What is your average kWh/day usage?

[sparkchaser]

D'Oh! I wish I knew those were available! I just replaced my toilet's innards! My houseful of girls goes through a LOT of water! Showers, flushing, laundry etc. I've been threatening to get a shower timer valve thingy too!

[Big Al]

Enjoying the thread and thanks Sparkchaser, but don't know from your header whether you are in Nigeria or Alaska-makes a bit of difference to energy usage. (Realise I might locate you from your profile -I guess its not Nigeria- . Do Nigerians have furnaces ?)

[Piwoslaw]

After looking through our natural gas usage I calculated that we use the equivalent of 4kWh for cooking and hot water during the summer, while the yearly average is 53kWh per day. Adding our electricity usage to that gives an average of 7.5 (summer) and 57 (year) kWh/day.

[sparkchaser]

Hi Big Al, sorry, I guess I didn't properly introduce myself here

EDIT (Piwoslaw): I moved the rest of your post to the Introductions sub-forum:
My belated intro! (Not from Nigeria!)

[Quest]

Originally Posted by BarryZ

My water bills ( sewer and water, actually) are consistently higher than the electric bill, which really p----s me off! Shoot, now I have to flush the toilet again.

Perhaps your gals are taking too many/frequent showers?

=)

Q.

[stefanc]

First month in my house so I only have limited data but...

-1hr north of Philadelphia, 2 adults and 2 kids, 1800sf, two story home. Electric everything (resistance heat!)

So far I'm averaging 30kwh/day over the last month but that number may be deceiving as the last few days that were cold, I used 45kwh/day. I'm sure come February Ill be seeing at least double that.


For reference, my neighbor with an almost identicle house pays $331/mo (87kwh/day).

I'm hoping that a 2.4 COP mini split, Tankless HWH, Solar HWH and possibly a woodstove will get me in the 35KWH/Day yearly average range.

[AC_Hacker]

Originally Posted by stefanc

I'm hoping that a 2.4 COP mini split...

stefanc,

You are aiming too low! There are very reasonably-priced mini splits with much better COP.

The Fujitsu 'RLS' line (Fujitsu 9RLS (12,000 BTU heating), Fujitsu 12RLS (16,000 BTU heating), Fujitsu 15RLS (18,000 BTU heating) ) models have COP of 3.2 or better. For some reason, the efficiency does not seem to scale very well, so the bigger models will not have the same high efficiency. Better to use several small ones.

BTW, I have no financial interests in this product, but I am impressed.

NOTE: Since mini splits get their heat from the air, there is a limit to how cold the weather can get before they start to bog down. You need to inform yourself about this matter.

I live in Portland, Oregon, and the weather patterns and mini splits are a great match.

-AC_Hacker

[stefanc]

You're right, but I need 4-5 indoor units so I'm somewhat limited to the cheaper multi splits. Im looking at doing a 3 zone unit on one side of the house and a 2 zone on the other side. With linesets they should be around $5k from acwholesalers. Wiring and mounting 5 individual outdoor units probably wont be cost effective. I haven't looked into too many other brands since I had the grunaire 4 zone from them in my last house and was really happy with both the units and the warranty service.

Im definitely open to suggestions for multi-splits at an affordable price.

For low temp heating I still have the resistance heat until I get a woodstove. Then the woodstove, then the stove will be working full time during the really cold months.

Thanks!

Originally Posted by AC_Hacker

stefanc,

You are aiming too low! There are very reasonably-priced mini splits with much better COP.

The Fujitsu 'RLS' line (Fujitsu 9RLS (12,000 BTU heating), Fujitsu 12RLS (16,000 BTU heating), Fujitsu 15RLS (18,000 BTU heating) ) models have COP of 3.2 or better. For some reason, the efficiency does not seem to scale very well, so the bigger models will not have the same high efficiency. Better to use several small ones.

BTW, I have no financial interests in this product, but I am impressed.

NOTE: Since mini splits get their heat from the air, there is a limit to how cold the weather can get before they start to bog down. You need to inform yourself about this matter.

I live in Portland, Oregon, and the weather patterns and mini splits are a great match.

-AC_Hacker

[Daox]

If you need 4-5 mini-splits just to heat your whole home I think you might have bigger issues like sealing up your house properly.

[AC_Hacker]

Originally Posted by Daox

If you need 4-5 mini-splits just to heat your whole home I think you might have bigger issues like sealing up your house properly.

Yes, that's always a consideration. And any EcoRenovator should insulate, insulate, insulate and then seal, seal, seal.

But my point is that the smaller mini splits are more efficient than the larger ones, particularly the multi-head ones.

So, if you had a house that normally took 54,000 BTU/hr (4.5 Tons) to heat it, and you insulated and sealed it really well and got your heat loss down to 36,000 BTU/hr (3 Tons), you would be better off getting three 9,000 BTU/hr (3/4 Ton) units, which actually have 12,000 max output, than one 32,000 BTU/hr multi head (actually about 36,000 BTU/hr), because the efficiency would be higher, and you would also have the safety of redundancy, so if one of the units went down, you'd have two units to see you through and lastly, you would have zone control...

All for about the same price.

But if you then wrapped the house in 2 inches of XPS, insulated and sealed the floor under the living area to about R40 and installed a high efficiency HRV, and triple pane windows, you might be able to get by with 1 Ton.

-AC_Hacker