Picture a group of guys sitting around a table, smoking expensive cigars and drinking Heineken, and talking about what they would build in a new green, sustainable house if they had the opportunity…and money. There’s some humor here. These guys are smoking cigars and talking about building environmentally friendly houses. Lots of ideas were bantered-about, but one guy actually, the following week, produced his plans for building an incredible house for his ‘retirement’-a home that he says could be passed-down throughout generations. A home that is entirely sustainable, as ‘green’ as it gets, and would out-last conventional homes by decades, without the usual expense of reconditioning and remodeling. We didn’t believe him…at first.
Rammed-earth
At first I thought this was a joke, but it is real. This guy is going to build a ‘rammed-earth’ home. It’s going to be more expensive than the conventional home initially, but the savings will come later. He calls it his ‘forever generation of families home’ that will last well past his demise, and one that his family will never sell. Needless to say, he got our attention.
Rammed-earth homes-or buildings-aren’t new. They have been around for hundreds of years, having been used in Europe, south America, and in the arid areas of the U.S., including California, Montana, Idaho, Arizona, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington. In essence, rammed-earth homes have 14-20 inch walls where earth is compacted between formwork to make a homogeneous mass wall. It’s been used for centuries and is catching-on as sustainable and beautiful building material. The concept is this: Buildings consume 45 percent of our energy use in Canada and the United States. With energy costs at an all time high and mass environmental awareness forcing change, buildings are the primary place we can impact global warming. In this age of peak oil and historic oil spills, we can transform the built environment now through proven ecological and sustainable alternatives. One of these alternatives is to use the very ground we live on to build the walls of our buildings. Check this out: Here are some of the statistics he provided our group about this unique process:
Energy Efficiency
The combination of heat retention from the mass of rammed earth and insulation makes rammed-earth homes suited for various climates. In fact, heating and cooling is efficient and there is little or no maintenance with rammed-earth homes. It insulates 13.5 times more than a concrete wall of the same thickness. Insulated rammed earth also has incredible thermal capacity, capturing and storing energy through passive solar design.

Sustainability
Most buildings have a life expectancy of less than 50 years. This cycle exhausts energy and resources and creates a toxic waste stream by constantly rebuilding. As well, there are no building codes or standards that require buildings be disaster resistant, healthy (containing no toxic materials) or meet other important benchmarks of a quality construction such as energy efficiency, environmental impact and durability.
Fire and Earthquake resistance
Rammed-earth’s green design is low to no impact, using sustainable, locally sourced and ecological building materials. Durable stabilized, insulated rammed earth walls are virtually fire, water and earthquake proof.
In Australia, rammed earth walls have a four-hour fire rating, the highest for Australian codes. Fire tests to AS 1530.4 – 1985 on a 300mm-thick rammed earth wall with 6 percent cement gave 240/240/240 for structural adequacy, integrity and insulative capacity. This means the wall is still standing strong after four hours in a fire!
Designed to withstand seismic events in Zone 5 (San Francisco and Los Angeles), the compressive strength of a rammed-earth building typically falls between 10–30 MPa (1,450––4,500 psi), making it highly seismically resistant. Many rammed-earth homes have achieved more than 6,000psi with only 10 percent cement and regularly exhibit the same strength as concrete with a fraction of the cement. Because the bending moment increases with the cube of the wall thickness, comparing a 24” rammed-earth wall and 8” concrete wall, the rammed-earth wall is 13.5 times as strong.
Environmentally conscious
Comparing resources required in building construction, a typical five-acre treed parcel supplies wood for 20 wood-framed houses, while a five-acre gravel pit has sufficient suitable earth to build rammed earth walls for more than 5,000 houses. Further, no precious topsoil is lost when building with rammed earth.
Improved Air quality
Many homes and buildings continue to be constructed with forced or recycled air, inadequate ventilation, temperature fluctuations, uncontrolled humidity, and poor sound quality. Rammed-earth buildings are excellent at controlling humidity through the humidity flywheel effect. Bringing more than double the mass to a building, which in turn doubles the thermal and humidity flywheel benefits, rammed-earth buildings result in better air quality and moisture control, maintaining an interior relative humidity in the low 50s, which is ideal for human comfort and an impossible humidity for mold to grow.
Healthier environment
We spend 90 percent of our time indoors and needlessly surround ourselves with carcinogens and other toxins. Lumber manufacturers douse most building wood with toxic fungicides to prevent mold growth. Often, the built environment is layered with chemicals and provides ideal habitat for mold, which contribute to asthma, multiple chemical sensitivities, immune system deficiencies and other health issues. Besides being bad for your health, such measures don’t always stop carpenter ants, termites and dry rot from slowly consuming wood houses.
Why does a typical wood wall contain elements like volatile organic compounds (VOCs), phthalates, fungicides and urea formaldehyde? Doesn’t the Building Code ensure that only healthy materials can be used? No, the Building Code is there to ensure the minimum level of safety in buildings and, at this point in time, toxic materials aren’t deemed to be a safety issue.
Unlike most building materials, rammed earth walls are non-toxic and maintenance-free, requiring no sealants or finishes, which preserves indoor air quality. Rammed-earth builders use an integral admixture that seals the wall all the way through, reducing the need for ongoing maintenance. In addition, rammed-earth buildings eliminate toxins from wall assemblies, creating interior spaces that are healthy to inhabit. This is true not only of the wall itself, but also through the exclusion of interior and exterior finishes that can contain many of the most toxic and environmentally destructive components found on a construction site. Amazing.
Rammed-earth homes incorporate traditional ceilings and roofs. Our guy says that he plans on topping-off his home with high performance reflective insulation, making it the most energy efficient and sustainable home that (he imagines) can be built. He plans on installing ecologically smart window film, and solar attic fans and electric systems.
When he finished his talk, the room was silent. Just a bunch of guys with cigars hanging out of their mouths…jealous and dreaming of our own rammed-earth homes in the future.

