The single easiest thing you can do to cut down your electricity bill TODAY!

In practically every home, there is a room with a well-worn couch, an arm chair and a wooden cabinet with every horizontal surface covered with any number of electronic devices.
In our apartment, it is the living room, where I am currently sitting typing this on my laptop. Looking across at our TV stand, I can see a red light, a green light, and a faint white light, which correspond to our TV, our Wii (our Netflix provider), and our AppleTV. Also present, but not currently lit, is my Xbox, which only really gets turned on anymore when the baby finds the power button.
To my left is our Wireless Internet Router which is blinking away.
When you have an electronic device that is in standby mode, it usually means that although it is turned off, it is scanning constantly for a remote to tell it what to do. It is ready to turn on when the signal is received, and is usually consuming a significant amount of power. How much power varies from product to product, but let's use mine as an example.

We have a Toshiba 32" TV, that is about 6 years old. Older TVs use 10-15 kW in Standby mode, so let's call it 12.5 kW and split the difference. That's about 110 kWh/year!
The Wii runs at 8 Watts in Standby mode, if it was on standby all year, that is 70 kWh/year!
Our AppleTV is almost always on, because it is on a different channel than the Wii, which we use most often. It is usually warm, which is usually a good sign that it is chugging away, power-wise. It apparently runs at 48W, which blew my socks off when I learned it. That is a LOT! That's 421 kWh/year, as it is running photostream the whole time it is on. Man... I need to get into the settings menu and shut that off!
Our Xbox, which is "off" but can be activated using the controller (standby mode) uses only 2.2 W, so 19 kWh/year.

That is a total of 620 kWh/year, or a cost of about $55.04 (accounting for peak/off-peak use) a year before anything is even turned on!

Luckily, there is an easy fix, and most homes are ALREADY using it, so there is no cost to set up your energy-saving system. We all have our TVs, VCRs, Cable Boxes, Satellite boxes, gaming consoles and video streaming devices or DVRs plugged into surge protectors and/or power bars. And they all come with an easy to use off switch. Flipping that switch cuts the power, and eliminates your phantom power draw. Easy!

Now, we have the unit turned on for about three hours a day, typically after the baby is in bed, so we are being charged off-peak rates. We turn the unit ON to watch, and I flip it off before bed. This means 21 hours of phantom/standby power consumption is eliminated, saving us about $50/year.

Having been through a good number of homes to advise on energy consumption, I know that in a lot of homes, there are a lot more devices than we have (although maybe not power hogs like my Gen 1 Apple TV!!!), and often in more than one room where there is a separate living and family room TV set up. Multiply out your savings, for no more work than the flip of a switch!

Even George W Bush had the good sense to cut down on this "Phantom Power" Consumption. Check out his Executive Order for all government agencies for the purchase of products that consumed phantom power!

More resources on phantom power:
http://www.cityofpaloalto.org/news/displaynews.asp?NewsID=1194&TargetID=235
http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/vampire.html (EXCELLENT! This guy is great, and very honest about what is and is not important to worry about)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standby_power
http://standby.lbl.gov/summary-table.html
http://www.electricityforum.com/news/feb11/Phantompowercostsconsumershundreds.html
http://www.electrical101.com/standby-power.html

Keep in mind that the newer your electronics are, the more strict the guidelines were for their manufacture, and the lower their phantom power consumption will be (Thanks Mr Bush!).

To calculate your own power consumption, take the phantom power use of your device (see the above resources).

Usage in Watts * 365.25 * 24 / 1000 = usage in kWh/year
For simple calculations, use the mid-peak rate of 10.9 cents per kWh (HydroOttawa) to find out how much it costs you per year.

Then figure out how many hours per day it can be turned off to find your potential savings!

Now take that money and do something more fun, you earned it with all that tedious math!

Out and about.

I've been feeling pretty bad for our dogs lately, and began taking them out for LONG walks after a few weeks of short walks to protect their paws from the cold. Warmer weather means they can catch up on exercise (as can I!).
Walking about in my neighbourhood, which is populated with a lot of homes at least 50 years or so old, meaning many of them are obviously underinsulated.
What jumps out are bare roofs and often HUGE ice dams on peoples' roofs. Yes, another blog antry about roofs.

