What Are “Energy-Wise” Behaviors?

Energy costs are rising, and most homes use a lot of energy. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, space heating and cooling represent the largest portion of the home energy budget, with lighting not far behind. NRG SVRS recommends changes to your home heating, cooling, and lighting systems, and these products, coupled with modest modifications of every day behaviors, can result in significant savings.

Practicing energy-wise behavior is an important ingredient of the energy cost-saving mix. Simple changes to actions we take without thinking are relatively easy to implement and can result in significant savings. Money spent on energy-saving improvements will be money wasted if energy-wise behaviors are not adopted. What do you need to change? Foremost among the behaviors that are energy-wise are the following.

Block off unused rooms by creating zones.

Creating zones is the best way to save on energy costs. Indeed, other countries have been doing this for years, the U.S. being the only industrialized country still wedded to centralized heating/cooling systems. The ideal solution is to isolate areas that are used often from areas that are seldom used. The isolation can be accomplished with solid doors, French doors, curtains, or screens; as long as air circulation between zones is greatly restricted. Then, zones that are occupied can be heated or cooled independently, and only when people are present. This may require the installation of decentralized, dedicated heating and cooling systems in each zone, since a centralized system cannot be adapted easily to conditioning several zones.

Zones for residences can be efficiently heated and cooled by Mini-Split systems, also called "ductless heat pumps.' These systems are rated at 20 SEER, about twice that of the typical central systems (8-13 SEER), so they can save a lot of money on your space heating and cooling bills.

Your furnace fan blows a limited volume of air through your ducts. The more rooms this air goes to, the less cooling is delivered to each room. You can increase the amount of cooling to a given room by taking the air flow away from another room. This is the principle behind blocking cooling to seldom-used rooms. The cool air that would have gone to that room now goes to other rooms, and the cooling system doesn’t have to provide as much total cooled air, so energy is saved. If you have a sewing room, or a spare bedroom, that is not being used, you can shut off the vents to that room and close the door. Since interior walls are not insulated, some heat will leak from the closed room into the conditioned space and keep the closed-off room somewhat cooled. (If you need to use that room infrequently in the winter, a small space heater is an excellent source of temporary heating.) See our article “Why Mini-Splits?” for more information about the advantages of zoning.

Turn up (or down) the thermostat on your ductless mini-splits.

Your heater or air conditioner (whether a central or decentralized system) works to maintain a temperature difference between the inside of your house and the outside. The work it does consumes energy. Sometimes the temperature difference can be 20 to 50 degrees — say, 70°F inside and 95°F outside. Each additional degree of temperature difference means that your system has to work harder to remove heat from your living space to maintain the desired internal temperature. For every degree you can reduce this difference, you will cut back on energy use, and therefore cut your energy bill. Some studies have found that one degree of difference equates to 1 to 2 percent less energy usage. Rather than setting the thermostat on your ductless Mini-Split to 70°F year-round, try 67-68°F in winter and 72-73°F in summer to cut your bill by 5 percent. Of course, you can save even more energy if you have decentralized heating and cooling systems because they heat a smaller living space than the centralized systems, and are much more efficient with the energy they do consume.

At night, you should turn up your thermostat even more. Since we spend most of the night in bed, you can turn the thermostat up several degrees more, to the high 70s (or low 60s in winter,) and save even more energy. In winter, pile on more covers and take off the covers in summer. It may seem uncomfortable at first, but the more willing you are to adapt to higher temperatures, the more money and energy you will save.

Use space heaters

If you use a room only occasionally during the winter, consider using a small electric space heater for your heating needs. Such heaters are relatively efficient heat producers for small space since they heat just the space you are occupying. Be sure your house wiring will support these heaters, and don’t use them to replace your furnace or Mini-Split heaters. NRG SVRS can sell you space heaters at our cost.

Use less hot water

Since heating water takes about a sixth of the house energy budget, it is energy-wise to look for ways to use less energy heating water in the kitchen, the laundry, and the bathroom. Of course, replacing your traditional water heater with a tankless model will save energy because you will only heat water at the moment it is needed, not during the much longer time water sits in the tank. You don’t let your car engine idle over night; you shouldn’t heat water overnight either.

