[LiveBrianD]

How energy efficient are you?

I try to be - I turn use my laptop when I'm just web surfing (as it uses far less energy than my desktop), and on hot days I usually use a fan and only use the AC when it's hot (it's 81F in here right now and the ac's off). In the winter the heat is at 65F or something. I think the house is pretty well insulated. I could close the drapes though.

What about you?

[SnyperTodd]

I'm not. I keep the AC and heat at about 68°F all year long because that's where I'm comfortable. I have 9 machines right now and all are left on 24/7. They update and run scans/defrags/backups/etc at night except the server, which does its maintenance during the day because it's being backed up to in the middle of the night. My truck averages 6.5 MPG according to its onboard computer, and I'm happy with that. My car isn't particularly fuel efficient either. I don't live in an area where we have rolling blackouts or fuel shortages and all that crap. I would move if I did. What is the purpose of cramping my lifestyle to suit someone else's wild hair?

[LiveBrianD]

SnyperTodd, on 20 June 2011 - 04:33 PM, said:

I'm not. I keep the AC and heat at about 68°F all year long because that's where I'm comfortable. I have 9 machines right now and all are left on 24/7. They update and run scans/defrags/backups/etc at night except the server, which does its maintenance during the day because it's being backed up to in the middle of the night. My truck averages 6.5 MPG according to its onboard computer, and I'm happy with that. My car isn't particularly fuel efficient either. I don't live in an area where we have rolling blackouts or fuel shortages and all that crap. I would move if I did. What is the purpose of cramping my lifestyle to suit someone else's wild hair?

Seriously? I've seen places (LOTS of them) with the AC at 70F. Actually, I was near Sacramento the past few days, and in the hotel lobby the AC was set at 70F. It's annoyingly cold in there - I'm dressed for the weather outside! It was about 90-100F outside.

Why do you leave your PCs on 24/7? Sheesh, maybe that's why you need the ac so cold. I'll admit, with the hot temp in here right now my PC is a bit hotter. I don't know why, but it seems when the ac is on (on the hottest days, set at 78F), it's constantly running and the house isn't all that cold. How do some units keep temps of 70?

Granted, here in California the infrastructure isn't the best, and PG&E is encouraging people to conserve. But still...

Also, how do you get such low mileage? Man, my dad seems to get about 24 MPG or so with a honda crv 2011, and that was on a trip on the freeway.

[myloginname]

Heh. I'm in Canada. And I am the worst with Farenheit. I usually leave my desktop on sleep overnight, never on 24/7. I do shut it down often as well, just to save energy. We don't use our AC too often though, even though it can be extremely hot in the summer even over here. Hit's 30C quite often. We had a day where it was 35C, and we just painted our house so we couldn't use our AC. It was crazy hot. Our school's AC wasn't working (for our class only ) so it was like 30C in there. None of us could work properly and we actually had to split up into different classrooms, that's how hot it was. The moment I got home I grabbed some popsicles and ice cubes and ran into the basement with a laptop and my bag, and enjoyed the cold air.

Using heat is practically a must. We like to keep it around 21C, which is pretty low. But without heat, no matter how good your insulation is, you'd freeze.

[LiveBrianD]

The AC kicked in a little while ago (it was set higher than I thought) and now it's down to 80F. That feels cool enough actually, particularly with a bit of breeze from the ac.

myloginname: Well, the US is one of the only countries that uses farenheit, I admit. I still think the heat is a tad high - that's 70F. They recommend 68F for energy efficiency, which is 20C. Where in canada are you? They say it's cold over there, but I doubt it really is.

[myloginname]

LiveBrianD, on 20 June 2011 - 05:41 PM, said:

The AC kicked in a little while ago (it was set higher than I thought) and now it's down to 80F. That feels cool enough actually, particularly with a bit of breeze from the ac.

myloginname: Well, the US is one of the only countries that uses farenheit, I admit. I still think the heat is a tad high - that's 70F. They recommend 68F for energy efficiency, which is 20C. Where in canada are you? They say it's cold over there, but I doubt it really is.

I'm in the Toronto area. A 10-minute drive to Toronto, in Mississauga.

It's cold, at least probably a lot colder than the winters you get there, thought not "freezing" compared to other parts of Canada.

We usually set it to 19-21C, it's actually different during different parts of the day. At night, it's higher, and during the day it's lower.

Well, practically everyday in Winter is below 0C (freezing point). Temperatures like -20C are seen often, and that is like cooooold. There are even -30C, which maybe happens once or twice during winter, which I think is -20F. Always a good amount of snow. Winters can be weird though, there are random warm above 0C periods in between.

