DIY gadgets that could keep your energy bill down
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I find that in cold rooms, my fingers slow down even if I'm warmly dressed.
typing with cold fingers might be a recipe for arthritis.
Bathrooms and kitchens are a special case, which can be addressed with ventilation. One of the upsides of keeping your home cool in the winter is it's much cheaper to circulate in new air from outside. You get to have fresh air all winter without paying to heat all that air up. I believe fresh air throughout the year has many health benefits.
It might be like you said only if you don't use that room, or you have a big house so maybe you don't use most rooms and then you don't fill them with humidity from your own breath. Walls are cold but also dry.
Opening the windows in the winter is how you let all that humidity out.
Absolutely, being able to open your windows is a big advantage of keeping your thermostat low.
Going back and forth over winter break I definitely noticed a productivity shift being some place I was warm and comfortable.
Perhaps there are less noticeable psychology benefits for it being cold but I do not think being uncomfortable and dealing with it is a long term strategy for success. And probably completely impractical if you live with other people in the same house.
If that isn't sufficient, there are still cheaper ways to deal with it than adjusting the furnace. A low power radiative space heater (the sort with a reflective dish) can be very efficient at heating up the person it's pointed at without heating up the whole room. Having a warm drink to pick up and sip on also helps; it'll warm your fingers directly and also give your core a little boost of heat. Heated electric blankets are also extremely effective.
Also, they either a) don't own a piano, or b) don't care about taking care of the piano they own.
Parents in nordic countries leave their babies outside bundled up in strollers in the winter to nap.
The key point here with this napping thing that did the rounds is that this is just for short naps. People in Norway/Finland do not leave their babies in a cold environment for long periods of time. Presumably the main reason they do this cold outside nap is that it's easier to get a baby to fall asleep in a pram (safely wrapped up) but very disruptive to then bring it inside, where it will be warm, have to undress it and then inevitably wake it. But I don't know, there are probably also other reasons. But parents in nordic countries are the same as everyone else when it comes to heating their homes appropriately, especially for night time sleeping.
Personally I would imagine even things like eating would be harder if the room is too cold and the infant must always be maximally layered up. It doesn't need to be any harder.
As for guests, you can turn up the heat when guests come to stay and still see dramatic energy savings, vs running the heat full blast the whole winter.
Anyway, enjoy your... [checks thread]... bathtub waste water heat reclaimer. I'm sure that will make a big difference to your energy bill when your thermostat is turned up to 30C in January.
alternatively
> freeze your nuts off for the environment!
Which lie do you do want to believe for making your poorer?
- have one fewer child (60 tons of carbon dioxide equivalents)
- live car free (2.5 tons)
- avoid one round-trip trans-Atlantic flight (1.5 tons)
- Buy green energy (1.3 tons)
- Buy a more efficient car (1.2 tons)
The source lists a chart with more actions:
https://www.science.org/content/article/best-way-reduce-your...
But instead people focus on recycling and replacing lightbulbs while paying no attention to the 20 flights they took last year.
Perhaps even making inaccurate value judgements on those that didn't recycle that year but also took 0 flights.
Simply put I've set it up that during electricity peak times the boiler doesn't try to heat water to save on electricity costs. Heating water is all done in the off peak hours with some easy calculations. Also I tend to set my boiler to a lower temperature (ie. 58 degrees) during weekdays and higher (60+) during weekends or holidays. That way I always have hot water and get rid of legionella growth.
What I can see I'm using about 1.5 - 2kWh a day for keep 100 liters of water at at least 55 degrees. While the manufacturer of the water heater says the device should use between 7 and 9kWh a day. I really would like to optimize it any further, but it seems that I've hit a wall.
I've also looked at instantaneous water heaters, which could be even more efficient. But those with enough capacity need 400V, which I don't have in my apartment. Also I would probably have legionella growth in my regular water heater if I want to save even more electricity. Which would be a health issue.
In my case, I was able to get rid of my dehumidifier in the basement and the window unit in the summer. Paid for itself in ~6 months.
