My Journy To Becoming UtilityFree

Where does the time go?

2008-07-20T10:55:00.000-07:00

Ok so I am going to get a solar hot water heater for about 1/2 price or even FREE!.

1/2 price: An active 2-3 panel system costs between $7,000 and $8,000. So with the $3000 and the federal tax credit of $2000 (max tax credit allowed but you have to spend $6700 to get the max Federal tax credit) for a total of $5000 off the price.

FREE solar hot water heater: If you do a passive solar water heater http://tctsolar.com/ such as a PN-50 then the cost is $2000 plus shipping and now the equation changes. You get $3000 and the tax credit for spending $3000 ($2000 plus S1000 shipping and installation) plus $900 tax credit. That make the passive solar water heater completely FREE!

Here in Colorado Amendment 37 was amended about 6 months ago and all the rural electric cooperative (REC) are no longer exempt from providing renewable energy in their generation mix. So therefore all the REC now have to have part of their energy mix renewable energy.

So my REC is United power with about 60,000 metered customers.

They have come up with a program in completion with the Governors Energy council to provide $3000 for a solar hot water system for those who only use ELECTRIC hot water heaters.

I have one of those so I qualify.

But not only do I qualify for the solar hot water rebate but I also qualify for a replacement hot water heater as well. That hot water heater is a Marathon hot water tank (see features below) that has a LIFETIME warranty on it and is NOT a metal tank but a plastic tank with about 3" of foam. Basically the best storage tanks if you are going to not have a thankless hot water heater.

So the first think I did was to request a replacement hot water tank. That came a few weeks ago and I am going to plumb that in first, then plumb in the solar and finally the solar panels.

I have 90 days in which to do this and already 30 days have flew by.

My current kWh averages about 500 kWh per month without AC being on in the summer months. Once my solar hot water heater kicks in I should drop the kWh to an average of about 400 kWh per month or less. I figure because my DHW heater is on a timer I use about 100 kWh a month to heat my water from the power grid.

Times are a changing.

THE HALF TRUTH (LIE) VS THE TRUTH

2008-01-10T19:55:00.000-08:00

I am going to do this on occasion. It will be title d as above: THE HALF TRUTH (LIE) VS THE TRUTH.

This post is simple. The Status quo continues to tell half truths to the public to try to do something "green". But what the general public does not realize is that what they read or see on TV is only a half truth. When I read a half truth and it is so obviously incorrect I will report it here and on our upcoming updated web site.

Here goes:

This just came form our local Rural Electric Cooperative:

THE HALF TRUTH (LIE):

“United Power’s Board of directors has moved to create a program of incentives for solar power installations. The program is being instituted in response to several customer inquirers.”

THE TRUTH:

Colorado HB-1281 was signed into law on April 24, 2007. Unlike Amendment 37, which exempted REC from a renewable energy requirement, HB-07-1281 requires ALL Rural Electric Cooperatives (REC) in the state of Colorado have to get up to 10% of their power from renewable energy source by 2020. It starts with 1% in 2008. Thus United Power paints itself as being responsive to “several customer inquires” yet the truth of the matter is that they HAVE to comply with the law and to do so they need to encourage the installation of RE systems on their system. Had the law NOT been passed then I am 99.9% sure that United Power (or any other REC in the state of Colorado, would not come forth and give encouragement to using RE systems. The only reason Xcel gives rebates is because they are allowed to put yet another tax (fee) onto all Xcel customers to raise the money. It is NOT coming out of Xcel pockets at all.

What they do NOT tell you in pain English is that that have been instructed by LAW to encourage the use of solar energy.

About a year ago I called United Power and asked one of their employees what their policy was on PV systems and the guy got really upset with me. He said PV where to “expensive” an hat hey had no “payback” and that they where manufactured using all sorts of polluting materials. I told him it was MY lifestyle choice and that I wanted to produce my own clean power. Then he got real quiet.

