Here's a couple of recent sobering experiences

accidental poisoning - I painted some rusty patches on a curved metal roof with a water sealing compound. Then the pressured tap water from the rainwater tank tasted like oven cleaner. I installed a charcoal filter to remove flakes but the dissolved taste lingered for a couple of weeks.

firewood gathering in a deluge - during 100 straight days of rain and sleet your dry firewood stash runs out. Then you have to go out in the forest clambering over wet logs with an idling chainsaw. When you inevitably slip don't grab the throttle by mistake. Think of a leech using a razor.

When we moved into our current home it was an energy sink with lots of low hanging fruit to pick. I will skip some of the more obvious things we did.

1. We have high ceilings; half of which have recessed lighting which has attic behind it. When we moved into the house there was no insulation between the walls with the lighting and the attic because the lights would then over-heat, creating a hazzard. By putting in compact florescents into the recessed lighting there was less heat produced, I was then able to add insulation in the attic.

2. Changing the plumbing so I can easily drain 1/2 the pipes in the house and now we do not heat 1/2 the house in the winter.

3. Insulated shades in the rooms that we do heat. It is a lot cheaper than swapping out the windows and more effective in both summer and winter.

4. A good wood burning stove and the use of dead fall trees around the house for heat. The furnace only runs 5-6 times a year unless we go on a long trip in the depth of winter. The thermostat is set for 40 degrees F. We now only use LP for hot water so one 400 ga LP will now last over two years... even longer if we needed it to.

5. A down comforter for every member of the household and let the house get cold over night. The first person up gets to re-start a fire for the house to start warming up. Children that were more likely to get up very early in the morning are now more likely to stay in bed a little longer... giving mommy a little bit of "quiet time" in the morning.

Installed instant hot water (propane powered) in house for new bride, electric tank system had worked fine for me for years, but not enough
for filling big bathtub for hot soaks. Propane had up until that time
been used for gas logs (rarely). new hot water would stop working almost invariably while she was taking morning shower before work, but sporadically,
one month not at all, another month 10 times. marriage lasted into the Fall when I installed outdoor furnace which also heated hot water. wedded bliss.
but spring came, and outdoor furnace was no longer being operated, propane heater began to act diabolically again. finally in desperation brought new
plumber in: regulator was wrong one, broken (and probably never worked), pipes wrong size, i was lucky the house didn't burn down. God's grace. all fixed and wedded bliss now available for all seasons.

I'm a devoted Do-It-Yourselfer, and I'm a little wary when I hear too much about 'unintended consequences' or 'you don't know what you're in for; it's harder than you think' in reference to such projects.

While it IS important to be aware of pitfalls and complications, there are also a lot of messages out there telling people 'don't try anything crazy, or you'll be sorry!'

There are hazards, and myriad problems arise, but you also have the chance to learn intensely from the process of figuring, implementing and yes, failing a bit and REfiguring.

My Solar Hot-Air panel last year worked quite well (but I need several more), and so I just spent some precious birthday money to get materials for two additional units, but my wife balked at the prospect of adding more impromptu and unpermitted creations to the roof that so far keeps ourselves and our stuff relatively secure. I have to convince her, AND the town I suppose, that this is a legitimate undertaking, safe for us and our neighbors and the firefighters who might have to contend with these things someday.. It's already a lot of work just building the damn things and hauling them to the roof, bolting them in and ducting, etc.. But it's fair enough that I have to dot some i's and cross some t's at this point.

Also, I also built my own cellulose-blower last year, since the rental units are too bulky, and having one allows me to do a section at a time, when time permits. Even with a mere 3" of channel to fill, it has helped take the edge off of a couple rooms which once had very chilly plaster walls. I'm still angling to seal insulated Tapestries onto those walls as well, but face a bit of resistance from the frau.

With luck, I'll have the controller circuit built and the pipes set up to 'catch' some cold and run a winterfridge this year, moving Antifreeze (PROPYlene Glycol), from a finned radiator outside the house into a retired freezer which will carry a tank of the cooled Glycol above it, sipping cold as the thermistor calls for it.

One more project that may see light of day this year is to rehang classic Shutters on the windows, but make them from Insulation board, with a means of easily opening and shutting them (either manually or on a timer) at dusk and dawn, to improve the overnight R-factor of the windows substantially.

My experiments proceed slowly, as I try to keep an income happening in this tortured economy.

