Can't wait for my next electric bill!

I think I've finally completed the endless list of weathersealing efforts that I've been pursuing for 5+ years....

Last fall, I installed a new oil boiler. The previous one was from the late 1970s. It was running great, but I concluded that I could easily get a 20-25% oil savings with a new one, and took the plunge. I opted for the outdoor air supply for the boiler, and in doing so, was motivated to complete the last of the basement weathersealing I had been putting off for some time. The flood over the summer was a very high secondary motivation to well seal the bottom of my "barn doors" in my walk-in basement.

Previously, I needed some leakage in the basement to supply fresh air to the boiler, but no more.

You'll enjoy your new 21st century house Matt. I 'finished' airsealing and insulation of my 1960 house in 2013. This dropped my BTU heating needs by ~50%.

Last month I 'hacked' the defrost controls on my 2008 heat pump with a kit called EDIDS, so now it only defrosts when there is actually a need, rather than every run hour on a timer. I expect this to reduce my space heating energy needs by ~20%, by making the effective COP that much higher in cold weather. Could save me 1500-2000 kWh/season, or about enough to propel my EV 7,000 miles/yr on negawatts.

woodgeek said:

or about enough to propel my EV 7,000 miles/yr on negawatts.

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Negawatts I love it.

My most recent project involved replacing our standard electric vented dryer with an un-vented (condensing) Bosch Axxis dryer and moving it to the area where our Geospring HPWH is located. The idea is to recover the heat produced by the dryer to heat our water. I've always hated the idea of how dryers pull unconditioned air into your house only to further heat conditioned air and then expel it outside -- no more!
I recently finished insulating and air-sealing the basement and then installed a pellet stove there. We used to operate a wood stove there but it really overheated the basement. We've found that because the pellet stove heats more by convection that the former stove, the heat produced in the basement better flows upstairs to our 1st and 2nd floors.

I finished our addition downstairs this summer. There's no longer any drafts compared to the old structure that was there. The house is much warmer. I'm still not happy though, we have some drafts I can't find. I want a seek thermal cam to track things down, and I really want to sprayfoam the perimeter of our basement (old beams on top of boulders). I'm afraid however if I get a thermal cam I will tear this place upside down, which I probably will lol.

Highbeam said:

Negawatts

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Great term coined by Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute. He was one of the first, if not the first, persons to advocate that we didn't need to build more generation - we just needed to use the existing watts we generate in a more efficient way, hence "negawatts" (efficiency improvements).

laynes69 said:

I'm afraid however if I get a thermal cam I will tear this place upside down, which I probably will lol.

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I infamously started a basement "remodel" years ago that turned into a full-on gut job once I saw what the previous clowns had hidden behind the drywall...

I thought I was the only one who eagerly awaited each electric bill. Looks like $40 again this month.

EatenByLimestone said:

What have you guys done to make life better in your houses this year?

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Regarding your original question: we bought another house, so we can build another solar array and start the insulation game again...

EatenByLimestone said:

On the weekend of Black Friday the wife and I purchased a new refrigerator and gas stove. Electricity is 3x more expensive than NG per btu in my area and I'm on a personal quest to tell the electric company to shove it.

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Natural Gas? Why are you even on this website? Just kidding; jealous.

I had a late evening fire only two nights this season, last night and tonight. I started after sunset and left a couple of larger splits on at midnight when I went to bed at midnight. I think just doing this keeps my heat pump off for 6 hours, which is mostly during the coldest part of the 24 hour period. But as noted with the natural gas, as I have a geothermal heat pump (my second, wore the first one out and just last November installed a replacement Water Furnace Series 5) and it delivers a COP over 4 even in the Stage II (high speed), and it produces all the hot water we need too. So, cord wood at over $200 isn't competitive. I'm just burning what I harvest from down wood on my property. I have to clean up the wood anyway, and I had a 35 year old Sugar Maple taken down last summer - I cut some of the rounds, the tree service cut the big diameter rounds to 18" length. I cut most of the other rounds with my 16" Husky chain saw. .... anyway, I have some firewood for emergency heat and use some, like tonight, because it feels good. Yes, I know it's New Years Eve, but at my age I try to put that out of my mind....time passes all to quickkly.

