Recommended cost effective ways to become more energy efficient?

Thats pretty cool.

Sounds like it work like a turbo-charger, reburns the fumes created by the initial combustion. Cool find. Thanks

Poet,

Rocket stoves are awesome, but I have some serious safety concerns.

The diagram and info in the link say that steam and CO2 are the only by product. This is incorrect. Hydrogen and methane are two primary by products of this level of burn. The reason it is so efficient is that it has a secondary burn of these gasses. Another byproduct is carbon monoxide, which can kill in about three breaths, and has no odor or other detectablility. IN order for a complete burn to happen, the secondary burn chamber must reach at least 1800 degrees F. The type of metal used is not suitable to long term temperatures that high. A 35 gallon barrel will burn through in short order I suspect. When the first few pinholes start appearing, gas leaks occur into the living quarters. There is no warning system to save you at that point, unless you a CO2 and CO alarm in the immediate area and are willing to trust your life with it's reliability.

I am very interested in this, as much as I am in gasification for use in internal combustion engines. I am deeply concerned about the potential for an exhaust leak into the living environment, resulting in death.

In my way of the thinking the potential for catastrophe and the ability to mitigate those results are not worth the risks.

Using this type of system as a primary heat source for water recirculation or a stirling engine might be something I would want to try.

Hi,

I've put some effort into developing a systematic plan to reduce energy and carbon use and to do it in the most economically effective way. 

When we started back in 2006, our going in aim for ourselves wat to cut home and car energy use by 50% -- we have managed this and then some: propane use is down 57%, Electricity use is down 82%, and gasoline for the car is down more than 50%.  We used 23 projects in all to do this -- some of them offer really outstanding returns.  They are all detailed here: http://www.builditsolar.com/References/H... I've tried to document energy and carbon saving, inititial cost, and rate of return for each of the projcts.

Of course, these projects are probably not the best ones for you -- there is a "Plan" to help try and identify the best projects for your situation.  We have come to call the whole thing the "Half Plan" -- the main page for it is here: http://www.builditsolar.com/References/H...

I'm thinking about overhualing the section on the Half Plan to make it easier to use and to appeal to a wider audience -- any ideas would be appreciated. This is not a commercial deal -- I don't sell anything -- its basically a retirement hobby.

You mentioned reducing propane use.  I think that for most people the best way is to upgrade your home's thermal envelope -- work on better insulation, better air infiltration sealing, duct sealing, thermal window treatments.  You can look at some of the projects we did and see that the rate of return on these kinds of projects is generally quite good.   If you have an old furnace, it might be worth going to a more efficient (any maybe smaller) one.  If you have a good location for it, solar heating can be cost effective -- especially if you are willing to do some of the building.  One somewhat odd project that did well for use was to use electric mattress pad heaters (not electric blankets) -- these allow a somewhat greater night time temperature setback while still maintaining toasty warm comfort -- the cost saving numbers for this are surprisingly good.

Gary

Hi Gary: I clicked on the top link and it didn't load (error). Can you verify the link, I'd like to really check it out.

So clarifying, this is a list that you put together based upon your experiences and projects ?

My home is only 5 years old, so everything is newer. I recently had work completed on my furnace/ducts to make air tight. Im going to expand this based on some of the other recommendations earlier in the post.

Sorry if this sounds dumb, but what exactly is thermal window treatments? Tinting ??

Jager: Most of my house is recessed lighting, how can I tell if I need to seal these better? I've read this is an area of loss heat/air.

Looking for advice on getting the energy analysis/audit...I've called a couple companies, not sure what to ask for, etc. do they all provide same type service, etc?

Any advice from people who have had them done before?

thanks!

I had one done about two years ago and it was quite informative, but I'll bet you can get the same advice free on the net, mostly right here at CM.com. Dig a little deeper around here and find a treasure of valuable info and lots of helpful folks. Here's just one recent thread on this topic. There are lots of others here, too. This is another site I found helpful a while back.

Good luck!

The biggest problem we hade were our old south facing windows heating up the living room. We could't afford to replace them so we found that installing window tint on these windows helped. Take a look at SnapTint windows tint kits. They were affordable and easy to install and alot cheaper than new windows.

from doing research, it seems that cost vs. return with payback/savings is possibly poly spray foam insulation, Plus with rebates out there in each individual county, seems very viable w/out cost of solar system.

Anybody out there have poly spray insulation ?

Whoaa.......!  I must intervene here, as this is my area of expertise.  WINDOWS are absolutely the core problem with houses that perform badly thermally, but what you do with them is UTTERLY dependent on the CLIMATE where you live......

Yes, if you live somewhere hot, by all means tint your windows, though ANY windows that face the equator would be better off shaded by some device, otherwise you will get very little winter warming from them.  Doesn't your house have eaves Duncan?

Tinting is very good at stopping direct insolation going through windows, and if you live somewhere really cold, that's the last thing you want, you need to trap any heat that does come into your house, which is where double glazing comes in handy.

The single most important strategy for dealing with unwanted summer heat and trapping needed winter heat is curtains and pelmets. Install curtains with pelmet boxes where practical. Windows are generally the area of greatest heat loss. Solid topped pelmets with heavy double lined drapes which touch the walls at either side of the window and also touch the floor are a very effective way of reducing that heat loss to a trickle.

The opposite works as well BTW, hot air created between the curtain and window rises, comes out the top, sucking cooler air at the bottom, basically reverse cycling what this diagram shows...

Mike