A few simple facts about gas and electric
heating systems 

Doug Rye with Co-host Ron Sherman

You'll Learn These Key Points and Their Benefits:

Air Infiltration:  How air infiltration can greatly increase your utility bill and greatly decrease your comfort.   View Video Clip .. House Framing:  A simple framing technique that can save you $200 in wood studs and gives you free insulation without changing the stability of you home. Caulking:  Do you have the right caulk? You will learn where to caulk to stop outside air infiltration which leads to higher utility bills. You will discover places to caulk that most people have never even thought of. Insulation:  Discover one change in your home that can lower your heating and cooling bill by 20%!  You will learn how 1/16" of cellulose insulation can stop more air infiltration than 3" of fiberglass insulation. Windows and Doors:  Are you using the most energy efficient window and door? Learn how French doors can be energy wasters and how to fix them and exactly what to look for in an energy efficient window. Geothermal - What is required to efficiently use geothermal energy,    geothermal energy and how it works  ,  and geothermal benefits and requirements.  How energy-efficient lights and energy-efficient recessed lights can save you money.  Recessed lighting can be one of the biggest energy wasters in your home, because most recessed lights cannot be insulated. How too much attic ventilation can actually INCREASE your utility bill.  Excessive attic ventilation can draw conditioned air out of your home. How to stop air from entering from the outside in both new and existing homes.  Did you know that on the average residential home, 35% of the total heating and cooling load is for outside air infiltration?  How to use geothermal energy – learn the benefits and risks of geothermal,  how a geothermal energy diagram looks, and how a geothermal unit gives you a percentage of your hot water FREE. A geothermal heating and cooling system is four times more efficient than a gas furnace and has twice the life expectancy of the average heating and cooling unit. How cellulose insulation or recycled newspaper is used for noise control, sound-insulation products, and home interior wall sound insulation.

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  "A few simple facts about gas and electric heating systems"

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To make your home more energy efficient, you need to understand the energy efficiency of different types of heating and cooling systems. Many times people are confused by inaccurate information they receive from manufacturers and sellers of heating and cooling equipment. 

But all you need to know in order to make wise decisions when purchasing this equipment are a few simple facts.

First of all, the proper sizing of equipment is of utmost importance for comfort and low utility bills. Once the proper size is known, then you must decide what type of system best suits your needs. Let's look at three ways houses are heated.

1. Natural gas furnace, 

2. Air-to-air electric heat pump, 

3. Geothermal heat pump (electricity). 

While I don't recommend this, a gas furnace that is 90-percent efficient can be used. With this unit, about 10 percent of the fuel goes up the flue. At first glance, you might think 80 to 90 percent sounds pretty good. But consider this. 

Would you purchase gasoline for your car and pump 10 to 20 percent of it on the ground? In my opinion, our nation would not have to worry about shortages of natural gas if we simply didn't waste it.

Another popular type of heating system, an air-to-air heat pump, uses electricity instead of gas. All Doug Rye homes use electric heating systems. An air-to-air heat pump, properly installed, would operate at an efficiency of around 250 percent. I know what you are thinking. “How can anything be more than 100 percent energy efficient?” 

Remember, we are talking about how efficiently a unit uses either electricity or gas to move or create heat. Unlike a gas-fired furnace, a heat pump does not actually create heat, it simply moves heat from one location to another. Air-to-air pumps extract the heat from the air. With a heat pump, you use one unit of electricity and get about 2.5 units of heat.

My favorite system, the geothermal heat pump, is simply the very best there is. Most geothermal heating systems operate at close to 400 percent energy efficiency! Wow! 

That's five times the efficiency of the 80 percent gas furnace. As this heat pump is extracting heat from Mother Earth, which is a constant 57 degrees, it is operating on minimal stress and using a very small amount of electricity to move the heat from the earth into the house. 

With a geothermal system, you buy one unit of electricity (one unit of heat) and Mother Earth will give you three more units of heat for free. (That three units of heat is solar energy that Mr. Sunshine gave us over millions of years.) In future columns, we'll talk more about how air-to-air and geothermal heat pumps work.