Bob
Portland, Maine

I've used a nanotech paint Nansulate that insulates. Our house is 1600 sq ft with 30 windows built in 1927 with no insulation in the side walls story and a half I've done about 60% of the interior and our utility bills have ave.$100 bucks per month at 70 degrees summer or winter.Last fall I coated the basement concrete walls and rim joist except for the wall that butts our drive way that I coated just half in yrs past the south facing drive along the wall would melt back to the middle of the drive within a day and a half of snow or ice this past winter the half coated had melted back about a foot and the other section was to the middle of the drive.The winter before last I had the utility show up saying they were going to move the meter from the basement they wanted a quick inspection which they do twice a yr anyway when the guy showed up he wasn't carrying his sniffer said the engineer would call Monday to set up a move date"I've only tried for 20 yrs" The engineer did his spiel and said it would be moved within the month.Then I told him what I had done on energy efficiency cutting our bill by about 70% and it's two yrs now and the meter is still in the basement.

I posted several comments about our DIY house in a previous thread about Passive Solar.

However, this post is about the two major issues that have been the most difficult to resolve:

- We have lots of south facing glass, heavy insulation, and plenty of thermal mass (which works well) however, the night time heat loss is substantial and the cost and technology for insulating the glazing against this night time loss is a real challenge.

- Heat exchange for air infiltration is another important toptic that is neither cheap or easy to implement.

These two items (although we were aware of them) were not given sufficient priority in the overall building process. As a DIY effort, we still have projects on-going after many years. However, these two items keep getting back-burnered because of the expense involved in actually doing them. My suggestion for anyone building a DIY passive solar home is to consider these two points very carefully - and budget accordingly.

When I built my house I ran an emergency circuit throughout the house. Each room has a recessed 19w fluorescent light and an outlet. This circuit is tied to an 110v inverter that turns on automatically when public power fails. I installed the system to accommodate my 95-year-old mother in law.

I installed a 92% efficient propane central air furnace with electric wall radiant heaters in each bathroom and bedroom. Again to accommodate mother in law. Old people are not comfortable at 70 degrees. When propane price went to $1.60, I installed a couple of additional electric wall heaters and turned off the propane furnace. My electric rate is $.0445kwh.

My wife is allergic to wood smoke so I did not install a wood stove in the house even though I have an abundance of fire wood. Looking to the future, I built an insulated heater room on my back porch and blow the filtered hot air into the existing central air circulation system. The hot air blower switches automatically from public to inverter power when public power fails.

Cold water into my electric water heater is about 50 degrees year round. I placed a junked hot water tank in the wood heater room and connected it to a copper coil placed between the heater firebox and outer wall. The water is circulated with a small pump. The preheated hot water is now the cold-water input to the electric hot water heater.

I live in southwest Washington and we have sun almost every day from June 15 to October 15. I know from personal experience that a 40 gallon steel tank paint black and placed in the sun will heat water hot enough to scald your butt. Next summer I plan to place a junked tank in a glass box on my roof and plumb it into my hot water preheater.

The result of this project is wood heat, and wood/solar preheated hot water.

Gail:

Thank you for your kind post regarding RESNET/BPI. For a further description of what this stands for:

RESNET is the Residential Energy Services Network, a non-profit association of Home Energy Raters. Resnet is best described as a provider of standards and certification for a standardized process of a mile per gallon equivalent for residential buildings. Home Energy Raters typically provide the rating but don't normally do the actual contracting.

BPI is the Building Performance Institute which provides contractor training which can include combustion analysis, carbon monoxide evalation and performing such repairs as the duct sealing mentioned in the messages that were quoted.

Both organizations are involved in training and providing services to increase energy efficiency in homes.

I guess I've been lucky since just about everything has worked as I planned from the PV system to the solar hot water to the heat exchanger in the wood stove.

What didn't work was the 1.5kW wind generator and it wasn't the generator's fault. I simply put it in th wrong place. I sold it for more than I paid for it rather than moving it 500' and putting it on a bigger mast.

Todd

Where I live we burn oil for electricity. When the oil price spiked, electric rates went through the roof, so we installed a solar system. Solar PV is cheap and easy enough for any homeowner to have installed. The equipment was supplied by this company:

http://mrsolar.com/

If you're going to do an off grid system, you can save a lot by using cheap off the shelf Wal-Mart deep cycle batteries (model 27DC6 works well).

Also, we replaced our office fluorescent tube magnetic ballasts with electronic ones. This saves a lot of energy.

http://www.advancetransformer.com/products/fluorescent-electronic.jsp?pb...

