Reducing Your Energy Usage
There is a certain hypocrisy to this post given the fact that I live in a suburb in a detached house that give us more personal space than most inhabitants of Earth. In and of itself one could argue that I live a wasteful life beyond my needs. Most of us in Canada do. So talking about energy conservation while sitting in my home office seems, again, hypocritical. Having said that, even in our suburban houses there is much that we could do to reduce our footprint.
When we moved into our house in 2009 the previous owners left us their utility bills. It has allowed me to make a comparison between the energy consumption of our family of four compared to the previous owners who were either four or five.
Our average use of water, electricity and natural gas when compared to the previous owners compares as follows.
Water 0.58 vs 1.13 m3 per day (51% of previous owners' usage)
Electricity 12.78 vs 39.45 kWh per day (32%)
Natural Gas 7.58 vs 10.125 m3 per day (75%)
The obvious question is "What changed?". Structurally we replaced all of the 1st floor windows (they had already done the 2nd floor). We can assume that this has helped save on heating and cooling. The old gas furnace was replaced with a more economical unit - that likely has saved us some natural gas usage. We use gas for our stove/oven whereas the previous residents used electricity - so that would lead us to use more gas and they more electricity for cooking. Finally our dishwasher and clothes washer/dryer are also newer models so we can assume some efficiencies in water and energy consumption.
I haven't gone through calculating how much the differences impact our usage but my gut tells me that they do not, on their own, account for the totality of the differences I listed above. Some of it must boil down to habits!
A few simple things we have always done follow. We switch off lights when not in a room. We don't ever turn on the twenty-five ceiling pot lights that were installed by the previous owners in the kitchen, den and living room as the floor and other lighting that exists more than suffices. We never turn on the exterior pot lights in the eaves of the roof meant to light up our house and give it curb appeal. We water our lawn only when needed and have turned off the automatic sprinklers. During the winter we heat to 19 degrees Celsius in the daytime, 20 in the evenings and 16 during the night. In the summer we cool down to 24.
So what do 51% of water, 32% of electricity and 75% of natural gas usage work out to in terms of energy saved in a year? Well quite a bit...specifically:
201 m3 of water in a year
9735 kWh of electricity
929 m3 of natural gas
How about dollars saved in a year??
$202 in water
$1020 in electricity
$691 in natural gas
Just over $1913 a year of savings.....not bad at all.
I know that none of this is scientific. Weather, time spent in the home, age of children all have impacts. Regardless.....it does show that we can make a difference to our energy consumption by taking some small actions.
Check out http://shrinkthatfootprint.com and also https://www.wec-indicators.enerdata.eu/household-electricity-use.html for some interesting data.
Happy savings and New Year!
Let me know what you think about what you have just read. Please and thanks!
When we moved into our house in 2009 the previous owners left us their utility bills. It has allowed me to make a comparison between the energy consumption of our family of four compared to the previous owners who were either four or five.
Our average use of water, electricity and natural gas when compared to the previous owners compares as follows.
Water 0.58 vs 1.13 m3 per day (51% of previous owners' usage)
Electricity 12.78 vs 39.45 kWh per day (32%)
Natural Gas 7.58 vs 10.125 m3 per day (75%)
The obvious question is "What changed?". Structurally we replaced all of the 1st floor windows (they had already done the 2nd floor). We can assume that this has helped save on heating and cooling. The old gas furnace was replaced with a more economical unit - that likely has saved us some natural gas usage. We use gas for our stove/oven whereas the previous residents used electricity - so that would lead us to use more gas and they more electricity for cooking. Finally our dishwasher and clothes washer/dryer are also newer models so we can assume some efficiencies in water and energy consumption.
I haven't gone through calculating how much the differences impact our usage but my gut tells me that they do not, on their own, account for the totality of the differences I listed above. Some of it must boil down to habits!
A few simple things we have always done follow. We switch off lights when not in a room. We don't ever turn on the twenty-five ceiling pot lights that were installed by the previous owners in the kitchen, den and living room as the floor and other lighting that exists more than suffices. We never turn on the exterior pot lights in the eaves of the roof meant to light up our house and give it curb appeal. We water our lawn only when needed and have turned off the automatic sprinklers. During the winter we heat to 19 degrees Celsius in the daytime, 20 in the evenings and 16 during the night. In the summer we cool down to 24.
So what do 51% of water, 32% of electricity and 75% of natural gas usage work out to in terms of energy saved in a year? Well quite a bit...specifically:
201 m3 of water in a year
9735 kWh of electricity
929 m3 of natural gas
How about dollars saved in a year??
$202 in water
$1020 in electricity
$691 in natural gas
Just over $1913 a year of savings.....not bad at all.
I know that none of this is scientific. Weather, time spent in the home, age of children all have impacts. Regardless.....it does show that we can make a difference to our energy consumption by taking some small actions.
Check out http://shrinkthatfootprint.com and also https://www.wec-indicators.enerdata.eu/household-electricity-use.html for some interesting data.
Happy savings and New Year!
Let me know what you think about what you have just read. Please and thanks!
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