I have a docker instance of it running on an Ubuntu server at home, and I bougth a few pre-flashed Tasmota electricity meter plugs from Delock. I added another docker container for mosquitto (MQTT) which reads the plugs and integrates into HA. This way I learnt my NAS eats as much electricity a day, as does playing Horizon Zero Dawn on my PC for an hour. Ikea Smart lights on half the brighness are basically non-consuming, and the router is best kept shut down when we're not home for a week or two.
In the end, small household appliances don't make as big a difference, as letting your car charge with solar when electricity is cheap, and reducing charge speed when electricity is expensive (which is also doable with HA). There were great threads in HN about how you can even save energy by heating up or cooling down your house in advance with cheap electricity during the day when demand is low, and turn down the heat/ac in the night when demand is high, thus storing energy in the form of heat. But as a junior programmer with a wife in an already expensive apartment, small savings add up. We realized that running the washing machine less often but fully loaded, and with the lowest temperature water, saves us approximately the cost of Netflix. Few people know it's even fine to wash clothes with cold water.
Ultimately though, our apartment is pretty well insulated, and I would do all the home automation that I have just for the fun of learning. I definitely spent more money (and time) on the server and smart things than what they save us in our bills. Although I hope to apply my knowledge soon at my parents' house, where there's a lot more potential in energy savings.
I haven't used it long, since I just moved over from a docker-compose based installation; but, it seems like it makes managing docker-compose files a thing of the past. I'm thrilled b/c the main reason I'm even messing with HA is to set up some automation for a non-developer friend.
I tried the container originally, but the full OS is just a better experience. It handles all the supervisor stuff a lot better, and there’s tons of addons you can install with one click. I even have VS Code embedded in my HA dashboard so I can modify my config directly from my web browser.
If anyone is looking at trying HA, I’d recommend starting there (https://hass.io).
I agree it's way better than the docker approach, especially once you start adding USB things that need to be piped in.
I had a tough time trying to get my Aeotec Gen5 Zstick to passthrough.
I'd love to know what your setup is, since it sounds like you've been successful in connecting USB devices to HA. Thanks in advance!
Plugged the devices in, added them to the VM from the UI and never had any issues.
It's just a Plex server and has x265 hw decoding so there's really no reason for it to be tuned for high CPU performance.
And that's rant is just the tip of the iceberg:
- finding device who talk ModBUS or MQTT depending on their kind (i.e. if they need fast monitoring or not) it's HARD, most non-industrial commercial stuff are cloud-IoT crap;
- finding devices built for renewable is essentially impossible: those who claim are designed to are not, the others are equally not. It seems that most OEMs or consider that most do not have p.v. etc so it's not worth investing in that area or their very designers do not have p.v. etc and have very wrong assumptions about it.
A small example: I have one of the "most advanced" "modern" water heater, "ready for renewables" etc, a 300 liters boiler where the water can be heated:
- with a small heat-pump
- with a classic resistance
- with something else, an external source like thermal solar, a hydro stove etc
"modern" for it means:
- instead of heat directly sanitary water it heat a "storage water" and have a long metallic spiral where the sanitary water enter from a pipe and exit heated, a good thing for health and durability (the balloon is not pressurized, so cracks are far more unlikely) but that's is. Just a different design with classic decades old tools, nothing special for renewables, energy savings etc.
- it's better insulated than classic water heater, again a good thing, but it's just a thicker wall of insulated material...
- it allow hot water from external source, again nothing special, heat exchanger like that have invented decades ago.
- ...now the "new, smart, exiting part": it offer two switch, one for classic "cheap energy vs expensive energy" and another to be used as a second bit of the first to state: "do not heat, very expensive energy", "do what you want", "energy mildly cheap, start with the heat-pump only than go with the resistence)", "very cheap energy run both heat-pump and the resistence". They do not even consider adding an option to run heat-pump only than stop when it can't heat more or resistence only if you have enough for it (2.7kW) but NOT ENOUGH for it and heat-pump together. Those who design it never consider the direct self-consumption usage, the SOLE sound renewable usage. And that's "designed for renewables".
