Stijn!!

[pete3799]

Sounds cheap Richard......what's an avg. mo. bill?
Ours averages about 85.00 per mo.

[GH85Carrera]

My electric company averages my electric bill for me. It is just over $80 per month. The gas bill is about $55 per month averaged. We have 12 foot ceilings which don't help.

[Oh Haha]

Originally Posted by Porsche-poor

one would hope she is ok.

Drove to her other house and she is fine. She said she just got busy running around looking at countertop samples. Her phone went dead so she didn't even know I had called.

I saw the island that she is installing. Holy cow! It is almost as big as our whole kitchen area!!!!

She apologized several times for not calling. I told her it was cool. I'm just glad she wasn't in trouble. She said "well, you waited long enough to check if you thought I was dead!". Um, yeah. Sorry, I got busy doing stuff.

[RKDinOKC]

Don't know how you guys get by with such cheap electric bills, mine averaged is $120. But gas is only $25.
Need to get some of those usage meters and see just what is using the juice where.

Maybe when I had those squirrels living in the attic they put in HVAC or a fridge or both!
Pretty sure they packed some of the outside wall insulation nesting form the noises they made.
Probably all going into the HVAC.

If I could read the meter, guess I could just throw the breaker on the HVAC and see how much it was using.

[GH85Carrera]

How old is your AC unit Richard? Older units are power hogs.

Of course my wife would never let me keep the house as cool as yours.

[Oh Haha]

We are on the "budget" plan with Consumers which provides power and gas. We've paid $236.00 a month for the past few years.

With the mild winter we had no payment in May and only $73 for June. The notice for July's payment came yesterday and it is $213.

Our furnace and A/C is 3 years old so it is pretty efficient. We keep the house at 70 degrees all year.

[RKDinOKC]

My HVAC is only about 10 years old. Supposed to be a lot more energy efficient that the original I replaced.

My house was built in 1981. It and the neighborhood was built cheap. Windows suck. They are single pane aluminum that sweat all around them in the winter. But the house is not drafty. Couple of years ago i put nice storm doors on front and back. The storm doors that were there when we moved in had gaps all around them.

Even with an insulated garage door, by 4pm it is the same temp in my garage as it is outside in the summer. In the winter I run a 1000watt thermostatically controlled space heater to keep my garage from freezing. Keeps the garage above 45°F in the winter. So I assume the garage walls and ceiling are not insulated at all.

When I replaced the roofing right before my foot fiasco I upgraded materials and and installed ridgeline venting to flow air in the attic better. Haven't beefed up the ceiling insulation, it's deeper than the rafters in most places.

[RKDinOKC]

Logged on to my electric company web site and was able to get some pretty fancy reports on my account. Most reports say my usage is lower than the average for my neighborhood. Especially the always on usage. The hourly graphs show that my usage pretty much follow the days temps up and down.

They have a summer rate thing that prices electricity at $.05 for off peak ours and $.18 for peak 2pm to 7pm. My usage history shows it will save me about $20 a month if I don't do anything any different. More if I use their thermostat so the ac runs less during peak alerts they send out, which are during the peak times, but not necessarily the entire peak time or every day. And it runs the ac an hour before the alert time to cool your house below your set temp so it will remain cooler during the peak alert shut down time. Kind of interesting. If it gets uncomfortable you can set it back to your regular temps. Also has a no risk guarantee, if at the end of 12 months if you electric bill is higher, they give you the difference back.

Signed up for an energy audit where they have someone come out and check everything usage, insulation, etc. then make recommendations for lowering energy bills. Will be interesting to see what they find.

[Oh Haha]

Our main house was built in the 50's but the windows were upgraded in the 80s when the second story was added. They are Anderson but are now old. We have good insulation in the attic and the garage. My garage stays cool in the summer and warm enough in the bitterest of winter to work with no coat.

Our house faces West and the summer sun is brutally hot on that side from about 2 til sunset.

[Jim Richards]

We replaced/upgraded our HVAC, changed the windows to dual pane, insulated the exterior walls and attic, and switched to a tankless water heater. So far, our utilities are not too expensive. But we need more time in the house to be sure.

[RKDinOKC]

Talked to my brother (supposed to be an engineer) about shutting off the heat/ac for rooms I don't use. In home automation information I found individual rooms can have their own thermostats by having those thermostats each operate the main system and also dampers that control the air into each room. In these systems a bypass is installed with a damper that allows air to go from the output of the HVAC unit directly to the return so the air flow thru the HVAC is the same even if you are only push air to one room. This keeps the proper amount of air going thru the HVAC unit so it doesn't strain the blower motor by not letting having only one vent open pressurize the output side of the HVAC unit. This is supposed to let you run multiple zones with one HVAC unit.

My brother says it will damage the HVAC unit anyway because it puts heated or cooled air directly back thru the condenser/heat exchanger. I thought the condenser and heat exchanger heating/cooling was maintained by their own thermostatic controls than the blower and system in general, ie, my circulation fans don't run until the heater box is warmed enough it does any good, and the burners shut off if the air box gets to hot. AND the cooling does the same thing with the compressor so the condenser doesn't freeze up.

My brother claims his HVAC is designed to run different flows so his system can run different zones. His house has a HVAC unit for each zone. One for upstairs and one for down. The house design looks to me like two units were used for space savings and simplicity of ducting and returns.

