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DIY gadgets that could keep your energy bill down

• mnw21cam 4y ago
  While the gadget that adjusts the flow return temperature is a great idea, it basically means that the radiators in the house aren't big enough. Either the radiators were installed in an age where condensing boilers were unusual and the boiler upgraded later, or the installer didn't do their calculations correctly. Bigger radiators allow the same heat output using a lower more efficient flow temperature.
  • wjnc 4y ago
    In my locale the installer does just that. Install. Perhaps some calculation in order to sell you a bigger capacity, but certainly not optimization. Even talking about optimization with only high school physics with the people like installers and energy advisers gets you blank stares quickly. I think the benefits could be like 10% on your gas bill, but alas it’s untapped potential for those not into DIY.
    • soco 4y ago
      Once you contact a slightly bigger company - say over 5 folks - you'll usually get one actually mastering their skill, for the initial talks. Then of course they'll send the lowlies to actually install and that's okay too.
  • serpix 4y ago
    This is outgoing flow temperature thermostat, adjusting the heating curve based on outside temperature. A very basic component which is on every single water based heating system in the Nordic countries. I am baffled why this is not a standard part. This component can also adjust the flow rate and the temperature of the water. A more advanced system can look ahead the coming weather AND price of energy and use thermal capacity to overheat / cool the building ahead of time.
    • TylerE 4y ago
      In large parts of the US it rarely gets much below freezing. I'm not even _that_ far south (35 degrees N lat), and the coldest month of the year has an average daily low of 0.5C. Coldest temp ever recorded here was -20.
• bombolo 4y ago
  The english version of "cook your pasta without boiling water"? https://www.repubblica.it/cronaca/2022/09/02/news/gas_pasta_senza_fuoco_giorgio_parisi-363880856/ https://www.repubblica.it/cronaca/2022/09/02/news/gas_pasta_...
  • walthamstow 4y ago
    The English version of that is to only boil the kettle with the amount of water you need for the cups of tea you are making My mother and mother in law both boil a full kettle regardless of how many teas they are making
    • Schroedingersat 4y ago
      If you're using gas or resistive heating anyway this achieves very little.
      • SECProto 4y ago
        > If you're using gas or resistive heating anyway this achieves very little. ? 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
        • Schroedingersat 4y ago
          If you're using resistive heating then you're just heating the house with a different resistor. 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).
          • benj111 4y ago
            That's assuming you're only drinking tea when you want the heating on though. Plus you seemed to have gone on the boilers rather than kettles.
• graeber_28927 4y ago
  Shout out to Home Assistant! 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.
  • vonseel 4y ago
    Worth noting that Home Assistant OS + the official and community add-ons make managing all this very easy. 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.
    • KMnO4 4y ago
      I have a server running over 50 various docker containers, and only 2 virtual machines. One of those VMs is Home Assistant. 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 https://hass.io).
• fho 4y ago
  What I stumbled upon recently is heat recovery for showers (e.g. https://www.meanderhr.com/en/2012/meander-at-vvs-dagene-showing-plumbers-and-energy-consultants-shower-heat-recovery/ https://www.meanderhr.com/en/2012/meander-at-vvs-dagene-show...). 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.
  • joezydeco 4y ago
    I looked into these things a long time ago and part of the problem is that the drains will build up a layer of biofilm (bacteria, soap scum, other waste) on the interior, making the heat exchanger lose efficiency over time.
    • danw1979 4y ago
      Could a regular dose of caustic soda not flush that out pretty easily ?
  • stinos 4y ago
    Do you even need a switch? In a normal cosed system (so no additional storage etc, but even then it's usually closed I think), cold water is fetched by the boiler to replenish the hot water which goes out when you're taking a shower. Small amount of time later the drain gets warmer, so it starts heating the copper tubes, through which the incoming water is flowing hence that gets warmer. And hence less work to do by the boiler.
    • Arelius 4y ago
      I think it depends on the details of the install, if you can install it directly in line of the cold line input and the boiler, I think that works fine. 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.
• IshKebab 4y ago
  The right way to do this is with OpenTherm, but you need a compatible boiler.
  • nsteel 4y ago
    Open by name but you need to join their OpenTherm Association to access the protocol spec (or use Google).
    • IshKebab 4y ago
      Yeah that's a bit disappointing but I can see why they would want to do that in order to force compatibility. 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/ http://ihormelnyk.com/Content/Pages/opentherm_library/ I couldn't find version 3.0 though.
      • nsteel 4y ago
        I couldn't find setting flow temp in 2.2 (only reading) but I only skimmed it. 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.
        • deleted 4y ago
          [deleted]
        • IshKebab 4y ago
          Yeah I also have a Worcester Bosch one and always was disappointed that it didn't support OpenTherm but it turns out they make a £40 adapter to convert EMS to OpenTherm! I've ordered it. We'll see. Looks like the "Control setpoint" is the relevant command for flow temperature.