Cold winters, yet hot summers. Not the best combo, but at least we're not getting anything super extreme.

[SnyperTodd]

Yeah, seriously. I am comfortable at 68°F. I wear shorts most of the year, sometimes even when it's snowing. And I'm not a big guy, I don't have a lot of "meat on my bones" as they say. I'm 5'10" and 155 lbs.

I leave my machines on 24/7 because they do things at all times of the day and night and because I can. The temperature I'm comfortable at has nothing to do with that.

And I get such low mileage because my truck is a Peterbilt 385, and almost everything I pull is overdimensional in some way (length/width/height/weight). As an example, my last load was a 12' wide x 80' long aggregate conveyor. I'm quite happy with 6.5MPG average, that's pretty good for the type of loads I pull. My Monte Carlo averages 28-29 MPG with mostly highway driving with the A/C on.

Like I said, I'm not the least bit intentionally energy-efficient, and I'm not the least bit ashamed of that fact...

[smax013]

I don't go out of my way to be energy efficient, but then I also don't try to waste energy either.

I try to remember to turn off lights in rooms that I am not using (saves me money as well), but seeing as I am getting older and more senile I am not always successful.

I do use the little squiggly CFL bulbs in many places in my house, but not all. There are some places where incandescent light is needed.

At the moment, I don't have more than one computer running typically (more because my office is kind of dis-assembled) and it is my main laptop. In the past, I would have my older desktop running 24/7. 5 years or so ago, that also meant two CRT monitors running. That tended to suck up energy...and heat up the office.

I just got my central A/C system replaced...the old ducts had fiber board insulation in the duct that was deteriorating. It caused my throat to get soar within 5 minutes of turning the A/C on. So, until this year, I had not used the central A/C and only used window A/C units in my bedroom and office. Since my lowest level (where the family room with the TV is located) has CMU walls, it tended to stay fairly cool until the continuous heat of July overcame the inertial thermal mass of the CMU walls. Now that I have my central A/C re-done (new ducts and new unit), I am running it this summer. I have it set at 69F so that my upper level will stay in the 75F or so range (the thermostat is on the middle level...it is a tri-level house)...the upper level is at the end of the run so it tends to push more cool air to the middle level (no vents on the lower level at all) AND there is the fact that hot air rises...both things that tend to make the upper level stay a bit warmer than the middle level...between the cool air from the middle level traveling down the stairs to the lower level and the CMU walls helping the lower level stay more naturally cool, the lower level stays about the same as the middle level.

For heating, I have base board hot water heating with three zones...one for each level. I keep the upper two levels at about 65F or so and the lowest level at about 70F.

I did have some windows replaced, so that should help retain some heating and cooling. I will likely have more windows replaced in the future (I got some big honkin' ones left to replace in the living room and family room) and might upgrade my attic insulation at some point.

As to vehicles, I drive an SUV, so I get about 17 to 18 mpg on average...less if I do more local driving (much of my driving is semi-highway type driving). I mainly drive it because I no longer like feeling like my rear end is dragging on the ground in a car...aka I like sitting up a bit higher. Plus, until recently most small cars were just plain UGLY and uncomfortable...with gas prices reaching $3 to $4 a gallon, the US car makers decided to finally get a bit more serious about putting real efforts into their small cars to make them more appealing. In addition, going to a more fuel efficient car would not really save me all that much money or gas...my SUV is 4 years old and is only now reaching 30000 miles (the benefit of largely working from home). I also do use the SUV to pull a utility trailer on occasion, so there is some function reason too.

So, in the end, I don't go out of my way to be efficient, but I do take some reasonable steps.

I do recycle. My city now has a recycling program, but before that I found other ways. I look at it as taking just as much effort to toss the glass or plastic in my recycle bin as it does to toss it in my garbage bin (the city does NOT make us sort stuff).

[LiveBrianD]

I just finished watching something interesting: http://www.youtube.c...w-button&wide=1 - about America's independence on unstable foreign oil... (and using more energy doesn't help that)

Synpertodd, personally I think that's weird - wearing shorts in the winter? Man, when the AC cooled it down to 77F, I thought it was cool enough, so I turned it off. Where do you live? What are your machines constantly doing? I didn't realize you meant a truck that was that big though - that explains it. Remember, you do wear out your computer fans faster when you run it 24/7 for no reason...

