Trimming Energy Costs – Progress Report

Last year I wrote my first blog article about our efforts to trim the energy costs in our own home. This is an update discussing our progress.

Steps we took during the last 12 months:

· Installed solar fans in the attic
· Ran our pool pump only a few hours each day
· Insulated duct work running through the garage
· Sealed leaks found in the ducts
· Insulated and sealed the attic through the NSTAR program
· Replaced high use light bulbs with CFLs
· Replaced washer/dryer with energy star units

Some significant steps taken previously:

-Replaced most (but not all) of our windows
-Installed and use programmable thermostats

And the results:

The X axis represents the months from 12/2006 through 2/2009.

The Yellow line represents electricity kilowatts. In the summer the pool and air conditioning drive up our electricity consumption. If we look at the change in usage using August 2007 (2612 KW) and August 2008 (2597 KW) the difference is not significant. We have more work to do here. The solar fans were installed late in the summer, and the insulation was not installed until November. We expect the solar fans will be more effective this summer now that the attic is insulated and sealed. Many energy efficiency efforts are interrelated.

The Pink line represents gas use in Therms. - (multiplied by 10 to make the figures graph in the same relative range as our kilowatt use). 2/2007 - 329 Therms, 2/2008 – 291 Therms, 2/2009 258- Therms . We have made more progress here. Our gas use peaks in the winter, just the opposite of our electricity consumption. Gas consumption has decreased by better than 10% . This is in spite of the fact that February of 2009 was much colder than February 2008. My methods and analysis are not completely scientific, but I attribute most of our savings to the insulation and penetration sealing that was done in our attic in November. We have also noticed that this year our house feels warmer and more comfortable, probably because it is less drafty.

The blue line is the total cost of gas and electricity. Unfortunately we have not saved much in terms of energy costs, mainly due to the increased cost of electricity. We average around $500/month year round. This summer we anticipate further reduction in electricity use attributed to the solar fans ventilating our now insulated attic.

What steps can we take to further improve our energy efficiency? We continue to look for other ways to trim our energy bills. One thought … we have an old refrigerator, not energy star, in our garage that may not survive the summer. Any other ideas?



We are experienced remodelers. Visit us at http://www.FitzCon.com/ and offer energy efficient home improvement products on our website http://www.ComfortAndSavings.com/