  • 4y ago
• casion 4y ago
  (in climates with cool seasons)
• Techbotch 4y ago
  I don't get it. How does this improve on the outside temperature sensor that comes with every heating system? Or is that not standard in the UK? Here in Germany it has been a standard feature for – well as long as I can think (several decades)...
  • walthamstow 4y ago
    An external thermostat on the outside of your house? This is unheard of in the UK
  • oakesm9 4y ago
    I've never had this in the UK, even with fairly new ones. Looking at the models offered there doesn't seem to be any mentione of a feature like that, even on the higher end models.
  • tony_cannistra 4y ago
    It doesn't. It's the same thing. Lots of combis don't come with one.
  • jessaustin 4y ago
    My parents got the highest-tech HVAC system locally available (rural midwest USA, "Lennox iComfort") five years ago, and rather than external temperature sensing it requires an internet connection so that it can talk to a weather service. Seemed sort of Rube Goldberg to me, but it seems to work?
  • odiroot 4y ago
    Most of these Worcester (Bosch) boilers don't come with these sensors. The one installed by my landlord is so cheap it doesn't offer any regulation interface besides the one knob in the front. It also lacks any temperature display, so I had to tune it with external thermocouple. 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.
  • 4y ago
• poulpy123 4y ago
  I don't get it, is 't it just a thermostat?
  • ars 4y ago
    See here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33348350 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33348350
• Animatronio 4y ago
  Pretty nice for a DIY project, but it turns out that the first guy in the article uses an Alpha e-tec boiler, for which the manufacturer also sells a "weather compensation probe" to adjust the heat output according to outside temperature. It's just under £45.
  • benj111 4y ago
    Why would you want a weather compensation probe? Surely it's indoor temperature that matters. 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'.
    • Animatronio 4y ago
      I'm guessing it adjusts the boiler quicker (up/down/off) than simply by measuring indoor temperature, which is a lagging indicator. I can also bet that insulation is very much deficient, this being the UK.
      • benj111 4y ago
        Wouldn't insulation be the first thing to fix though? 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.
        • _carbyau_ 4y ago
          Insulation is great. But if you rent then you have limited control over what you can do. Insulation seems to be hard for Renters but maybe turning up and down a boiler is possible.
        • Animatronio 4y ago
• giantg2 4y ago
  I always click these articles hoping for a new trick. I'm almost always disappointed. 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.
  • pftburger 4y ago
    I installed a heat exchange between my shower drain and the water heater inlet. Still need to do some calculations but the heat recovery is dramatic. I’m using a metal wafer pool heat exchange and a boost pump for pressure on the outgoing side.
    • giantg2 4y ago
      The way my house is set up, I doubt it would be dramatic for me. My hot water is already turned down. It seems like a big project to install a heat exchanger given the space it would need to be in.
    • Scoundreller 4y ago
      I just want to superglue old aluminum heatsinks on the water inlet pipe, but people are going to think I’m nuts… 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…
  • benj111 4y ago
    Well there's no silver bullets. If you're on HN you're probably more engineering inclined than 90% of the population anyway and could figure most of the big stuff out. 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.
    • danw1979 4y ago
      Basically none of us hackers out there saving 10-20% on this and that is going to make a difference whatsoever. It might make us feel good I guess. 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.
• jessaustin 4y ago
  Why is BBC running this sort of article now?
  • MichaelCollins 4y ago
    Opposed to months or years ago, you mean? The best time to plant an apple tree was 20 years ago. But if you didn't do that, the best time is now.
• turtlebits 4y ago
  IME, the most useful way to keep your energy usage down is to get an energy monitor. Almost akin to seeing how fast your electricity meter spins, it's enlightening to see how much money you're spending per hour/day/month in real time.
  • danw1979 4y ago
    Yes ! I have found a couple of constant ~100W loads (faulty fridge, broken hot water sensor causing constant pumping) that were costing hundreds of pounds a year.
• fiat_fandango 4y ago
  My utility recently made smart-meter metrics available (even raw data feeds) with 15min resolution for all energy use and pricing. It's been incredibly helpful, however my biggest electricity hog is my refrigerator. 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 :).
  • aulin 4y ago
    a single meter to classify all your appliances? does it use some kind machine learning to do NILM? how accurate is this?
  • flaviut 4y ago
    What model of refrigerator do you have? Mine pulls down about 1.2kWh per day. The water heater is the real power suck for me. Here's a couple typical days: https://i.imgur.com/Hx8Zgk4.png https://i.imgur.com/Hx8Zgk4.png
  • _1tan 4y ago
    Cool! Do you know what tech your utility is using?
• elif 4y ago
  my power company installed one of these devices on my water heater this year as a pilot program completely free. so far i haven't noticed any difference, but i think that's the point.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• joezydeco 4y ago
  My Ecobee wall thermostat happily shows the temperature outside and the forecast ahead, and does absolutely nothing else with that information. The ability to do this kind of thing has been around a long time.
