Traciatim:
#1 – Concur that newer water heaters would benefit much less from more insulation. Wrote about that in a similar post on my site.

#2 – You should never set a residential water heater to 140 degrees. Scalding burn times at 140 are 5 seconds or less. Water that is hot enough to kill most bacterias will burn a human very fast. Perhaps you don’t have kids and so haven’t thought of a 4 year old stepping into a 140 degree bath and slipping, only to be covered in burns. If you’re concerned about bacteria, use anti-bacterial dish soap. Or let your immune system do its job.

#3 – Dishwashers existed for a long time without “sanitizing rinse.” There is a difference between the normal heating a dishwasher performs and the 180 degree rinse. You cannot disable the first, you can the latter.

#4 – Your statement here is true but misleading. Incandescent bulbs “waste energy” by producing electric resistive heat – while electric heat pump systems use a compressor system to draw heat from outside air – a much more efficient method. Also, as you note, it doesn’t hold true in the summer when you are actually paying to *remove* the heat generated by these bulbs with your A/C. You should get your heat from a system designed to produce it efficiently.

Andy:

#1: Good point.

#2: You could insulate the pipes as well, but I understand this is a problem in some areas.

EA:

Cost evaluation is key here. Your $30 electric bill given your consumption is amazing. KWhs are fluxuate between $0.11 – $0.15 per here in MD. A 100 watt bulb running around the clock would cost us about $9.00 / mo. It sounds like you’re paying well under half of that. And, it also sounds like you have a very well made refrigerator.

Good tip on heating an individual room vs. the whole house, this can definitely save money; we do this at night.

High Output:

I’ll definitely check out LEDs. I’ve never seen them in use as a home lighting alternative…

All:

Thanks for reading and commenting on this. It was fun!

I started a year ago experimenting with longer lasting and lower energy consuming LED lights, these are the future, no warmup like CFL’s and no disposal issues either. Heck, you’ll never replace the LED lights, you children will be using them after your gone! Eventually all my CFL’s will be High output LED.

They cost the most, but last nearly forever (unless overdriven). Oh … and CFL’s HATE dimmers, High output LED’s work great in them.

If you are using Windows XP, follow the steps

- Start Menu Bar
- Go to Control Panel
- Click Power Options
- Go to Hibernate Tab ( 3rd tab )
- Check on enable Hibernation ( if not already enabled )
- go to Power Schemes Tab ( 1st tab )
- Set the time for System Hiberantes option and click on Apply.

The moral of the story is to check your electric rates and make sure it’s worth it. If you live in an area of very low rates and very high heating oil prices (like me) you might want to keep your fridge and lightbulbs that are helping heat the house. (And also keep the central temp low while heating just the room you’re in with an electric space heater.) I’ve been contemplating a switch to entirely electric heat, but the up front cost is the killer.

#2 – I tried, but the hot water supply goes through an unheated crawlspace and on the really cold mornings (single digits), the shower isn’t hot enough.

An idle machine with the drives spun down and monitor in standby probably is using around 50 Watts or less . . . with the 3D card going strong, CPU chugging away, and monitor showing a pretty picture to no one it’s probably 180-200 watts (or 300 for a CRT).

For #1 that’s fine on older models, most newer ones come with more than enough insulation already.

For #2. If you like breeding bacteria for fun that’s a great plan.

For #3. Yippie, a bacteria breeding box, without heating the 115 water it will probably be 100-110 in there (since some comes out not hot and it stays in there a while), and moist and has lots of food. That’s a breeding ground for bacteria. A small tankless heater on the intake of your dishwasher (or internal heater) that gets your water to > 140 will be more than enough to kill mostly everything (but not all of it). Of course, you could probably use cold water if you run it all through a UV system and reverse osmosis filter anyway. Personally I like my dishes over 160, but I’m a little paranoid being on city water.

For #6, don’t bother with CFLs in table lamps and floor lamps, or most inside lights if you heat your home. The ‘wasted’ energy from the cheap and easily disposed of regular bulbs is wasted as heat . . . if you’r heating your home the ‘wasted’ energy isn’t wasted at all. (The opposite is true if your running A/C all the time).