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#205897 - 08/11/10 09:16 PM Re: Heat Waves and triple digit temperatures [Re: falcon5000]
Am_Fear_Liath_Mor Offline
Carpal Tunnel

Registered: 08/03/07
Posts: 3078

Painting the concrete walls with an IR reflective masonry paint such as TEX•COTE® SUPER•COTE™ COOLWALL Systems® or EnerG H.R. Architectural might be worthwhile looking into.

http://www.texcotehomes.com/

http://www.dwellsmart.com/Products/Paint-Stains-Sealers-Wall-Coverings/EnerG-Heat-Reflective-Paint

A combined roof hot water and PV solar installation would also shade and put to use the excess solar heat absorbed by the building, reducing internal temperatures and reduce your electricity load for domestic water heating (solar water) and lighting (PV). A water sprinkler system for the very hottest days fitted to the roof for evaporative cooling would be a pretty cost effective solution.

Shading windows by the use of planted trees will have a double effect by shading the amount of IR radiation being absorbed by the windows and you could even have a crop of cherries, oranges etc within a few years.

With your new AC system (actually a good investment) you should also find the efficiency will be better than the previous one. It might well be possible using some of the energy efficiency methods to reduce your AC load by more than 50%.

After lighting (use of CF and LED lighting) the next biggest energy saving appliances to replace in my experience would be for refrigeration and computer appliances (of course depending on how efficient your current appliances are). I have replaced an 20 year of chest freezer with a A++ rated Vestfrost SE255 this year at a cost of around $600 - this was after I realised that the old chest freezer was costing over $150 a year to run by using a power meter. The Vestfrost SE255 is now estimated to be costing around $40 a year to run. As you can see the newer larger capacity chest freezer will pay for itself within 5 years.

I can make measurements and make estimates of electrical energy supply costs using a Costcurrent energy monitor hooked up to a low powered dual core Atom media PC (which itself only consumes around 25W compared to an old Athlon XP machine which consumed around 170W). If you have a large LCD TV you can save a considerable amount of energy by just adjusting the back light down and adjusting the contrast and brightness settings. I saved around 80W yet no-one else noticed the difference in TV picture quality.

What is really surprising is the fact that solar energy is so abundant in places like Florida and the southern states and combined with the fact that the USA is a modern high technological society that the USA should be at the very forefront of implementing alternative energy such as solar power. At the end of the day its not really rocket science. wink

Can you get a government grant for a combined solar water/PV installation which helps towards the cost of an installation?





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#205905 - 08/11/10 11:27 PM Re: Heat Waves and triple digit temperatures [Re: Am_Fear_Liath_Mor]
Art_in_FL Offline
Pooh-Bah

Registered: 09/01/07
Posts: 2432
Quote:
Painting the concrete walls with an IR reflective masonry paint such as TEX•COTE® SUPER•COTE™ COOLWALL Systems® or EnerG H.R. Architectural might be worthwhile looking into
.

The effectiveness, especially the long term effectiveness, of IR reflective paints and their cost-effectiveness compared to other methods remains in question.

The same is true of metalized radiant heat barriers in that if they get dust or crud on them, or there is no space to radiate to, their effectiveness drops. Doesn't mean they aren't useful or can't be used. It means you have to employ them carefully, maintain reasonable expectations, and take the marketing hype with a grain of salt.

The military uses some IR paint that runs north of $100 a gallon that works quite well. But it has to be applied quite thick to meet specs so it takes a lot of paint to do any job.

It has been noted that something as simple as painting a wall exposed to direct sunshine with any good quality white paint drops its thermal uptake. This can be seen on a hot summer day when the blacktop will take the skin off your feet but you can walk on the white lines without serious damage.

http://www.colormatters.com/energymatters.html

Point being that while high-tech paints may gain you a few extra percentage pints you can get most of their benefits, at a fraction of their cost, with common paint you can buy at the local hardware store without sending big bucks.

