What are your Green household tips?

[telman]

I don't think so, the fridge is located in an alcove and very little heat that it produces can be felt. If I unplugged my fridge, I doubt that my gas bill would rise proportionally. Save where you can, it always good.
My other goal is to see how long we can hang in ther without firing up the furnace, last night in T.O was single digits so I closed all the windows but I think I'll wait before starting the furnace. And no I would catch cold or flu as these are spread by virsuses not by cold temperatures. When I start the furnaces, it only runs in the evening as we are not home in the day, and I can't see warming up thr house for the morning dash to work.

[brunes]

This is spring water I buy. I don't like the taste of tap water - the chlorine is very noticeable.

Easiest way to get rid of chlorine is to fill your water jug and let it sit in the fridge for 1-2 days, *open* (no top on the jug). The chlorine will very quickly evaporate.

This combined with a Brita or other charcol filtration pitcher will give you great tasting water.

[brunes]

This winter if it ever gets cold, I am going to put all the cold packs I have outside, and rotate them into the fridge. I don't know if it will make much of a difference but it seems silly in cold weather not to harness the weather somehow.

I have always thought it would be very cool in Canada to design a house with a "winter fridge / freezer", which would be a closet of the house that had an insulated steel door (kind of like a large fridge door you see in restaurants - maybe get one from surplus?).

This would lead to a closet that would be uninsulated to the outside, but vapour-barriered. The insulation would be between this room and the interior of the house. The bottom half of the closet would have like maybe an R-10 insulation and a very small heater set at 5 degrees, so you could use it as a fridge. The top would be the same temp. as outside, AKA a freezer.

This way in the winter you can store your stuff in here and unplug the deep freeze, and maybe your whole fridge.

[notanexpert]

I don't think so, the fridge is located in an alcove and very little heat that it produces can be felt. If I unplugged my fridge, I doubt that my gas bill would rise proportionally. Save where you can, it always good.

Just like with any other appliance, ALL the energy it uses ends up as heat. It has no place else to go, and it HAS to go somewhere.

...
And no I would catch cold or flu as these are spread by virsuses not by cold temperatures.

You are FAR more likely to get sick when you are cold.
And you're right that the cold and flu are viruses, but the body's ability to fight them off decreases significantly the colder you get.
Also, when you're cold, you get a runny nose even if you're perfectly healthy. For adults that may be easy to deal with, but in kids, that liquid tends to accumulate in their throats and lungs. This creates the perfect breeding ground for viruses and bacteria, so they get sick much more easily when they have a runny nose.

[dark169]

I have always thought it would be very cool in Canada to design a house with a "winter fridge / freezer", which would be a closet of the house that had an insulated steel door (kind of like a large fridge door you see in restaurants - maybe get one from surplus?).

This would lead to a closet that would be uninsulated to the outside, but vapour-barriered. The insulation would be between this room and the interior of the house. The bottom half of the closet would have like maybe an R-10 insulation and a very small heater set at 5 degrees, so you could use it as a fridge. The top would be the same temp. as outside, AKA a freezer.

This way in the winter you can store your stuff in here and unplug the deep freeze, and maybe your whole fridge.

my parents have a cold room that most of the year you could keep most things in pretty safely, in the winter its pretty close to freezing. And their deep freeze is in an unheated garage so it almost never turns on in the winter but its nice to have it plugged in just in case it warms up.

[joshmxpx]

I have always thought it would be very cool in Canada to design a house with a "winter fridge / freezer", which would be a closet of the house that had an insulated steel door (kind of like a large fridge door you see in restaurants - maybe get one from surplus?).

This would lead to a closet that would be uninsulated to the outside, but vapour-barriered. The insulation would be between this room and the interior of the house. The bottom half of the closet would have like maybe an R-10 insulation and a very small heater set at 5 degrees, so you could use it as a fridge. The top would be the same temp. as outside, AKA a freezer.

This way in the winter you can store your stuff in here and unplug the deep freeze, and maybe your whole fridge.

If you read popular mechanics or go to their website, their is a series of articles about a man and his family living entirely off the grid (self-sufficient). One of the first features was about just what you are describing. He put an exterior door in his kitchen and it opened into a sort of pantry that he had turned into an uninsulated fridge for in the winter time.

Another thing that he did was take an older chest freezer (the floor cabinet type) and converted it into a fridge that uses way less energy than a typical fridge since cold air is heavier than room temp air and with a low horizontal fridge, none escapes when you open the door, unlike a conventional fridge in which all the cold air "falls" out every time you open the door.

[telman]

Just like with any other appliance, ALL the energy it uses ends up as heat. It has no place else to go, and it HAS to go somewhere.



