There are two systems in homes that toss hot water down the drain.  The first system is in your shower.   The second system is from your air conditioning unit.

For the shower situation, there is a simple solution called a “Power Pipe.” The drain pipe is replaced with a “power pipe.”   The power pipe is a simple nested copper tubing system.  The hot water drains out the inner copper pipe.   The surrounding copper pipe brings the incoming cold water back to your hot water heating system.   This acts to pre-heat the cold water going into your hot water heater.   The water starts out warmer so there is less heating costs to bring it to temperature.

For homes with central air conditioning, you also create waste hot water.  According to the Heat Harvester website - “A residence with a three-ton air conditioner could expect from 15-to-25 gallons of hot water raised from 70 to-140 F every hour the air conditioner is running. With a five ton air conditioner a, possible 25-to-40 gallons could be recovered. This hot water would be available during the summer months when the air conditioner is running fairly consistently.”

Both systems are easy to install and provide a very quick return on investment.

In Michael Porter’s book on Competitive Strategies, he talks about the competitive forces that shape an industry.   One of the main competiitve forces that impact almost every industry is the source of their energy.   The more options businesses create for their sources of power, the more competitive they will be long term - espcially with respect to other companies in their industry.  

This point was brought home recently by a business I have been working with on assessing, aligning, and expanding their energy options.  The company is a small speciality grocery who has seen his electrical bills go up from $700 to $7000 dollars over the past 20 years while his overall consumption has decreased due to efficiency improvements in his refrigeration.   When deregulation went into effect, he was able to get a lower electrical rate from an out of state provider, yet had to still pay the local carrier for delivering the electricty.   And then last year with the dramatic increase in heating oil prices,  it was the first year his company didn’t turn a profit.  

With electrical rates expected to experience a simiar increase over the next 20 years.  and the impact of volatile oil prices on his long term viability,  the business owner wants to develop his own power solutions.   The more options he can create to power his store, the less he will pay for his power, the more competitive he will be and the lower he can charge for his products or the more profit he can make on the products he charges that are in line with his local competitors.  

Through the Project  Energy Independence course, we are looking at two solutions - one for creating his own electricty with roof solar panels and another for heating his store with a removable wood furnace.  He doesn’t own the store so any solution he selects, he wants to do it with minimal infrastructure changes - these two solutions enable that.   There is a  whole foods store in a community 25 miles away that is using a fuel cell as a back up electrical generator - we are looking into some grant money to explore that option.

As part of my drive to become energy self-sufficient (and to help others do the same), I get google alerts for a number of terms, and stumbled into this website by Design Pedia from the term “Energy Independence.”

I won’t google alert the term “green” as that is way overused. And having spent part of my engineering career studying the environmental life cycle of products, most “green” applications with respect to energy self-sufficiency might not be “green” at all - but still make sense to do from the stand point of long term sustainability AND economics. For example, those compact florescent bulbs - quite toxic on disposal because of the mercury. Likewise with solar panels. And many other materials that go into creating sustainable energy solutions - they need to be properly disposed of. So, from a life cycle environmental perspective, I’m not sure we really have enough information yet to know enough about the long term ramifications of the more sustainable energy producing options to make claims that one is more “green” than another.

But these designs, literally are “green.” Amongst the many fantastic design concepts, something about these three images were really charming. And just how did the little square house with four sides and white picket fence become the aspirational norm?

Would you like to come over to my hovel for a nice cup of tea?

What if I invite over my neighbor, a former NBA star?

What if the roof was covered with mint and there were sheep up there?

Geothermal heat pump application will reduce heating costs and reduce risks of monopolistic pricing practices by the only diesel supplier in town.

I’m evaluating using a geothermal heat pump to heat a property I manage in Southeast Alaska. The drivers for considering this application are:

1. Presently the property is heated using a diesel oil powered furnace for radiant in floor heating. The price of diesel oil is controlled by one monopolistic company in town and the prices go up but not down.

