This weekend I was planning to finish plugging up my plug outlets. The biggest robber of your heat from your house is air infiltration.
This place is going to be an excellent wind site in the future. I found out this weekend that there was a water pumping windmill located on the land. The footers are still there as is the well casing where the water was pumped from. It was a shallow well and I don't think that it could be revived but I plan to find out. The current well on the property is apparently about 300 ft deep. I have to verify that with a well report which did not come with the house.
Ok back to air infiltration. The day we first moved it was quite windy. I put my hand over the plug outlets along the wall the wind was hitting and I could not believe the amount of air that was coming into the house through the wall plates! So I started on plugging the plugs up.
My next post will detail what my choices where and what I decided to do.
John
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Friday, March 23, 2007
My newest elatric bill...
Today I received my electric bill from UnitedPower. I used a whopping 675 kWh from February 13 to March 13. This is rather puzzling because I replaced the electric stove with a propane stove (to be eventually converted to Hydrogen) and replaced the electric dryer with a propane dryer. However, we used both appliances for a few weeks before they where replae cbeing used ed so I expect the next electric bill to drop by at least 100 kWh or more because the furnace is less and less because of the rising daily temperatures. At the present time the largest electrical load we have is the electric hot water heater.
Moving from Longmont, CO to Fort Lupton, CO essentially doubled the price per kWh we now pay. I was paying $06 cents while I was in Longmont buying electricity from a local municipality. Now with UnitedPower I am paying (the latest bill) $.11 per kWh. How did I arrive at that figure?? You simple divide the cost you are billed by the amunt of kWh you where billed for. Thus $73.53 divided by 675 kWh is $.11. On a cost per million Btu basis that is $31.97 per MMBtu!! (to figure out how you find out what your cost per MMBtu is please download the SourceBook introduction at http://beutilityfree.com/sbmainpage.html) My guess is that this is twice the cost per MMBtu of the propane. Remember the name of the game if you have to buy energy buy the least cost energy first!
The plans I have for the electric hot water heater are four fold. First is the put a timer on the electric hot water heater to heat the water only when it is needed. The next thing I may do, but have not decided yet, is to have the electric company come out and put an "off peak" meter that will allow me to use electricity for the cost of propane or cheaper (about $.04 per kWh)
The third thing I will do is to repalce the hot water tank with a gas driven tankless hot water heater. I plan to install the tankless hot water heater on the OUTSIDE of the building so I do not have to deal with exhausting the fumes to the outside by installing expensive double walled exhaust piping. The last part is to displace energy used for domestic hot water (DHW) with a soalr hot water system.
The first two steps are stop gap measures to control the amount or electricity an d simultaneously getting the cheapest cost PURCHASED electricity. But one thing I do not like and therefore may not do the "off peak" thing is that they jack up the price of your "monthly service charge" (MSC) to $17.05 a month from $9.50 effectively doubling that charge. Why do they do that? Well they lose revenue charging a kWh at $.4 when they are use to getting $.10 so they have to try and make up some of the lost revenue. But they justify that higher cost because the On peak - Off peak meters cost more. That is true but once the meter is paid for then they should lower the MSC or eliminate it all together once a meter has been paid back by the homeowner.
The weekend is coming.. TGIF!
Moving from Longmont, CO to Fort Lupton, CO essentially doubled the price per kWh we now pay. I was paying $06 cents while I was in Longmont buying electricity from a local municipality. Now with UnitedPower I am paying (the latest bill) $.11 per kWh. How did I arrive at that figure?? You simple divide the cost you are billed by the amunt of kWh you where billed for. Thus $73.53 divided by 675 kWh is $.11. On a cost per million Btu basis that is $31.97 per MMBtu!! (to figure out how you find out what your cost per MMBtu is please download the SourceBook introduction at http://beutilityfree.com/sbmainpage.html) My guess is that this is twice the cost per MMBtu of the propane. Remember the name of the game if you have to buy energy buy the least cost energy first!
The plans I have for the electric hot water heater are four fold. First is the put a timer on the electric hot water heater to heat the water only when it is needed. The next thing I may do, but have not decided yet, is to have the electric company come out and put an "off peak" meter that will allow me to use electricity for the cost of propane or cheaper (about $.04 per kWh)
The third thing I will do is to repalce the hot water tank with a gas driven tankless hot water heater. I plan to install the tankless hot water heater on the OUTSIDE of the building so I do not have to deal with exhausting the fumes to the outside by installing expensive double walled exhaust piping. The last part is to displace energy used for domestic hot water (DHW) with a soalr hot water system.
The first two steps are stop gap measures to control the amount or electricity an d simultaneously getting the cheapest cost PURCHASED electricity. But one thing I do not like and therefore may not do the "off peak" thing is that they jack up the price of your "monthly service charge" (MSC) to $17.05 a month from $9.50 effectively doubling that charge. Why do they do that? Well they lose revenue charging a kWh at $.4 when they are use to getting $.10 so they have to try and make up some of the lost revenue. But they justify that higher cost because the On peak - Off peak meters cost more. That is true but once the meter is paid for then they should lower the MSC or eliminate it all together once a meter has been paid back by the homeowner.
The weekend is coming.. TGIF!
Saturday, March 17, 2007
This is my first post in the journey to become UtilityFree. By this term I mean to completely disconnect from the grid and to produce my own fuel for my transportation needs and all my other energy needs through various means of electrical generation such as solar electricity. Being off grid is my personal choice and I will give reasons as I go along as to why I choose the be off grid as opposed to being on grid or grid tied.
I have been off grid before when I lived in Pennsylvania. We had a 3 kW Jacobs wind generator and a solar hot air system, I had an Exide battery bank along with a 3000 watt inverter. That was over 20 years ago now. I heated the house I lived in with just a 1,500 watt electric heater because the house was so well insulated.
I am beginning to take another journey going down a familiar road. This time will be just as exciting as the last time because we have better energy efficient materials then we did 20 years ago, have solar electric cells that are more affordable then ever and have wind generators that now are more reliable then ever before.
Let me set the stage for all of you reading this. We have just moved our home and office to a 5 acre parcel north of Denver, Colorado. The home was built in 1999 but put on the site in 2004.
The next post will describe the house in greater detail and what my immediate plans are for the site.
I plan to post pictures on a regular basis as I move along. Pictures are worth a thousand words at times so I will post then often as I can. Digital camera are one of the greatest things to come along.
Well that is it for now..
I have been off grid before when I lived in Pennsylvania. We had a 3 kW Jacobs wind generator and a solar hot air system, I had an Exide battery bank along with a 3000 watt inverter. That was over 20 years ago now. I heated the house I lived in with just a 1,500 watt electric heater because the house was so well insulated.
I am beginning to take another journey going down a familiar road. This time will be just as exciting as the last time because we have better energy efficient materials then we did 20 years ago, have solar electric cells that are more affordable then ever and have wind generators that now are more reliable then ever before.
Let me set the stage for all of you reading this. We have just moved our home and office to a 5 acre parcel north of Denver, Colorado. The home was built in 1999 but put on the site in 2004.
The next post will describe the house in greater detail and what my immediate plans are for the site.
I plan to post pictures on a regular basis as I move along. Pictures are worth a thousand words at times so I will post then often as I can. Digital camera are one of the greatest things to come along.
Well that is it for now..
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