I tend to focus (harp?) on roofs because they are such a clear indicator of escaping heat, especially when we get a warm winter spell. When the temperature gets close to zero, the combined outdoor heat and the
heat lost through the ceiling tag-team to melt the snow in no time. This means that when I walk by a house, I can see which houses are losing money due to easily preventable heat loss.

Take a look at your house next time you are outside. Read through the previous posts with the roof label and see if it fits what you see. These problems are very easily and quickly dealt with, and often with very short payback periods. The average for houses I have been through has been an estimated three to five years! If an attic takes $1500 of insulation to save not only energy costs but roof repairs, once the payback period is over, you will have an extra $300 to $500 at your family's disposal every year.

Not too shabby!

Next generation hippy wrapping!

You have probably seen some newsprint-wrapped gifts under the tree in the past, and thought to yourself "That is from Uncle _______". Everyone has that uncle (or aunt, or other granola-muncher).

You know...


Well, I have become that uncle. haha.

Now we live in an apartment, don't get flyers delivered, and read most of your news online.

This will be the third Christmas that we will be re-using some fabric that I bought when my fiancé started sewing. We use old ribbons and have added in new scraps from new projects that she had trimmings from.

And so I introduce to you... next generation hippy wrapping. COMPLETELY reusable, and very cute to boot.

They have to be very cute, or I would not be allowed to continue doing it. haha.

Merry Christmas, and happy holidays!

Knee walls are DIFFICULT to insulate properly.

Hello again everyone.

After making a VERY hasty decision to head out west to work with my father-in-law doing flood/fire remediation work for a month, I am back and at it with the blog.

Today, my fiancé needed a break after hitting the books pretty hard this week studying for her final real estate exam. We have been talking a lot about the kind of house that we want when we settle into life in Ottawa, get our careers in order and figure out where exactly we want to live here. We do not want to repeat the mistake we made with our old home, rushing into home ownership when we don't know a town very well. Better to pay rent for a while.

One thing that ranks at the top of my list (after south-facing windows and yard, more on that in upcoming posts) is an unfinished attic. I have spent the last few months (minus my brief trip out west) working with a local insulation installer evaluating people's insulation and making recommendations when needed, and I have noticed a few things as my knowledge or roof and attic systems has grown.

An unfinished attic, I may have mentioned before, is a space that can act as an appliance in your home, that protects and preserves your roof. When people expand their homes to include a conditioned attic space, they can create a whole host of issues, unless they are very careful about it.

A properly ventilated attic will draw air out the ridge, gable or chimney vent, which will in turn draw air into the soffit vents at the bottom of the roof. This keeps the attic cold enough to prevent snow melt on the roof.
Without proper ventilation, the attic cavity will become warmer than the outside air, and can lead to snow melt off the roof. Adequate insulation (we recommend R50 to R60) will slow heat loss into the attic, making the work of the ventilation system easier. And even better, less heat lost means less money lost!

If the ventilation system is not adequate or is blocked by poorly installed insulation, heat escaping the home will build up in the attic, warming the roof and melting snow. This can lead to ice damming, peeling shingles and even black mould.
Taking care of your ventilation will add life to your roof, and increasing your insulation will slow down damage as well, in addition to saving you money.

Here's a classic roof showing symptoms of being underventilated. The roof is warm, and the snow had melted. At the bottom of the roof, forming a ring above the soffit is a cold zone not heated by the home underneath. Water will run down to this point every time the temperature gets close to zero, and then it will freeze and form an ice dam.
And how much money is pouring out through that roof all winter? It takes a lot of energy to drive that much snow melt!


When an attic is finished, it involves squaring off the triangular roof so that the walls are reasonably flat. Here is an image that I found doing a quick search:
They even stole my punch line! Knee walls are rarely insulated properly, and this means that heat loss and moisture problems can develop.

There are two common approaches, I'll start with the one that I like less, for purely practical reasons.

The first is to insulate the roof the whole way up. This creates a kneewall space that is basically a closet. It is INSIDE the house, which means that it will (in theory) be heated.
The difficulty here is that now the ventilation system of the attic, if it is going to act properly, now needs to be entirely contained within the rafter depth in order to keep the roof cool and prevent snow melt. Having no cooling can lead to a great deal of melt, and ice-damming and roof damage.


In this case a barrier, such as a soffit baffle, can be used to keep the insulation from blocking fresh outside air from moving from the soffit to the upper attic and top vent.
This will keep the roof cool, preventing snow melt and all associated problems.
A bonus to this design is that the kneewall spaces will be kept warm and allow for conditioned storage.




