in Winter:
How to save some $$
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
By James Windham
The time to build the cellar is before the tornado hits.
Winter is upon us, and energy costs are going nowhere
but up. Don't expect any favors from your utility companies. Next year
may be worse than this one. Now is the time to plan how your family will
meet this challenge. The first thing to do is understand that you have
control over your energy bill. Every bit of energy you save is money you
can spend on something else. Even small things you do add up over time.
Sit down with your family and make a list of everything you do that uses
energy, and then think of ways to do things differently so you use less
energy.
Remember, it's not only how you use
energy that matters, it's also how you waste energy. If your
home or apartment is not well insulated, you're piling up one hundred dollar
bills and setting them on fire. If you are a renter, the lack of insulation
is like an extra tax added to your rent. Your most effective way of saving
money might be to move to a different house or apartment that is better
insulated, has more efficient heating, and is located closer to your work
or to public transportation. Generally, you can get an estimate from your
gas and electric utilities about the energy bills for any address, so it
pays to check. If you own your housing, you will save the most bucks by
insulating and weatherizing. If you are a low income homeowner or renter,
there are programs to help you insulate and weatherize your housing. Stop
wasting energy, and you will start saving money. You will also give planet
Earth a break from the pollution.
Turn down your thermostat.
The lower you set the thermostat the less money
you will pay for heating. Set it no higher than 68 degrees, and turn it
down even more if your income is very limited. If you are going to be gone
all day, turn it down to 50 degrees. To cope with cooler indoor temperatures,
wear several loose layers of clothes while you're in the house. If necessary,
you could wear a hat and a sweater or light jacket. People have been known
to curl up with fluffy blankets on the couch or a favorite chair. Clean
clothes keep you warmer than dirty clothes. If your budget is severely
limited, consider heating only one or two rooms. When you set your thermostat,
or turn on a free-standing gas or electric heater, you must be brutally
realistic with yourself about the resources you have available to pay this
bill. You can manage your expenses better if you learn to read your meter.
Your gas and electric companies can tell you how to do this and how to
calculate the cost of your energy as you consume it. If necessary, read
it every day and adjust your energy use to meet your budget.
Keep the cold out and the heat in.
Many houses and apartments leak heat like a sieve. To find air leaks, light an incense stick and slowly move it around doors, windows, baseboards, electric outlets, light switches, shelves, and places where pipes and electrical conduits go through walls and cabinets. Most home supply stores have inexpensive products to help plug such leaks. You can get little foam pads to put inside electric outlets and light switches (it is sometimes cheaper to buy a large piece of foam and cut it yourself to fit your outlets and switches). Use caulk to plug leaks around windows. Wood putty or caulk can be used along baseboards. Read the label to make sure the caulk is suitable for the materials it is being used with. Latex caulk is the cheapest, doesn't give off fumes, and before it dries it can be wiped off with a damp rag. Foam comes in cans so you can spray it around pipes going through walls and fill miscellaneous holes. Weatherstripping helps seal doors tightly -- a 1/4 inch gap at the bottom of the typical door is equal to a 3 square inch hole in the wall! If there are holes in your floors or walls, plug them as necessary. If you have nothing else, fill them with crushed newspaper or styrofoam (packing beads work) and cover with plastic and lathe (strips of wood sold by the bundle, they're cheap) or duct tape. Patch ('tuckpoint") broken or missing mortar in exterior brick walls. Brick mortar is very cheap, just add water, mix, & if you don't have tools, use a kitchen knife to fill the gaps with mortar.
Stop air infiltration through windows by covering them with plastic held in place with staples and strips of lathe. If the windows are really leaky, cover the inside with plastic also. You could cut sheets of styrofoam, or rigid foam insulation, to fit the inside of the windows, and put them up at night. Take them down during the day to let the sun shine in. Another option is to hang heavy curtains over the windows at night, and/or quilts or blankets. These could also be hung over walls to help insulate a room. Extra mattresses would work for walls, windows, and doors. Fabric stores carry a product called "Warm Window" which is composed of several layers of insulating material and a metal foil liner. This can be easily made into indoor thermal shutters.
If cold air is coming up through a bare floor,
you can improvise "carpet" by putting down several layers of newspaper
and covering them with blankets or quilts. (If you do this, have people
take their shoes off when they go in that room, and be careful about slips
and falls.) Even better, learn to make rugs from rags and cover your floor
with something you have created yourself.
