RefurbN16

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  • Track Your Carbon Footprint with The Carbon Account

    In a post on measuring electricity consumption I wrote back in December, I briefly touched on a fantastic website called The Carbon Account and thought I’d go into a bit more detail about it because it’s really very good.

    This is a dead easy to use carbon monitoring website that allows you to track your carbon emissions from gas and electricity consumption in the home along with car and flight emissions.

    It displays your carbon footprint for the last year in a neat little chart to which you can add notes to flag up changes that you have made to your home or lifestyle or any times when your house was unoccupied. Unfortunately it only shows your carbon footprint for the last year (it would be great if the developers could fix this at some point).

    There is even a social networking element to it so you can see how your friends’ energy consumption has changed and congratulate them on the steps they’re taking to reduce their emissions.

    You don’t even need to do any conversions of your gas meter readings into kWh (something I’ll touch on soon) as it does it all for you. All you need to do is input the actual meter readings. It literally takes two minutes to take your electricity and gas readings and add them to the website.

    When you first get an account, it asks you a few questions about your home and make a stab at what your annual carbon footprint might be and gives you a flat graph which doesn’t vary over the year.

    As it takes a while to build up a profile of meter readings, I would suggest digging up any old bills you have lying around and adding the readings from them. Just do the “actual” or “customer” readings because the estimated readings are usually dodgy. If you don’t have your old bills, see if you can get your energy supplier to send you your past meter readings or check out their website as they may have a section where you can download your old bills.

    Then take a gas and electricity meter reading on a regular basis, ideally each week, so that you can see how your energy consumption changes. You can even set up an email reminder to give you an e-nudge every week.

    Bear in mind that the outside air temperature is a big driver of your heating demands so it’s quite possible that you might do some energy efficiency work and you don’t see the drop you were expecting to – it might just be that it’s been cold outside. You will still have made a saving because your energy bill would have been considerably higher than if you hadn’t done that measure.

    Taking weekly readings is a good thing because it allows you to do some calculations which remove these temperature effects, another topic that I will cover in the future.

    There’s plenty of information about how it works on the Carbon Account website, along with the calculation methodology. One thing to note is that if you’re getting funny results for your gas meter, it might be because it measures in 100s of cubic feet. Check out the info about this here.

    So set up a Carbon Account right now and start monitoring. If you don’t know what your carbon emissions are, you won’t know how far you’ve cut them!

  • Curtains and Radiators

    This topic came up tonight: what do you do with a curtain hanging over a radiator? And why are radiators sited under windows anyway?

    Back in the day, radiators were located under windows for a counterintuitive, but valid reason, although it has more to do with comfort than energy efficiency.

    Imagine a room with single glazing and a radiator on the opposite wall. The air beside the window will be cooled and will sink as it becomes denser. At the opposite end of the room the air is warmed by the radiator and will therefore rise.

    These two effects combine to circulate the air around the room, but this circulation will draw cold air from the window down into the centre of the room where you are sitting.

    Stick the radiator under the window and it will warm the air beside the window, causing it to rise into the room. At the other end of the room it will descend, but it should be at a warmer, more comfortable temperature. It’s worth noting that with double glazing, this isn’t really a problem and you can locate your radiator wherever is most convenient.

    So radiators are usually found under windows which have curtains which, more often than not, hang down below the top of the radiator.

    Having them hang in front of the radiator is a big no no. All that lovely heat will rise up behind the curtain, right against the single glazing and will be trapped there before leaking out to warm the outside air.

    Tucking them behind the radiator can also be counterproductive. Radiators work best when they have a free and unobstructed flow of air around them, helping to set up the convection* currents that circulate warm air around the room. For this reason you definitely want to avoid radiator shelves and radiator cabinets.

    If you take a look at a typical radiator, you’ll see there are the thick bits through which the hot water flows, and thinner fins that transfer the heat to the air. It’s these fins that you need to keep clear and unobstructed, and tucking a curtain around them will reduce their effectiveness.

    So what’s the solution? Cut the curtains so that they hang a bit above the radiator and then find some way of holding them flush against the wall. Hooks? Velcro? Elastic? Whatever works best. Just make sure that as little hot air as possible escapes behind the curtain and as much air as possible can flow around the radiators.

    By holding the curtain flush against the wall, you will not only prevent warm air from rising behind the curtain, but you’ll also trap a layer of air there. Air is a fantastic insulator, as long as it is kept still, so if you can keep the air between the curtain and window  as motionless as possible, you’re on to a winner.

    * radiators are really badly named – they’re convectors, not radiators; but radiators they shall be known as for ever and ever…

  • Fridge Freezer Temperature

    I picked up a bunch of thermometers this week for TTSN people to check their freezer and fridge temperature. These thermometers are cheap as chips (and apparently reasonably accurate – thanks WRAP) and could save you a tidy little sum if you’ve been overchilling your food. I’ve just popped one in the freezer compartment and it seems to be reading -19 degrees. According to Iceland (and they should know)…

    Star rating Location Temperature Storage
    * Ice box -6 degrees 1 week
    ** Ice box -12 degrees 1 month
    *** Ice box -18 degrees 3 months
    **** Freezer -18 degrees Long term

    So apparently I can store frozen food long term but I don’t really need the freezer compartment as I buy all my food fresh, in small quantities, and eat it straight away. But I can’t turn the freezer part off and leave the fridge part on.

    So what about switching the whole thing off? In winter I could get a cool box and stick it in a shady spot out on the balcony – you don’t want your food (or indeed beer) to be frozen and thawed as would have happened quite a lot this year so a cool box should provide a bit of a buffer.  In summer I think I’d need to switch it back on, but if I could switch it off for half the year…? It seems some are already trying it.