It was bound to happen. I was in a monthly networking meeting of business people and got into a conversation about energy conservation, ‘going green,’ and what individuals and families can do to help save this planet. He asked the dreaded question: Do you recycle? I had to admit that I only do it periodically, which is another way of saying, “no.” What I got was a master’s thesis on why it’s important and why I can’t truly be ‘green’ unless I recycle faithfully.
Recycling, as you know, is reusing materials in original or changed forms rather than discarding them as wastes. In reusing material-or changing material-into new materials rather than throwing it away, individuals benefit, as well as the environment, as I found out.
Why recycling is important
I guess I never really thought much about ‘why’ recycling is important, other than it ‘just is.’ But here are some tangible reasons why I am now a converted recycler. I have seen the light.

Recycling saves energy
It takes less energy to process recycled materials than it does to use virgin materials. For example, it takes less energy to recycle paper from waste material than it does to create paper from new woodland, because there is no longer a need to cut down a new tree, process the wood from the tree and make it into paper. Energy from non-renewable resources is protected and saved for future generations, money is saved when less energy is used, and often pollution and emissions are reduced when less energy is used. Another example: Production of recycled paper uses 80% less water and 65% less energy, and produces 95% less air pollution than virgin paper production. I stand corrected.
Recycling Saves money and land space
Recycling reduces trash in landfill sites, which cuts down on the cost of waste disposal and the clearing of more land for new landfills when the current ones become too full to store any more waste (never thought about that happening). Recycling is an easy and less expensive alternative to clearing more land. For example, recycling kitchen waste and yard waste into compost provides a means of free nutritious soil for gardening, because most kitchen waste is biodegradable. It stays in the landfills for years to come, just sitting there and piling up with the rest of the trash-wasted. So my wife was right.
Recycling reduces air and water pollution
Decomposing waste often releases noxious gases and chemicals as it decomposes at landfill sites. These gases and chemicals create air pollutants. When the chemicals leach into the groundwater, it creates more pollution, eventually contaminating our water. This isn’t as far-fetched as it might sound. Years ago, when I lived in Colorado, I lived in a house that was a mile south of what is called a ‘Superfund.’ This, as I found out, was a place for the most toxic of all waste, and I just got a house a mile away. Not only me, but an entire community of homes surrounding Denver’s newest golf course. Within one year we discovered that our worst nightmare was happening-that there was evidence that the groundwater was in fact being leached into by the site. Within 6 months, 75% of the future home developers dropped their plans to build and our property values plummeted. We got out.
Recycling creates jobs
Recycling in the U.S. is a $236 billion a year industry. More than 56,000 recycling and reuse enterprises employ 1.1 million workers nationwide. More recycling opportunities would create even more jobs, without the loss of any current workers, which is a huge deal nowadays.
Recycling can positively impact wildlife
It can preserve wildlife. When fewer trees are cut down to make virgin material or to make space for landfills, habitat for wildlife remains. More habitat-more animals and less potential for extinction.
As you can imagine, I felt put firmly in my place. Seriously. I was convicted for not taking the time or energy to do something that is so simple, yet has a much bigger impact than I would have ever imagined. So guess what?

I have learned how to separate plastic, paper, and glass from other stuff. It’s hard not to just ‘scrape’ everything into the trash can, but I think it’s worth it. I am also not throwing away the plastic bags that my groceries come in, either. I’m saving them and use them to help separate the stuff. I am now a bona-fide recycler, having learned yet another way to help save money and help the environment.