  • Scoundreller 4y ago
    Yeah, it drives me bonkers. 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.
• globalreset 4y ago
• green-salt 4y ago
  What ends up being ok for me in my apartment is an inexpensive 'dumb' space heater on a wifi plug and a room fan with a temperature sensor I made with an ESP32 on it all tied into home assistant to be a 'smart' thermostat. I have baseboard heating and its set up terrible in this apartment.
  • Nextgrid 4y ago
    Watch out with smart plugs and heaters. I personally would only trust smart plugs to half their rated current.
    • green-salt 4y ago
      Good call, I've had these Sonoff plugs run at 1000w for several days before (a big dehumidifier that maintenance put in to dry out a leak), but at "high" setting on the fan the inrush current goes to 15A, at medium the inrush is 7A and stable at 6.
• alex3305 4y ago
  I have a warm water boiler / water heater where I live now. Running fully on electricity, which I have 'made smart' with Home Assistant. First of all I replaced the analog temperature sensor with a digital DS18B20 connected to a Raspberry Pi. I 'calibrated' this sensor with another sensor at our main faucet in the kitchen, so I can set the tap water temperature. Secondly I've added a power monitoring smart socket to the water heater, so I can switch it remotely. Finally I've added both to Home Assistant as a climate device, so I can easily control it. 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.
  • stefan_ 4y ago
    There are heat pumps to replace warm water boilers, but if you are only using 2kWh a day, it's probably not gonna pay off in a long time.
    • addflip 4y ago
      If you're in the US. Starting next year, the Inflation Reduction Act added a $1900 tax credit for purchasing heat pump water heaters so it might pay off earlier than you think.
    • alex3305 4y ago
      Yes. I know of these. Here in the Netherlands those start at about 1000 euro's for a hybrid solution. A full heat pump boiler starts at about 2000 euro's. But you get about 600 euro's subsidy. However, as far as I can tell it will only about half my power consumption for hot water. So with the current electricity prices (about 30ct/kWh) it will pay back itself in about 13 to 15 years or so. 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.
• gorbypark 4y ago
  I recently just set up a smart plug I got at LIDL for about €8 to turn on only for the 6 cheapest hours per day. Here in Spain the prices change per hour seemingly randomly but they give 24 hours notice. It was pretty easy to do in about 5 lines of YAML in Home Assistant that hits a JSON api with the prices. I use it to charge my electric scooter and battery banks. Remains to be seen if running a Pi with Home Assistant 24/7 actually would save any money overall, but I am already running it for a Pi Hole instance.
  • djhworld 4y ago
    I've got 3 pi's running all the time with a small 5 port unmanaged switch and the whole setup consumes around 0.2KwH per day.
• MichaelCollins 4y ago
  The best "gadget" for saving energy is a sweater. Conserve your own body heat and turn down (or off) the furnace. If you're concerned about your energy bill and you're also wearing tshirts indoors in winter, you're doing it wrong. Get long sleeve shirts, put on two or three layers, get some warm clothing like sweaters and thick wool socks. Then turn your furnace down to 10 C / 50 F. I promise you will survive. Your pipes won't freeze. With warm clothing, you will even be comfortable.
  • m463 4y ago
    I wonder what the gradient can be from core temperature to extremities? 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.
    • GoToRO 4y ago
      Also, cold walls mean condensation and then mold.
      • MichaelCollins 4y ago
        That happens when the cold walls are cooling down warm air, dropping the moisture out of that air. If you have a warm house and open all the windows in winter, you'll get condensation on the walls. If the house was cold in the first place, e.g. the walls and air are in a cold thermal equilibrium, you won't get condensation on the walls. 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.
        • GoToRO 4y ago
          It really depends. The air that you exhale is hot and humid. As soon as it touches the exterior walls, it will condensate. I'm talking about a house that is not insulated, but also does not leak air out (new windows with good seals). If it leaks some air out, then the condensation is very limited as outside cold air is dry in winter. 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.
• nottorp 4y ago
  Isn't it simpler to just get a thermostat that will turn heating on/off based on the indoor temperature? Most heating systems where I am have one...
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • Aaargh20318 4y ago
    Sounds like what a modulating thermostat does. It will change the heat of the water flowing through the radiators based on the difference between current and desired temperature. One big advantage over a on/off thermostat is that it the room temperature doesn’t fluctuate as much.
    • nottorp 4y ago
      Thing is, they're relatively cheap off the shelf.
• Nextgrid 4y ago
  It should be considered a massive and laughable government failure for energy bills to have become enough of a concern to warrant a front-page article on national news. 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.
  • seanwilson 4y ago
    What's the rational for why they haven't proposed solutions like this?
    • Nextgrid 4y ago
      There are 2 options: 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.