Holistic View of Energy Use in the Household-Part 1

The Hack My Solar Podcast

Today we're going to talk about a holistic view of energy use in the household. This is not going to be specifically about solar energy any of the things that I'm going to talk about today are things that it could definitely be be used on a household that is on the grid off the grid on the grid with grid solar or it doesn't really matter. It's not a solar specific podcast it's about evaluating your energy usage identifying ways to potentially reduce that usage and conserve your cash. Because in most situations the more energy you use the more cash outflow you have to pay for it. And that energy may be in the form of firewood and maybe in the form of a propane or natural gas or might be electricity. So you're some of the things that we're going to talk about in no specific order. We're going to talk about heating and cooling and talk about Limiting water usage. Talk a little bit about appliances consumer appliances things like that. Want to talk a little bit about insulation windows things that you can do to keep your money inside after you've spent it. And anything else that may pop up as we go along. So. The first thing and this makes a whole lot of sense because it is the place where most of the energy usage in any household exists is conditioning the space whether that be cooling or heating it. And in some areas the humidified that's going to be your biggest annual spend and that's pretty common for just about everyone in the U.S. If you live in the South you may not be as much in the winter but you're cooling a lot more during the summer and vice versa if you're in North now as someone that lives off grid. I can tell you that I would much prefer to live in a cooler climate because it's much easier for me to go out and pick up and cut up deadwood from my own property and burn that in the winter or even pay someone if someone's got cheap firewood in my area pay someone for firewood and then burn that for heat in the house. That's much easier for me to do. What's more cost effective for me. Than it is to try to keep my house cool in the heat of the summer. We do a pretty good job. We have some systems in place that allow us to cool and stay cool and stay comfortable at night without spending a lot of money that we don't want to spend. But in terms of overall usage it's actually typically cheaper in the south because electricity is cheaper compared to some of the other things like propane and heating fuel diesel and things like that. Some of the other things that people that don't heat with wood with up in the north their winter bills are way more expensive than the highest. Several bills in the south unless you've just got some crazy bad insulation or inefficient system going on. So one of the options that someone could use and we'll start with cooling would be to take a look at basically three different strategies. One is evaluate the system that you're using for cooling. There's something called a seasonal energy effectiveness rating or sear. That. Rating. Really is I mean one number change is going to have a pretty decent impact on what you're going to spend to cool air space over the course of a year or over the course of several years or even decades. So take a look at what you've got in place and making sure if you're in a position where you can change or in a position where you have to change your system without getting those higher efficiency ratings may cost more upfront with that money is absolutely going to pay for itself over time many times over the next thing is and I'm sure you've heard it before but I would be remiss if I didn't mention it but set your thermostat to reasonable levels if you live in Texas and you're getting 110 degree days you shouldn't have to have your system set up 68 degrees to feel comfortable in the house. Honestly where we live we don't even get that high and we're typically if we can keep the house in the high 70s to even up to maybe 82 83 we're comfortable especially if y...