2. The property is vacant about 30% of the time - primarily during the coldest winter months. The heat pump will keep the house warm enough to prevent damage from freezing if no one is on site. The property has a large central chimney with a large wood stove that would suffice as the heating back up on days where the heat pump system may not provide sufficient heat when people are present.

3. There are numerous options for the geothermal heat source of water - the property is on a large body of water that never freezes.

The best site I have found so far that succinctly defines how geothermal heat pumps work is by the California Energy Commission - http://www.consumerenergycenter.org/home/heating_cooling/geothermal.html

I am working on a corporate retreat center in Northern Nevada that is on a south facing hill. The entire south side of the house is a bank of windows and the original design of the house was passive solar. While the design worked well in the winter to reduce the heating requirements, in the summer, the house’s heating loads were extreme.

We replaced the windows with low-e windows to reduce the solar load, but needed a more aggressive solar blocking strategy in the summer. Putting on an awning to reduce the solar load in the summer was mandatory to make the space habitable without excessive air conditioning. I saw a solar awning design several months ago so had the designer draft a concept of putting solar panel awnings over the south facing windows.

What I like about this design is how she has applied the sun angles for this specific location. In the winter the sun still gets in and in the summer, the awnings prevent exposure AND collect the solar energy. This is a triple whammy - passive heat gain in the winter, shading and energy creation year round.

Solar Awning Design for South Facing Windows

Gas Fireplace Insert uses half the natural gas of the open hearth and stopped heat loss up the chimney

I was inspired to become more energy self-sufficient after experiencing one 20% price increase after another with my local utility company, living through $5 per gallon gas prices, watching the tundra around my brother’s house in Fairbanks, Alaska turn to swampland because of warming global temperatures and watching my retirement savings take a nose dive in late 2008. Just from the financial perspective alone, I figure if I can reduce my recurring expenses then I can live on far less income in my “golden” years. PLUS, it makes far more sense to me to invest in things that will give me a solid return on investment than investing in a very volatile securities industry. Additionally with the prospect of looming inflation because of the US Treasury having less than 1% of assets in reserve vs. what they are loaning out, I figure the more I can reduce my monthly bills, the more resistant I will be to economic instability.

To get started, I first evaluated all my options (see blog post below). Next I created my first project plan, and then started by reducing the energy needed to heat the house and the water. I am eventually going to be creating my own electricity with solar and maybe wind power, but I learned that for every dollar I could save in energy usage, that was $5 less I’d have to spend with creating my own energy to power and heat my home. So I figured I would start with reducing my energy usage first.

Tankless Hot Water Heater Uses Half the Natural Gas as the Old Water Heater and 75% of the Natural Gas of a New Water Heater.

I started with the heavy hitters first - the natural gas I was using to heat the house and the water. I had a very old natural gas water heater and with my travel schedule, I was paying to keep a lot of water hot that I was never around to use. I also had this open natural gas fireplace that used 40,000 BTUs of natural gas and let a lot of heat out through the chimney. I replaced the water heater with an instant on tankless water heater that uses half the natural gas of my old water heater and 75% of the natural gas of a new hot water heater. But with my travel schedule, it just made no sense for me to keep a tank of water, no matter how well insulated, heated. For the fire place, that is easier, I installed a natural gas fireplace insert that uses half the BTUs, and is rated to heat the entire space of my house. Plus the insert is very well insulated so I won’t have the heat rushing up the chimney when it’s not on. By my back of the envelope estimates, I cut my natural gas use by at least 50%. This means I am saving $70 per month. I’ll have the upgrades paid back in less than five years. Click here to see the pay back analysis for making these improvements. payback-analysis-for-tankless-water-heater1

For more information on energy efficient appliances - visit - http://www1.eere.energy.gov/femp/procurement/eep_gas_waterheaters.html

Next I am making warm window shades to reduce the heat loss through my windows, improving the insulation under the house, and swapping out light bulbs with LED bulbs as they burn out.

Click here to see the project plan for becoming energy self-sufficient with this house. project_plan_energy-improvements-house-carson-city