Now the best: from the lowest segment appliances featuring cloud-tied crapplications, with useless features but NOTHING usable locally, not even dry contacts to being controlled by a homeserver to the highest segment like smart wall box for EV recharge where only VERY few offer basic logic like:
- charge ONLY from renewables
- charge from renewables but watch the clock, ensure this minimum SOC for $this_time seeing actual renewable power and local grid maximum power
- charge as fast as possible
- slow charge targeting $SOC for $this_time
ONLY few months ago a new CCS standard appear dealing with bi-directional usage to enable V2H applications, of course NO ONE have implemented it so far even if EVs are there since decades, albeit marginal. Most EVs use 400V DC batteries, most solar inverters support domestic high voltage batteries who happen to be equally 400V DC, with the very same BMS and concept than cars batteries but no, you can't just plug the battery-on-wheel like the stationary one even if they are the same, nobody though at that so far apparently.
At automation level? NEARLY ALL "smart" stuff are unreliable wireless devices with various radio tech/protocols only VERY FEW are wired even if from simple ModBUS to powerline and equally complex TCP/IP stack with classic ethernet cost the very same and happen to be far more reliable. Those who want, know and can end up with HA, some raspy pico/classic, ESPHome, ... arranging fragile and crappy monsters just because no one so far have really though about "the new deal"...
Well.... Sorry for the wall of text and for such a rant, but we are really in a ridiculous state of things and IMVHO that's due to the fact we completely miss public and free (in the freedom sense) research who can advance the society for societal needs not for someone business needs against the rest of mankind.
Seems like a no-brainer once you think about it ... in the worst case of a flow heater you bring up the water to temperature, let it flow over your body and dump it with most of the heat you put into it.
Systems like the one liked above improve on that by recovering some of the energy. I don't know what the "official" way of installing this system is, but I would just put it in the cold water path and have a thermostat controlled faucet to "switch" to the now-warmer-water gradually.
But I think instead often the heat recovery is installed somewhere in-line after the boiler, to make piping easier, but it makes heat management obviously more complicated.
Tapping the waste water as heat source for a heat pump seems like a better idea.
Better to just have a filter on the drain similar to a dishwasher.
Or am I missing something?
For simplicity, if your hot water system was already a heat pump, you could run it past/into the cold side. No real efficiency gain vs exchanging it with the cold water (actually a loss in theory) but might be cheaper.
I was thinking a cop of 4 would be able to extract 4 units of energy to the heat exchangers 1. But there's only 1 unit of energy in it to extract, which the heat exchanger is already extracting basically for free.
But it should be more efficient to run a heat pump against the heat exchanger's inefficiency/delta then to let it happen and compensate with an ohmic heater.
Yes, the wastewater discharge with a 100% efficient heat pump might actually leave colder than the fresh water comes, due to heat loss to the room exceeding the work required to pump the heat against the exchanger's losses.
The replacement for the lost heat would happen to the equilibriated water and could happen with a heat pump. In principle (if your heat pump and exchanger is perfect) this generates no entropy so is more efficient than putting things with finite temperature delta in contact. In practise it's probably just simpler and requires a smaller heat pump.
Whether you use the waste water (which will still be a degree or two above as exchangers aren't perfect) or whatever your normal source is (ground source may be warmer) would be about cost and making the heat pump work for not-the-shower too.
In massive American homes the water heater could be hundreds of feet away from the shower.
Where I'm from, we take Navy showers[1], where you only use water to rinse things off. Basically:
1. Run water on you so you get wet everywhere, turn the faucet off.
2. Apply body wash and shampoo.
3. Turn the faucet on and rinse everything.
4. Done.
The actual water-using portion of this is less than a minute.
Gas boilers with long pipes means you need to wait for the hot water to come through, and if you stop it again you then have a load of cold water just waiting to take you by surprise.
Cutlery too. The United States doesn't have kitchen knives, we have to tear meat and bread with our hands, it's terrible.