I love water. I’m a sea-kayaker and get out into it every chance I get. Candidly, when I’m out there I don’t think about water conservation. There just seems to be so much of it. An ocean of water, and it seems endless. But recently, because of a desire to be as ‘green’ and conservation-minded as possible these days, I have been thinking about another kind of water-fresh water. The kind that we drink and use in the course of our daily lives. So I’ve been doing some research into how much water we use and how much water is needed for us to enjoy the quality of life that we do here in America. The results are sobering.
Last week I wrote about how much fresh water we use (in our homes) just going through the motions of everyday life. The average family of four using 600 gallons of fresh water a week was a real surprise. There was some good news, however. We found that we could control a lot of our usage. Today’s blog is, sad to say, about much of what you and I cannot control. It’s about how much water is used in the production of the food we eat. I guess it’s more informative than anything, and is meant to be educational.
Let’s take an average meal at a restaurant as an illustration of just how much fresh water goes into putting that food on your plate. You go to your favorite restaurant and look over the menu. You decide to get a steak. It comes with a baked potato and corn-on-the-cob. With it you have a glass of wine, and finish-off with a cup of coffee. Pretty standard stuff. So, how much fresh water does it take to put that steak dinner on your plate? But before I tell you, I need to let you know that my intent isn’t to make you enjoy your meal any less, it’s to help you enjoy it more, to appreciate it more. We live in a country, despite all of the problems that are dished-up to us daily through the news, where we have the blessing of enjoying meals that take an enormous amount of water, just to get it to our plate. This will surprise you.
1. Your steak: In order to put-up one pound of beef, it requires 1,799 gallons (6,810 liters) of water! That’s 6.6 pounds (3 kilograms) of grain for feed, plus irrigation water; 36.2 pounds (16.4 kilograms) of roughage or grasses for feed, plus irrigation water; 18.6 gallons (70.5 liters) of additional water for drinking and processing. You read this right. That’s close to 1,800 gallons of water for every pound of beef we eat!
2. The baked potato: In order to get one pound of potatoes it takes 119 gallons (450 liters) of water. Think about this: Worldwide potato production soaks up about 0.2 trillion cubic feet (6.5 billion cubic meters) of water annually. Potato production accounts for 0.09 percent of global water use for the planet’s total agricultural crop production.
3. The Corn: One pound of corn (0.5 kilograms) requires 108 gallons (409 liters) of water. Worldwide corn production soaks up about 19.4 trillion cubic feet (550 billion cubic meters) of water annually. Corn production accounts for 8 percent of global water use for the planet’s total agricultural crop production. So much for corn-produced gasoline being inexpensive. Oil consumes only 1.01 gallons (1.06 cubic meters) of water per kilowatt hour to produce. Didn’t think about that, did we?
4. The Wine: Get this. For one gallon of wine (3.8 liters) it takes 1,008 gallons (3,816 liters) of water. That’s 63.4 gallons of water for one glass (1 cup)! Most of the water used for wine production is for growing the grapes. I happen to think it’s worth it.
5. The coffee: One gallon of coffee (3.8 liters) requires 880 gallons (3,331 liters) of water. That’s 37 gallons (140 liters) of water for just one cup. If everyone in the world drank a cup of coffee each morning, it would ‘cost’ about 32 trillion gallons (120 billion cubic meters) of water a year. If you’re like me, I consume 4 cups by noon. That’s 148 gallons of water just to wake me up.
O.K. So the steak is only 8 ounces, the potato is only 8 ounces, and the corn is only 4 ounces. So…by the time we have consumed that steak dinner, with the wine and coffee, it has required somewhere close to 1,200 gallons of water just to get it to our plate. Amazing.

Having done the research on this hasn’t caused me to feel bad. It’s actually caused me to be more appreciative of the fact that I live in a country that actually has the water resources that enables me to enjoy the quality of life that I do. Imagine living in a country where water isn’t available like it is here in America. In order to produce the food we eat, it takes lots and lots of water. We’re blessing to live in this country, regardless of the politics. There are some things that we just take for granted-like water. Kinda makes we want to invest in organizations that help third-world countries drill for water…

In our attempt to reduce our hidden energy usage and be as ‘green’ as we can as a household, I did some checking into an energy resource that we have just taken for granted: Water. It’s just there. Every time we need it, we just turn on a faucet, and it comes out. If you’re like us, you really don’t know how much you’re using on a daily basis.
In a men’s group that I attend, the subject of energy conservation has been a topic of discussion for some months now, and we’re all trying to minimize our usage-and the money we spend on it. But no one, until last week, talked about water.