If this ventilation is blocked, then heat will migrate through the insulation (more slowly as R-value increases) and reach the roof sheathing and contribute to snow melt. The attic space above will also be warmed by lost heat and not cooled by ventilation, leading to further melt unless additional vents are added.

This can lead to otherwise preventable snowmelt, and potentially shingle damage, ice damming and even mould growth.

Here we see a home where the kneewall is part of the inside conditioned space. However, it looks like there is not adequate ventilation along the roof sheathing to keep the roof cool. It is very early in the season, and there is already a significant ice dam building up and quite an icicle!
More worrisome might be the amount of money pouring out through the melted strip of roof. Yikes!


The second method is to insulate the kneewall separating the room being built from the kneewall space, and the floor of the kneewall, such that the new space is essentially OUTSIDE the house. The big benefit here is that you have cut off a bunch of air volume that you do not have to pay to heat! You have created two triangles of unconditioned storage space on each side and a small attic on the top. The benefit of this is that you have more freedom to increase the insulation value of your walls, and you can control the ventilation more easily.

If the walls of the new room are insulated, ventilation must be provided to connect the soffit vents with the top attic space.
This will keep the roof cool and reduce the air volume that will have to be heated.










If ventilation is not adequate, insulation will actually provide a contact path for heat to move to the roof sheathing.
In the case drawn here, the kneewall is shown ventilated, as in the photo below.
In many cases, however, the kneewall may require further ventilation, and without it the kneewall may get warm enough due to heat lost through the ceiling of the floor below and the wall of the new room that snowmelt may be generated through the full height of the room.

Now in this case, we actually see a home where the kneewall space itself is well ventilated, but the sloping ceiling in the finished attic show signs of not being ventilated at all.
Just going by the line of snow melt, I could make an educated guess about where the kneewall ends and the ceiling follows the roof.
The kneewall is ventilated by the soffit and vents on either end, providing cool air and keeping the roof above cool. Unfortunately, the roof above the room and the small attic that remains do not seem to be staying cool, and snow melting from over these spots will run down and form ice dams over the cool kneewall. So close!

Not shown is the case where the room is not square, but instead has a sloped ceiling that follows the roof line. In this case, ventilation must be run the entire length of the slope above the room, to connect the cool kneewall with whatever attic remain above the room. Otherwise melt will occur.

That is all for now. I will put up some more pictures from my walkabout soon. There are so many roofs and so little time!

Not only will you save energy...

apparently you can also contribute to a more tightly knit, liveable and sustainable community. This is an interesting read.

Small fridges make good cities, but American fridges just keep getting bigger

Reminds me of something I saw years ago on "The Nature of Things". It was a special about green homes and building techniques. There was one home that looked like a series of underground onions, but where the shoots should be there was a round skylight to let light in, with the onion rooms connected by tunnels. They were all connected by tunnels, and they were naturally heated and cooled largely by the earth that surrounded them.
The coolest part (no pun intended) was the fridge that the designer had made. He recognized that a big flaw with the fridge design that we all see in our homes is that they open vertically, so that all the cool air (which is more dense fluid and sinks) pours out when the fridge is opened. That's why I get so frustrated when I see "new energy efficient" fridges that have a bottom freezer with a drawer instead of a door. Especially when that drawer is not solid but is a wire basket. Not only is the cold air going to flow out, but the food is all moved out into warm air without even a solid barrier to isolate it form the warmth of the kitchen. Any air cooled by the food will fall onto the floor as well, instead of back into the freezer.
Anyway, back to the well designed fridge. It was circular, with a pneumatic lift in the center. When you wanted to grab the ketchup or whatever you needed, the button is pressed and the food lifts out on wire shelves (admittedly exposing all the food to warmth) BUT the cool air is left within the fridge itself so that an entirely new mass of air does not need to be cooled. WHAT SAVINGS!

Think of the air in your fridge as cold water. You open the door, and it pours out all over your kitchen. But if you're at the cottage and you grab a beer out of the kiddy pool full of ice, you don't have to let all the water out. You just grab what you want and leave the cool fluid behind.
Heavenly!

Food for thought.

An excellent interview with an outside-the-box thinker, Michael Reynolds.