You are FAR more likely to get sick when you are cold.
And you're right that the cold and flu are viruses, but the body's ability to fight them off decreases significantly the colder you get.
Also, when you're cold, you get a runny nose even if you're perfectly healthy. For adults that may be easy to deal with, but in kids, that liquid tends to accumulate in their throats and lungs. This creates the perfect breeding ground for viruses and bacteria, so they get sick much more easily when they have a runny nose.

Sorry, didn't realize you were a doctor. I haven't heard that before, but kids are pretty tough. The heat the fridge produces is not benefitting me very much, much like your light bulb thread.

[notanexpert]

...
The heat the fridge produces is not benefitting me very much, much like your light bulb thread.

Of course you don't feel it "benefitting" you, because neither fridges nor light bulbs are designed to keep your house warm! That does not mean that the heat does not exist, or that it somehow does not actually warm your house but "escapes" somewhere into space. The average space heater is 1500 watts, I'm not surprised that you don't feel a 60 watt bulb "benefitting" you, or the fridge, which is probably a couple of hundred watts spread over a huge surface area. But it still WARMS your place, guaranteed. When your heating is on, saving that power means that you have to replace that heat with another source, or it will be cooler, period. You can argue all you want but there's no way of going around physics.
All these efficiencies that so many people talk about are only valid when you don't need to heat your place at the same time. I really feel sorry for people who are too obtuse to realize that and keep deluding themselves about how good they are to the environment or how much money they're saving, when in fact they are only saving anything at all when they don't need heat at the same time.

[telman]

well, not only a doctor but now an expert! If you are why did you start the "Are FL bulbs actually "greener" than incandescents? "thread. Seems to me you are trying to justify using what you want but its far better for me to conserve where I can.

[notanexpert]

well, not only a doctor but now an expert! If you are why did you start the "Are FL bulbs actually "greener" than incandescents? "thread. Seems to me you are trying to justify using what you want but its far better for me to conserve where I can.

For what its worth, I have CFL's all over my house. But I feel I got conned into buying them by some clever marketing. And I feel bad about it, because I have a very strong suspicion that I did the environment absolutely no favour by buying all these useless things, from a total lifecycle perspective. I guess I could feel good about the three that I have outdoors, but those are crap in the winter, they are too dim before they warm up.

[brunes]

For what its worth, I have CFL's all over my house. But I feel I got conned into buying them by some clever marketing. And I feel bad about it, because I have a very strong suspicion that I did the environment absolutely no favour by buying all these useless things, from a total lifecycle perspective. I guess I could feel good about the three that I have outdoors, but those are crap in the winter, they are too dim before they warm up.

Everyone in this (and the other thread) seems to forget - we live in Canada, sure, but it isn't the arctic. You only heat your house 1/2 the year. And I don't know about you guys but in this area I actually need A/C in the summer. So the idea of using incandescents to heat up my house while I cool it with AC is insane.

Sure, in the winter, they don't really save anything since you'd need th eheat anyway. But you don't need the heat in the summer.

[notanexpert]

Everyone in this (and the other thread) seems to forget - we live in Canada, sure, but it isn't the arctic. You only heat your house 1/2 the year. And I don't know about you guys but in this area I actually need A/C in the summer. So the idea of using incandescents to heat up my house while I cool it with AC is insane.

Sure, in the winter, they don't really save anything since you'd need th eheat anyway. But you don't need the heat in the summer.

I absolutely agree with that, the only question that nags me is: are the total lifecycle energy savings that the more efficient light bulbs or appliances claim actually enough to offset the energy used when manufacturing these items. I'm not saying that you should not buy an energy efficient fridge if you need a new fridge, but if you're replacing an old inefficient fridge that still has 10 years of life in it with a new one that is more efficient, is it actually worth it? It takes a lot of energy and resources to produce these appliances and scrap yards are filled up with old ones. I think our climate is not hot enough for this trade off, and its actually better for the environment overall to be using appliances as long as they last versus scrapping them early to take advantage of newer more efficient ones.

[gordholio]

Easiest way to get rid of chlorine is to fill your water jug and let it sit in the fridge for 1-2 days, *open* (no top on the jug). The chlorine will very quickly evaporate.

This combined with a Brita or other charcol filtration pitcher will give you great tasting water.

Good tip, but I like to get water right away. I don't worry if I'm not perfect about energy savings or being green.

[hoob]

A note Blackle does absolutely nothing if you have an LCD monitor. it will only save you power if you have a CRT.

That is incorrect. Blackle does indeed reduce power consumption, even on LCD monitors. Even though the backlight remains on, it takes power to charge the pixels to allow all the light through in "white" mode.

On a 20" 1600x1200 LCD screen, running blackle instead of google in full screen F11 mode, power consumption drops from 38W to 33W. Running on a laptop screen also reduces the power by about 3W as well. (These readings are direct experience using a Kill-A-Watt device hooked up to my monitors and laptops.)