I've noticed its a lot harder to hyperwatt once you're already in a newer house that's properly constructed, sealed, and insulated. The incremental gains are very difficult to see on a monthly bill, at least when your H20 and heat/cooling is also electric.

It's also hard to go to extremes when it affects the entire family. At least hypermiling is usually by yourself!

Maybe the house equivalent of an instantaneous FE gage are in order. Modern meters are smart enough to pump that info out... or just clamp an ammeter onto your line.

CFL lighting did make a noticeable impact on my bill- every light that is used for more than a few minutes at a time is a 14W CFL, or some 3-way (7-16-24, or something like that). I'm hunting for little 2W guys to stick in the nightlights now, and PAR-30 form factor floods.

My family never noticed any color difference until my wife was dusting one day and looked at the bulb- lampshades work wonders to soften the light tone even on a
high-color temp bulb. Only drawback is that it takes a minute to come up to full brightness, so the CFL spots are not great for task lighting when you want it on quickly- I use halogen pucks for that.

Low-E window film is the next project.

 

challenger1,

I just found this interesting thread. Do you know anything about the emissions from your corn furnace? A good setup of a wood burner (new burner, thermal heat storage tank and so on) gets emission levels that are not too far away from big furnaces in district heating systems:


Particles (kg/25 000 kWh): 3.5

NMVOC (kg/25 000 kWh): 0.24

Methane (kg/25 000 kWh): 0.13

OGC (kg/25 000 kWh): 1.4

Benzene (kg/25 000 kWh): 0.06

PAH (kg/25 000 kWh): 0.03

I found the numbers in the enclosed report. It's in swedish, but there is an abstract in english if someone is interested. 25 000 kWh is an estimation of the yearly energy consumption for heating and hot water in an average Swedish house.

http://www.sp.se/databas/rapportpubl...?RapportId=620

 

I have those! Well, one of them at least. I use it just for the outside light by my front door since it remains on all night. I use a pair of 4w CFL's for the hallroom lighting, which replaced a pair of 15w bulbs. Those are nice because not only is there an energy savings, but those retarded candelabra-style bulbs would burn out every 3 months! The payback on the CFL hallway lights is probably about 6 months, based on longevity alone!

Here's the 2w bulb next to an old GE "true white" bulb for size comparison:



You can get them for $6 or something from TopBulb.com. As for affecting the whole family, well, I'll admit the main reason I was able to start hyperwatting after August was my roommate finally moved out and I now have the whole house to myself. I have full control of what lights are on or off (although I've completed my $350+ total home CFL update now at least), what temperature ranges are acceptable, and so on. I also recentrely replaced my 110w draw 21" CRT with a 48w 21.3" LCD display that's lighter, more compact, and of course draws less than half the power. Investing in something like a Kill-A-Watt so you can measure the electrical draw of any and all 115v appliances is a great aid in knowing what you're up against as far as calculating cost to benefit ratios.

Lastly, on the topic of the delay some CFL's have in switching on, I have about 8 or 10 different styles now, and two or three of them are of the "instant-on" variety. I can give you the part numbers if there's a few that it's critical for you to have instant-on capability for.

 

Sorry I haven't posted the pictures like I said I would. I've actually been trying to hunt down my units baby brother for our bedroom. I wasn't certain if the unit could heat our bedroom that is over the garage. It is big, has a vaulted ceiling, and the heating ducts come out of the ceiling. Even with the ceiling fan running, it still can't pull the heat down. Since we've lived in the house, I have always had to use a kerosene heater in that room. One gallon lasts us about 2 nights, and the kerosene stinks. It is also a bit dangerous, and actaully left a ring of soot on our ceiling that I've painted time and time again. The rest of the house is no problem. We also have had to use a kerosene heater in the living room on cold days. In some instances, with both Kerosene heaters going at different times, we would use about 3 gallons a day. The house didn't smell good, and we just didn't like the feel of the heat.
The problem we noticed was if we wanted to heat the house above 69 degrees, the furnace would just run and run and run, only turning off for maybe 30 minutes, then runing again for at least an hour.
I have completely turned of the gas furnace, and we've had a couple of nights below 40 degrees. I've been tracking my burn rate since the 1st of November, and will post my results for November at the end of the month.

As for the units emissions, I have no idea, except there is no smoke, and all the folks I've talked with at Nesco, the company that produces this machine said, it is almost all Carbon Dioxide.

 

Thanks.

I didn't mean delay- they all turn on instantly. But when it gets colder out, they don't come up to full brightness for a minute or so- particularly the upside-down floods. It bothers my wife over the kitchen sink- that's when I knew I had reached the limit of acceptable neurosis.

I think Lowe's has the 2 and 4W lights, and in the candelabra shape too, so they look the same. HD doesn't, at least by me.

 

i came home the other night and hubby actually had a brochure about corn furnaces on the kitchen table. he works with someone who heat with one, and got the info from him. there are many things to consider as far as using one, but at least we have started looking.....
i am also switching to the energy efficient lights.......

 

I have a bunch of energy efficient lights in our house, but I'm a bit counter productive. I leave the computers on all the time. I turn off the monitors, but the computers stay on. We have some of the large high efficiency lights outside, and I don't think we ever turn those off.
Laurie, if you are comparing corn to pellets, I have a bit of info for you. We were going to get a pellet furnace, but the unit I wanted got recalled, so we decided against it. Burning pellets has a bunch of pros. You don't have to clean it every week, most are self starting, and some are even self cleaning.
Getting back to the info, the hearth place where I put a deposit down on the pellet furnace is completely out of pellets. Everyone seems to be. I asked when they might be getting pellets back in, and they said everything is sold out through January at this point. Basically no fuel available out here. My mom has a pellet stove in Wisconsin. She has a Quadrafire. She loves it, but they bought 4 tons of pellets in June, and she is saying that even up in Wisconsin, pellet fuel is in very short supply. At this point, corn is looking plenty stable. I talked to my supplier, and he said that he has multiple sources, and tries to keep a 20 ton supply on hand. He has been selling about 20 tons a week from the sounds of it.