I'll admit, with dual monitors on my desktop that are fluorescent backlit, it isn't too energy efficient. I often have 40 watts per monitor (5:4, matte which means less light gets through, more energy usage; 19" each), plus the tower uses maybe 60-80 watts - I have a Watts Up thing. My laptop uses about 10-15 watts idle with the battery not charging. I usually only have both on if I'm transferring a file that's too large for dropbox, otherwise just one. I have my power settings set to turn off the screen after 5 minutes (on the laptop, dim after 2), and to put the computer in sleep after 30. I don't have it turn off the HD because that shortens its' lifespan.

Smax, why would you need an incandescent bulb? The only places I have them are in appliances. Well, I guess dimmers can't use CFLs, but I don't have any of those.

I just about always compost or recycle things where possible. Most of the time, my family uses a Nissan Altima Hybrid '08 sedan, it's rated 33 highway, 35 city I think, and my dad gets about 35 in it.

This post has been edited by LiveBrianD: 20 June 2011 - 08:58 PM

[waldojim]

I use an environmentally friendly power company, that claims they only use 100% renewable energy sources (solar and wind). Does that count as efficient enough?

Oh, they are Green Mountain Energy for those who care.

[coastie65]

SnyperTodd, on 20 June 2011 - 04:33 PM, said:

I'm not. I keep the AC and heat at about 68°F all year long because that's where I'm comfortable. I have 9 machines right now and all are left on 24/7. They update and run scans/defrags/backups/etc at night except the server, which does its maintenance during the day because it's being backed up to in the middle of the night. My truck averages 6.5 MPG according to its onboard computer, and I'm happy with that. My car isn't particularly fuel efficient either. I don't live in an area where we have rolling blackouts or fuel shortages and all that crap. I would move if I did. What is the purpose of cramping my lifestyle to suit someone else's wild hair?

( Machines !?!?!? I think you beat out rg and I thought he have a lot. I keep the house at 68 and the winter ( oil heat ) and around 78 in the summer. This corner I am in is next to the bid picture window in front and it get hot in the summer, even with the drapes closed. I do keep a fan blowing this dierction though. Do have ceiling fans in the Kitchen / Dining room and Den. Need to install some more. Do use those curly cue bulbs, but going abck to the old style, Those things are dangerous and if they break, you need to call a hazmat team to clean up the mess. We don't have rolling blackouts either, in fact, in the summer the power company is usually selling excess power to other states. Have had Brown outs in the past in the summer around 5 PM when people get home and turn on / up their A/Cs. That is what toasted the MOBO in my Commodore 64, years ago ( about '86 or '87 ). Right now I'm between cars. My last two were V6's and did pretty with gas. Before that, I always had muscle cars ( not so good on gas ). My desktop is on roughly 12 Hrs a day, plus 2 TV's. The Laptop is run on the battery when I am using it, but on the adapter when my Mom uses it.

[coastie65]

LiveBrianD, on 20 June 2011 - 08:58 PM, said:

I just finished watching something interesting: http://www.youtube.c...w-button&wide=1 - about America's independence on unstable foreign oil... (and using more energy doesn't help that)

Synpertodd, personally I think that's weird - wearing shorts in the winter? Man, when the AC cooled it down to 77F, I thought it was cool enough, so I turned it off. Where do you live? What are your machines constantly doing? I didn't realize you meant a truck that was that big though - that explains it. Remember, you do wear out your computer fans faster when you run it 24/7 for no reason...

I'll admit, with dual monitors on my desktop that are fluorescent backlit, it isn't too energy efficient. I often have 40 watts per monitor (5:4, matte which means less light gets through, more energy usage; 19" each), plus the tower uses maybe 60-80 watts - I have a Watts Up thing. My laptop uses about 10-15 watts idle with the battery not charging. I usually only have both on if I'm transferring a file that's too large for dropbox, otherwise just one. I have my power settings set to turn off the screen after 5 minutes (on the laptop, dim after 2), and to put the computer in sleep after 30. I don't have it turn off the HD because that shortens its' lifespan.

Smax, why would you need an incandescent bulb? The only places I have them are in appliances. Well, I guess dimmers can't use CFLs, but I don't have any of those.

I just about always compost or recycle things where possible. Most of the time, my family uses a Nissan Altima Hybrid '08 sedan, it's rated 33 highway, 35 city I think, and my dad gets about 35 in it.