Geothermal Heat Pump System

In the meantime, if you have questions, just give me a call at my office at 501-653-7931 or e-mail me at info@philliprye.com. Either me or my son Phillip will be glad to help you.

Thanks for reading my Home Energy Saver newsletter and I know that applying these techniques will SAVE YOU MONEY.

God Bless,

Be sure to visit my website at http://ww.dougrye.com and order my video/DVD that is jam-packed with all the energy saving techniques that I teach. It will be one of the best investments you've ever made - Guaranteed. Not to mention the FREE e-book downloads with your order.

"The Home Energy Saver" is published monthly by Phillip Rye and nationally recognized energy consultant Doug Rye.

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 How to Fully Utilize the Storage Space in Your Garage

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 (ARA) - If you're like most people, your garage is mess. Garden tools are stacked in one corner; there's a pile of paint cans in another; the kids' bikes are parked in front of the cars; and your work bench -- well it's under those boxes -- you think.
 
 A lot of people try to make their garages more user friendly by putting up peg board for the tools, hanging the bikes from hooks in the ceiling to get them out of the way, and building shelves along the walls to stack things on. "Those solutions are all well and good, but they don't utilize the available storage space to its full potential," says Kevin Shaha, president of Racor, Incorporated, a Sandpoint, Idaho company that specializes in garage storage solutions.
 
 Shaha's company is about to introduce a new garage storage device that he says will revolutionize the industry. The HeavyLift system will allow you to store virtually anything out of the way and off the floor by making use of the space on the ceiling.
 
 The easy-to-install do-it-yourself kit, which will be available through retailers nationwide, the Sears catalog, and online at www.racorinc.com in March 2005, includes heavy duty steel support beams which you will secure to the rafters, a four-foot-by-four-foot platform, a winding axle, enough vinyl coated steel cable for a ceiling up to 12 feet high, a hand crank and all the mounting hardware.
 
 All you have to do is screw the support beams into the ceiling, attach the winding axle with the enclosed hardware, thread the steel cable through the support beam wheels and attach to the platform, then use the provided hand crank to raise and lower the platform. "You can safely store up to 250 pounds on it," says Shaha. "It's a great way to keep the lawnmower out of the way in the wintertime, or you can use it to store file boxes, third row car seats, outdoor furniture, tires, pretty much anything you can think of that normally takes up a lot of space."
 
 An added plus is the safety factor. The American Ladder Institute reports that each year, more than a half million people are injured and 165,000 visit emergency rooms after falling off ladders. With a HeavyLift system in your garage, you'll never have to climb a ladder again. All you'll have to do to get down something heavy is hook up the hand crank and lower the load, then take whatever you need off the platform and crank it back up to the ceiling.
 
 And once you get those bulkier items out of the way, you can make better use of the limited shelf space you have in the garage. So instead of using shelves to store boxes and other bulky items, you can put cleaners, auto accessories and other things you need immediate access to on them.
 
 For more information about the HeavyLift system, or any of the other garage storage solutions offered by Racor, call toll-free (800) 783-7725 or log on to www.racorinc.com.

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Energy Saving Tips

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If you are a first-time homeowner, building a new home, or just wanting to make changes to an older, existing home, here a some energy-saving tips for you to consider. There is no better time to do this than at the beginning of a construction project.

1. If you are clearing a lot for a new home or considering landscaping options, don't forget about the shade advantage trees add, as well as the evaporative cooling their lush canopies can offer. 
2. Window coatings are energy saving, especially for west-facing view windows. For most residential applications, low-emissivity (low-e) coatings are sufficient. They can cut heat gain by up to 25 percent without changing the window's appearance. 
3. When building a new home, try to keep glass area at 10 percent to 12 percent of the floor area of the house (example: 2,000 sq.ft. x 10% = 200 sq.ft. of glass). 

More energy saving tips to come in the next Home Energy Saver newsletter.

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Tell Us What You Think!

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We would love to hear what you think of this issue of The Home Energy Saver Newsletter. And of course, if you have any suggestions for upcoming issues that you'd like to share with us, please send those, too! Either me or my son Phillip will be happy to help you.

Just e-mail me at: mailto:info@philliprye.com

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