So I did some research into just how much an average family uses on a daily basis. I picked ten average water-usage activities for a family of four to present to our group and here’s what I found:

WATER-USE ACTIVITY                                                       AVERAGE AMOUNT OF WATER USED
1. One bath                                                                               50 gallons
2. One 10 minute shower                                                      2.5 gallons per minute =  25 gallons
3. One teeth brushing                                                             1 gallon X 4 = 4 gallons
4. One hand/face washing                                                     1 gallon X 4 = 4 gallons
5. One face/leg shaving                                                          1 gallon X 1 = 1 gallon
6. One dishwasher load                                                           20 gallons = 20 gallons
7. One dishwashing by hand                                                     5 gallons = 5 gallons
8. One clothes washing load                                                  10 gallons = 10 gallons
9. One toilet flush                                                                    3 gallons X 10 = 30 gallons
10. One 8oz glass of water                                                      8oz X 4 = ½ gallon

Now, taking into consideration that we wash clothes and (in our house) baths are taken periodically (we shower daily), that comes to an average daily water usage of 84.5 gallons! If someone had suggested to me that we use an average of 600 gallons of water a week I would have thought he was crazy! I realize that this is just an estimate, and I’m not taking into account everything we use water for, such as cooking and dog washing. And, water use for all activities vary by individual. I might use three gallons of water to wash dishes by hand, but my son might use five. You might leave the water running when you brush your teeth, but your wife might not. If you live in a newer house, your toilet probably uses less water per flush than the toilet in a very old house. Newer houses also have shower and faucet heads that use less water than before (look at the end piece on your sink faucet — it should have the number of gallons per minute that it will allow stamped in it).

The guys in my group were stunned. We all were. We were trying to guess how much water we all used in washing our trucks. We all took a minute to add up the houses on our street in order to figure-out how much water actually goes down the drain…You get the point. It’s scary.

It also started us thinking about how much water it took to put those cups of coffee and burgers in front of us, and the rest of the people in the restaurant. Being the researcher that I am, I offered to do some research on that as well, and share it with them over the next few weeks. I’ll put what I find into a blog, for those of you who are interested.

This is one of those deals where one feels like just one person can’t make much of an impact, but we figured that we were only responsible for ourselves, our families, and others that we might be able to impact. So here’s what we decided to do:
1. Each guy was going to share this information with his family and vow to cut-down on as much water usage as possible in his own home. We figured we could probably reduce it by 50% with some effort and controls. I’m still not sure about only flushing the toilet a couple of times a day.
2. Each of us were going to ‘walk our neighborhoods’ with a home-made flyer and see if he could get the neighbors to do the same.
3. All of us were businessmen, so we decided to take the message to our work-place as well.
4. We all frequent Starbucks, restaurants, etc. and decided that (for what it was worth), we’d give them the info as well. Who knows?
5. We all agreed to email the info to our relatives as well.
Is this going to make a difference? We’re not naïve. We know that some of our kids, relatives, and co-workers will just shrug their shoulders and not really give a rip. But some-maybe many-will, and make some changes in the way they take for granted one of our best natural resources. Who knows? It may just reduce their water bill at the same time.

When was the last time you stuck your head up in your attic to check the temperature? I posed that question to a group of men I meet with weekly, and the answer was, “Never.” If you’re like me, you don’t think about what’s going on in your attic as long as you think you’ve got enough insulation. Out of sight, out of mind. But what you don’t see can be hurting you.
Ventilation of the home attic is important for two reasons.
• During the summer, excess heat that builds up in the attic during the day results in high energy costs for cooling.
• Also, moisture produced within the home may move into the attic if ceiling vapor barriers are not used. If this moisture is not exhausted from the attic it can condense and cause insulation and construction materials to deteriorate. Thus, temperature and moisture control are the major reasons for providing attic ventilation.
Attics can reach temperatures of 150 to 160 degrees F during a summer day, although outside air temperatures are only 95 to 97 degrees F. The cooling load for a home air conditioner depends on the difference in temperature between the inside and outside air, and reduction of attic temperatures from 155 degrees to 105 degrees F will result in a significant reduction in cooling load. In a home with poor ceiling insulation, heat movement through ceilings may account for 30 percent or more of the total cooling cost. With a well-insulated ceiling, this source of heat may account for only 12 to 15 percent of the total cooling cost. Making sure we have the best insulation is one part of the solution, and making sure our attic is properly ventilated is the other part. So…how do we actually ventilate an attic?
Attic ventilation can be accomplished by gravity ventilators, wind assisted ventilators or through electric or solar powered ventilators. Regardless of the method used, the purpose is to provide uniform ventilation of the attic for proper temperature and moisture control. There needs to be air movement in the attic in both summer and winter months.
At first it may seem odd to add insulation for warmth and then purposely allow cold air to enter the attic through vents, but this combination is the key to a durable and energy-efficient home. Here’s why: in the winter, allowing a natural flow of outdoor air to ventilate the attic helps keep it cold, which reduces the potential for ice damming (snow that melts off a roof from an attic that is too warm and then re-freezes at the gutters, causing an ice dam that can damage the roof). Proper insulation and air sealing also keeps attics cold in winter by blocking the entry of heat and moist air from below. In the summer, natural air flow in a well-vented attic moves super-heated air out of the attic, protecting roof shingles and removing moisture. The insulation will resist heat transfer into the house.
Natural ventilation is the most common way that homes have of achieving attic temperature and moisture control. This method takes advantage of two principles:
• First, as air is heated it becomes less dense and rises.
• Second, wind movement over and around a home creates areas of high and low pressure, which tends to move air.
Ventilation caused by wind pressure differences requires less vent area to achieve the same ventilation rate as ventilation by gravity. One problem with wind ventilation is that the areas of high and low pressure change with wind direction, causing difficulty in locating inlets and outlets so that ventilation will take place regardless of wind direction.
Attic Fan Ventilation is intended to cool hot attics by drawing in cooler outside air from attic vents (soffit and gable) and pushing hot air to the outside. NOTE: If your attic has blocked soffit vents and is not well-sealed from the rest of the house, attic fans will suck cool conditioned air up out of the house and into the attic. This will use more energy and make your air conditioner work harder, which will increase your summer utility bill. You don’t want your unfinished attic cooled by your air conditioner.
So, which is better? Natural ventilation is the least efficient way to ventilate your attic because it depends upon air pressure changes heavily affected by wind direction. Attic fans keep a consistent movement of air going, regardless of wind direction. Don’t want to spend money on electricity to keep those fans running? No problem. Recent advances in technology have made it possible to install efficient attic fans that are solar powered. That means your fan will be running without using a single watt of electricity. Think about it. If your attic is 50 degrees cooler, your air conditioner will not work as hard and there may be many days when you won’t need it on at all.

