Re: Home and garden projects
 

Oh the hilarity of an *ahem* well proportioned professional trying to squeeze through the really small access hatch to the attic. We joked about how people were smaller in the 1950s. Apparently some insulation had been sucked into the fan and was blocking a pressure sensor. We'll see what the invoice says when it arrives.

Re: Home and garden projects
 

With the pending move to San Antonio it was interesting to see that the town actually pays you to get rid of grass and sprinkler systems. A house we're looking at has quite a large rear lawn that I don't think I'd want to get rid of but must take quite a bit of water to keep lush.

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Look in to the T&Cs. They give you grants and subsidise to get rid of turf and put down artificial here, but the window of opportunity only lasts a day or so every year.

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I have just finished installing my new programmable thermostats in place of the previous on/off set temperature ones. And have now been told that it could actually raise heating bills during the winter as i have heat pumps and aux heating is by heated wire.
Undaunted i am thinking about having a look at our kitchen electrics. Occasionally switching on the microwave trips the breaker and the kitchen lights(!) go out. Is this one to tackle myself or hand over to a professional?

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I installed timer thermostats, but after several years realised that there was something "odd" about the way they work. Once I worked out how to make them do what we wanted, instead of them doing what they think we want, we saved about 30% on our heating and AC bills. In short, the timer thermostat will turn on the heat or AC ahead, sometimes hours ahead, of the 5ime of the programmed change, so that at the time of the programmed change the desired temperature has already been achieved. I noticed this when, in the middle of winter when we like our bedroom to be cold, and we had set the heating to come on at 5:30am ahead of our alarm at 6am, the heat was coming on at 3am! :frown:

What I discovered, through trial and error is that if you "bump" the temperature up or down manually the thermostat will hold that exact temperature until the next programmed temperature change, so the last thing I do before going to bed at night, or leaving the house in the morning, is to bump the temperature up or down one degree.
Oooh! A microwave question! :wub:

The microwave is a remarkably heavy power draw and is typically on a breaker of its own, and certainly should not share a breaker with the lights. If you have incandescent lights you could switch them for something more efficient, such as florescent or LED, which might reduce the power consumption enough to avoid the microwave tripping the breaker. A more involved fix would be to run a new wire to the breaker box and install a new breaker, but this might be impractical or impossible for several reasons, such as your breaker box is already full, or there is no way to run the cable with out removing the plasterboard on the walls.

What is the power of the breaker that is tripping? A microwave on its own breaker is OK with a 15A breaker, but microwaves are commonly connected to a 20A breaker, so you might be able to safely upgrade the breaker to stop it tripping.

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Thanks Pulaski
RE: thermostat - i was told that if there were more than 3-4 deg between room temp and set temp, the aux heating would come on and as this is by heated wire, you would lose any savings made due to lowering the temp. i think i will use the timer to drop it by a couple of degs when no-one is in the house but leave it running the whole time.
RE: microwave - it is plugged into the mains circuit in the kitchen, so that means that the whole circuit must be shared with the lighting circuit. I assume they ran out of breakers but i will check. Also will check upgrading to a 20A breaker - i hadn't thought of that

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Depending on how effective your heatpump is, how cold it gets, and how warm you like your house, you might ask your HVAC service company about running the system without the heat strips, as they can sometimes by bypassed. I know someone who had a heatpump system that wasn't as effective as she wanted, and it turned out that the heat strips hadn't been connected. After they were connected she complained about the heating bills! :rolleyes:

Sometimes the heat strips are on a separate breaker on their own, so you may even be able to use the breakers to switch (access to) the heat strips on and off according to whether you need that much heat.

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All good points. In the meantime, i will continue to run at 65 deg and supplement with the fireplace whilst sticking cotton wool in my ears to deal with complaints from wife and children

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Are we related? :unsure: That said, 65° seems a bit extravagant! :lol:

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It is quite cosy sat round the fireplace on a chilly evening. It it gets really cold, we actually light it

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Our upper heating is by heat pump and we use our 'smart' thermostat to bump the temperature in 2 degree steps. That way it avoids activating the heating strips.

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Gas is not that bad, I dislike things like plastering which is more a skill.

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I always enjoy watching skilled tradesmen like that. The way they make it look so utterly effortless and do in a hour what would take me several days.

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I'm weighing in here because I've been attempting to reduce our electricity consumption and bills....
First mistake - a big one actually and I'm a bit embarrassed to tell you that after living in our house for 18 months, complaining about how high the electric bills are compared to previous rental house, I found out last week that we do not in fact have 2 heat pumps for the A/C and heating, we have 2 a/c units and the whole of our central heating is done using those bloody heating elements. One downstairs and one in the attic. In my defense, I saw a quote in the pile of documents the previous owners left us which was for "heat pumps". They updated everything in 2009 but didn't install heat pumps.

Our electricity bill for last January was about $475 for one month, February was an absolute bargain at only $356. Air conditioning bills for the hot summer topped out at $319 for August.

We bought a nest thermostat for downstairs in March/April. On Pulaski's advice, (thank you MrP!!) I stopped it anticipating the temperature. Good thing considering how much that would have cost us. According to Nest, the thermostat does the anticipating thingy to save you money by raising the temp slowly to stop the aux heat kicking in which is great if you don't have our crappy heating system. I bought a decent space heater to heat one room downstairs to a decent temp (68F) when I'm in the house alone during the day.

Insulation in the loft is 12 inches which I'm told is adequate, however it isn't evenly distributed and I've learned that this can drastically reduce it's effectiveness so I'm going up there with a rake to even it out. I've searched high and low for any areas that need blocking up and improved the weatherstripping on all the exterior doors. Next item on the agenda is a chimney balloon to stop the draught coming down the chimney (there is a damper but I'm told the balloon is way better). The fireplace insert looks nice but is terrible for heating the room. I'd like a wood stove in there- anyone got any insights there?

Pool pumps... oh dear god. They installed the most inefficient single speed pump going. That will be replaced in the coming weeks and apparently ROI on that is 12 months, saving me $40 a month electricity. I'm working on getting my son doing a solar panel to run the new pump.

Sheepdip - Water consumption in Texas...arghhh! Our whole neighbourhood is lawned with odd bits of xeriscaping - probably more for fashion than anything else. I've changed the border watering system to drip feed. I'm also about to rig up a greywater system - my NZ friend put me on to this one. We need a permit here and we can use the water from baths/showers/washing machine. I'm just going to use the washing machine water since that is easy and cheap to do. Rainwater collection in Texas is not really an option since we get rain all at once in 2 months.

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I'm not sure about you having AC but not heat pumps. The AC system IS a heat pump - in the summer it pumps heat out of the house, and in the winter it can be reversed to bring heat in from outside. Maybe you're missing the controls or circuitry to make the AC system work backwards?

I know that it is common for a gas "furness" to have no heatpump capability, but I thought that in most electric heating systems that rely on "heat strips", there is a lower level of heating available from the heatpump, with the heatstrips only coming in to play when more/ more rapid heating is needed. :unsure:

On the subject of insulation, firstly you're going to kick up a lot of dust, so be sure to wear a dust mask, but secondly, personally I'd say, if you have areas of inadequate insulation I'd just rent a blower from Lowes/HD and blow in some more, rather than trying to move the existing insulation around.