LED lamps save a lot of energy but can be expensive. These lamps from Sams are cheap and work well.

http://www.samsclub.com/shopping/navigate.do?dest=5&item=389896

For our second passive solar house, we decided to go off grid, minimalist and low budget. House is of steel/polystyrene/steel panels. It is a 12 volt set-up, electrically self-sufficient (for lighting and sound) using a 50 watt PV panel, 4 second-hand 65 amp/hr batteries, all LED lights (home-made, buy them in bulk and assemble them series/parallel) and car stereo. Total lighting draw less than 2 Amps.
We tried wind, but where we are we get a gale, then weeks of nothing. Solar is much more even, and quieter, much quieter.
All air shunting is by thermosyphon, with manual vents. Cooking and hot water by woodstove.
There are no electric kitchen appliances (no kitchen plugs), no nothing. Hereabouts appliances are 230 volts AC, and we have a washing-machine and vacuum-cleaner running off a generator at that voltage - charging laptops etc as it does so. It runs 2 hours a week.
'Fridge is a top-loading freezer carcass set outside the South (we're in the Southern Hemisphere) wall, and a bay of the house outcrops above it. The lid surfaces in the outcrop - the body is permantly shaded outdoors, 1 foot of styrene all around it. 12 volt compressor, only needed in summer.
A tip: use double-glazing except in a couple of downstairs windows - condensation will go there, will drip down and can be chanelled outside. It beats de-humidifiers.....
The other thing is not to over-current you LED's, it can shorten their life dramatically - we found out the hard way....
Minimalism is the key - if you don't have it, it won't cost you, and it won't break down.

It would be more useful if this subject matter is more focused through specific questions/ themes ( i.e. thermal insulation for residential buildings in cold or warm climates, passive solar shading for office use, night time ventilation for offices, etc.) Energy use in cosntruction and buildings is a very large subject so if everyone writes bits and peices in one thread there it all tends to lead to tiresome and unrpoductive generalizations. The number one thing to state for example is where is a building located which relates to a certain climate and microclimate, for what use and in what context - if that basic information is not included then we are simply not comparing apples to apples.

There's a rather common pattern of "strategic failures" associated with any kind of energy savings project, that the ones that work the best often stimulate more energy use impacts elsewhere. Part of it is the Jeavon's paradox problem, that reducing demand for things lowers the price and stimulates new demand to replace it. As a result much of the effect you intended doesn't actually occur. When you're part of a whole system in which everyone uses things to the max, relieving pressure locally doesn't relieve the pressure of the whole system.

There's the more basic problem, that learning to "do more with less" lets you "do more". Improving your own productivity is a lot like "printing money". If you save money on doing one thing, you have more money for your consumption of other things... It's actually feedback loops of that kind, combined with how money put in savings is used to create new appetites and businesses, that produces economic growth.

So how do you get out of that?? You could put the savings you gain from efficiencies for non-consuming perfections of life, rather that buying and having "more" life. Switching from "more and more" to "better and better" takes a thought process shift, that can be seen demonstrated in any kind of whole system that stabilizes and perfects itself. Our brains are just not taught to think that way. It takes a while to get the knack, and not just leave yourself open to being taken advantage of in a world where a growth culture is increasing its control of everything it can lay its hands on all the time. Finishing and perfecting things is a way to continue being creative without consuming more and more, but sort of breaks with the great ideals of modern culture...

I have completed many small projects that have cumulatively reduced my electricity use by 2/3's and my natural gas use by 1/3.

Cooling:

When roof shingles needed replacement, replaced gray shingles with white shingles.

Replaced all conventional bulbs with CFLs.

Installed electronic thermostat.

Installed ceiling fans in living room and each bed room.

Installed light blocking shades.

Heating:

Used V-strip weatherstripping in conventional windows.

Installed electronic thermostat.

Hot Water:

Installed low flow shower head, and sink aerators from a Niagra kit.

Insulated hot water lines with rigid foam insulation.

Set gas water heater to 120 degrees.

Miscellaneous:

Picked Energy Star electronics when available.

Turn off lights and appliances with firm switches when not needed.

None of this is was very expensive or difficult.

I've used an Aquastar tankless water heater for many years and love it. But when I installed one for a friend she kept have problems with it turning off when showering or rinsing dishes.

I had to watch how she started up the shower and did dishes to catch the problem...
* In showering she would run the hot water full blast in the tub until it got hot, then adjust the hot and cold knobs until it was a nice temperature, then use the diverter to send the water up to the shower head - at which point it quickly became all cold water.
* In doing dishes she filled one side of the sink with hot water for washing then swiveled the faucet over to the other side of the sink and throttled the flow down (still on hot) to a trickle for rinsing.