If you have been following these blogs over that last ten weeks then you know that we have been on a hunt to reduce our monthly energy bill. Through the help of our local utility guy we have identified ten ‘Hidden Energy Guzzlers’ in our house, appliances that have been sucking-up more electricity than they really need to, adding to our growing electricity bill and reducing the bottom-line of what I bring home each month.
The final appliance that we needed to talk about is one that we use only in the summer months to help reduce our air conditioning cost. It’s our evaporative cooler. We try to use it during the hot months instead of our air conditioner and it works pretty well until the humidity gets up there, in which case it doesn’t work all that well, blowing hot, humid air into the house. What I found was though this cooler is a good substitute for air conditioning in the spring and fall months, it doesn’t work for us in July or August due to the high humidity. The cost of running this big unit isn’t too bad. During the months we use it, we figured it ran us around $25.00 a month, much less than our air conditioner. Interestingly enough, though California is a good state in which to have an evap cooler, costing about 25-30% of what it takes to run an air conditioner, I found that less than 5% of the homes or businesses have them.
Our utility guy asked a couple of questions regarding how and when we used the cooler, in an attempt to see how he could help us reduce our operating cost and improving the effectiveness of the cooler. The first thing was determining whether our cooler was the right size for the house. We were OK here. The next thing was determining whether we were getting the most from it. Normal air conditioning is a closed system, taking air from inside a house and recycling it. For air conditioning to function properly, doors and windows should be closed. Evaporative cooling, however, takes air from outside the house. For evaporative cooling to work properly, the cooled outside air must be allowed to escape. By choosing which doors or windows in your home you leave open, you can help direct the flow of cooled air to areas where it is needed.
This felt ‘counter-intuitive’ to us. For some reason we still felt like we needed to keep the hot air ‘outside.’ So we have a tendency to not open doors and windows when we turn on the evap cooler and, in effect, were working against ourselves. No wonder we just turned on the air conditioner. Another question, “When you decide to turn on the air conditioner, do you make sure the evaporative cooler is off?” Hmmm. Not sure. The reason he asked that was because if both are running we aren’t getting a ‘double’ benefit, but just the opposite. Because of the humidity that is being brought into the house by the evap cooler, the air conditioner has to work twice as hard to get rid of the humidity it is  producing. I made a note to check on that one. Another area we were told to check was the filters. We were told that we needed to clean or replace them annually, if we run it around six hours a day for 3-4 months. I hate heights, so I was sure mine hadn’t been replaced in a few years. Another note to self.
So here’s the bottom line to us: we can cut our cooling bill significantly during May-June and September-October by running the evaporative cooler rather than our air conditioner. That would save us around $50-60 a month to cool the house if we used the cooling unit effectively and didn’t forget to shut it off when we did decide that we needed the air conditioner on.
While we were on the subject, and being interested in being as ‘green’ as we can, I asked our utility guy about the feasibility of using solar energy with an evap cooler. He said that evaporative coolers are now on the market that use photovoltaic panels to create the electricity used to run the blower and the water pump. For hot, desert areas, the combination of evaporative cooling and solar power are a perfect match: the afternoon, when the most solar energy is available, is also the hottest part of the day, when cooling is most needed. And since evap coolers use a fraction of the energy of air conditioners, PV cells can provide enough electricity to run the system effectively. Interesting. He was quick to note that having one’s house insulated well was a good idea regardless of the way one chose to cool his house.
So that’s it for my hidden energy guzzlers. I think, with the insight I gained through this process, that I’ll be able to reduce my electrical usage considerably in the future. Who knew that things like flat-screen TVs and freezers in the garage could add so much to the bottom line?
Here’s our energy reduction plan for the future, in case you were wondering:
1. Refrigerator – keeping the seals tight and the filters clean
2. Flat Screen TVs- the games are hooked-up to the old CRT TVs and we don’t leave the big screen TV running unless someone is watching it.
3. Air conditioner- we will keep the drapes closed, won’t set the thermostat lower than 78, and put it on a timer to turn off when we leave for work.
4. Swimming Pool and Hot tub-run these for half the time they normally run.
5. Freezers-got rid of one and made sure the other is more than half full when running.
6. Dishwasher-turned-off the heated ‘dry’ cycle. Stove-We bought a Nu-Wave and are using it more and more.
7. Water heater-we’re turning this off each night at 11pm and back on again at 6am.
8. Clothes dryer-we’re only drying ‘heavy’ stuff and made a place in the basement to hang-dry lighter clothes.
9. Portable heaters-sold them.
10. Evaporative cooler-this we plan on using instead of our air conditioner for four months of the year, and keeping the doors and windows open and changing the filters.