Bottom line: 99% of utilities will NOT be encouraging ON SITE RE systems UNLESS they are required to by law. They realize that RE basically has no benefit to the utility companies. Two key reasons: RE systems are intermittent. Therefore they still have to provide 100% at night and during peak load periods during the day. Second issue is that the more RE on their grid network the less revenue they will generate. And that won’t pay the outrageous salaries that REC executives receive.

Window film

2007-12-22T08:12:00.000-08:00

I have completed about 1/2 of the window film treatment and have already noticed a difference. I measured the window temperature on the inside bottom (the coldest part of the window since cold air falls) of both a north window with the film and without the firm. Both windows do not have any forced air heat on them and the window with the film on it is at this moment 57 F the other window sill 54 F. So there seems to be a small 2 degree difference but 2 is better than 0!

This film is suppose to bounce back 55% of the heat from the house in the winter and reflect out 72% of the heat in the summer. I am putting this on the north and west ends of the house only as I want to collect as much winter sun as I can during the winter months. Also on the south side when I put the screens back on in the summer I will keep out over 80% of the sun from coming in the house. The trouble with putting this film on the south side is that in the winter months it will block way to much sun! And energy from the sun is FREE and delivered to your home free of charge so why stop it form coming into your home? We seem to build a window and then not let the natural daylight come in to help heat your home.

And you have to remember that the summer sun goes very high in the sky and with such a high angle not as much sun goes through the south windows. I may consider putting a small shading device alone the top of the south windows (PV modules?) to shade them and using that energy to perhaps operate a solar evaporative cooler if need be.

The only film I plan to install on the south side is UV film that will block out 99% of the harmful UV rays that fade your furniture. Other than that the south side does not get the Titanium film. Oh and by the way the other film I am putting on also blocks about 99% of the UV to boot!

Well off to get some more window film!

John

2007-12-17T13:40:00.000-08:00

Well I just opened up my "UNITED NEWSLINE" December 2007 newletter and top story is their 8.4% price increase. So now this is all the more reason to strive to save electricity and "cut the cord". Why be subject yourself to constant inflation?

Our last bill was $57.00 and averages about that amount monthly. An 8.4% increase will add another $4.79 to it. That is $57.48 a year if we do nothing. It all adds up. That is what they do. Increase it little by little and the next thing you know your prices double...and guess what you have NOTHING to show for the service they give you nor do you own a thing either. You are a slave to their every whim and these are companies that fight renewable energy tooth and nail because they know that renewables reduce their revenue and at the same time they lose control over you as a customer. The exception is if THEY own the renewable energy source like a wind farm. Then they are all for renewabels....it is all about who control the revenue stream- you or them.

At present we are buying (renting) the electric service from a local Co-op called United Power.

Remember all systems in a house are interconnected. By insulating your windows at night (the sun here heats the house nicely during the day with our great south west exposure) the heat loss will be much less and therefore the MOTOR on our furnace will also operate less. So hopefully we will not see that price increase in our coming bills because by the time the price increase takes effect we will have decreased our electric bill by that percentage thus giving us the same electric bill as before.

As the saying goes. "Somethings got to "give"....in our case we are negating the current rate increase by reducing our heat loss. Once we "cut the cord" we will be done with ALL price increases sooner and get all our electricity form clean ON SITE energy. On site energy is the future of energy delivery and coupled with energy efficieny cannot be beat and will be the most economical way to have energy for your use.

WInter soltice coming - December 20th!

2007-12-16T19:52:00.000-08:00

All my plugs are now "plugged" now....and the cold weather is now here!

The coldest month is upon us in Fort Lupton, CO and lots to be done before January (January's average night time low is 12° F) comes.

The worse heat loss area of ANY home has been and for some time into the future will be the WINDOWS of ones home. In our home we have 5 north windows, 7 south windows, one north sliding door, 4 windows to the west and only 3 windows facing east. So add all the windows and doors all up and we have a lot of glass square footage.