The new HP fan is also very quiet and efficient, I have it running on constant and it is moving something near 1200 cfm which does a good job moving heat from the fireplace insert to the rest of the house.... but, it is time to replace some or all windows. The house is about 30 years old and the double pane Andersen windows are showing their age.. some cases of the glass starting to pull away from the frame (distortion of the frame...). Suppose it'll cost $400 or more a window to replace, if that's a good number just the living room will hit me for $2,400 (6 good sized double hung - now with wood frames, with some type synthetic cover on the outside.

Jerry_NJ said:

Suppose it'll cost $400 or more a window to replace, if that's a good number just the living room will hit me for $2,400 (6 good sized double hung - now with wood frames, with some type synthetic cover on the outside.

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That number would not surprise me. If you think that's bad, don't ask what my double pane Low-E hurricane impact resistant casement windows cost. Replacing the 50 year old windows on my house certainly helped lessen the $$$ silently escaping out my window openings, but it didn't come cheap.

Where2 said:

That number would not surprise me. If you think that's bad, don't ask what my double pane Low-E hurricane impact resistant casement windows cost. Replacing the 50 year old windows on my house certainly helped lessen the $$$ silently escaping out my window openings, but it didn't come cheap.

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Whoa! Window replacement to save energy certainly can provide some relief, but only $400 a window? In the early 1990's we installed a 5' x 14' casement/picture window combo, quad-pane equivalent, R8 rated window, in our living room. Cost as a recall was several thousands of $$$. Did it save energy? Yes, can't even feel a cool draft off the glass with -40F outside and howling winds; glass is warm to the touch. Did we do it to save energy? No. We did it because my wife would never live in a house that wasn't comfortable to live in and where she could enjoy the ambiance of the window view. Did it save energy? Yes, big time, and combined with other $$$ window replacements and insulation upgrades the entire 1500 sq ft house now is heated with a small wood stove in the living room.

We live in a fairly extreme climate, and the highest quality windows may not make sense in other regions, but now with more than 20 years of enjoyment and near $0 heating cost with the stove and wood from our land, probably one of the best decisions we ever made. BTW, four full cords of aspen (equivalent to about 2-3/4 cords of oak in heat content) is all that is needed to heat our house during our 9 month heating season.

Well northern MN and best windows go together. I saw 18 degrees this moring a 8 AM, that's about as cold as I've seen this heating season. I read the electric meter and I had used about 65 KWH that's close to $10 here in NJ. I ran the airtight insert up to at least 1 am, not sure when the HP came back on as was sleeping by then. That means the HP was off for 5 to 6 hours of the cold darkness. Of course when the HP came back on it had to work the far corners of the house which were likely a good 8 degrees colder than the living room (fireplace/thermostat).

We have 2000 sf on two floors. The house was built to "all electric" standards back in 1985, so it has heavy insulation in the ceiling and pretty good in the walls, and double pane windows....the biggest thermal upgrade now would be new windows all around. That's about 20 windows. Is there any tax rebate on window upgrades? My replacement HP (reuse of my ground loop) ran about $15,000 but the tax rebate puts that down to aboiut $10,000. If I rough estimate $500 per window average I'd see about $10,000 there too.... but if there is an energy tax rebate, then less ; )

As it now stands a typical winter heating plus summer cooling costs no more than $2,000... no that's total electric cost, add in cooking, hot water, cloths drying (I try to line dry my stuff, wife is more inclined to use the electric dryer ---- is there an effective filter to dump the cloths dryer air back into the house? Maybe running on slow dry to slowly gain the moisture and still dump all heat in the house would be worth a $200 in a filter arrangement. I could dump the dryer out back into the basement. That would reduce the air draw from outside and would dump all the heat in the house. Don't want a damp basement... I also use a cloths drying rack for inside drying...that works great but isn't such a great view.

Jerry, unless you have blower door data that says you're all good, in an 1985 house the most cost-effective energy upgrade would be a pro airsealing, which would cost a few thou, and prob save you 20+% of your bill. You might need new windows, but they will never give you savings like that.

Well northern MN and best windows go together. I saw 18 degrees this moring ...

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We're looking at -19F Saturday night and -21F Sunday night. Time to get out the winter jacket.

Finished installing new windows in our upstairs--replacing the single-pane barn sashes. Finished insulating walls: r-30 due to hewn-beam home construction. Insulated the attic--R-38 fiberglass bats on top of 6 inches of old cellulose. Dithched the old Ruud oil furnace for a 7-series Waterfurnace GSHP. The woodstove is happier, the furnace is happier (no ~$6/day average in oil), and the wife is happier.