"The utilities are bad because they mine the earth for fuels and make nuclear power plants, but just as bad as that are the infrastructure that they use to deliver the utilities. And then they are all run by corporations and so on, so the people are vulnerable.
This building, the people that live here are not vulnerable, they are a free people to exist no matter what happens to the economy or anything." (emphasis is mine)

While not everyone has the means, opportunity or drive to embrace such a radical home, everyone can surely see the value in reducing their vulnerabilities to the energy market and the geopolitics that drive it, whether they choose to live on the grid or off.

More on loading order and investing in your greatest investment

There are a couple of reasons why I went the route that I went when I became interested in Green building and sustainable design.
In 2008, when everybody became very interested in energy issues, my father was dying and I was immersing myself in a lot of new information. My father had always been the provider in my family, not just for our immediate family, but always helping out in the community and our larger family as well.
When he became sick, I saw that there was going to be a large gap. Where he had money to help people out, I quickly realized that that was not going to be an option for me. I had just returned from teaching abroad, and I was faced with poor job prospects. Plus, I was delving into the world energy situation, and this was a particular topic of independent study that at one point kept me at varying levels of insomnia (stress+massive interest) for almost six weeks. Needless to say, I was not a lot of fun at parties. I started looking at ways to save money, and ways to help others save money as my niche to fill the gap.
In 2009, I had the opportunity to return to school, and went to Prince Edward Island to Holland College, and began studying "Electromechanical Technology". I had the idea that I was going to learn all about electrical systems (plus some millwright work) and be well positioned to help out changing the country over to renewable power generation and clean energy with solar panels and windmills. Midway through the year, I revisited the documentary "Garbage Warrior", which documented the ups and downs of "Biotect" Michael Reynolds struggles to build sustainable homes largely out of recycled materials while still conforming to the demands of conventional building practices. Not an easy task...
I realized that solar panels and windmills are really window dressing. They are bandaids that are often applied to the sieves that we call houses, and very expensive ones at that. I started reading more, and realized that in most cases, low tech and low cost fixes make the biggest differences, and that once those differences are made the bandaids will really make a difference. Solar panels and windmills are a great step, but seeing the holes that existed in conventionally built homes is why I switched into Construction Technology.
While staying and studying at Sirius Ecovillage in Massachusetts, we had an afternoon with a local business person from the community there who was a Building Performance Institute certified Building Analyst. We toured several houses that he had worked to improve, and learned about the protocols used to properly order the work to maximize payback. What I liked about the ordering was that the work was ordered to fit the customer's budget, working with them to reduce one bill, pay back the initial work, then allow for savings for larger items. I was so impressed that when I was finished my college program I returned to Massachusetts to get the training through BPI myself.
What are the first steps? As I said before, you start with insulation and air-sealing, ensuring proper ventilation and air supply, and then move on to the more expensive items. 




So why is the order so important?

Starting with insulation and air sealing will immediately reduce bills. I have been in several homes that I have helped with their attic insulation, and they noted almost immediate improvement in comfort. When we increased the attic insulation at my family's cottage, we noticed the next day that the air conditioner turned off once it reached temperature. It was significant, because it had never turned off before. It ran constantly.
Your attic alone, when properly insulated to R-50 or R-60 (adding R-30) and paired with air-sealing, can cut up to 25% off your total energy bills. This means less running your furnace, less running of fans, and less cycling on and off once temperature is reached.
Holding the heat in will not just save you on your bills in the present, it will save you on maintenance and replacement costs on your major comfort appliances.
Taking that 25% you saved means that attic insulation will often pay for itself in as little as three to five years, depending on the size of your attic and the conditions before work is done, as well as the quality of your air sealing.
Three to five years to pay back means it is an investment that pays 20-33% back. This beats just about any investment that you can come up with in the market. The big difference is that you are getting money into your pocket each year by not paying it to utilities. And unlike monetary investments that fight inflation (how much of your gains are eaten by inflation each year?), the nominal value of your savings will increase every time inflation drives prices up.
This means that as the price of fuel or energy goes up, SO DO YOUR SAVINGS!
If energy prices stay the same, you still pull in the same savings as you would today.
Even if energy prices go down, you will not only pay less along with your neighbours, you will continue to save more on what you do pay.

I really believe that for anyone who is looking to save money, live better, increase their free time, and to do it in a smart way, the BPI series is a great place to start.

More to come on active versus passive approaches.