Several articles on this site and others talk about how wasteful hot water recirculation pumps can be, both in terms of wasted electricity (running the pumps even when you’re on vacation or sound asleep) and wasted natural gas (reheating the water after it cools down running through the plumbing in Read more…
The company OhmConnect provides a “demand response” service to consumers in some parts of the country. I tried their service way back in 2014 and was unimpressed: seemed to me very few people would be willing to run around the house turning off lights and delaying dinner during their random Read more…
Last summer we had to do an emergency fridge replacement — our giant 25 year old SubZero gave up — and we struggled to find the right replacement. Availability was very low at that time due to the pandemic. But we ended up with an LG-LFCC22426S and love it; other Read more…
How can you know if your existing home’s heating and cooling systems are efficient? New homes are often modeled in software before they are constructed, and in many states this model is required to result in a certain level of heating and cooling efficiency. But after a home has been Read more…
Years ago a friend gave us a beautiful chrome heated towel rack for use in our bathroom. Plug it in, drape your towels over it, and treat yourself to a nice warm towel after every shower or bath. Sounds great, right? Problem is, it’s expensive! The device has a normal Read more…
It took me years to discover that our big pool pump accounted for nearly a third of our electric bill. But once I understood this it only took a few months to fix—by switching to a variable speed pump. Excited by the easy win, I wondered what other energy hogs Read more…
This simple behavioral change is crazy simple, but surprisingly rare. You might think I’m going to talk about the different methods used to boil water, and which is best… use the microwave? a gas stove? an induction cooktop? maybe one of those insta-hot dispensers? These all have different energy consumption and Read more…