades instead of using indoor lights.

manual can openner

kill the phantom loads (warts). got a doorbell? its a phantom load too, you know.

clothes dryer, hairdryer, dryer in dishwasher, water heater are killers. you can airdry the first three, and switch to either on-demand unit or passive solar (or both) for the last. i would think that is the place to start. shutting off your electric water heater does not help much, cause when you turn it on, the water is cold... a pre-tank might help some, get the water out of the ground, and into a tank outside in the sun, if not a full-blown black pipe array, that will help a ton even in winter.

heatpump. arg. i've got one too. a/c function works by dumping heat from indoor coil to outdoor coil. the lower the outdoor temperature, the better the outdoor coil is at shedding heat, which means it can pick up more from inside coil, which means unit runs less.  how do we reduce temp of outside unit? put shade over it, use a liquid loop to tie it to the ground temp (especially cooling the compressor)

heat function works in reverse, so you WANT the outdoor coil in the sun, and your groundloop would be better as a black pipe array, arg.

i have been thinking seriously about solar water heating myself. if i could somehow use it to reduce my winter heating bills, i'd be happy.

allan

allan

[DanG]

Redman Mobile Homes (Champion?) joined into the 'green' movement in sept 2000 and boosted efficiency etc more in the next few years from what I can find on the web. A quick 4'x8' lattice trellis or two on hottest side planted with a fast growing ornamental vine will pay for itself in a couple or three cooling season..

The outdoor AC compressor in shade can reduce energy used for same cooling by 7-14%, just don't build cover so it restricts airflow. Making sure you hose off pollen and dirt glued to outdoor coils will help. Keeping filters clean, and checking interior heat exchanger coils for lint build up would be good.

Light-blocking awnings over the south side windows will help alot - canvas hung on frame or all-aluminum style, but you need to be able to hang brackets and if you don't own outright landlord might be a problem. Alot of younger home owners think they look old-fashioned and trash them, keep an eye out!

Painting the roof bright white can also help - but you might miss the passive heating effect too - I think the advantage goes to reducing the cooling costs in your area...

[shadowwalker]

We have a 110v water heater, do not use the dish washer, wife air drys her hair, we have no door bell, all appliances are now 110v if all ( kitchen appliances) ran at same time would be about 4000 watts, so now we will do as suggested and change out all lights and putting all on power strips that can be shut off when not in use, We too have been reaserching solar water heating and maybe for heating house too! So even tho we are sure not out of the woods we are slowly getting there. If the sun gives out 45oo watts per day what does this actually translate to and what size pvs would I need to power two forklift batterIes which we are thinking of getting with inverters. Ya talking to a real dummy here with all this, just now getting into all the alternative energy stuff, just have to figure what budget can handle and what it cannot and make some wise decisions based of factual info.

[kitno455]

basic fact of the matter- the dark secret of RE-

by the time you add up PV panels, mounting hardware, wire, charge controller/inverter, and batteries (dont forget they wear out, you'll buy them again in a few years), you will spend far more than just buying from the grid. different sources have different payback times, but i am betting > 10 years.

that is why i say solar water heating, rather than PV, cause you can cut out the 'electric middle man', by using cheap black pipe and a small pump.

allan

[DanG]

Morehead City,NC  Lat: 34.72 Lon: -76.73

North Carolina is beautiful and green with alot of big trees because is rains alot.

Being on coast you have alot of cloud cover, esp Nov-Mar when you can expect 6-9 days of 'black' no-sun days per month. The best time for solar is a couple of hours each side of solar 'noon' & any cloud during those peak hours means small output. Not a good canidate for big solar energy results, but enough to lower some energy costs if you can fabricate things cheaply and don't count your labour as an expense.

The 4.5 Kw/hr is averaged over the entire year, ranging from 6KwH in june to 3.25KwH in January. That 4.5KwH is the amount of energy falling on a square meter area tilted towards equator to best catch suns energy over an entire day.

Monthly Averaged Daylight Cloud Amount (%) varies from 54% to 74%.

Go to this website and log in w/ your email adress and enter your map coordinates I've listed above to get all the data...

http://eosweb.larc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/sse/grid.cgi?

[bob g]

how many kwatt hours per month are you using?

and how handy are you?

i got to believe there are alternatives to get you under the 150 dollar point.

i remember back in around 1977 i lived in an old stone hotel that dad and i bought, god what a energy vacuum that thing was.

in the winter the forced air ran 24/7 and never was the apartment over 55 degree's!

the cost was around 200 dollars for electric, and 200 dollars for the gas to run the furnace and hot water tank

all that for less than 700 sq/ft.

and in the summer, with the axis facing due west, i dont have to tell you it got horrible hot in there. i put a window air conditioner in the bedroom and closed off the rest of the place. still high utilities but at least i could survive.

and to think i only made $5.20 per hour, good thing i didnt eat much or have far to go to work.

it was that experience that got me into alternative energy big time, and since i have read everything i can get my hands on, on the subject.

one thing is for sure, the house i have planned will do far better than that place, or i will dig a hole and live in it.

i certainly do not want to be in retirement and suffering anymore than is necessary.

bob g

[MelTx]

  ShadowWalker  I have got a 35' fifthwheel Its under some large trees so that helps.My elec bill was $160 a month last summer now in july 05 it was $39...Things I changed.++++ The 60 wattt bulbs for 13w CFL++++ Turned elec waterHeater T stat down to 95 degrees+++Unpluged microwave excep when needed +++++ Unpluged all wall warts++++ Turn off all energy users when leaving room.++++And the thing that helped the most was I stoped using the roofTop A/C and installed a 8k BTU window unit.The new ones made by whirlpool are much more effecient.The smaller unit even cuts off from time to time.The larger one never cut off...I live in Tx so the climate is similar...

  Also someone suggested to build a vine trellis over the house...Shady leaves in summer no shade in winter when the vines loose the leaves..

                                        I hope this helps some  MelTx