Save energy by using the right windows

vinduerLike many of you, I live in a old house. I used to have a pretty big heating bill as my house really couldn’t keep the heat inside. Last year I hired a company to go over the house and find the places where it was leaking heat. This process is called a thermal mapping, and uses a special digital thermal camera to generate an infrared map of my home. On that map we can easily see which parts of the outside, is leaking the most heat.
It turned out that most of the heat was getting out through my old windows. 80% of the energi loss came from the windows, which made sense as they were about 30 years old and in pretty bad shape, well the glass was still there though, in case you were wondering.

I then hired a local company called Vinduer, to come and replace all the windows in my house. It was a bit expensive, but I wanted the job done right, and I am not much of a DIY type of person. I also wanted some quality windows that would last for a long time, and would isolate my home as good as possible.
After Vinduer had replaced all my old windows, I have them do a new thermal mapping, and the result looked much better. 3 months late I could also see the affect on my heating bills. It had been lowered by a whooping 25% and the period had been even colder than the months earlier. With this saving it wouldn’t take more than a fews years before I had saved the amount of money I paid Vinduer to change all my old house windows, so not only would I later on save money, I would also do something for the environment.

I am pretty sure there at quite a few of you in the same situation, you got an old house with 20-30 year old windows. By replacing those windows you would likely save money in the long run, but you would also use less heat, which is a good thing, when you consider the amount of pollution and CO2 it takes to warm a home these days. If all of us could lower the amount of energy we used by changing to the right windows, then it would make a huge impact on our planet, and could really be something to help lower the CO2 amounts. The energy we use to heat our home, is really something that leads to massive amounts of CO2 emition.

But the windows arn’t always the only part of the home that could be changed to save energy, according to Gratistagtjek, a lot of the time it’s the roof that’s an issue, with their Nyt Tag app, they have found that a lot of the problems come from leaky roofs, so imagine if you could both get a new roof and new windows, then you might be able to cut your energy use in half, now that would be quite something. Of course it would take several years before it would be economically beneficial, but the effect on the enviroment would start from day one after you replaced the roof or windows.

Source:
gratistagtjek.dk
WEB: http://www.gratistagtjek.dk/

The Environmentally Friendly Way to Stay Cool

We all know how hot and sticky it can get during the summer months and most of us are guilty of turning on the air conditioning in our homes and offices to try and keep cool or at least be able to live or work in a comfortable climate.

The only problem with using AC is the incredibly high load on the power supply.

AC Energy Consumption

Ventless Portable Air ConditionerA typical family home with AC running in several of the most used rooms in the house can be consuming 10kW or more. That can run into many hundreds of dollars in additional utility demands when the summer is over and cause major headaches for moms and dads trying to balance the household budget.

But worse still is the less realized impact on the environment when not just one house is consuming all that additional electricity to keep its occupants cool, but thousands in every town. It’s no wonder there are constant brown outs and blackouts through summer as the energy companies literally run out of power to supply the increased demand.

To produce the additional electricity to keep us all conveniently comfortable, huge volumes of non-renewable fuels must be used up in the form of, for example oil, coal and natural gas to keep the generators turning. Not to mention the need for nuclear power stations to take up the extra load and all the additional air pollution that the increased power generating produces.

Environmentally Friendly Cooling

But there is a much more ecologically sound way to produce the cool air we crave inside when it gets too hot outside. Evaporative coolers are vent free (see: ventlessportableairconditioner.intervalinc.com) and are capable of maintaining a comfortable interior temperature in areas that have low humidity and they run at a fraction of the energy consumption that air conditioning uses.

The power needed to run an evaporative cooler can be as little as 1/20th that used by a comparable AC unit!

Just imagine if not just one home made the change to evaporative cooling, but thousands of homes in towns where the climate is hot and dry. That saving can mean a huge load off the minds of cash strapped families who can benefit from much lower utility bills, while the power companies can reduce the amount of electricity they need to generate to supply the grid.

The less electricity generated, the less fossil fuel is needed to produce it, the lower the air pollution levels and the better all round for the environment. It makes sense so all we need to do now is educate people to stop relying so heavily on air conditioners in areas where they can switch to evaporative cooling technology.

You can learn more here: youtube.com/watch?v=CXjj_LoHaKU