First, There is plenty of oil here, just the fact that folks are preventing going after it. Second, and I have seen this at work, Natural gas. The comapny I worked for built a building and put in two huge generators that ran off of Natural gas. It burns clean and those things produced enough electricity to power all the machinery and everything else and the surplus was sold to the power company ( it was called a CoGen plant ). All but our large forklifts were run off of propane as well. As for wind farms, if they put a big one up around D.C. there would be enough hot air to power half the country. Heck, George Bush used Geothermal on his ranch in Texas as well as a lot of other inovations such as solar. As for CFL's, AS said in my other post, those things are way too dangerous if they should break and should be banned as they did R-12 Freon. Besides, incadescent bulbs provide more light. Now all this talk about the use of fossil fuel is only vaild to a point. There are other more important factors at work, and if you paid attention in Biology class you would know this. Plants and treees in particular are the "Lungs" of the earth. They take in CO2 and release Oxygen back into the atmosphere. I have heard very little to nothing about the practice of deforestation that is taking place in places such as the Amazon Basin and Africa to clear land. Also there is the fact that the climate is cyclic in nature and does change. Remember that at one time there was an Ice Age. Then the Earth warmed ( no one was driving cars then ) and the glaciers melted and retreated. That is what created the Great Lakes as well as all those lakes in MInnesota and elswhere up there. That having been said, I do watch my energy usage and do recycle. It is more about cost efficiency and saving money and nothing to do with the idiotic rants of Al Gore and company. He is a hypocrite in that his personal "Carbon Foot Print" is probably larger then my whole neighborhood and then some and buying offsets and planting trees is nothing more than feel good BS. Anyway, people should do what they can to conserve, it's just good common sense. One other thought and this is not a slam to our good members from California. You see California hyping Electric cars, but yet they have a seriously distressed power grid as it is and would have to add all those charging stations and further stress a power grid that can barely, and sometimes not, handle the existing demand. OOPs, guess it is time to climb off the soap box.

In all fairness though, I might add here that most off the problems I am aware of seem to be in SoCal and I haven't heard of a lot of problems in that respect in Northern Ca.

This post has been edited by coastie65: 21 June 2011 - 07:00 AM

[mjd420nova]

Why should I conserve??? We're already being hit with increased rates for natural gas, water and electricity because the people have conserved so much the providers (PG&E, pacific gouge and extortion) claim they aren't taking in enough money to maintain the infrastructure because so many people are conserving too much and the revenues have dropped below what they need to maintain the system. I feel that I'm doing my best to help maintain the present rate schedules by keeping my consumption at normal levels. I do however use a grey water collection setup for the clothes washer and dishwasher to water the lawn. This was actually pretty easy to do as those two devices have their own outlets seperate from the sewr and are easy to route to a plastic barrel for collection. Some areas don't allow this but for those areas that do, think about how much water that is. Each cothes wash cycle is forty gallons that you don't have to use for the lawn, the diswasher is only around fifteen gallons per cycle but is very rich in nurients that make the grass very green and lush. Now if I could just figure out how to recycle the shower/bathtub water.

[coastie65]

mjd420nova, on 21 June 2011 - 08:41 AM, said:

Why should I conserve??? We're already being hit with increased rates for natural gas, water and electricity because the people have conserved so much the providers (PG&E, pacific gouge and extortion) claim they aren't taking in enough money to maintain the infrastructure because so many people are conserving too much and the revenues have dropped below what they need to maintain the system. I feel that I'm doing my best to help maintain the present rate schedules by keeping my consumption at normal levels. I do however use a grey water collection setup for the clothes washer and dishwasher to water the lawn. This was actually pretty easy to do as those two devices have their own outlets seperate from the sewr and are easy to route to a plastic barrel for collection. Some areas don't allow this but for those areas that do, think about how much water that is. Each cothes wash cycle is forty gallons that you don't have to use for the lawn, the diswasher is only around fifteen gallons per cycle but is very rich in nurients that make the grass very green and lush. Now if I could just figure out how to recycle the shower/bathtub water.

Haven't done that, but do have a 5 gal plastic bucket catching the condensation runoff from the A/C and use it to water the crate myrtles in the front yard.

[LiveBrianD]

Remember that the trees can only take in so much. Things all evolved to work in cycle - that is, before the humans starting burning fossil fuels in mass. Then things started to get screwed up. And things are changing much faster than before.

Unfortunately, my computer is in the side of the house where the sun is shining - my bedroom is on the shaded side of the house, and it's a degree or two cooler over there. Oh well, I use fans anyway at times.

[coastie65]

LiveBrianD, on 21 June 2011 - 01:21 PM, said:

Remember that the trees can only take in so much. Things all evolved to work in cycle - that is, before the humans starting burning fossil fuels in mass. Then things started to get screwed up. And things are changing much faster than before.

Unfortunately, my computer is in the side of the house where the sun is shining - my bedroom is on the shaded side of the house, and it's a degree or two cooler over there. Oh well, I use fans anyway at times.

