Saving Money

Mark N

According to the web site of my gas company every degree I turn back my thermostat will save me 3% on my gas bill.  I'm assuming this is for the entire month.  So I decided to do the math.  I normally keep my t-stat set to 70 degrees.  So say I decided to set it back to 65 to save money.  According to my lastest bill I used 188.05 therms from 12/11/09 to 1/13/10.  By my calculations 151.7 therms were used for heating.  Setting my t-stat back 5 degrees should save me 15% on my bill.  Setting back 5 degress would save me 22.75 therms of gas for the month.  I pay $1.35 per therm so I would save $30.71.  Thats pretty underwhelming, comes out to about a buck a day.  It really makes me wonder how much people are saving when they do temporary setbacks over night or during the day.



Mark

StudyingHard

Fuel Usage Observations

I have been reading my gas meter daily for the last two weeks as I experiment to find out whats going on with my system. .    When I cut back an extra 10 or 15 deg  for most of a day or night, the consumption drops noticeably



We were out of town for three days with the thermostat at 50 deg. when the mean temps were 36-36-40,  CCF was about 6 per day.  Versus two really cold days earlier this month when inside temps were kept in the 60 to 68 deg range and mean temps were 21 and 29;  CCFs then were 18 or 19 per day.



I live in southeast Colorado, 6000' elevation.



My math says 35 deg differential (inside to outside)  uses 3X the fuel of 15 deg differential. 



Of course, the hot water heater does run more when we are here, but we keep it in the mid-heat range, so I don't think that will skew the usage very much.

Mark N

Set-back

If I were to set the t-stat back 20 degrees to 50 the saving would be 60% thats a significant amount. By whatever my divorce would cost would wipe out any savings.

From my own experiences of having steam heat for over 20 years my system runs much better the less I fiddle with the t-stat. The efficiency of the system as a whole goes way up the warmer the boiler and the pipes are when the boiler starts. By my own observations when my system is stone cold it takes about 17.5 minutes to get steam to the furthest rad. When it runs every few hours that rad gets steam in 12 minutes. I'm losing less BTUs to the pipes and putting more in the rads. The boiler uses the same amount of energy every minute it runs. I would rather put those BTUs into the rads instead of into the pipes every time the boiler runs.



Mark