The largest use of hot water in the kitchen is washing dishes. Many people either hand-wash their dishes or prepare them for an automatic dishwasher by turning on the hot water tap to its “full Niagara” position. A better way is to run a few inches of water into the sink, add detergent, and turn off the tap. Wash the smaller items first and rinse them with water from the tap into the same soapy sink. Then the sink can handle the larger items. Save a stack of soapy dishes before rinsing them so as to be efficient with the water. In fact, if you stack soapy plates in an adjacent sink, when you run rinse water over the top plate, it acts as pre-rinse for the next plate down.

For newer automatic dishwashers, it is a bad idea to pre-rinse dishes. These washers usually have sensors that determine when the dishes are clean. Pre-rinsing is a waste of heated water. In addition, there is usually an option to use a fan and heat to dry the dishes. The heater uses electricity and can usually be turned off if you don’t need the dishes to be instantly dry. Fans are pretty energy-efficient.

In the laundry room, the clothes washer might use a lot of hot water. However, in recent years, advances in detergent technology have created cold-water detergent products that can get your clothes just as clean as before without using heated water. Try it in its liquid form, you’ll like the results. To save electricity, keep your washer loads full. If your local ordinances allow it, consider air-drying your clothes. Air-drying does take longer but your clothes will last longer and have a fresh smell and natural starch.

Take shorter showers and smaller baths. While a long, hot shower feels good, it is very costly. The same goes for baths. In fact, a reasonable-length shower uses less water than a bath.  For even more savings, install low-flow (less than 1.5 gal/min) shower heads.

Think about other ways to save energy. Sometimes a simple change of routine is energy-wise. For instance, if you live on the second floor and normally wash your face, then brush your teeth, you waste a lot of water waiting for the hot water to work its way from the downstairs water heater to your tap. Brush your teeth first, while the cold water comes out of the hot-water tap, and then wash your face.

If you have a gas water heater, air from your house is drawn up through the flue along with the gas combustion byproducts. If this water heater is in conditioned living space, the air that goes up the flue is conditioned air—either heated or cooled by your heating/cooling system. Electric water heaters do not do this. Consider bringing unconditioned outside air to the gas heater through a dedicated duct so that conditioned air is not drawn up the flue.

Turn off lights

Although it is the simplest energy-saving step to take, turning off lights is usually the one least practiced. Conventional incandescent ight bulbs are large users of electricity, about 10 percent of the total home budget. An urban myth says that turning on a light takes more energy than keeping it running. This is simply not true. While light bulbs do require a small surge of electricity to turn them on, it is no more than a few seconds of running time. So, keep unused lights turned off to save money. Also, take advantage of natural sunlight during the day by opening blinds in winter.

You can also save energy by being energy-wise in your use of lighting. There are two general types of lighting: area lighting and task lighting. Area lighting is for a room as a whole—illuminating the room to make it friendlier. You should choose lower wattage light bulbs for this type of lighting. Task lighting, on the other hand, is focused on a specific task, such as reading, sewing, hobbies, etc. You should use local, dedicated lamps for this type of lighting, rather than increasing the light in the whole room, and you can use low wattage bulbs there, too.  This is the same principle as the use of ductless Mini-Splits for heating/cooling.

In addition, you can go further and replace conventional tungsten light bulbs with newer Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFLs.) These bulbs are more efficient than tungsten bulbs, using only about a quarter of the electricity (and not producing nearly as much heat.) A side benefit is that they last 2 to 13 times longer than tungsten bulbs. A single 25 Watt CFL replacing a 100 Watt tungsten bulb can save $50 in electricity over its life, in addition to the purchase cost of about ten tungsten bulbs—perhaps another $10 saved. That makes CFLs a money-saving choice. NRG SVRS can sell you a box of 10 CFLs at our cost.

The future holds additional money-saving lighting costs: LED bulbs.  These are just coming on the market now, so they are relatively expensive.  Countering the cost issue are a few advantages of the LED lights: they use only one-tenth as much energy as conventional bulbs, and 40% of CFLs; and they can be expected to last a decade or longer.

For security lighting, consider replacing those always-on bulbs with motion-sensing lights. Instead of running at full power all night, they turn on only when needed and are still effective at warding off intruders.

Use your window treatments.

Though the sun is 93 million miles away, it is the greatest renewable source of energy known, and it’s free. It is energy-wise to take advantage of this free heat energy whenever possible. During winter days and summer nights, open the blinds or curtains to let heat energy pass through your windows. The winter sunlight will warm floors, furniture, and furnishings. During summer days and winter nights, keep blinds and curtains closed; curtains act as additional insulation to keep heat in during winter. South-facing windows are particularly good at admitting heat energy, so make sure you rigorously manage window treatments on those windows.

