Energy Conservation
We’ve covered what Zone 5 did to conserve energy in our office. Now let’s review a few simple things we can do for ourselves at home. Saving energy at home should be nearly free to implement while providing immediate savings. We all know to turn the heat down before leaving the house, and to turn the lights off when leaving a room. For me, it’s all about temperature.
People are always shocked to learn I set my heat to 70+ degrees when home. I’m always surprised to hear that others are going home to a cold evening filled with sweaters, slippers, and blankets. There’s no question that lowering your thermostat helps to conserve energy and save money, but being uncomfortable in your own home is missing the mark. We should never suffer especially as a result of trying to do the right thing. Since I don’t conserve energy by lowering the thermostat I had to find another way.
Ever turn your faucet to hot and then burn your hand? If you can scauld yourself with your tap water chances are you could stand to lower your hot water heater’s thermostat. It’s perpetually heating the water day and night. The higher the temp it’s set at the more energy it uses. Lowering it a degree or two will save you money and you’ll never notice the difference.
I love food but don’t cook. My refrigerator usually houses things like red bull and leftover pizza instead of items you would need to make a gourmet meal at home. Again it occurred to me that there might be an opportunity to save by lowering the thermostat. I put a thermometer in there and sure enough my condiments were being chilled to a frosty 33 degrees. I turned the dial down and the temp went up to 40 degrees which is much more reasonable.
Washing my clothes in cold water seems to be working out great. I bought some Tide Coldwater and never looked back. Even my dirtiest grease-covered mechanic coat and gloves come out clean. I never have to worry about shrinking anything or any other laundry disasters and I conserve energy by avoiding the hot water heater entirely.
My last example doesn’t involve a thermostat, but it’s still related to heat. Change out the filter on your furnace. I was very surprised that only a couple months into the season my furnace filter was completely clogged with dirt and debris. A new filter costs almost nothing and will keep your furnace running at maximum efficiency.
One important point. All of these energy conserving examples are automated. You spend a few minutes doing each one once and then forget about it. This is how we can make a difference for ourselves. If I have to do something over and over in order to make a postive change I know eventually I’ll burn out. Other than the furnace filter I never have to think about these items again. My appliances are going to do all the work for me.
Next we’re going back to the office to review a cornerstone of environmentalism. Proper recycling.
Energy conservation is one of the most popular environmental initiatives these days. Even people who aren’t particularly concerned with the environment are on the bandwagon because everyone is looking for ways to save money and rightfully so. Regardless of trends or the economy, trying to conserve energy really seems like the way to go. Using less energy saves us money and reduces the carbon footprint of the entire world. It also lowers demand and reduces strain on existing power systems which helps us all. Here are some examples of what we did in our office to help out.
A large portion of the space we occupy in our building used to be studio apartments. They had separate leases so many of them had separate heaters and hot water heaters. They were all ancient and none of them were energy efficient. We replaced 36 decrepit heaters and 18 water heaters with two brand new Energy Star SEER 13 HVAC units and two new energy efficient hot water heaters. The power company must have loved old 25 Monroe because the amount of energy all those units were sucking up must have been astronomical. I’m a big fan of “don’t fix it if it isn’t broken,” but when you need to replace, an appliance Energy Star is the answer.
One way to conserve energy is to piggyback something you want onto something you need. Like any networked office, we have servers. Servers need a cold environment for protection and maximum efficiency. Therefore, we needed to enclose them in their own climate controlled room. Good wine needs to be stored in a climate controlled area, as well. The idea was born to combine the two and construct the wine rack with it’s back to the server room. We avoided the need for an additional air conditioner and a steady flow of cool air keeps the wine just right until Todd (our owner) is ready to crack it open and share with us at happy hour.
One of the main energy consumers in any office is lighting. In order to make a difference we focused on lights in common areas that stay on at all hours. The hallways already had fluorescent bulbs, so next was our elevator and lobby. The original bulbs we installed were burning out too often so they were upgraded to LEDs. They are more expensive but they have a really long lifespan and use very little electricity. Now we don’t have to waste time changing out light bulbs every week. If you want to get it done for as little money as possible, you want CFLs. They are cheap but still have a long lifespan. We also installed motion sensing timers for our bathroom light switches. You walk in and the lights and fan turn on automatically. More importantly, they turn off automatically. This saves energy, plus it’s one less thing you have to touch in the bathroom.
I have one more very exciting initiative that we are currently researching that has great energy saving potential. However it hasn’t actually been installed yet so it will have to wait. I can tell you that it involves maximizing natural sunlight in order to save energy, and it’s not solar panels. If we go through with it I’ll make a separate post for it. Up next: saving energy at home.