Even a minute of initial water flow should generate enough heat in the enclosed area for the minute or three you need to comfortably apply whatever gels, soaps and shampoos you need. If that's not the case, then either you're in a place with harsh winters and it's the coldest week of the year, or your bathroom / building needs serious insulation rework. In that last case, I guess the water waste is a non-issue compared to overall heat waste due to poor insulation.
Also note that none of that precludes you taking your sweet time in hot water if you need it for e.g. relaxation reasons. It just doesn't make sense to keep it running for the part when you apply the cleaning agents.
I get the efficiency of Navy Showers, but water is cheap where I'm at. Would be a lot of extra effort and discomfort for negligible savings. Maybe it makes sense if you live in a desert or, as the name implies, you're on a ship
No, we just don't like wasting water/heating. I don't know how much extra effort it is to turn the tap off when you're done with it. It definitely doesn't feel like effort to me, and having the water run while I'm trying to avoid it so I can soap myself up is very annoying.
> water is cheap where I'm at.
You are in a thread where people are installing heat pumps to reclaim the wasted heat. Is saying "how about you don't waste the heat in the first place" really that crazy?
You can also compress/save used aluminum cans and periodically sell them to a scrap metal dealership for money. Quick check shows scrap aluminum cans are selling for a national average of $0.45/lb, and it takes about 32-35 12 oz cans to accrue 1 lb of aluminum cans. Assuming you go through a 24 pack of cans per week, enjoy your ~$1.30/month savings for hours of effort!
At least food is cheap, I guess!
How cheap is water in your place you'd consider this a micro-optimization? In my country, unless you're tech-salary-equivalent-or-above, not doing it - and doubling or tripling your hot water (or water + gas) bill - would noticeably cut into whatever discretionary spending money you have.
Micro-optimization would be "grey water reclamation" with a bucket placed in a sink, to reuse hand-washing water for flushing the toilet. Which is something my wife and I started to do a while ago, and while we don't need to do it, the drop in utility bills for near-zero effort is impressive enough that we continue anyway.
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[0] - Or should I say "Standard Showers", as I literally can't think of anyone who doesn't turn off the water for soaping after being made aware that water and heating both cost money.
So it's not a negligible amount of money, but it costs less than my combined streaming services. Cutting it by 20% would allow me to afford... another streaming service? A couple of days' groceries?
I'm also not sure what kind of showers you're taking, but I know from experience being forced to shower with a mostly-clogged drain for a couple of days there's no way my shower head is filling the tub even over my ankles before the shower is done (5-10 minutes). So "several bath tubs" is an exaggeration unless you're taking extremely long showers or your showerhead has the efficiency of a fire hydrant.
And I guess we're just blessed with plentiful water on the US East Coast, because I've lived in several states on this coast for my entire life and I'd never even heard of "Navy Shower" until college, and only then as a reference to... the Navy! Or sometimes we hear about Californians being asked to do so when a drought hits.
But whatever, you do you! If it actually does make a difference for you than go for it!
Your math comes out similar to what I remember from the utility bill (which I currently don't have handy, so I won't provide exact calculation). It's not life-changing, but it's not nothing. A couple days of groceries worth of money we could use for arbitrary discretionary spending, at a cost of... pretty much nothing, I don't consider this habit to take noticeable effort over keeping the shower running. And with several more such "little to no effort saves you a Netflix subscription" habits, this adds up. You can probably ignore $100-$150 / month saved off utility bills and incidental costs when on a tech-equivalent salary, but many people wouldn't.
(And yes, we mind the opportunity costs too.)
> I know from experience being forced to shower with a mostly-clogged drain for a couple of days there's no way my shower head is filling the tub even over my ankles before the shower is done (5-10 minutes).
That's an interesting data point. I may have exaggerated with "several tubs", though my actual shower, left on for the entire duration and with drain plugged, would fill a tub[0] to the level where, were I to lie down, the water would spill out[1]. We may have different sizes of the tub/showering compartments, and possibly different pressure levels and flow rates. Eyeballing it now, the bathroom faucet gives some 10-12 liters per minute, maybe a bit more; this is cut down to some 8 liters per minute when going through the shower head in default setting.