You apparently missed my point. There were no humans using fossil fuels during the Ice Age to mess things up, but yet Green House gasses were created and thus warmer the earth enough to melt the glaciers. The problem isn't so much about burning fossil fuels as it is about indiscriminately clearing forests that help to take the bad stuff out of the air ( remember what I said, a tree takes in CO2, a green house gas, and releases Oxygen to the atmosphere ). I'm no tree hugger, but then again, I don't like to see land stripped of trees for developement. We have contractors around here who take great pains to leave as much as possible when developing a project and plant more trees and stuff during the landscaping phase. I'm not discounting the use of fossil fuels either as it has to have some effect, but not to the extent that they would have you believe. A lot of the weather is blamed on global warming when in fact it is due to certain Ocean currents ( El Nino, La Nina, and the Mid Atlantic Oscillation to name three, and there are others. These are Natural occurances and play a big role in the weather.

Here in Virginia, the primary source of power is from Nuclear and Coal fired generators. The Coal fired Plants are clean and non polluting. Va. Power has added scrubbers to the stacks, and on top of that, that added coal scrubbers, so in effect they are burning clean coal ( we have plenty of coal in Va. as well as Natural gas). The emmissions from the Coal fired generators are constantly monitored by both Va. Power and the EPA. We even have a guy over in the next county who has an oil well in his back yard ( produces about 2 barrels a week I think ). The point of all of this is that there are a lot of Chicken Littles out there, but they are basing their sky is falling rhetoric on unproven psuedo science or twisting the facts to suit their agenda. I listen to nobody. I keep my mind open and read, read, read, and try and get the facts and make up my own mind. I take that approach with everything, as most people are preaching from an Idealogical agenda and I refuse to jump on that bandwagon and make up my own mind on things from the facts I have access to through the internet ( I put very little stock in the media these days on giving me accurate information on anything ).

[LiveBrianD]

I do wonder what the co2 emissions are like with the clean coal, even if there aren't particle emissions. Remember, there is only so much coal, oil, natural gas, etc in the Earth.

Do we want to cause unnecessary extinctions here or should we try to avoid to? The former is what we're doing.

[mjd420nova]

The planet we live on is so far a real mystery to its inhabitants. The fluctuations of CO2 and the ozone layer are beyond our understanding. To say that our burning of fossil fuels is driving the planets temperature up and melting the ice caps is misdirected. We are but observers of these changes and nothing we do will change these trends and nothing we did since the advancement of humanity caused these changes. Many observations and measuring of temperatures and atmospheric gases only give us clues to what is happening and no direction as to the causes. The fossil history of the planet indiccates that it has gone through many changes, from one continent covered with forests to over half the planet being covered with ice. What caused those changes?? The sun has a much larger effect upon our weather than we can begin to imagine. And not just the weather is affected. Finger pointing and efforts to reverse observed effects will result in massive expenditures of money and manpower and result in no changes. Mother Nature is so powerful and has influences we cannot detect. We know more about the moon than we do about the area covered by water and that's seventy percent. Don't blame me, I'm just the messenger.

[SnyperTodd]

Quote

Synpertodd, personally I think that's weird - wearing shorts in the winter? Man, when the AC cooled it down to 77F, I thought it was cool enough, so I turned it off. Where do you live? What are your machines constantly doing? I didn't realize you meant a truck that was that big though - that explains it. Remember, you do wear out your computer fans faster when you run it 24/7 for no reason...

I like wearing shorts, even in the winter. I'm comfortable in shorts. If I get too cold I'll put jeans on, but I've blown snow in shorts before. Shoot, I'll wear shorts with a coat if I need to. I live in northern IL/southern WI area. My machines are constantly waiting for me to do something with them, that's what they're doing. And I don't care about wearing anything out by leaving it on 24/7, I swap parts out fast enough that nothing has ever died on me from doing that. And they're not running for no reason, they're running because I don't want to wait for them to boot up...

Something tells me that this topic was started to further an anthropogenic climate change agenda... Am I wrong?

[crazy4laptops]

Umm... its kinda hard to be energy efficient when running 15 Mac servers that have dual 750watt power supplies.... (both racks are on separate 120v 30amp circuits)
Here in TN, we have a nuclear plant, hydro, fossil, and gas-turbine... tied to a fiber-based smart(er) grid, needless to say going green as a city is a very complicated process.

Most of my family uses laptops as primary computers so we're making the green move at home
But we live in a 66 & 81 house (66 winter 81 summer) so needless to say I can do much more CPU intensive stuff in the winter...