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Old 07-26-12, 06:34 PM   #15
strider3700
Master EcoRenovator
 
Join Date: Dec 2008
Location: Vancouver Island BC
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shorter showers. More use of the clothes line. Reminding the wife/kids to turn the lights/tv off. I replaced a 7-10 year old fridge that died with a new one of the same size. New one was a decent energy star model but I don't think the old was that bad.

By far the biggest improvement came in the winter and the heating. If you look at the charts above dec/jan was 25% better and feb/march was 27% lower then last years. hell dec/jan was 47% lower then my first winter here before I started air sealing and put R40 on top of the existing fiberglass in the attic.

Last summer I found serious issues with the furnace ducting which required a roll of foil tape and a 1 ft square patch to fix. After that was corrected go figure air flow was way better to the remote bedrooms and the space between the floors under the livingroom wasn't a dumping ground of hot air. when that got better I spent about $20 on some ducting and rearranged the cold air return in the basement to pull about 1/2 the air from the rec room where the woodstove was. So I ended up burning less wood and getting far more uniform heating of the house by using the furnace blower while having the stove lit.

As well I've been air sealing as I find issues.

still I got 10% improvement in the summer period as well and that's entirely just being smart about using things around the house nothing to do with heating.

I've looked into on demand hotwater but they have a long pay back period as well I was told that if it kicked on while my heat pump was on and the oven was on my 200 amp service couldn't handle it. all 3 at once is not uncommon in the winter.

All of this said, my wife doesn't feel deprived. My kids don't know any other way and it's not like we're living in a shanty with 1 lightbulb or anything. The only real extra work from before is the increased number of loads on the clothes line and that's not really much extra effort.

Last edited by strider3700; 07-26-12 at 06:37 PM..
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