> And I guess we're just blessed with plentiful water on the US East Coast, because I've lived in several states on this coast for my entire life and I'd never even heard of "Navy Shower" until college, and only then as a reference to... the Navy! Or sometimes we hear about Californians being asked to do so when a drought hits.
I never heard it called this way until 'stavros mentioned it today! For me, it was always known as the "mom asking 'why are you wasting water in the shower?' shower" :). We don't need to do it, it just feels unnecessarily wasteful if we don't (and it makes noticeable difference in the bills for households on median salary or below).
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[0] - The 32' x 60' like here: https://www.thespruce.com/bathtub-sizes-reference-guide-1821..., which is similar to "standard bathtub" of 70x170cm where I live.
[1] - I admit I got confused by my intuition. A "standard bathtub" similar to [0] will hold over 200 liters of water, which is of course way more than the shower head would provide over the duration of my shower. When I wrote about filling bath tubs, I thought intuitively about the volume past which you can't lie down without it spilling out.
So over the course of a 10 minute shower that's 25 gallons, * 0.0065/gallon = ~0.16/shower. Sometimes if I'm working from home and not exerting myself physically I won't shower (dry skin so I don't stink after just one day), so say an average 6 showers a week = ~24 showers a month = 3.84, and times 1.5 for the sewer cost (roughly) = $5.76 total / month from the water/sewer usage. Harder to calculate how much water heating costs since the same hot water source goes to all the fixtures/dishwasher/washing machine, and it needs to maintain temperature. But let's be generous and say 20% of the non-winter gas bill is strictly due to heating water for showers. So roughly $14. That's a total of $19.76. Let's say by doing, call them maximum-efficiency showers that take only 1.5 minutes of running water instead of 10. So an 85% reduction in costs would be $16.796 / month in savings. Again not nothing, but I'm not sure it's worth the discomfort either. Plus the steam helps with my shave a couple of days a week. I could also get most of the way there just by taking quicker showers, and honestly I'd rather do that. If I'm going to be uncomfortable, I'd rather have time discomfort than temperature discomfort :)
But yeah I guess it's also a cultural thing. And I'm sure there are some families over here that shower that way, I've just never encountered one in conversation/life. You certainly don't see it in gym/school locker room/dorm/pool showers, and in media, as you pointed out, people have the water running constantly.
I used to have a shower that didn't have a thermostat so it was fiddly to get the temperature right. That one I'd lean in and out, sure.
Municipal sewage is one of the main things we need to focus on atm. We essentially mix black water with grey water, turning the whole concoction into black water that needs to go through sewage treatment. Woohoo, government screwed us over yet again.
Instead, we should re-use grey water in the garden or at least have a separate municipal dump for grey water.
That's highly dependent on location and time. And even if it's renewable, it isn't necessarily cheap, and the people in this article are mostly motivated by high energy prices, not renewability.
My total yearly spend on showers is about $100 a year, and there's lot of things I'd give up before that to save $100, in dollar or energy use terms.
Eventually I'll get a new valve, but right now changing the water flow also changes the temperature.
Wouldn't that money return more via a solar system, or better insulation?
Short of getting a newer heat pump, nothing I do will impact my bill in any significant way. I already do most of the smaller stuff.
I’m using a metal wafer pool heat exchange and a boost pump for pressure on the outgoing side.
I have to admit I haven’t thought out whether this will galvanically disappear the copper.
I’ve also thought out putting a 50’ spool of pex inline, but unsure of pressure loss issues. Or maybe that would be good for the house pipes…
These types of articles are for the general population which may not realise things about insulation. Or energy, or phase changes etc. And generally sent interested in how things work, or efficiency, except to the extent it costs them money.
What would help is higher regulatory energy standards and better enforcement. I’d settle for making sure builders actually use insulation and don’t leave obvious thermal bypass/bridging across it.
My 20 year old new build property leaks heat due to it being a “plasterboard tent” (thermal bypass due to missing sealing around dot-and-dab drywall). If a building inspector had actually checked this before signing it off, it’d have been rejected.