I don’t know if you have a similar issue, but keeping a consistent level of warmth in all of the rooms of our house is a problem. Our house is around 3500 sq. feet, and has four bedrooms on the upper level. The thermostat is located in the center of the second floor, in the hallway. I can set it at 78 degrees and it keeps the main floor and the middle of the second floor pretty-much at that temperature. The problem is that two of the bedrooms, which are located at the far end of the house, always feel cold in the winter. We felt that turning up the heat in order to keep those rooms warmer wasn’t a wise thing to do, since it might drive our heating bill through the proverbial ceiling, so we opted for getting a couple of electric space heaters for these rooms. Bad idea. Here’s why: kids live in these rooms.

We bought 1500 watt heaters with automatic temperature regulators (for obvious reasons-kids) with the idea that a portable heater would be a great way to ‘take the chill’ off the morning. We also thought that the kids would be vigilant about turning them off in the mornings when they left for school. Wrong again. What we didn’t think about was that these thermostatically controlled heaters would automatically turn on again when the room got cold, which it did during the day. Once the temperature of the room reached a certain temperature, the heater would shut down. The kids just forgot to turn them off, because they didn’t ‘hear’ them running.

Our energy consultant asked us if we had portable heaters and asked us why we thought they were a better idea than turning up the heat. Of course, we thought it was going to be a cheaper way to bring heat to those cold rooms. He asked us if we knew how much they actually cost us to operate. We didn’t really have a clue. Here’s the reality of how much these things cost to run: At $.17 a KWH a 1500 watt portable heater running three hours a day costs around $23.00 a month to operate. Take that times two and we were looking at $46.00 a month, just to ‘take the chill’ off. Amazing what escapes us. That’s if they only ran the three hours. I could just see the heaters kicking-on-and-off-again throughout the day…with no one home. Add this additional amount to what we paid for the heaters and we felt like idiots.

O.K… so what were we to do? The rooms were still going to be cold if we didn’t do something.
Our issue was not wanting to increase our heating bill by turning up the furnace, but we didn’t want the additional $46.00 or more added to our heating bill, either. He told us that the ductwork in our house, because of the size, didn’t have the capacity to bring the needed heat to those out-lying rooms. If we turned up the heat, the rooms in the center of the house got warmer-too warm for us-even though the cold rooms did warm-up. Besides that, the additional heat seemed to want to kill these great fern plants that we have on the second story landing.

Our guy suggested something that did, in fact, work for us. In order to compensate for the inconsistent heat flow we could spend more money for a higher output furnace (which we weren’t going to do), or we could do the following (which we did):
• Select the temperature range on the thermostat that brought enough heat into the cooler rooms in order for them to be comfortable.
• In the rooms in the center of the house, close the heat registers so they would be less affected by the additional heat and subsequently, force more heat into the cooler rooms. We had to play with this a little in order to get the right balance, but it worked.
• Take the portable heaters out of the room and sell them on Craig’s list, which we did.

After a couple of months we noticed a couple of things:
• Our always-cold daughters stopped complaining about their rooms being cold.
• The overall house temperature seemed more balanced and comfortable.
• The increase in our heating bill increased only by around $20.00 a month-half of what we were unknowingly paying to heat those rooms.
• The ferns aren’t dying.
It’s amazing when one thinks about the concept of Hidden energy guzzlers. They really are hidden, and that’s what makes them so insidious when it comes to the impact that they have on our wallets. I have nothing against energy companies. I want to pay my fair share. Truth is, however, that I’d rather save what I can and spend it on something I enjoy. I figured that, with the amount of money we were going to save by being more energy efficient, I could eventually buy a new sea kayak. That didn’t go over all that well…