Turns out that tankless water heaters have a safety device that requires a minimum water flow rate for them to keep running. She had a fancy low-flow shower head (which was below the minimum flow rate) and that her dish rinsing trickle was also below the minimum flow rate.

So we took the flow restrictor out of the shower head, and she switched over to doing a cold-water dish rinse - and the problems disappeared.

The project specific vs whole system dilemma seems to be that in order to save some water heating energy with a tankless water heater you may need to plan to use (waste?) a little more water...

We moved into a 1930's house 5 years ago knowing we had to do a lot but the unique construction hooked us. This house is in the middle of a medium sized College town in the upper midwest so utilities are reasonable and reliable. Summer highs in teh mid 90's and lows in the mid -20's (F) annually. Hose was originally 1380 sq ft but now 1520 with 3 season porch. ouse feels much bigger because of excellent use of built in storage everywhere, particularly second floor under the 10 in 12 pitch roof.

The basement ceiling (first floor) is 4 inch thick concrete slabs on concrete beams. This is a 1.5 story Cape Cod with Brick wxterior and a very small doormer for the upstairs full bath. Second floor is hardwood over conventional 2x6 joists. The interior walls on 1st and second floor are 2x4 with lathe and plaster, ceilings the same. The windows were original single pane, double hung with weights. The gas furnace was "new" (in 1957) replacing the coal fired boiler and we still have the coal chute and room now converted to a pantry in the basement. Gas hot water was older model and utilities were vented into an internal chimney that runs up the center of teh house. There is another chimney for the fireplaces in the basement and first floor that is on the north side/exterior of the house. Kitchen is from teh 1960's including very old built in GE electric stove and oven. A 3 season porch was added in the 1970's onto the much smaller outside porch, 1/4 of this is over basement the rest on slab.

The changes.
1st year.
Replaced furnace and hot water with 95% and 97% direct vent gas units. Furnace has DC variable drive blower to run at low speed to circulate air efficiantly. Installed programable thermostat.

2nd year.
Installed Vermont Castings Wood stove insert and chimney liner and sealed off. Stopped using programable thermostate because the house has so much thermal mass it is more efficient to keep at 68 in winter than cycle between 62-68. Wood heat goes up center stairwell and heats most of teh second floor acceptably. Wood heat also keeps thermostat off making furthers downstair rooms cooler than living room.

3rd year.
Sunroom walls rebuilt (super insualted) with existing double pane sliding windows left. Black tile replaced carpet to get some passive solar gain. Didn't know I could have put down a super insulating cork layer. First mistake and oversight. Blinds on sunroom windows to keep sun out in summer and reduce cold air drain in winter in this room

4th year.
Reroofed house and replaced blown in insulation in attic with R60 fiberglass (2 layers) as an attick blanket. Removed central chimney down into the wall space of second floor to reduce cold air infiltration into core of teh house. Replaced all exterior windows (except sunroom) with Anderson double pane double hung replacements with coated glass. Air conditioning almost never runs now because we close the house up in the morning and open at night. The thermal mass + excellent windows keeps the house cool all day except in constant high humidity 80+ degree weather which is rare. Most nights get to low 70's which is cools the house.

5th year.
Installed ceiling fan in Mater bedroom upstairs to drive the heat off the ceiling. The super insulated attic works in winter and in summer but you still have to exchange air. Removeing chimney down rest of the house in preparation for kitchen upgrade. The chimney goes through kitchen which is tiny and we can gain 9 sq feet by removing it which is a lot to us. Considering putting in either electric or hydronic floor heat on the slab in every room except living room, which has the wood stove. Learning that modern temperature controls don't work with my house due to the thermal mass of the concrete and plaster.

All in all the house is very tight and once the temperature is set it stays there. The house works great for slow heating and cooling since the walls just don'e change temperature quickly. I am investigating solar hot water but almost no one in the community knows details that I want.

As a poster said above, you need to do these things on your own often against recommendations of others who are used to different applications.

Gail, thanks for starting another excellent discussion thread!

One very simple trick I learned from a friend who works in construction: a simple box fan placed at entrance to attic to force cool air into hot attic. I know there are more elegant and permanent solutions for venting the attic, but boy what a difference it made this summer for us! Our central A/C died, and we don;t have the cash to replace it yet. Cooling the attic dropped our interior temp several degrees.