Yes regulation and other stuff is sorely needed. But in the context of what an individual can do 10%-20% is nothing to be sniffed at. And I suspect that severely underestimates the savings compared to the average person, let alone the worst offenders.
If collectively it means 0.00000001% change I don't find it provides much "I did a good thing" value and the time would have been better spent fundraising, petitioning politicians, or maybe even just raising awareness towards say... improving a law that makes a collective 1% difference.
The ability to do this kind of thing has been around a long time.
I’ve had to fool the ecobee into thinking I have a heat pump (I guess I do technically) just to avoid it turning on the aircon when it’s below 18.6C outside.
I think it’s called the heat pump lockout setting or something.
But I can’t set the threshold higher than that, so I still end up in situations where it’s 20C outside and the AC is on to get it under 23C when really I should get the cue to open windows.
Usually the boilers are also oversized for houses here. The temperature differential is not big enough and you waste quite a lot of energy through steam.
Finally, the system boilers are also the most common (as opposed to combi-boilers) and for that reason you are not supposed set them below 60 degrees.
Building insulation for one was a shocking factor. It's 2022 and stuff that was considered "normal" in Europe 10 years ago is still a problem in a lot of UK buildings. Worse, it doesn't even require rebuilding - you can improve the situation incrementally, so it should be a no-brainer for a government to subsidize, yet they aren't doing so.
I've lived in social housing in France that was much better insulated (it would be considered "good" even by today's standards) than places here that rent privately for 2k+/month.
These "tips" are good, but target the wrong market. Those who have the resources and/or knowledge to implement them are either already doing it, live in a well-insulated property, or make enough to not care about the bill in practice. Those who are actually affected badly by the recent energy crisis have neither the resources to implement these, nor will it make enough of a difference to their situation anyway.
The main problem here is that the government has completely failed its citizens by letting the situation get to a state where a significant proportion of the population is considered to be in "fuel poverty".
Blaming the Russia/Ukraine war is a convenient scapegoat but isn't the answer either. Being forever dependent on foreign energy is a major failure for the government, and even now, I'm not seeing anything being done about it. Most short-term energy subsidies won't address the problem (they may solve this problem, but won't prepare us for the next crisis - not to mention that personal energy subsidies do little when you still have to pay businesses' energy prices in the form of increased costs of goods).
There solutions IMO would be:
* massive subsidies on insulation. UK building standards are shocking by European standards, but the good thing about it is that incremental improvements are both possible (no need to demolish the building) and don't require scarce materials so no supply chain concerns there, merely money concerns the government can subsidize
* solar subsidies, and actually making feed-in tariffs competitive to encourage people to invest in it. This would reduce our energy dependency during the day (which conveniently is when the demand is the highest).
Government borrowing for the above points makes sense because it can and will be paid back down the line (solar lasts 10+ years and efficiency decreases gradually, so you'll get something out of it even 30 years later), unlike stupidly subsidizing people's energy bills without addressing the root cause which will be a one-off expense with no expected return.
1) giving them the benefit of the doubt, there might be rational reasons for it that I’m not aware of - unlikely but possible
2) a politician’s primary objective is to get re-elected and accepted/appreciated by their peers. They are usually rich enough to withstand whatever crisis is plaguing their country anyway, so they aren’t afraid of the consequences of their actions. Therefore, politicians probably benefit from what they do now more so that what they’d get if they actually enacted policies that benefit the common man at the expense of large companies and/or lobbyists.
https://www.repubblica.it/cronaca/2022/09/02/news/gas_pasta_...
My mother and mother in law both boil a full kettle regardless of how many teas they are making
? This isn't correct. If my kettle boils in 2 minutes when it's half full, and 3.5 minutes when it's full, then by only half filling it you are saving 1.5 minutes worth of (gas/electricity). Low absolute impact, but high relative impact, and adds up if you boil the kettle 3+ times a day
If you're using gas, it depends on how your electricity is generated and how much heat escapes through your boiler's exhaust etc (some very old boilers are less efficient than a gas turbine + transmission losses).
Plus you seemed to have gone on the boilers rather than kettles.