I am using a three-four level attack on the each window depending on its location on the house. To start with we have double pain windows with about a 1/4" air gap (the higher the better in general) which starts with about a R1.7 valve. With mini blinds on all windows I may have MAYBE an R2. Compare that to our walls with about an R25. A HUGE difference. My end goal is to have a windows with a R20 minimum and them when we replace the existing windows to have an R30 window.

Step one: Put window film on the inside glass that will retain up to 55% of the heat in the winter and keep OUT about 70% of the heat in the summer. This type of film will not go on all windows but just the west and north windows. The south windows will have no see un screens on them that block out over 80% of the sunlight which is what you want in the SUMMER but you want as much light as you can get in the winter. The only film that will go on the south side is film that will block out 99% of the harmful UV that causes fading of your furniture over time.

By putting film on the west side I keep out the afternoon sun that you do NOT want in the summer and keep as much heat in the house in the winter while letting daylight in. With film on the north windows I am retaining as much heat as I can during daylight hours and in our case when the sun gets way west when it sets in the summer it keeps the heat out. The house faces off to the west of south so in the summer months the sun actually goes through our north windows in the summer time towards the end of the day.

This may not increase the R value by much (maybe by 1) but it will reduce both the heating and cooling costs in the summer with a minimal effort. To achieve this I bought a one roll of window film named Titanium from a manufacturer called Gila Films, Inc. I tried it this weekend but I have to tell you it is a bitch to put on smoothly. I have no idea how the "professionals" do it (I would love to know or watch) but after going through a 36" x 15' role I was baffled as to how this stuff looks so good in their advertising. What bugs me is that they don't even have a video on their web site that DEMONSTRATES how to do this yourself. Yes the instructions are clear but their new product has the same instructions as the old products it seems to me. The new product has adhesive on the side that goes onto the window. I believe the old stuff does not. So this new stuff is a SOB to put on and not get bubbles or creases in it.
So if you want a really great looking job hire a professional to do it. Since we plan to replace the windows next year I won't lose any sleep over my work...the next roll hopefully will go on much better after I have a talk with the company who makes this stiff before I do this again!

I will talk about step two tomorrow.

2007-05-28T15:52:00.000-07:00

Monday, May 28, 2007 16:54

This will be my first post with pictures. So I have no idea how they will look or how easy they will be to download. I do know that from past experience that these computer things are usually never as easy as they appear to be at first. The pictures should be put in a different order but I have little control over pictures in this blog. I may have to look for another format. You would think Google would make things a little easier to put pictures in a easy format.

As I mentioned in the last post the air infiltration from all sorts of cracks from your building structure are what cause the greatest heat lost on your home. Seal as many cracks as you can and you will lower your heating and cooling bill significantly.

One of the worst places for leaks is your plug and light switch boxes. In most cases the insulation is pushed away from the box and air is allowed to infiltrate because of the lack of insulation around the boxes. Often there is NO insulation at all behind the boxes. So when the wind blows air comes pouring in (hot or cold) and you then have to heat the cool air or cool the hot air.

All the materials can be found at your local home improvement stores except for the gaskets and the insulated plug plates. These have to be ordered from specialty stores like BeUtilityFree, Inc.

The tools needed to do the job:
1. Caulking gun
2. Hax saw blade - to rim the dry foam
3. Gloves
4. Flat head screw driver

The materials needed:
1. Can of foam (Great Stuff brand is best)
2. Caulk
3. Foam gaskets - plug and light switch
4. Insulated plug plates (retrofit)

Here are the steps to reduce your air infiltration from your plug and light outlets:

Step 1: Remove all cover plates

Step 2: Put your gloves on and screw on the plastic straw and put this in the space between your plug outlet case and the drywall. most of the time there is plenty of room to slip this straw in. Slide the straw back about 5 or 6 inches and apply foam form can. Slowly bring the straw forward and exit the area. Do this on all four sides of the box is you can.