Next up for our old home, weathrization and high efficiency furnace w/ A/C...

About fifteen years ago my brother built a new house in NSW, Australia, in a location which is two miles from the nearest grid power. It was not specifically built to be energy efficient, but was built to be cheap to maintain. The climate is hot and dry in the summer (temperatures up to 105F/40C) and moderately cold in winter (temperatures down to about 20F/-7C). Some key decisions about the house:

• Construction: steel frame with steel siding and roofing (cheap, cheap to transport materials, and termite proof).
• Fiberglass insulation filling all outside wall cavities and R19 in the ceiling.
• Wide verandah all around to shade the walls in summer.
• All windows and doors double-glazed.
• Cooking with wood-fueled slow combustion stove, which also works as a backup water heater.
• Primary hot water heater is solar, with the system mounted on the roof.
• Heating by circulating hot water through polyethylene pipes cast into the slab.
• Cooling with ceiling fans and by large sliding doors in all four walls to allow through breezes.
• Electricity from dual photovoltaic sun-tracking panels charging dual 24 volt lead-acid batteries, with a smaller backup system, a fixed PV panel charging a 12 volt battery. Each system has a 240 volt inverter, with a controller to allow the house to be supplied from any combination of the systems.
• Water collected in tanks from the roof.

How has it turned out? Generally, much as expected. He has added shadecloth curtains in on the outside of the verandah where the summer morning and afternoon sun shines on the walls and the doors. The electric system has had more problems than expected:

• The lead-acid batteries are starting to die. At over 100 pounds per cell, removing one to replace it is not a trivial task.
• With increasing usage for computers, and grandchildren who are addicted to video games, the system was not up to the load, even when it is sunny (which it is most of the time). Replacing the CRT TV with an LCD one did a lot to solve this problem.
• The controllers for the sun-tracking mechanism died. When he went to get a replacement, he found the supplier had disappeared without trace. When he investigated reverse engineering them, he found the markings had been scraped off all the IC chips on the circuit board. The panels are much less efficient without tracking.

To work around these problems, he initially supplemented the system with a small gasoline generator, but this became expensive as fuel prices went up. He has recently (within the last three years) installed a small 12 volt wind generator, and bought a well-used diesel generator. The wind generator helps supplement the solar system most of the time, and the diesel generator is used when there are a lot of visitors, or an extended period with clouds and little wind.

The house is extremely comfortable in winter. In summer, many people would find it a bit hot. Lighting is adequate, using compact fluorescents everywhere. He has enough power to run a refrigerator, a freezer, radios, a computer, television, microwave, washer, etc. He has also found the wood stove heats the house too much in summer, and uses a small propane stove for cooking then.

I upgraded my older homes from the 1970’-80’s over the years and designed and general contracted my current home.

My advice is to install double pane windows if you don’t already have them. This will greatly reduce uneven temperatures in rooms. This can be a do-it-yourself project. Fiberglass frames recommended because they are much stronger than vinyl.

Upgrading to double pane windows will lessen the airflow through duct work when you next replace HVAC equipment. You may be able to go down a unit size,. Variable fan speed air handling units will also lessen resistance through undersized duct work and are more efficient.

Manual J from Air Conditioning Contractors of America explains how to calculate heating and cooling requirements and how to size duct work. My experience in industry is that air balance problems are often caused by a few undersized ducts and that replacing only those will solve distribution problems.

Use metal ductwork. It lasts forever and has less air flow resistance than flex.

Replacing old furnaces and air conditioners will bring you up to today’s higher energy efficiency standards.

With these changes along with compact fluorescent lights I was able to reduce my home energy consumption by 30%.

We've focused on non-complex projects with little to go wrong.

Moved to Hawaii and designed a cheap house with high ceilings (plywood, glass, screen, light-colored metal roof) which uses the trade winds for ventilation. No heating or cooling of the home; skimpy clothes in summer, heavier in winter. No artificial lighting necessary anywhere in the house during daytime. The roof can double as water catchment as necessary.

A simple switch on the water heater. Only gets turned on rarely. Old swimming pool converted into pond, so no need to run a pump; we have a solar-powered small pump to turn the water over. Put up a clothesline to replace nearly all use of the clothes dryer. I reuse a few silk shirts, hand-wash them when showering (cold, feels great) after evening walk, hang to dry and the shirt's ready to wear next morning.

Rearranged our lives to not commute anywhere, and consolidate our trips so total family car mileage <1000 mi/yr, most on a 1500cc engine.