Yeah, I meant using in the present tense, sorry (ie. The system is keeping the room above ambient even if it's presently idle due to the thermostat). If you're cooling the space, it's much worse.
> Plus you seemed to have gone on the boilers rather than kettles.
The boiler would be the gas central heating system. The kettle is making the tea.
So unless you have some quite specific circumstances it is almost always better to boil only as much water as you need at the time.
If your grid is low carbon it might still break even (it will cost you money though).
This is all relatively pointless minuitae though. The main advantage is it's faster so one should do it anyway as there's no downside.
Unrelated, I've always been fascinated by the idea of a solid state heat engine driven kettle. Peltiers are so inefficient that it's not really pointful even as a toy though. I keep waiting for magnetothermal to be a thing.
https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i2d=true&i=+3Divide%5BkW%...
However, the hardest thing to do when figuring out what uses / wastes electricity in your home is establishing a baseline with the most appliances / systems turned off as possible.
My apt is well insulated, but for me it's still crazy (even packing the fridge with as much thermal mass as possible), and furnace / AC turned off at the breaker my apt still uses around 8KWH per day. Water heaters and refrigerators have a long way to go! Curiously, leaving my AC / furnace completely off or on at about 80% cooling a 20F delta uses very little power, exciting how efficient modern climate control is :).
The water heater is the real power suck for me. Here's a couple typical days: https://i.imgur.com/Hx8Zgk4.png
Is it for heat pumps that work slower? It still implies to me that insulation is lacking.
I'm still somewhat dubious of 'better' thermostats though. I just turn it on when I feel cold. I don't see how a thermostat could improve on: 'The heat only goes on when it's cold enough for me to turn it on'.
I've got cavity wall insulation, 30cm of insulation in the loft and recentish double glazed windows and the bedrooms stay warm enough at night with just body heat and residual heat. The heating on goes on in the evenings (still hasn't gone on yet) unless it's really cold. I don't think any of those are particularly onorous jobs to undertake.
My house has something called ETICS* (basically a thick outer layer of polystyrene with a weather resistant paint. Ugly stuff, but it works wonders!), mineral wool insulation in the attic (which I'm supplementing just in case), underfloor insulation with extruded polystyrene and of course double glazed windows. We don't turn on the heat until it's 3 degrees or less outside. Thermostats and stuff like in the article bring too small benefits to really consider.
Ultimately my direct debit for gas electricity is only £10pm at the mo after the govt bung so my house is about as good as I'm going to get it anyway.
For those of us with solid walls it's expensive and very disruptive to install internal/external wall cladding. I happen to live in an area where I'm not even allowed to install external cladding.
Theoretically it could use feedback from all the thermostat valves (and adjust the burner to keep the most-open valve near (but not at) 100% flow), but that requires feedback from all valves rather than just an outdoor temperature probe and a parametric mapping curve that depends on radiator style, desired indoor temperature, and building insulation.
The lower the level the more efficient it is. It's better to run the boiler on low for 3 hours, vs high for 1 hours.
How do you know if to run the boiler on low or high? You check the outdoor temperature. You also do a backup: If the boiler has been running for more than an hour, increase the temperature slightly every 15 minutes. Once it goes off, reset the temperature to the one determined by outdoor temperature.
There does seem to be a copy of the 2.2 version (latest is 3.0) floating around so nothing stops you using that - as someone has done: http://ihormelnyk.com/Content/Pages/opentherm_library/
I couldn't find version 3.0 though.
Edit Although to be fair it's way more open than something like EMS, which is what my Worcester Bosch uses. There's some info on that from reverse engineering efforts but that's it.
If I was buying a new boiler I'd try and get one with Opentherm support for future proofing. Surely more controllers will come out. Isn't much at the moment AFAIK.
Looks like the "Control setpoint" is the relevant command for flow temperature.
Most heating systems where I am have one...
One big advantage over a on/off thermostat is that it the room temperature doesn’t fluctuate as much.
so far i haven't noticed any difference, but i think that's the point.
The best time to plant an apple tree was 20 years ago. But if you didn't do that, the best time is now.