Step 3: Let the foam dry for at least 24 hours. If you cannot foam the sides then apply Acrylic caulking with a very thin bead of caulk. If that does not work then the only thing you can do is apply foam gaskets to reduce the air infiltration. If you use foam gaskets then you should also use Baby safety plug that plug directly into the outlet. If you use foam then the Baby safety plugs are usually not necessary at all because the foam is all around the box.

Step 4: Once the foam has dried it will or should come out of the sides because the foam expands in place. Trim off the excess foam with the hax saw blade and put the covers back on.
That is it!

The next time the wind blows hard you can put your hand over the plate and feel no air movement if the box is foamed properly.

Some foam may go inside the box but that is not a big concern. Remember the foam is or should be OUTSIDE the box and not inside of it. Unless you have an Xray vision you have to just use your best guess as to how much foam you need per box. Err on the side of to much!

I just recently got my last electric bill and it keeps dropping. I will share with you what I have done to keep the bill dropping. The goal is to drop it to zero by disconnecting from the grid.
Until I install the wind generator and the solar PV modules I will have to get my electricity from the utility.

This weekends project

2007-04-11T08:16:00.000-07:00

The first line of defense to reducing your heating and cooling costs is to reduce your air infiltration rate of your building. The reason is simple. When air is introduced into your structure you have to either heat that air or cool that air depending on the season. So by keeping the conditioned air (heated or cooled air) in the house longer the less energy is needed in the end. heating and cooling of a building is your structure largest energy expenditures so it makes sense to tackel that issue the first when you are trying to get yourself off the grid and become UtilityFree™

Air leaks in from cracks all over your house, from door cracks to cracks you never even are aware of until you really have a good look at your stricture. If you are still buying utilities then you have to pay for the energy on an on going basis and if you are producing your own on site power then the more energy produced the larger the power system and the more money it will cost you.

The wind at this location is a world of a difference from the last house we lived in. That house was in a suburban setting with the houses about 5 feet for one another. When the wind blew you really did not "feel" it for the most part. Here with wide open views you definitely feel it.

The first high wind day the house felt "drafty". I knew that there must have been some big leaks besides the typical leaks from the doors and windows. The windows are many what I would call a B grade window so they are fairly tight. So that was not the problem. The doors could use a little work but they where not bad either. Nut the chief culprit was electrical outlet. You could put your hand over a plug or a light switch box and it was like there was no wall there. Air was streaming in from the outside at every electrical outlet.

When the wind blows it causes a negative pressure on ones structure and air is pushed into your house in any crack that it can find. Negative pressure is also created when your gas furnace turns on and has to have Oxygen to burn its fuel. All combustion requires oxygen to burn. Where does it get that Oxygen? Where ever it can get it which is usually form the outside. Outside air is sucked into the room where the combustion takes place. Newer furnace installations now have a pipe that allows outside air to be drawn into the room to allow combustion and doe snot drawn it in from other area of the house.

I started with the kitchen plugs and am working my way around the house. I have maybe 1/4 of the outlets fixed but have to of the rest. Remember that air infiltration stopping techniques work to kept the cold OUT of the house in the heating season and hot OUT of the house in the cooling season. So just like good insulation values air infiltration stopping techniques work ALL year around. Win , Win. More comfort, less energy usage = money saved!

On my next post I will be posting pictures and talk about the different options on how one stops air infiltration from electrical outlets in ones home.

Have a great day!

No much done..

2007-03-28T10:18:00.000-07:00

This weekend I was planning to finish plugging up my plug outlets. The biggest robber of your heat from your house is air infiltration.

This place is going to be an excellent wind site in the future. I found out this weekend that there was a water pumping windmill located on the land. The footers are still there as is the well casing where the water was pumped from. It was a shallow well and I don't think that it could be revived but I plan to find out. The current well on the property is apparently about 300 ft deep. I have to verify that with a well report which did not come with the house.

Ok back to air infiltration. The day we first moved it was quite windy. I put my hand over the plug outlets along the wall the wind was hitting and I could not believe the amount of air that was coming into the house through the wall plates! So I started on plugging the plugs up.