My brother was zero help when trying to get my front bedroom the same temp as the rest of my house. Instead of 5 degrees warmer both summer and winter. It is the only room in my house that has a west facing wall AND it has a west facing gable over the room. It was weird running a window a/c unit in the winter with snow on the ground! Now that a tree and big shrubs shade that wall and gable from noon on it is the same as the rest of the house.

You think my brother is full of 5hit on the multiple zone bypass thing not working as the home automation stuff says it does?

I think it would be cool to have thermostats in each bedroom and the kitchen. You could have a set temp for the house in general, then have set back thermostats in the bedrooms to make them cooler at night, and another thermostat for the kitchen so it could keep the kitchen cooler when cooking. Besides shutting off bedrooms that aren't in use.

[Oh Haha]

I believe the "This Old House" guys installed a system like you are describing. I don't recall exactly how it worked but it had multiple zones. I think the homeowner was having trouble keeping the entire house the same temp on each level.

[Oh Haha]

https://youtu.be/F2EJLhZ939A

[GH85Carrera]

Howdy all. I had a fun morning playing in the attic. I installed a new video surveillance system. 4 cameras for now and a DVR that records two weeks of video before it overwrites data.

Getting the 4 new Cat6 cables run was zero fun. I did have a friend helping for some of it.

I need to adjust the cameras and get them straight and pointing perfectly.

[Oh Haha]

I had an eye doc visit this morning and then we went to see my mom. She was in the hospital again all week but is home and feeling better. My BIL finally had his heart zapped to correct the atrial fibrillation. He said the difference is amazing in how he feels.

Gotta be at the in-laws at 8am tomorrow to help the handy-dude hang drywall on the ceilings. yay

I hope we actually get some work done this time.

[RKDinOKC]

Hope you actually get some help this time.

Thanks for the this old house zone video. Lead me to bunch of others too.

That pneumatic bladder system looked pretty neat for zoning an existing system. I liked it having thermostats in each room. That system would have really helped with my hot room situation! They only talked about distribution and not having a bypass or managing the returns.

One showed by measurements on a closed system that bypass ducting did not cause any less current draw but was actually wasting energy by circulating treated air back into the evaporator and not focusing the treated air on the zone being distributed to. There were comments about how not putting in a bypass made the zone being treated being very noisy because of the higher velocity of the air flow. Described their house as sounding like it was going to take off.

Another showed the proper way to set up and calibrate the bypass and how inefficient a system with a bypass installed backwards would always be open and was not letting enough air flow to get to the house ducts.

Another showed the importance of a balanced system. With a hallway return he measured the air pressure in a room, then closed the door and show how the air pressure in the room increased significantly and the pressure decreased in the rest of the house. Explained this was causing problems because the pressurized room was leaking treated air out of the system, windows, etc. AND the lower pressure in the rest of the hose was drawing from outside in thru the returns making the system treated new untreated air.

Another showed how most houses were improperly sealed and insulated. Showed places treated air was being leaked into the attic. Gave an example of snow melting on the roof due to the heat in the house leaking into the attic and the damage it caused. Showed bathroom vent fans should be vented to the outside and not just the attic. And needed a damper to keep the outside air from coming in thru them. I know my insulation could use a tune up.

My conclusion to be the most efficient right now is the keep my unused rooms doors and registers open. My system right now doesn't seem to be having any trouble maintaining a 32°F difference with triple digit temps outside.

[RKDinOKC]

Glen, glad you all didn't get heat stroke working in your attic with it so hot outside. Mine doesn't get as hot as it used to. When I had my roof redone they removed the cyclone vents and installed both ridgeline vents and more soffit vents. It does a pretty good job of keeping it not too much hotter than it is outside, which is still hot though.

Only have one network cable run in my house right now. It was recently upgraded to cat6 when I had to pull a new cable after the tree coming thru the roof poked a hole in the old one. It is so my servers are wired to the internet cable modem with gigabit. Everything else is on wifi.

Had a video camera for a while. It was wifi so could move it around. It also had tilt, swivel, and zoom. Had to quit using it because the camera wifi controller messed with my work VPN. It kept glomming all the 192.168 traffic and their was no way to turn the 192.168 network off on it. Anybody want a wireless camera?

I set up my local net to 10.0.x.x to keep from having problems with works 192.168.x.x LANs. When they first set up the network at work I told them the norm for company private networks was 10.0.x.x because the private home network default was 192.168.x.x, but I am family so I don't know what I am talking about. Now they have problems with people using VPNs. And the VPN itself is not setup correctly because most users Outlook will not find Office365 when the VPN is connected.

[Oh Haha]

blech. feeling like crap this morning.

Must be getting a head cold.



Threw some cold meds down my neck and I'm off to drywall.

[GH85Carrera]

I did the attic work just after dawn. It was actually cool up there until 8:30 or 9:00. The attic work was done by 9:30 and it was not too bad up there. I was showered and finished with outside work by 10:30. I did some of the configuration work and still need to figure out how to connect it to the Internet. That way I can see the cameras from an app on my phone. All the cameras are outside so if some geek figures out how to hack into image system all they see is a real boring view of my yard.

[Oh Haha]

We really poured it on today.


He and the other dude didn't get there until 845 and were hungover. I think we hung 5 sheets and then he called it a day. If I was running things we would be there until the sheeting was done.

Going back tomorrow for a few hours he tells me. I'm working for him so I just do what I'm told. Glad it isn't MY house.


We have had rain steadily since about 10am, though and we need it.