Posted by Mark Kw
on June 21, 2009, 9:07:42, in reply to "Re: Good Information Mark"
71.48.249.178
Waste and ignorance is rampant. I don't buy into the global warming/climate change bullsh%t because all tallied, the entire world's population produces barely 3% of CO2 and pollutants. If "people" were the problem, the world would have ended a long time ago - just look at the volcano eruptions, if their claims about "greenhouse gases" and "CO2" had any merrit to them, any one of the hundreds of volcano eruptions in the last century alone would have wiped the planet out a thousand times over!
Nonetheless, while I don't buy into the BS, I do believe strongly in conservation and preventing waste simply because it makes sense. I insulate all pipes, hot & cold simply because it makes sense. Cold because if you have cold water in a pipe where heating the structure is common, you're sucking heat out of the air to warm the water that doesn't need to be warmed. Furthermore, if the structure is sitting idle, you need to maintain higher temps to keep the un-insulated lines from freezing. Hot water lines are obvious, there is more wasted energy going to uninsulated hot water pipes than anything else in the potable water system.
Speaking of fixtures, how many decades did it take before faucet mfg's finally got the bright idea to make the stubs long enough to clear the bottom of the friggin sink??? Holy crap, almost a centry passed before common sense kicked in!
Funny thing is, there are so many cost-effective measures that can be taken, even in existing homes, to reduce the normal operating costs to the point where the improvements will actually save money within a year or two that it boggles the mind. I developed a heating system control, very simple device, nothing more than an upgraded t-stat that can cut hydronic heating bills by 10-50% without doing anything else to the system. People won't spend $100 on a control despite the fact they will recover the cost plus in one to three months, sometimes within a week as was the case with a commercial office I installed on in. My own shop in PA, 4,300 sqft, most of it with 12' & 16' ceilings, uninsulated concrete block and hydronic heating. The year before I developed the control unit, I burned 42 tons of coal keeping the place at no more than 55-60°F for the entire winter. The heating season I installed my hydronic control was colder and longer than the previous season yet I cut my coal use by 9 tons (at $168/ton I saved $1512) . The following season I developed high-ceiling heat channels that cost less than $5 each per year to operate and shaved another 5 tons ($840) off my heating costs.
But, like anything else, it's tough trying to show people how much money they can save - they'd rather just keep spending more every month rather than spend some extra now and save a lot later.
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