Friday, December 28, 2012

The Double Wide Driveway

Double Wide Driveway...

Double the pain to shovel.

I used to like winter.

Used to.

===========================

If you're looking at a house with a double wide driveway, its convenient for most of the year.

My driveway is "shared" with the neighbor as we're in a semi detached home. This means I have to shovel all of my snow onto the grass on the one side of the driveway. It's literally twice as much work.

I'll be saving for a snow blower. :-(

or at minimum one of those giant scoop shovels you can drag around.


Monday, December 24, 2012

The Cost of Lights

So, I was at Costco, and there was a sale on LED lights.

I'm a geek. I am to LED's like a moth is to a flame. They're efficient, They're quick to react (so... they're efficient), they run cool (again... meaning they're efficient) and they are also new and shiny  and I impulsively bought them, without doing any research, because... well they were on sale.
My Light bulbs used to look like this... 


My House as a TON of GU-10 Socket light fixtures.
They are 110 Volt fixtures with 3-4 Halogen "Projector" bulbs in them.
These bulbs run HOT, don't last very long, and are high wattage for their size.
I chose to replace all these with the LED's. It meant leaving Costco with over 140 bucks in LED lights.


It seemed like a good idea at the time!

I had also gotten my first "lunker" of a hydro bill.
(Yes, Sometimes my spending habits make no sense - Big bill I have to pay = sink money into LED light bulbs?)

So,  Lets figure out how stupid I really was.

Here will be my calculations on how much you can save/spend on various forms of lighting.

First a 40 second intro to Lighting: (more if you are a slow reader)

There are 5 kinds of lighting that are commonly used in house holds.

Incandescent - Thomas Edison style - Tungsten filament, burning so hot it glows. Standard for the last century until the last decade or so. 40-60-100 watt bulbs are standard

Standard Socket Compact Florescent - Ballast built into Bulb, Direct replacement for most incandescent bulbs. 7-8 watt replaced 40. 13-14 watt replaces 60. 23-27 watt replaces 100 watt. Variety of "color" temperature, but effects useful light output. Bulbs also decay and lose up to 40% of light output with age.

Florescent Tubes - In houses, used in workshops, laundry rooms and sometimes kitchens. Bright, uniform light reduces shadows. 32-40 watts per bulb, usually 2-4 in a fixture. Somewhat harsh light, and is avoided in "living" area

Halogen Lights - Small, High output bulbs, also used in pot lights, Under cabinet lights, some desk lamps. They run hot, and burn out frequently, but are great when small size matters. 20 watt For desklamps/cabinet lighting, 35-50 watts for flood or spotlight type fixtures, 100-150 watts for outdoor / some bathroom fixtures

LED Lights - Popularized probably by Christmas lights, only in the last few years has the technology been developed to get this at a price range people will consider buying to replace normal house bulbs. More efficient than all of the other light types, they're also more expensive for the light output produced.

Heres a handy chart for Light output vs Energy Usage: (shamelessly stolen from wikipedia)

Electrical power equivalents for differing lamps[27]
Minimum light output (lumens)Electrical power consumption (Watts)
IncandescentCompact fluorescentLED
450409–134-9
8006013–1510-15
1,1007518–25Not available
1,60010023–30Not available
2,60015030–52Not available


So - Lets find out how much money I wasted:

Note: the way I will explain this wont' make sense from a science perspective, but WILL get you the desired result in energy consumption.

To calculate the cost, you need to figure out how many watts (Watt Hours) you use.

Basement - 3 Bulbs, 5 hours a day  = 750 Watts
Kitchen - 3 Bulbs, 4 hours a day = 600 Watts
Breakfast bar - 3 bulbs, 6 hours a day = 900 Watts
Bathroom - 3 Bulbs, 1.5 Hours a day = 225 Watts

Total daily usage: 1475 Watt Hours, or 1.475kWh

My Blended Usage Rate (an average of what I pay per kWh, based on time of usage peak/low rates) is about 8.3 cents per kWh (I pay 12 cents at "peak" time, 6.9 cents at night/weekends)

So, in One day, these bulbs cost me an average of 12.24 cents.
Over a year, that means $44.68 in energy us used to run these bulbs.

The LED bulbs use just 6 watts, or just 12% of what the halogens used, so all I have to do is take 12% of the total to figure out the cost of running them for a year:

44.68*0.12 = $5.36 per year.

A savings of $39.32 a year.

This means these bulbs will pay themselves off in 3.5 years in energy costs alone.