$6/day for oil heat? Is that what you mean? That sounds pretty darn good to me - if so.

Yup, back when I had oil heat, Jan 2008 ended up costing me $1300, or $42/day.

ClintonH said:

Insulated the attic--R-38 fiberglass bats on top of 6 inches of old cellulose.

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That just sounds crazy. Why on earth didn't you just add another R-38 of blown in cellulose on top? Cheap, easy, superior installation by default.

I just had a great time blowing in 178 bales of the stuff for an R-49 in my shop!

What we did to our house in 2014

• Installed eight new windows, downsizing one picture/double casement on a north facing wall to two double hung and upsizing the picture/double casement on the south wall to a slightly larger picture with flanking double hung windows there.
• Removed 1970's wood veneer sheet paneling from three rooms, rewired, added insulation and sheet rocked
• Gutted the kitchen and installed new appliances. The new refrigerator had a noticeable impact on electricity consumption
• Buried a 550 gallon LP gas tank
• Removed the 1970's 73% efficient oil burning boiler and installed a direct vented Triangle Tube, 97% efficient LP fired boiler. This change freed up the old single flu center chimney for a wood stove
• Had a poorly insulated attic area sealed with an inch of closed cell spray foam and covered with blown cellulose to take it to R-61
• Had the underside of the floor in our small TV room that is built over unconditioned space sprayed with closed cell foam to bring it to R-32
• Had the chimney lined with a 5 1/2" stainless, insulated flu
• Fired up the new woodstove
• Joined a Community Solar Array

The 2015 list won't be quite so aggressive, but I do have an agreement in place to have the basement walls and sills sprayed with three inches of closed cell this Spring and plan to install a Mittsubishi FH15 heat pump downstairs. For now we've got the upstairs closed off since we're empty nesters and have plans to completely gut and remodel that area within the next two to three years, as budget allows. I don't want to put money into trying to make it tight now, only to rip that all out so soon, but the inefficiency there is certainly bugging me as I know much of the heat from the stove is being lost upstairs now.

The price you pay for seeing the potential in an old house.

valuman said:

The price you pay for seeing the potential in an old house.

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You're obviously a year or more ahead of me in this old house retrofit game. Impressive list for a single year!

Where2 said:

You're obviously a year or more ahead of me in this old house retrofit game. Impressive list for a single year!

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Thanks. That list is me playing catch up after being in the house for 20 years, trying to put Band-Aids on the thing to keep from heating the great outdoors. There were some months earlier on, when we burned 250~ish gallons of oil. The hell of it is that when we were spending so much on heating back then, we could't afford to make the upgrades that were needed in order to stop spending so much on heating. I feel very fortunate to finally be able to develop more of the potential of This Old House, that I saw when we first looked at the place in 1993. Good luck with yours!

EatenByLimestone said:

On the weekend of Black Friday the wife and I purchased a new refrigerator and gas stove. Electricity is 3x more expensive than NG per btu in my area and I'm on a personal quest to tell the electric company to shove it.

I had no way to measure the usage of my old electric stove, but I figure it was a significant part of my bill as we cook a lot. The refrigerator was tagged with Montgomery Wards as the maker and used 90 kWh per month, or was 40 % of my monthly usage. I just broke out the kill a watt and instead of using 3 kWh a day, the new one is using .7 kWh per day! The difference works out to a savings of $140.76 per year! I think the savings will pay for the upgrades pretty quickly.

I'm pretty optimistic about wood usage too. I had cellulose blown into the walls that previously didn't have any insulation (probably 3/4 of the house) and replaced the storm doors with better sealing and insulated units. It seems like a completely new house. There are no drafts, the floors are warmer, and the wife is happier!

What have you guys done to make life better in your houses this year?

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My 1981 GE Fridge is still running strong but sucks down electricity like no tomorrow. Been contemplating replacing it. I have held off after hearing countless stories of friends buying new fridges and having constant problems especially circuit board electric ones. I did hook it up to a killawatt and the energy usage is huge. Probably around 30% of our monthly usage.

They sure dont make stuff like they used to. The current fridge has been running for 30+ years with no issues. Imagine how many hours its probably ran. Quite remarkable.