Raised border collies instead of human children. Recommended. Better temperaments, don't shop or need their own cars, legal to work them all day.

Many other small things add up. I will note that there's an ongoing process of trial & error; during the heat wave last week I tried flash-drying my sweaty T-shirt in the microwave oven; worked well for a few days but I got distracted and wrecked the shirt, now wearing it with microwave burnthroughs. Wife has nix'ed the practice. Also save some energy by procrastinating on chores; the society of sloth has to start somewhere.

This is more of an aesthetic choice than anything else; Jevons or no Jevons.

cheers.

Hi Gail,

That's a great idea to talk about the relative merits of our attempts at efficiency. Mine is a tiny one- I think I may have mentioned it long ago in DB - with excellent feedback from Paul in Halifax.

In early 2006 I replaced a bunch of incandescent bulbs with CFLs. For years I had had three CFLs in the garage - relatively expensive at perhaps $7-10 each, and were around 10 years old and still functioning perfectly. Of course the total duty cycle in the garage is quite low, perhaps helping explain the long lifetimes. But they were also well-known brands like Sylvania or Philips. I also had a CFL-based torchiere with some 26W "pin-type" CFLs that runs a little warm, and its bulbs tend to last 5-6 years each.

The new spiral bulbs were largely from HD and hardware stores and were unfamiliar brands like "Commercial Electric" and "Max-Lite". I verified each bulb's power consumption with a Kill-a-watt, but I didn't try to measure the light output or spectral output.

Within two years, nearly every bulb failed. There was no pattern to the failures - bulbs were oriented in different ways, some within an enclosure, others open to the air, none in recessed fixtures. But each had discoloration of the plastic housing at the point where the bulb ends connect to the PC board. Clearly, heat had something to do with it. Dismantling several of the bases, I was unable to locate any obviously failed components.

When I mentioned this on a local forum, I was immediately rebuked by others for making a non-politically correct comment about these obviously wonderful products. Certainly, even with a lifetime as short as year or two, my bulbs were still saving energy over their lifetimes, but the lifetime was a small fraction of the stated typical life, so I felt ripped off.

I've since migrated to name-brand CFLs, mostly 5 and 6-packs by GE, which are in the $2/bulb price range. And I'm marking the in-service date on each bulb now so I can tell exactly how long they last. I'll know better in a couple years how this turns out.

My point is this: it's important that we understand hype and salesmanship can be used to push "green" products just as successfully as in any other market niche. We tend to be early adopters, perhaps, but quality matters just as much here as in any other area. It's worth taking the time to ask around and to do the math before making an investment.

I have a similar story about home efficiency consultants. A company recently called, offering to do a home energy audit. Personally knowing several local folks (and being an engineer myself) I had a nice conversation with the person and then politely said no. But a friend of mine agreed to having an audit done, and proudly called me afterwards to report the outcome. He asked me what I would have said (I've never been in his house) and just offhand I correctly guessed the top three recommendations. I found the person didn't do a blower door test ("Didn't need to, the answers were obvious") and also didn't have an IR imager, but went right to the list of recommended contractors and how it could all be remedied for less than $5,000 or so. When my friend mentioned paying the guy $500 for the service, I didn't have the heart to tell him his local electric company would have sent someone to do that much for free.

We are in a sensitive area - most homeowners don't understand this stuff at all, and are prone to being taken in. Like they say, there's trouble in River City....

I went through several summers on Las Vegas when the temps went up to unbelievable heights (see photo). I got by in complete comfort using a small fan and a spray bottle of water. I'd spray myself and let the fan dry me off, and the latent heat of evaporation (endothermic) kept me quite cool. My electricity bills were a fraction of my neighbors', who ran A/C 24/7.

1. Like TGN we have a 40 gallon water tank, an old defunct hot water heater -- stripped half the shell and insulation off, painted that half black, and installed it in what amounts to a cold frame. We have a high efficiency hot water heater the utility helped us get, and when we run water from it, its supply comes from the solar pre-heater and so it does not have to heat up the new water, just maintain it. This cut about 50% of our electric bill. Cost for materials was nothing. Oh -- not quite. A $40 contractor hose connects it to the house -- if you use an eight dollar hose it will MELT.

2. We have painted the house white and much of the roof as well, and in the summer we use a burlap horizontal awning all along the south wall and smaller awnings over the east and west windows, with burlap shades on the inside. 35F temperature differential: 95 outside, 60 inside narrowing to 85-70 by 8 pm, without air conditioning. Cost for materials was about $20 for all the awnings and shades.