Now, there are some tangible and intangible benefits over the next 5 years of ownership:
  • The Halogen bulbs burn out quickly - I had 2 burn out in 3 months. Normalize that a bit (I might have been unlucky) and lets call it 5 a year. That's 20 dollars a year in bulbs. The LED's will last a lot longer, (probably longer than I will own the house - 5+ years.  The bulbs have a 3 year warranty to boot. so thats now $59.32 a year savings.
  • The halogens were HOT. So much so, they'd heat the back of my head when i was cooking in the kitchen. They'd also heat the basement up a bit. So the AC was turned up to counteract that. Its hard to put a dollar value on it, But I'm assuming the opposite effect occurs in winter - Gas consumption vs Electric - we'll call it a wash - But it was DEFINITELY noticeable in the fact that the kitchen has cooled off since ditching 300 watts of lights!
So, really, ~$60 a year in savings, I didn't have to replace 4 light fixtures ( 300+ Dollars)

Overall... I'd call it a "smart" decision in hindsight. 

Within the length of their lifetime, they will pay themselves off two to three times.

I am also impressed with their light output, the color and "crispness" of their light, and overall aesthetics  I'm not a huge fan of CFL (twisty) bulbs, but Use them where I can over incandescent, just for the energy savings.

When We first bought the house, almost every fixture had 60 and 100 watt incandescent bulbs (mixed randomly)

For shits and giggles one day in September  I turned on all the lights for an hour, and Documented that the house used 4.4kWh.  I turned off all the lights for an hour afterwards, and the house consumed 0.9kWh This tells me I have 3100 watts worth of Light!  I know for a fact now I've reduced that by about 1000 watts via LED and CFL lights, so Once I'm done swapping out all the bulbs, I'll do the test again (after getting a "baseline" hour) and see what the difference is!  I'll do this in a few weeks.


So my official recommendation:

If you don't mind the "light" that comes from CFL bulbs, they are the cheaper way to get energy efficiency. If you have some unique/unusual fixtures that use the two pin GU-10 sockets, LED may be the only way for you to go green - And if it is, I HIGHLY recommend it. They're great little bulbs!



Friday, December 21, 2012

The First Fire... (in the fireplace)

So We were lucky enough to buy a house that has a Wood Fireplace in the basement Family Room.

There are a few pros, and a few cons to this:

Pros:
Its a nice looking, Painted Brick Fireplace and it adds to the rooms cosyness.
In A Power Outage, we have a way to keep our house and our pipes from freezing
Chestnuts roasting on an open fire. (need I say more?)
My odds of surviving a zombie apocolypse are slightly better.

Cons:
Insurance isn't a fan of these and you'll pay a dollar or two more a month as a result
Some minor heat loss/drafts when not in use
Storing wood is a pain. Bringing wood into your house can also bring pests/bugs


So, I Megan and I actually committed to staying up and watching TV until 11, so we decided to burn one of our 3 hour logs I bought before a big storm coming our way (they warned of blackouts... I figured that was as good as excuse as any to spend money)

My Father in law told me that I should burn some news paper to warm up the chimney.
I assumed - hey, the 3 Hour log is covered in paper - Should be good enough! *shrugs*

So I proceed to Open the Flu (a  lever that opens up a flap to connect your chimney to the house) Light the paper, and almost immediately panic.

It was like... a Wall of smoke, billowing into my house. Panic, Running around, "do we have a bucket?!?" ensued, then an eternity later (about 10-15 seconds) I decided my best course of action would be to close the glass doors and the vent at the bottom.

Once the flame got going, things settled down. Half a can of febreeze in the basement and the smoke smell was sufficiently masked.

Should have listened to the Father in Law.  (wow, did I just say that?)

Lesson number 1: Hot air rises.

It was a cold, windy day... and Cold air sinks. That cold air came rushing into my basement via the chimney  blowing the flame/smoke into our

Thankfully, My knee jerk reaction of closing the glass doors helped a little bit. It reduced the amount of wind rushing down through the fireplace into my house enough that the flame was able to heat the air enough to get some hot air rising - Convection. Once this occurs, Smoke goes out the chimney, rather than billowing into my basement.

FYI: the soot mark above the fireplace was there before I started the fire...

"3 Hour Logs"

A warning about "three hour logs" and such - They're basically sawdust held together with wax. They don't make a huge flame - But if you poke them while they're burning, they'll desintigrate into a fireball of doom, as all the sawdust breaks apart, causing a huge amount of surface area - AKA "fuel for the fire" to be exposed.
Also, they don't burn overly clean. You'll need to have your chimney cleaned if you burn them regularly.

I've yet to try a "cleaning" log, but If i do, i'll be taking before and after photos! Expect a new post on this in the new year.

Our three hour log lasted 4 hours. It was a late night for a work night. Since you can't just break it up for fear of the fireball of doom, you're forced to just wait it out.

One Nice thing about the 3 Hour log is that it doesn't crackle much - No sparks flying, We put the chain mesh screen in front anyway, but we didn't need to. it also burns down to pretty much nothing, reducing the number of times you have to clean the ash out of your fireplace.

Conclusion:

All said and done... I love the fireplace, but for the work/hassle, I think I'd Prefer gas next time and sacrifice some of the "traditional" feel you get from a wood burning fireplace. I wonder if they make "open" gas fireplaces not surrounded by Glass. That would be a good compromise.