Open up the windows.

Similarly, during mild weather, if noise, pollen, and humidity levels are tolerable, you can save money on energy by turning off your system entirely and enjoying the naturally-heated air.

Be aware of the fireplace

Your fireplace is essentially a hole in your house. As such, it leaks hot air: up and out during the winter; down and in during the summer. Even when the damper is closed the fireplace is a big energy leak because the damper is not well-insulated. But, don’t forget to close the damper once the fire is out; it is still more energy-wise than no damper at all. A glass fireplace screen is another good way to cut down on the leakage of conditioned air through the fireplace. With a gas fireplace, consider turning off the pilot light during the summer; you can easily start it back up for fireplace season.  Or, install an electronic ignition lighter.

Turn off unused electronics

There is a power-hungry force invading modern homes called “standby power.” Sometimes called “vampire” devices, these types of electronics devices consume power even while nominally “off,” if they charge batteries or have “instant-on” features. Each device may only consume 3 to 5 Watts of power, but with 10 or more devices in a typical home, this adds up to a lot of money over the course of a year, perhaps $30 to $50. A good solution is to connect several of these devices—your cell phone charger, iPod cradle, battery-powered hand vacuum cleaners, etc.—into a power strip and turn the power strip on only occasionally, preferably at night.

Computer screens and TVs are particularly energy-hungry appliances, and many of them consume power even while in “standby” mode. Consider unplugging them or making sure they are truly off when not in use.

Conserving in the kitchen

The kitchen is often the most popular room in the house. In the winter, firing up the stove adds heat to the home and decreases the load on the furnace. You should leave the oven door open after cooking until the oven has cooled. In the summer, heat in the kitchen must be removed by the air conditioning system to maintain comfort levels. Therefore, especially in the summer, energy-wise cooking practices should be used.

In any season, it makes sense to use the microwave oven when appropriate. Countertop toaster ovens and broilers can prepare foods more economically than heating up a large oven. Also, you can shut off your stove or oven  somewhat before the food has finished cooking due to the residual heat in the burner, pot, or pan. Cooking food in large batches, and freezing the leftovers, often saves more energy than turning on the stove several times for smaller batches. Re-heat the leftovers in the microwave oven.

Refrigerators consume about 8% of the energy of a typical house, a significant portion of the home energy budget. Every time you open the door, some of the cooled air escapes and the warmer air that replaces it needs to be cooled down. Keeping the number and duration of your trips to the refrigerator to a minimum will save energy and money. Similarly, let warm foods cool to room temperature before storing them in the refrigerator to minimize the amount of cooling you ask the refrigerator to do. Most modern refrigerators have a condensation-prevention heater that prevents water condensation on the walls and door. This is a small heater that uses electricity continuously. During the summer, when air is more humid, it is a useful device. It can profitably be turned off during the winter. Look for a switch labeled something like, “Prevents Condensation/Saves Energy – On/Off.”

Consider the outside of your house

While there are many energy-wise things you can do inside the house, you might also consider the influence of your trees and shrubs on your energy costs. Planting fast-growing Leland Cypress or Lombardy Poplar trees, or ivy, on the south and west sides of your house will provide shade and help reduce the amount of cooling required in the summer. Shrubs on the west side of the house can act as a windbreak and thereby minimize the amount of heat carried away from the house by winds. Ivy on the north side of the house can act as additional insulation in the winter.

Summary

There are many ways you can cut your energy costs, some of them without additional cost, just small changes in behavior. Most importantly, work on the largest consumers of energy first: heating, cooling, and lighting. The most significant behavioral modification you can make is to be cautious about heating/cooling. Partitioning your house into zones that are heated or cooled by ductless mini-splits, only when occupied, provides the most impact on your energy costs, if followed up with energy-wise behaviors. NRG SVRS can help solve your energy-saving requirements.

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Disclaimer: The information presented herein is provided for informational purposes only. Technical descriptions, specifications, details, requirements, and limitations expressed do not constitute an endorsement, approval, or acceptance of the subject matter by NRG SVRS. There are no warranties, either expressed or implied, regarding the accuracy or completeness of this information. Full reproduction is not permitted. ©,NRG SVRS, LLC.