The same is true of roofing. White shingles absorb a fraction of the energy that dark ones do. Problem is that dark shingles make the roof look smaller, and by comparison the house larger and more valuable. A dark roof increases the sales price while increasing the energy use.

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#205923 - 08/12/10 01:55 AM Re: Heat Waves and triple digit temperatures [Re: Am_Fear_Liath_Mor]
Susan Offline
Geezer

Registered: 01/21/04
Posts: 5163
Loc: W. WA
"... the USA is a modern high technological society that the USA should be at the very forefront of implementing alternative energy such as solar power. At the end of the day its not really rocket science."

Do you have lobbyists in Britain?

We do not have common sense here, we have lobbyists. Big Business hires lobbyists to pay off politicians so Big Business can make even more money than they do. Power and oil companies are Big Business; solar and wind power, organic and permaculture are Small Business. Money talks and common sense walks, every time.

Sue

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#205924 - 08/12/10 01:59 AM Re: Heat Waves and triple digit temperatures [Re: falcon5000]
Susan Offline
Geezer

Registered: 01/21/04
Posts: 5163
Loc: W. WA
Not only trees will help, but so will trellises and vines, and they tend to be quicker to do it. Site your trellises near, but not against, the walls (and roof, if possible), leaving a space between the two. Use strong trellises that will last, not those wimpy little things you see so often.

Find out what vining plants grow well there. Many are fruiting vines, and that would be an asset, too.

Maybe you could even sell the fruit to the neighbors to offset part of your electric bill...

Sue

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#205926 - 08/12/10 02:05 AM Re: Heat Waves and triple digit temperatures [Re: Art_in_FL]
Yuccahead Offline
Member

Registered: 07/24/08
Posts: 199
Loc: W. Texas
AFLM, this is perhaps a nit and a bit of a thread hijack, but it bothers me that you labeled many of my neighbors lazy because of their garden choices. I feel compelled to respond in their defense. You wrote:

"What is really annoying is that many folks are now going for so called low maintenance gardens (folks too lazy to push a lawn mower around) consisting of paving stones and gravel chips and concrete slabs...."

Where I live (El Paso, Texas -- in the Chihuahuan Desert) a large percentage of front yards are "xeriscaped" to save water. Our water utility structures our rates so that using water for landscaping -- which would keep the house cooler -- is cost prohibitive for many homeowners. On top of that, the utility used to pay homeowners something like $1 for each square foot of lawn they removed and replaced with decorative rocks or approved drought-tolerant plants. I will add that it actually rained 0.75" this afternoon and so I can turn off my sprinkler system for a couple of days and save about $5 off my next water bill.

These folks would love to have lush gardens inspired by Capability Brown but don't want the $200+ summer water bills and the city wants to have drinking water through the next 100 years.
_________________________
-- David.

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#205937 - 08/12/10 03:24 AM Re: Heat Waves and triple digit temperatures [Re: Yuccahead]
Susan Offline
Geezer

Registered: 01/21/04
Posts: 5163
Loc: W. WA
David, if your house has a 1000sqft footprint, about 450 GALLONS of water fell on your roof today. What did you do with it? What did your xeriscaping neighbors do?

Did you collect any of it, divert it to a swale or basin around a shade or fruit tree, or just watch it run down the driveway and into the street gutters?

Lawns are water and nutrient hogs, I'm certainly not advising them.

I've got to agree with the Big Grey Man, laziness probably has something to do with it. All that concrete, rock and gravel, along with the paved sidewalks and streets are nothing but heat storage units. Texas isn't hot enough, raise the thermostat?

Or maybe it's just ignorance, which can be fixed. But Texas has made more information available on rainwater collection than virtually any other state. So why aren't more people doing it? And I'm not talking just about a bunch of rain barrels in the front yard, there are all kinds of ways to store water, even if it's just in the ground.

As it is, I would suspect that most of the rain that falls in urban areas of Texas just runs into the Gulf. I wonder how many millions of gallons that is?

