Kremlar said:
I came here to ask for help, not to be critized.
Pardon them their jerking knees, or shrug it off. You're in a big grid
connected mostly-electric house and you've posted to a largely off-grid
energy-conserving newsgroup. Enough of us are willing to help; Some of
us have even done time in one of those houses. Some may have been
scarred by the experience.
I know my electrical
useage is high, and a big part of that is because of my home office where I
need 5 servers running for test and other purposes 24 hours per day.
Well, I believe that several old threads discuss some very efficient
headless servers which run on ~11 watts or so. And before you decide
that a big part of your usage is your home office, even with CRTs and
hot processors, you might want to go through the measuring schemes,
since most computers these days don't really draw all that much. If the
Kill-a-Watt actually shows them to be a big part of your use, you can
probably re-arrange things to save a bit there, yes - LCDs, sleep modes,
more efficient hardware for the stuff that really has to be always on, a
better analysis of what really has to be always on. A dirt-cheap
"obsolete" laptop will do a dandy job of checking your email, burn very
little power, and probably even have a choice of sleep options and
power-saving options.
Of course I want to lower that usage, and I'm working on it
Step one: look at the basics. The very basics. The "cripes my home is
brand-new I don't need to look at that" basics. Learn an important
lesson (which your sewer pump "installation" is trying to tell you): the
builder/contractor does not give a fig what the place costs to run, only
what it costs to build.
Check the insulation on the hot water pipes - actually, it's very likely
there isn't any - add some, and add more insulation to the hot water
heater, on top of what it came with. Check the caulking on the doors and
windows. Check the sealing/weatherstripping on the moving parts of the
doors/windows. Check insulation on the ductwork, especially if it goes
through unheated/cooled parts of the house. Check for drafts anywhere,
especially common locations such as electrical boxes on exterior walls.
Check to be sure that there are no "Ice melting cables" either in your
steps/sidewalk, on on your roof. Those eat a LOT of juice.
Check for any/all plumbing leaks, especially those that might not be
obvious. Use water-conserving showerheads and faucets where appropriate.
Check the dryer vent to see that it is free of obstructions and blows
strongly when the dryer is on.
That there hot-tub-thang. Couple of options, depending. Most are
<expletive>-poorly insulated, to say the least. This includes the ones
that claim to be well-insulated, in my shopping inquiries. They also
have pumps which suck a good bit of power. A usual option among off-grid
types is the wood-fired snorkel stove, or a wood-fired thermosyphon
stove setup. Takes a bit of planning ahead to use it, and generally
assumes that one is in a cheap-or-free-water area, as the usual
arrangement is to simply dump the tub when done, rather than frig with
chemicals. Fancy wood tubs on one hand, stock tanks used creatively on
the other. But this may not be an option in your more citified location.
You can certainly insulate the tub you have better, probably a lot
better. Comes to money on the one hand and aesthetics on the other. Also
involves your level of commitment to being fully outside, as opposed to
perhaps having a greenhouse over it to modify the local temperature
profile, and perhaps make your wife happier - ask her. In any case you
should be able to build a box for it from some type of stressed-skin
foam panel - given the water, I'd lean towards the metal-skinned ones
used for walk-in refrigerators, and then you can add redwood or cedar to
that where it's seen if your aesthetics require that. Be sure to start
by picking the tub up and fitting a panel under it, then have sides to
come up just above the current sides, and a good, thick, latching lid
with some means to help you lift it off. Or toss the one you have, get
two fancy wood ones (or stock tanks) of different sizes, put smaller
inside bigger and fill under and around with foam (do plumbing first,
and leave access holes for that anyway). Put the rest of the equipment
in a well-insulated "dog-house" attached to the access hole, and you're
set.
You might also (and this is one of those places where cheapness on your
contractor's part gets expensive for you) want to replace both the
electric hot water heater and the electric hot tub heater with an
oil-fired water heating boiler. If you had this for the house heat as
well, you'd be all set, but you already bought a forced-air furnace when
you bought the house, so you now get to not economize if you change the
heat source for water at your house from electric to oil.
As for that sewer pump - you definitely want a ground-level access hatch
with NO Digging required. When those things break, it is something you
want to be able to fix NOW, not next week after you find it again. You
might very well want to buy a spare pump (unless it belongs to the
city/town/sewer district), and either know how to change it, or have a
plumber who has come out and looked things over while it's all working
and daylight lined up for the emergency call when it's not working. At
minimum, you want a shut-off valve, and every competent member of your
family should know how to operate that, even if they find it Icky to
think about. Not being able to shut off a backflow is much icky-er.
