Not much new on the project front.
I am eyeing replacing our kitchen fridge over the next few months. I am hoping to keep the cost below $1500 while getting the highest effienciency I can in our size needs. It should help the electric bill which was the highest it has been in in 2 years (over $440 dollars). The problem is that the tempature here has been at records all month. Also, since the kids and my wife's schedule mean someone is home nearly all day.
After I take care of a few other expenses I am hoping in the next few years to put solar on the house also replace the AC units with more effiencent models.
Aaron
Hoping the weather cools off.
Is the ground source heat pump an option for you?
Posted by: Joe Otten | September 28, 2009 at 02:30 AM
I don't know if you've already thought/done this yet, but my wife and I knocked out ~80kwh/month from hang-drying our laundry instead of using the electric dryer. Our electric dryer uses around 4~5 kwh per load and we typically have 4 loads/week. The hang-drying laundry works suprisingly well in our stairway-hallway as it only takes 1 day (2 now that its getting colder) to dry. Throwing in a fan, the evaporative drying gives a bonus slight cooling effect in the summer.
We average 13kwh/day in our 2 story 2 bedroom townhome on days without A/C usage --just at the summer baseline. We drove this down from nixing the dryer, auto-shutdown the home-theatre computer each night, and timering the reservoired coffee maker
Our circa 1999 fridge takes 3kwh/day...an equivalent new one would approach 1kw/day. But the fridge still works well, and the home has other more pressing improvements to be done so we'll see.
Posted by: Joseph Winn | November 15, 2009 at 08:40 PM
Thanks for the input. We do hang our laundry in the laundry room.
The fridge replacement is next. Hopefully year end.
Eventually I want to replace our AC system.
Posted by: Aaron Baranoff | November 15, 2009 at 09:39 PM
Ground source heat pump would be very expensive in this area.
New AC system and Solar would be good.
Our heating costs and hot water costs are very very low. We average 0.66 therms in the winter and half that in the summer. At less typically less then $20 per month this is a non-issue.
Posted by: Aaron Baranoff | November 15, 2009 at 09:45 PM