Saving Energy and Heat Flow Basics

The most basic and important way to think about saving energy is to understand how energy, specifically heat energy, flows.  Heat ALWAYS flows from warmer to cooler.  Let me say that again because it is so fundamental and so important:  heat energy always flows from warmer towards cooler. In winter, when you open a door, the warm air in your home literally rushes to the cooler air outside.  The warm air in your home flows towards the cooler glass in your windows, and towards the walls and ceilings that are surrounded by cooler air, and towards the floors that are over unheated spaces (yes, the warm air will actually flow down toward your floors if they are cold).  The heated air will rush out of open cooler spaces (doors and windows for example if open) and will pass through walls and ceilings and glass that have cooler air on the other side.  The same is true in the summer….if you use air conditioning, the warmer outside air will always want to flow into your cooler home…through openings, walls, ceilings, windows, skylights, floors, etc.  

When you think about this, you will see all kinds of ways to slow down the heat transfer out of your homes.  Obvious ways are closing windows and doors tightly. Other ways are adding insulation to our walls and ceilings which slows down the heat flow from warmer air inside to cooler air outside (and vice versa in the summer). Insulating your water tank will slow down the heat transfer from the warmer temperature inside the tank to the cooler temperature outside the tank.  Insulating floors that are above unheated spaces like garages or crawl spaces will slow down the heat transfer.  Closing the doors to rooms that are not in use where the heat is turned off in those rooms will slow down the heat transfer from your warmer rooms to those cooler rooms.

Keep in mind, the less resistance in place, the more the heat will flow from warmer to cooler.  We all know that a closed window in winter loses much less heat than a partially open window.  All due to heat flow.  Keep this in mind, and you will find more ways to reduce heat out of your home in the winter, and keep heat out in the summer.

Think energy savings all the time!
jeff

Energy Saving Tip of the Week:  Try not to use your bathroom fans to remove steam in the winter.  First of all, when the fan is running, it is removing heated air from your home. So your heating system is heating the air for you, and your fan is removing the heated air! Secondly, in winter, the humidity levels outside and especially inside can be very low.  Let that steam out of the bathroom and it will help humidify the rest of the house.  A typical bathroom fan removes between 70 and 100 cubic feet or air per minute.  All that air needs to be reheated!!