Daily Handy Tips

Posts Tagged ‘energy efficiency’

Summary: Air gets into and out of our homes from a wide range of places. Many of these can be fixed with some simple do it yourself handiwork. Undertake any of these and you’ll start to realize instant energy savings. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, American homes lose energy from the following places (in decreasing order of importance): floors, ceilings and walls (31%), doors and windows (21%), heating/air condition ducts (15%), fireplaces (14%), plumbing penetrations (13%) and all others (6%). Recognize that these numbers may vary based on home type, age, geographical region and other factors.

It’s pretty simple to save on your energy bills by installing more efficient doors and windows or by replacing your insulation. These, of course are also some of the costlier ways to improve your home’s energy efficiency. There are also some very easy and less expensive ways to stop air leaks in your home.

You can save plenty on your energy costs by putting in energy efficient windows and doors as well as upgrading your insulation; but these are also expensive propositions. You can also stop air leaks with some easy, low to no-cost DIY projects using materials you probably have on hand already.

Reapply caulk (pushing the bead to ensure it gets into gaps). Be sure NOT to caulk window weep holes (small holes at the bottom of the window that allow for any condensation to drain). It’s best to apply the caulk when outdoor temperatures are between 50 and 70 degrees Fahrenheit. In most locales, this is when most building materials are at the midpoint of their contraction and expansion range.

Choose the type of caulk and color that is best suited to your home and any associated remodeling activity. But in most cases, a paintable, light-colored caulk is what you’ll want. What works for windows and doors, also applies to skylights and any other places where gaps may occur. This can include places where air conditioning, phone or electric lines enter your home. You can now find special cover plates that be placed over the once massive caulked or sealed areas. You’ll still need to seal these, but it looks a lot more attractive.

You should seal any and all air ducts in your attic, basement and crawl spaces. This is a little easier than doing your windows and doors - you can use duct tape here instead of caulk.

You should look for air leaks in your ductwork, especially in your basement, attic and crawlspaces. For this job you can use duct tape instead of caulk, making this a much easier and faster job. However, you can make this easier still and seal those leaks you can’t reach by using an aerosol sealer. These sealers will collect wherever they pass a leak, sealing them without you having to crawl around through your home trying to duct tape them all!

After seeing to your home’s ductwork, check your weather stripping. Weather stripping will wear down with age and develop gaps which air can flow through. Sometimes you may be able to fix these by just sliding in a new piece, but often you will have to remove the door or window in question and replace the weather stripping entirely.

Finally, you can seal leaks around electrical outlets and light switches, especially on outside walls. Make sure the electricity is off before you start and remove the plug covers and switch plates, feeling for air leaks. You can cover most of these using foam inserts and if needed, you can use some insulation or aerosol foam sealant. Wait until the sealant is in place, then feel for air leaks again.

These are all easy projects which can stop air leaks, make your home more energy efficient and save you quite a lot of money in energy bills. Best of all, the savings begin as soon as you complete these easy projects; you may wonder why on earth you didn’t do these projects sooner!

We have gotten accustomed to having heat available at the push of a button, but it is often from inefficient sources. Heating homes,schools, and businesses with solar power is cost effective in addition to being much more efficient. Even in winter there are several ways to capture the sun’s heat. In order to capture the heat from the sun you will need what is called a solar source. The source is something that will absorb and trap the heat from the sun’s rays. A simple example of this is a sunroom.

Generally sun rooms are attached to the house and built from floor to ceiling glass panels.Usually these rooms are built so that they face the morning sun, in order to get the most exposure.When the sun’s rays shine through the glass they are intensified, heating everything in the room. Not only is this a great way to produce natural heat it is also efficient.

Here’s some other forms of solar power heat:

Thermal mass that absorbs and retains the heat of the sun while it is shining and then disperses it after the sun goes down.

A Trombe Wall is a natural solar heating and ventilation system. It uses airflow paths to trap heat between a glass object and a thermal mass facing the sun. The sunlight is absorbed and retained inside the wall. Then it is circulated through vents in the bottom and top of the wall,which then radiates the heat.

A solar chimney is another solar ventilation system. It is made of a thermal mass that is hollow on the inside. The chimney warms the air inside of the chimney and causes the heat to rise. This rise allows air to vent and circulate properly.

A great way to ventilate a building is through solar cooling. Solar heat is absorbed and cooled with ice made by a solar powered steam engine that is attached to a cooling device.

There is a variety of ways to provide heating and cooling to our businesses,homes, and schools. The methods listed above attempt to use natural means as much as possible. In the long run it will pay off to use the sun and not artificial sources of heat that use non renewable materials.

To really go green all the way and get off the gird as well as having the opportunity to save all the money spent on those electricity bills is really special.

However, what people want to know is whether living off grid is really realistic and whether they will be able to set it up on their own and keep it running and how much it will cost.

If you go back a few years getting off the grid would have been a very difficult thing to do. The only real way for someone who was not a ‘techie’ to do it was to buy very expensive equipment that would rule out most ordinary people on start up costs alone.

Things have thankfully come around full circle and you can now get off the grid very easily indeed. You can now find instruction manuals that will take people who have never done anything like this before through to getting their first project up and running, whether they chose that to be a wind turbine or a solar panel.