My next post will detail what my choices where and what I decided to do.

John

My newest elatric bill...

2007-03-23T12:51:00.000-07:00

Today I received my electric bill from UnitedPower. I used a whopping 675 kWh from February 13 to March 13. This is rather puzzling because I replaced the electric stove with a propane stove (to be eventually converted to Hydrogen) and replaced the electric dryer with a propane dryer. However, we used both appliances for a few weeks before they where replae cbeing used ed so I expect the next electric bill to drop by at least 100 kWh or more because the furnace is less and less because of the rising daily temperatures. At the present time the largest electrical load we have is the electric hot water heater.

Moving from Longmont, CO to Fort Lupton, CO essentially doubled the price per kWh we now pay. I was paying $06 cents while I was in Longmont buying electricity from a local municipality. Now with UnitedPower I am paying (the latest bill) $.11 per kWh. How did I arrive at that figure?? You simple divide the cost you are billed by the amunt of kWh you where billed for. Thus $73.53 divided by 675 kWh is $.11. On a cost per million Btu basis that is $31.97 per MMBtu!! (to figure out how you find out what your cost per MMBtu is please download the SourceBook introduction at http://beutilityfree.com/sbmainpage.html) My guess is that this is twice the cost per MMBtu of the propane. Remember the name of the game if you have to buy energy buy the least cost energy first!

The plans I have for the electric hot water heater are four fold. First is the put a timer on the electric hot water heater to heat the water only when it is needed. The next thing I may do, but have not decided yet, is to have the electric company come out and put an "off peak" meter that will allow me to use electricity for the cost of propane or cheaper (about $.04 per kWh)

The third thing I will do is to repalce the hot water tank with a gas driven tankless hot water heater. I plan to install the tankless hot water heater on the OUTSIDE of the building so I do not have to deal with exhausting the fumes to the outside by installing expensive double walled exhaust piping. The last part is to displace energy used for domestic hot water (DHW) with a soalr hot water system.

The first two steps are stop gap measures to control the amount or electricity an d simultaneously getting the cheapest cost PURCHASED electricity. But one thing I do not like and therefore may not do the "off peak" thing is that they jack up the price of your "monthly service charge" (MSC) to $17.05 a month from $9.50 effectively doubling that charge. Why do they do that? Well they lose revenue charging a kWh at $.4 when they are use to getting $.10 so they have to try and make up some of the lost revenue. But they justify that higher cost because the On peak - Off peak meters cost more. That is true but once the meter is paid for then they should lower the MSC or eliminate it all together once a meter has been paid back by the homeowner.

The weekend is coming.. TGIF!

2007-03-17T21:33:00.000-07:00

This is my first post in the journey to become UtilityFree. By this term I mean to completely disconnect from the grid and to produce my own fuel for my transportation needs and all my other energy needs through various means of electrical generation such as solar electricity. Being off grid is my personal choice and I will give reasons as I go along as to why I choose the be off grid as opposed to being on grid or grid tied.

I have been off grid before when I lived in Pennsylvania. We had a 3 kW Jacobs wind generator and a solar hot air system, I had an Exide battery bank along with a 3000 watt inverter. That was over 20 years ago now. I heated the house I lived in with just a 1,500 watt electric heater because the house was so well insulated.

I am beginning to take another journey going down a familiar road. This time will be just as exciting as the last time because we have better energy efficient materials then we did 20 years ago, have solar electric cells that are more affordable then ever and have wind generators that now are more reliable then ever before.

Let me set the stage for all of you reading this. We have just moved our home and office to a 5 acre parcel north of Denver, Colorado. The home was built in 1999 but put on the site in 2004.
The next post will describe the house in greater detail and what my immediate plans are for the site.

I plan to post pictures on a regular basis as I move along. Pictures are worth a thousand words at times so I will post then often as I can. Digital camera are one of the greatest things to come along.

Well that is it for now..