Sue

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#205940 - 08/12/10 03:56 AM Re: Heat Waves and triple digit temperatures [Re: falcon5000]
CANOEDOGS Offline
Pooh-Bah

Registered: 02/03/07
Posts: 1853
Loc: MINNESOTA
just as a side note,back in the 30's during a major heat wave people in Minneapolis and St Paul went outside and slept on the boulevards,in mass!!the problem here is having a house that works both summer and winter and is affordable.in the Midwest a real stucco home seems to fit the bill.

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#205953 - 08/12/10 12:47 PM Re: Heat Waves and triple digit temperatures [Re: CANOEDOGS]
falcon5000 Offline
Addict

Registered: 09/08/05
Posts: 662
Am_Fear_Liath_Mor I had remembered you had brought up that energy monitoring device awhile back and was looking into it, they had a similar one for us in the US for the 220V 60 HZ and I think that will be an investment coming up. They do give a few breaks on solar but you still have to fork out quite a bit cash. I have been trying to monitor the progress of the thin film technology to see if the prices would start coming down. They are making cells they can print out almost like a printer, they have them in shingles and like banners to be hung from the sides of houses as well but the price is still more than I can afford right now. I'm putting a water heater timer on the heater now and will try to convert it over to solar down the pipe as well. I'm also tinting the sun face windows with black out curtains behind them as something to try and slow down the loss until I can use other means. I do have shrubs on one side that helps but not where I need them most.

What is messed up was I geared a lot of my survival equipment on cold and floods with equipment capability of 300 feet underwater and 60 below zero for cold. Ironically now it's the heat I neglected thinking the temps would stay semi what normal but these past years have shown a continuing rise into the triple digits and heat waves pounding a lot of normally cold environments. As I am trying to get my house and energy bills under control I wonder what we can do to prepare for a future worst case scenarios of extreme heat, I know Australia has been kind of the watching grounds for everything, the increase in box jellyfish in the waters due to warmer oceans (like what is going on in key west)to nights than can reach either cold or oven temperatures. Even as stated in the past we have followed the animals and went underground, it may be another history repeats itself in the future. Should get interesting. With us we have killer amoebas in our water in the summer, pythons and gators in the swamps, jelly fish and sharks in the oceans, cruise ships turning coco beach into a land fill and add a little oil in the water and wallah you have Florida..
_________________________
Failure is not an option!
USMC Jungle Environmental Survival Training PI 1985

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#205987 - 08/12/10 05:42 PM Re: Heat Waves and triple digit temperatures [Re: falcon5000]
Am_Fear_Liath_Mor Offline
Carpal Tunnel

Registered: 08/03/07
Posts: 3078

The CostCurrent monitor is available in the USA from,

http://www.currentcost.net/buynowmain.html#Extra

What looks interesting is also the Google Power Meter and the Current Cost Bridge device which allows you to record your power consumption 24/7 without having your own PC on all the time as the data is recorded with the online Google Power Meter server.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/oct/28/google-powermeter-home-energy-monitor

I may have to look at getting the CostCurrent bridge device!

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#205991 - 08/12/10 06:48 PM Re: Heat Waves and triple digit temperatures [Re: Yuccahead]
Am_Fear_Liath_Mor Offline
Carpal Tunnel

Registered: 08/03/07
Posts: 3078
Quote:
Where I live (El Paso, Texas -- in the Chihuahuan Desert) a large percentage of front yards are "xeriscaped" to save water. Our water utility structures our rates so that using water for landscaping -- which would keep the house cooler -- is cost prohibitive for many homeowners. On top of that, the utility used to pay homeowners something like $1 for each square foot of lawn they removed and replaced with decorative rocks or approved drought-tolerant plants. I will add that it actually rained 0.75" this afternoon and so I can turn off my sprinkler system for a couple of days and save about $5 off my next water bill.


I should of perhaps been a little more specific as where I live in the east coast of Scotland, the water supply isn't metered and if gardens are left unattended for a few months during the summer you would be waist or neck high in vegetation. The last time I used a garden water hose would have been around 6-7 years ago.


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