    Of course you don’t want to save CO2 by cutting your fridge or freezer consumption if your food is going to spoil and be wasted.

    I’ve stuck my fridge freezer on a plug in electricity meter to see what it consumes over 24 hours on its current setting. I’ll then increase the temperature and see what the difference is – empirical science going on right here, just for you lucky people!

    1st Results – OK over the last 24 hours my fridge got through 0.4kWh, very roughly suggesting consumption of 145kWh and 80kgCO2 per year. But I checked the temperature in the freezer compartment at one point and it was down to -14. This was towards the end of its off cycle and I’m guessing the -19 reading was taken somewhere around the end of the on cycle. I’ve cranked the thermostat from “3” to “4” and we’ll see what happens (I’m not even sure if it’ll make it colder or warmer at this point).

    2nd Results –  Consumption over 24 hours at the “4” setting was 0.54kWh, a 35% increase. Next I switched it up to “5” and consumption increased to 0.71kWh, a 30% increase again. I’ve now turned it down to “2” and we’ll see how it goes.

  • DIY Chimney Balloons?

    Do you have an open fireplace in your home? Go over to it and see if you can feel a draught going up the chimney.

    If the fire is not in use then a really smart move is to block up the flue. If your fire is in occasional use then please, please, please be careful if you do stick something up there – some sort of reminder in eyeshot might be a good idea.

    During the summer months, make sure you remove the obstruction to let any moisture that might have built up clear away.

    I’ve been investigating chimney balloons but all I can find are ones priced somewhere north of £15 which to my mind is just a tad expensive. So I’m opening it up to see who can come up with the best,  cheapest, most sustainable DIY solution.

    Someone suggested using the foil balloon in a box of wine. Would that work? I think it might on narrower chimneys. Thoughts?

  • Behavioural Measures Pt 1 – Thermostat & Standby

    In my post on Measuring Electricity Consumption, I made reference to changing habits to reduce electricity consumption. These are known as “behavioural measures” and these should be the first steps taken when you start to reduce your energy consumption. They’re free and they’re easy to do – you just need to think about how you interact with energy in your life and adjust your habits ever so slightly.

    You’ve probably heard some of them before and no doubt you are doing some already but there’s always a few others you can adopt. In this first post we’ll cover a few of them but please feel free to add your own in the comments below. I’ll do two or three per post so this could be quite a lengthy series 🙂

    Thermostat

    First of all there’s the old chestnut of turning down your thermostat. The temperature you keep in your house affects your energy consumption a lot. For every degree higher you set the thermostat, it increases your heating consumption by roughly 10%.

    Generally people say “turn your thermostat down 1 degree” but really what you want to do is turn it down to the lowest temperature at which you still feel comfortable. For most people this should be somewhere around the 18 or 20 degree mark but the lower the better.

    This saves energy for two reasons: it takes less energy to warm up your house to the required temperature but it also means that your house loses heat at a reduced rate because the temperature difference between the inside of your home and the outside air.  All in all, your boiler will be working less hard.

    Your room thermsostat is only one of your heating controls and setting these controls correctly is key to getting the best efficiency out of your heating system. It’s a complicated topic and deserves posts of its own and I will cover this soon. All I’ll say at this point is that you want your heating on for as little time as possible and at as low a temperature as possible while maintaining a comfortable, warm living environment.

    Standby

    Many homes have quite a variety of electrical equipment nowadays. Just take a moment to think about what you might have out of (deep breath)…. TVs, VCR, DVD player, digital radio, hifi, MP3 player, games console, digital camera, set top box, mobile phones, computer, monitor, printer, scanner, broadband modem, wifi router, electric toothbrush, shaver, washing machine, dishwasher, tumble dryer, microwave, oven and hob.

    All of the devices in that list will have some sort of standby consumption to a greater or lesser degree. The better performing products might have standby of 1W or less but a few can easily be over 10W and in a couple of cases even up to the 20W mark.

    A good rule of thumb is that for every watt of standby you leave on, it costs you about £1 per year. This may not sound like a lot but it adds up across all of the devices you have in your home and it’s so easy to avoid!

    Some things, such as video recorders, portable phones, clock radios, security systems etc have unavoidable standby because they need to be left switched on. There’s not much you can do about that except for if you ever come to purchase a device such as this, try and find one with low standby consumption.

    Portable devices such as the camera and mp3 are less of a problem. They are very efficient and use very little energy to power themselves, but their chargers do draw a small amount of current if left in and plugged on. The old, clunky chargers that were slightly warm to the touch were quite bad, drawing 2 or 3W if left plugged in but now the lightweight chargers are a lot better and there is a European directive in place (the Energy Using Products directive) that will keep driving down standby consumption. Until that happens though, it’s worth making the effort to switch stuff off.

    The ones to watch out for are the set top box, hifis and digital radios. Set top boxes have, in some cases, eye watering standby consumption. The more complex digital TV boxes (like Sky and Virgin) can knock out 15W to 20W so having it just sit there not doing anything can add about £15 to £20 to your electricity bill. I unplug my Virgin set top box when it’s not being used – it works just fine and boots up quickly.

    You can measure standby using plug in electricity meters but these can be a little inaccurate and this really affects things at low, standby wattages (I’m trying to track down a very accurate plug in electricity meter and if anyone knows where to find one, please let me know). You don’t need to know how much power is being drawn on standby, just assume that it is and unplug it.

    If unplugging something is awkward then there are standby saving devices which you can buy that make things a bit easier.  Simply plug everything that you want to be able to turn off standby into a 4 way socket and then plug that into a standby saving device such as a Standby Buster or an Energenie.