Introducing my house

[egnorant]

Lets begin by saying energy and its use has been a passion of mine since I was burning ants with a magnifying glass.

My house has been a long term project with pure cheapness as a prime factor.

In Texas, heat is the main battle so good trees are now shading the house yet shed leaves so it gets some winter heat.
bamboo grove engulf the northeast corner and also helps the cedar trees shade my small pond and creek.

Concrete walkway among the bamboo down to the creek has a built in 1 foot square air underpath duct along with drainage and water pipes to the pond and pond area.
Air circulation works well so I haven't used the water much.

Heat producing appliances are placed where heat can be vented in summer or retained for winter.
Insulation is excessive but airflow is controlled...hate a stuffy house.
Ventilation between rooms is passively controlled can be adjusted somewhat to get one room cooler or warmer than the rest depending on how I set the vents.

Concrete slab and large stone wall moderate things a lot.

Flourecent all through the house with some incandesant for the bathroom.
You fight with the girlfriend who says that she needs them for makeup!
Bought a bunch of them when Home Depot had some for $7.99 with an $8.00
mail-in rebate.
Bathroom mirror lights are on a timer that automatically shuts them off in 5 minutes.

My one solar panel charges some batteries from a power supply for computers.
It seems to keep up with running a battery charger for the AAAs and such
and the chargers for the cell phones.
It also powers my desk lamp and is hooked up to the chargers in the garage for the drill, hedgetrimmer and weedeater. I got the panel for $3 and the batteries for free and a college kid rewired it somehow so it has 110 and 12 volt coming out.

Desk lamp and reading lamp (battery powered along with the alarm clock) are
multiple LED lamps with a diffuser that keeps it from being a real harsh light.

I have a huge diesel generator that I bought at auction for $200.
It is mounted on a trailer and can power my house and 6 other houses on my branch of the power line.
However I vollenteered it to the Fire Dept when needed.
they maintain it and fill it up when they use it but it was dismaying to come home and see the city offices, traffic signal (small town) and christmas decorations burning while I have no electricity.
Lucky I had gas heat and water.
Large clean windows help with interior lighting.

Total gas, water, electric averages around $50 per month.
93 degrees outside right now and 74 inside. Its my day off so I turned the intake fan on early to keep me cool.

Small pump from the pond is used for outside stuff, watering lawn, washing cars and such. Have thought about hooking it up to the toilet but my water usage is billed in 1500 gallon increments and am currently in the 0-1500 set fee with actual useage around 900. I don't get too bent over water.

I will be working on cheaply aquiring heat for the month of cold weather that I have to use my gas heater. But other stuff is first.

I have my hybrid car project that will reduce one of my bigger expenses...gas.

I am luck enough to make enough money that I can just experiment and spend a few extra bucks that won't ever pay off..just my hobby !
My brother spends his money on hunting, that is expensive.
I am not rich, but I feel I live better now than I was when I worked twice as hard for 50% more money and wasted most of my money and time.

As soon as I can get them college boys to quit redesigning the electronics on my little hybrid I will give you some real word figures.

I don't do these things to have a clean earth or because I am "Green" ..I am just seeing how little I can get these without any appreciable loss in lifestyle.
I'm just working on enlightened cheapness.
Can be a battle when the fridge breaks and GF want a big monster that matches the new counters and I am checking efficiency of a scratch and dent
one that matches how we actually use it. I do like the filtered water and ice in the door though.

Bruce

[2TonJellyBean]

enlightened cheapness

I like it!

I live it!

[repete86]

Sweet. A friend of mine found out that actually, it's cheaper to black out the windows in the summer and use internal lighting because of the sun light getting in. He keeps his thermostat at 82 with the fan on, and it feels much cooler without the light. At the same time though, it feels like the bat-cave because you'll wake up in the afternoon and it will look like the middle of the night until you open the door only to be blinded by an outside that looks like a nuclear explosion.

[SVOboy]

Originally Posted by repete86

Sweet. A friend of mine found out that actually, it's cheaper to black out the windows in the summer and use internal lighting because of the sun light getting in. He keeps his thermostat at 82 with the fan on, and it feels much cooler without the light. At the same time though, it feels like the bat-cave because you'll wake up in the afternoon and it will look like the middle of the night until you open the door only to be blinded by an outside that looks like a nuclear explosion.

In japan my nextdoor neighbors had big roles of small bamboo poles and when it was sunny they would unroll them and cover the whole side of the house that faced the sun, pretty sweet, I thought. Kept the heat from even directly hitting the house.

[Erdrick]

SVOboy: A lot of Japanese people do that. Unfortunately, they are mistaken in doing so. First, it blocks much of the breeze that you would normally get. Second, depending on the color, they sometimes get hot, retain that heat, and then the breeze picks up the heat and moves it into your house. I also figured out that strategically closing certain areas of my house off during the day DRASTICALLY lowered temperatures, compared to leaving everything open and letting the breeze blow through.

egnorant: Most of my life has been in Michigan, where the main concern is cold winters. It was nice to see what types of things you have implemented to deal with the heat down there in Texas.

[trebuchet03]

Originally Posted by SVOboy

In japan my nextdoor neighbors had big roles of small bamboo poles and when it was sunny they would unroll them and cover the whole side of the house that faced the sun, pretty sweet, I thought. Kept the heat from even directly hitting the house.

I can only imagine what a home owner's assoc. would do.... A few semesters ago we had a project similar to that concept in my heat transfer class. Depending on your latitude, solar radiation significantly increases the temps of outer walls (above ambient). Blocking allows some thermal radiation through as your barrier heats up, but it's much less than the sun And when you take wall radiation into consideration when it comes to personal comfort - that explains why 75 degrees in the summer feels warmer than 75 degrees in the winter (something I didn't even think about until that class)

[Telco]

On the bathroom lighting, Home Depot sells three different light temp CFL bulbs, in white packages with green, red and blue coding. I've been converting to the red ones as they burn out (they don't really last 7 years, but they still save more than they cost) because they light up the room like sunlight. They work so well that I'm thinking of moving from the 60w equivalents to 40W equivalents. I think the green ones closely approximate the yellowish light incandescents put out, and the blue ones likely make a bluish light since they are higher up on the color freq than the red ones.

Might also try and get the girlfriend to stop wearing makeup altogether. Really makeup makes women look like little clay people, and causes the blemishes they are trying to cover up in the first place. Women look better with a fresh scrubbed look anyway, no need for painting. All she's doing is paying hundreds of dollars a year to smear cow piss on her face (a lot of makeup contains urea, which is... moooooo wssssss). Then there's no issue with lighting for makeup.

I'd also suggest selling the generator to the city, tell them that you aren't going to loan it to them anymore, but you'd be willing to sell it. Then use that money to buy a whole-house generator for your own use. If it's large enough to run half the town it's way too big for your needs anyway. A smaller, newer generator would cost a lot less to operate and maintain anyway.