They can be made in a few days and for less than a couple of hundred bucks, the materials can be sourced from local hardware stores or sometimes from stuff lying around the house.

However, be careful because although this is relatively easy, it’s vital to get a very high quality guide from a good organization that will provide you with support throughout the process.

Now although you don’t have to worry, it is a problem and a few unsavory characters have been cashing in on the amount of press off grid living has been getting recently and we need to stay aware not to get duped by them as well.

So there you go, what you have to do now is get started with off the gird ASAP.

Just a few months back, before President Bush left office, he signed the revised Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 into law. In that legislation is a an opportunity for small businesses, farms, and residents to credit some of their small wind turbine cost against their tax expenses.

The Act offers a federal tax credit for 30% of the total installed cost of any wind power system with a 100 kilowatt capacity or less, but the credit will not exceed $4,000. The limitation of the Act is that it only applies to new systems installed from 3 October 2008 through to December 2016, so any current systems will get no tax relief. In addition, for home wind turbines, the credit is further limited to the lesser of $4,000 or $1,000 per kW of capacity.

Traditionally North America has had the largest market in the small wind turbine industry, but lately it was getting under-cut by its European rivals who offered greater tax relief for small wind turbine systems. So the tax incentives were very much loved by Ron Stimmel, a small wind advocate for the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), who said:

“We thank Congress for recognizing and supporting small wind systems as an important contributor toward energy security and a cleaner environment. This credit will help individuals cut their electric bills while combating global warming in a tangible way.”

This is the first federal tax credit for small wind power systems since 1985, and experts predict the legislation could expand the American wind energy industry by 40 percent or greater each year. And together with the soon-to-be finalized equipment certification system, this will aid in securing the U.S. as the leading market worldwide.

To put the industry on equal grounds with the photovoltaic (PV) solar industry, the AWEA, and its members have long requested a 30% federal investment incentive for small wind turbines 100kW and smaller. And now their persistence has paid off.

Since the two industries share the same renewable energy market, the wide legislation also expands on a similar credit for the PV solar industry that was first enacted in 2005. Domestic PV solar systems now receive a 30% credit, limited to $4,000, and commercial installations can get the same, but uncapped, credit.

How does the new legislation influence privately made small wind turbines? It looks like do-it-yourself wind power systems can receive some tax incentives, as long as it can be shown when and how much costs were. Just remember, to get professional legal advice to help you enjoy the best tax credit due.

With all these state and federal tax credits for renewable energy homeowners, it makes sense to get your own small wind turbine at home. No matter whether you buy an expensive commercial home wind turbine, or learn to build a cheaper one yourself, the potential for you to save a lot of money on electricity and tax expenses is a decision away. It just requires you to make the right choice.

As the world reaches its energy crisis we need to reduce our dependence on non-renewable energy sources, and start generating renewable energy on a massive scale.

Currently there are 4 major types of renewable energy available at our disposal: solar energy, wind energy, hydro energy, and geothermal energy.

Wind Energy:

Wind turbines have been around for millennia, further back than the birth of Christ. Over the years they have been used to pump water, drag boats and grind flour. But at the turn of the industrial revolution, wind turbines were made to produce electricity.

You may still see windmills as those small wind pumps dotted all over farms, or the large ones in the Netherlands, but the technology has really evolved. Now the wind is harnessed with large wind turbines to produce thousands of kilowatts of electricity, and can even be scaled right down to produce power for a single household.

The Sun:

Sunlight is the most abundant form of energy we have available, so there is no excuse for us not using more of it. But thanks to extensive research and development, we can make use of the sun in various ways - solar heating and passive solar design, solar electric power, and solar cooking and solar drying.

Solar water heating, solar electricity, and passive solar design are some the simplest and cost-effective ways to reduce your conventional energy use. They do not need much maintenance, and are really environmentally friendly. With solar cooking, no gas or electricity is needed, just some good sunshine. making it very popular for campers and travelers alike. Also, the food is cooked at a muhc lowere temperature, which helps to stop vital nutrients from being lost.

Water Power:

Like windmills, hydro energy used to be used in ancient machines to grind flour or transport water in aqueducts for irrigation.

Today hydro power is used in dams to produce electricity for households and businesses. Hydro-electric power is generate on a large scale where dammed up water is channeled through turbines, which spins a dynamo as it gushes through. The best example of hydro-electric power would be the Hoover Dam, which was built to provide electricity to Las Vegas. In fact hydro-electric power is efficient is popular nowadays that it accounts for over 90% of the worlds renewable energy.

There have been some social and environmental concerns about building dams for hydroelectricity since entire village and communities are flooded by the dam, and the walls prevent certain species of fish from swimming upstream to spawn.

Geothermal Energy:

Most of the time Geothermal energy is harnessed in volcanic regions, where molten lava is rather close to the earth’s surface. An good example would be in Iceland, an extremely volcanic island that generates a lot of its power in this way.

Where this lava comes into contact with water, it super heats it and causes large volumes of steam to burst to the surface through geysers. The pressure from this steam is diverted and passed through turbines to generate electricity. Once the steam has passed through it is sometimes cooled, turned back into water, which is then pumped back into the geyser to make more steam. This makes it everlasting cycle…

Well, this concludes our brief overview of the 4 main types of renewable energy. You can find out more in-depth information on each type by reading our other articles or browsing our website in the link below.