Recover Heat
If you use an electric dryer, vent it indoors during
the winter (you can't do this with gas dryers due to the risk of carbon
monoxide poisoning). Put some nylon hose on the end of the exhaust duct
(secured with a large rubber band or duct tape) to catch the lint and dust.
When you take a shower, put the stopper in the tub. Let the water cool
before you drain it. Air dry your freshly-washed clothes inside the house.
These practices will add humidity & heat to the inside of your house
that would otherwise go down the drain or out into the cold back yard.
At Night. . .
Turn the thermostat down or the heater off and
pile on the blankets. Dress warmly for bed in sweat pants and shirt, socks,
and maybe even a cap (depending on how cold it will get and how low you
set the thermostat). If you have a waterbed, keep it heavily insulated
during the day (a waterbed heater can use more energy than a water heater
and refrigerator combined!). Use heavy comforters on top, and also on the
sides.
Adequate nutrition is essential.
To help you stay warm, adequate food and water
is a must. Drink plenty water and eat frequent meals with lots of carbohydrates.
Winter is a good time for comfort foods like casseroles, stews, soups,
and home baked bread.
Pay attention to details.
Lights. Your grandfather was right: "Turn off the lights when you're not using them." Compact flourescent bulbs, which will work in regular light fixtures that typically use incandescent bulbs, last longer and use much less energy than the incandescents. They cost more up front ($10 for the equivalent of 60 watts), but over their lifetime they save you money (they use 75% less energy than regular bulbs and last for thousands of hours). Instead of using the dryer, air dry your clothes. For $30 or less, you can get a solar powered battery charger and some rechargeable batteries, and avoid spending money for batteries for your radios or other small electronics.
Refrigerator/Freezer. Keep your freezer full -- even if you have to add 2 liter pop bottles about 2/3rds filled with water. Cover foods, especially liquids, and let hot food cool, before refrigerating. Don't hold the refrigerator door open while you decide what you want. Keep the coils clean. Defrost your freezer/refrigerator when the ice gets to be a quarter inch thick.
Cooking. If you are stuck with a big energy hawg of an electric stove, turn off the burners before the cooking is finished. It will continue cooking as the burner cools. Crockpots, roaster/toaster ovens, and electric frying pans are much more efficient than electric stoves. Large ovens don't cook small meals efficiently, so use those small appliances. When you do heat up the oven, cook several dishes at once; alternate their placement in the oven so that air circulates easily. Minimize pre-heating. Glass or ceramic oven pans are the most efficient. Make sure the flame on a gas stove is blueish, a yellow flame indicates the gas isn't burning efficiently. Pressure cookers use less energy for stove top cooking because foods cook in less time. Uncovered pans can use 3 times as much energy as a covered pan to cook the food. Defrost frozen foods before cooking them. Use the smallest pan that will fit the recipe, and match the burner to the pan if possible (use a small burner for a small pan). Keep the metal splash guards under the burners clean so they reflect heat upwards, blackened guards will absorb, not reflect, cooking energy.
Hot Water. Use less by installing low-flow shower heads and faucet aerators. This can cut your hot water requirements as much as 50%, saving 14,000 gallons of hot water/year/family of 4. Take quick showers. Insulate the hot water pipes. Insulate the hot water tank with a special "jacket" made for the purpose (typically $10-20 at home supply stores), or wrap it with insulating materials. Do not cover the top or the bottom of the tank. Lower the temperature on the water heater to 120 degrees or less.
Use solar heating whenever possible. Open the shades and curtains on the sunny side of the house. If the sun can shine on some heavy masonry (like a brick or concrete floor or wall), so much the better -- it will soak up the heat during the day and radiate it at night. You could improvise such a heat absorber with buckets or plastic bottles of water painted black (if the bottles are clear, use food coloring to darkly color the water). If you're using 2 liter bottles, it's best to put them in trays so they don't fall over so easily. Plans are also available for a solar heater that fits into a standard window. Keep your windows clean so the sun's rays aren't deflected.
Many
appliances have "ghost loads" -- even when they're "off", they are still
drawing power. Plug them into an extension cord that has a switch and put
it in an easily accessible place. If you use the extension cord switch
to turn it off and on, avoid wasting power.
James Windham is a former Marine and educator living in Southwest
Virginia and is a frequent contributor
to Floyd County In View.
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