One of the appliances that I thought was in the ‘top 3’ hidden energy guzzlers, the clothes dryer, actually ended up using about the same amount of energy as my flat screen TV. That was a surprise. It would seem (to me) that the amount of energy required to generate the heat necessary to dry a load of clothes would be far greater than that needed to run a flat screen TV. Guess again. We figured our average monthly cost, when running 34 loads a month, to be $13.75. Not bad when you think about it. That’s the equivalent of a cup of Starbucks and a piece of banana nut loaf bread a week.
Our job here, however, is to see how we can reduce our energy expense, so here are some of the things we discovered that can reduce your clothes dryer expense considerably:
1. The ‘load:’ For some reason I have a tendency to pack my clothes dryer like luggage bound for Europe. I haven’t really stopped to think about it, but the inner logic may be that I’m getting more dry clothes for my money. Not true. I found that an over-loaded dryer costs more to operate. I also was told to separate the lightweight clothes from the heavier items and dry them separately. Here again, I would just dump everything in the dryer bin, turn it on for 45 minutes, walk away and let it roll. I found that drying the lighter items by themselves and turning the timer on for only 20 minutes resulted in most of the load being dry. In half the time. Putting the heavier clothes (towels, jeans, etc.) together and setting the time for 30 minutes gave us the same results. I ended-up with less wrinkles as well.
2. The lint screen: This is something that I’m pretty good about. I pull and clean the lint screen each time I use the dryer. I was told that dirty lint screens can cause a dryer to use up to 30 percent more energy-and it can be a fire hazard.
3. Outside exhaust: One thing I didn’t think about was to periodically check the outside exhaust filter. I was told to make sure that the cover fit tightly, so no cold air could leak in. Also, he recommended that I change my flexible vinyl duct with a metal one. Evidently, restricting the air flow can reduce the effectiveness of the dryer, and vinyl ducts have a tendency to get squashed. I went home, looked behind my dryer, and sure enough…my 6-inch ductwork was crunched into about half the size it’s supposed to be.
4. Moisture sensor: I had no idea what this was, or if I even had one. I was told to use it instead of a timed cycle. Interesting…some machines have a ‘moisture sensor option’ which automatically shuts off the machine when the clothes are dry. I went home and checked our dryer and, sure enough, we have one. Now..to figure out how to use it.
5. Spin option: How do these guys know so much about this stuff? If your clothes washer has spin options, choose a high spin speed or extended spin option to reduce the amount of remaining moisture, thus starting the drying process before you put your clothes in the dryer.
6. Solar clothes dryer: There’s always a wise-guy. I totally fell for it, asking him what a solar clothes dryer was. It’s a clothesline. He said that most people don’t need a dryer. They could save themselves the money and hang their clothes either outside (if the homeowners association permits) or inside on a rack. He seemed to think that clothes would last longer and look better, too.
He had some good suggestions that will save us enough money to pay for those weekly Starbucks visits. However, I just can’t see us hanging stuff around the house to dry….

When we first started looking for hidden energy guzzlers in our house I was asked to list (what I thought) were the top three energy guzzlers. Here’s what we listed:
1. Air conditioner – this was, in fact, the number one guzzler at $80 per month.
2. Clothes dryer – This was not as big a culprit as we thought. We’ll discuss this in our next blog.
3. Hot water heater – This was more expensive than I thought it was going to be, as you’ll see.
Our hot water heater is electric, is a 50 gallon tank, and is around 8 years old. We discovered that our average usage runs around 375 kilowatt hours per month. At $0.17 per KWH, that puts our monthly average at around $68.00 a month, which makes it the number two energy-guzzler in our house. I remember buying it based on one thing: its price tag. What I found was this:
Every appliance has two price tags. The first is the price you pay when you purchase the appliance (I went cheap). The second is the cost of operating the appliance over its lifetime. You might be surprised if you consider how much it costs to operate an appliance compared to what seemed to be a good deal when you purchased it. I thought I got a good deal, but found that I’m paying through the proverbial ‘nose’ each month.

The utility guy said that there are a number of things I could do, which included spending $500 on a new, energy efficient unit. Not being inclined in that direction, I asked what we could do to reduce the bill on the unit we have. Here’s a list of things that he suggested:

1. Repair leaky faucets & showerheads. He said to check the faucets and showers in all three bathrooms for leaks. A leak of one drip per second can cost $1 per month. This doesn’t sound like much, but can add-up.
2. This was interesting. He asked if we used hot water when running the garbage disposal. We always used hot water. He said to use cold water to operate the garbage disposal. Cold water use saves energy and is the recommendation of most disposal manufacturers. Didn’t know that.
3. When washing dishes by hand, he said to use a sink stopper or dishpan so water – hot or cold – doesn’t rush down the drain. Remember, too, that hot water running needlessly not only wastes water, but it wastes energy as well. This was news to us, since we often washed dishes by hand so as not to use the dishwasher (see last week’s blog).
4. Set our water heater to 120 degrees, which will produce plenty of hot water and still save energy. I ran down to the basement and saw that ours was set at 160 degrees, which I promptly changed.
5. Wrap your water heater with a water heater blanket, and insulate the pipes where we can. We got these ready-made foam tubes that worked well and were easy to cut-to-size. He said we’d save around 10% on our bill just by doing this.
6. Conserve hot water by installing water-saving showerheads.
7. Last, but not least, this was the big eye-opener. He said to put a timer on the heater that shut it down at night. Candidly, I didn’t buy this. I thought we’d be showering in cool water in the morning, which I wasn’t excited about. Not to worry, he said, because the water in the tank would still be warm, and it wouldn’t take much to heat it up. He said that by turning off the water heater for 8 hours each day, we could save as much as 30% on our bill. To prove it to us he brought us outside the house to where the electrical meter was. He asked us to watch the dial, which was spinning quite fast. He then went into the basement and flipped-off the breaker for the hot water heater. Amazing. The dial (which measures the kilowatts being used) slowed-down to half of the speed as when the heater was on.
His point was this: Why continue to heat water at 120 degrees when no one is using it? A well insulated tank will keep water warm for quite a while. So we put the heater on a timer and decided to turn it off from 11pm to 6am, and from 9am to 4pm, when we are away at work and school. That’s 14 hours that we won’t be heating water at 4500 watts. We also decided that there won’t be any more 20 minute showers. Sorry ladies…

If you have been following any of these recent blogs, you will have picked-up that we are on a mission to uncover and eliminate hidden ‘energy guzzlers:’ the appliances, equipment, and habits that, unknown to us, are wasting energy and causing us unnecessary expense. We have found that some appliances and equipment, much to our surprise, use much more energy than we would have guessed (flat screen TVs and hot tub pumps). But there are a couple of appliances that, at first blush, might seem to be energy-suckers, but in fact are not.
I asked a few people at work to identify the two appliances in their kitchens that they thought were the biggest energy-wasting culprits. To the person, each one listed both their dishwasher and their electric stove. By the way, none of these folks thought that their refrigerator was an energy-waster. I pointed them to blog number one. Like them, I really thought my dishwasher and electric stove used lots of electricity, so I try to use them sparingly. I was surprised to find that they actually use much less electricity than I thought. This was good news for me because I love to cook and hate to wash dishes.
First, the Dishwasher. I figured that we ran our dishwasher 18 times (cycles) a month. That’s a little more than every-other-day. At $0.17 per KWH, the dishwasher costs us an average of $6.62 a month. Huh. I spend more than that on breakfast. What about all that hot water? We were of the opinion that if we cut down on running the dishwasher and washed dishes by hand, we’d be saving money. Not so. I found that we use less energy washing dishes in a dishwasher than washing by hand! This is one of those counter-intuitive things. It’s like taking a bath versus taking a shower. With all that water running down the drain, it would seem that a bath would use less water than a shower, but just the opposite is true. Same with washing dishes by hand.

Even though there was a smile on my face when I found that the dishwasher wasn’t a true ‘energy-guzzler,’ I was given a couple of tips that can help reduce the energy usage even more.
First, run the dishwasher only when full. We found that this reduced our monthly usage from around 18 cycles to around 15. But here’s the tip that I thought was pretty cool. We were told to use the cool-dry cycle (on our dishwasher it’s called the ‘no heat’ button) rather than the hot cycle. Never thought about that. I guess I thought that they needed that cycle to make sure the germs were killed. The utility guy told me that, with 160 degree water, the germs were already dead and it just takes a little longer for the dishes to dry. For those of you who don’t have this feature on your dishwasher, you can turn it off after the final rinse and let the dishes air dry. I guess that this can reduce the dishwasher’s energy usage by 30-40 percent.

Next, the Electric Stove. We figured that we used the stove-top around 45 minutes to an hour a day. The average monthly cost, oddly enough, is only $7.25 a month. Not bad. Everyone I asked thought this one was the bad-boy of the kitchen, using much more energy than any other appliance. Interestingly enough, some of my friends have spent hundreds of dollars on counter-top appliances that they purchased just so they wouldn’t use their stove. One friend, who just spent $135 on a convection-type, dome-shaped oven, upon hearing how little his electric stove was really costing him, gave me the “thanks a lot” look. Should have saved his money.

In closing, here are a couple of tips we picked-up regarding how we can reduce the stove usage even more.
• Foods cook faster at lower temperatures if you use pots with flat bottoms and tight-fitting lids.
• Pans that are bigger or smaller than the heating coil waste energy. (Weird. I thought that by putting the smaller pan on a larger coil would cause it to heat-up faster)
• You can also save energy by using your microwave oven, slow-cooker, toaster oven, and electric skillet instead of the larger oven or stove.