You want to jump into new technologies when you’re ready. In my case, I only do so only after the old stuff no longer meets my needs. That usually happens when the old stuff is no longer supprted by software or hardware. My son, on the other hand, likes to be up to date. That means having stuff that’s “cuttiing edge”. He’s looking at hybrids right now, but wants to wait to see what comes out for 2014 models.
Frankly, after I retire I may never get new technology again. I couldn;t care less about computer and communications technology.
@the_same_mountainbike–new technologies have saved me a lot of money and let me have things I could not otherwise afford. It works like this: a new technology comes out and a person has to have the latest. I can then get the next-to-the latest technology that the person is replacing with the latest technology. I have picked up high fidelity equipment that wasn’t the latest for a great price.
I keep receiving email messages from my friends that say at the bottom "send from my i-pad. I’m still at the technological stage where a cell phone needs to have a dial before I know what I am doing. My computer is so old that it says “Babbage Analytic Engine” on its case. It uses cams and gears, so no electrical energy is required. The software used says “copyright by Ada Lovelace”. I find it a little inconvenient to keep adjusting the “cat’s whisker” on my radio. However, maybe my crystal set is in keeping with the times as it works without a battery or being plugged in. Our refrigerator is self-defrosting, but the self defrosting feature doesn’t use electricity. Neither does the refrigerator. I monitor the outdoor temperature and decide whether I need a 25, 50, 75, or 100 pound block of ice.
My advice to the OP is to forget what is the latest technology and buy the vehicle that fits your needs and your pocketbook. We have friends who are a couple in their early 80s. They installed a new, tankless, electric water heater. It has led to so many problems–the power company had to upgrade the electric service coming into the house. The plumbing had to be changed. More rewiring had to be done from the circuit breaker panel to the heater. The plumber, electrician, power company representative and an engineer from the company that builds the tankless heater have, at different times, each made multiple visits to their house to try to get the heater to function properly. They still get about a minute of hot water before it gets cold. To me, the frustration alone wouldn’t be worth the savings over a tank type heater and with all the expense, they could have purchased a lot of kilowatts for the heater. I again second the motion that if the OP can find a good Honda Element it would fit her needs better than the current hybrids.
It is a hybrid car technology and you start off using electric until you run out and then use hybrid. You plug in to charge the electric but can drive hybrid all day.
I have to do it. Like fair trade coffee. At some point you put your money where your heart is. The problem is that USA manufacturers have ignored their customers. They know better than us. So, I am going to have to buy foreign. I need a cross over but I cannot get that because foreign manufacturers don’t have customers in their countries who drive around big ugly cars. So, I need a van or truck. I want a hybrid as the fallback but believe in diversified energy sources so want the electric.
plug. in. hybrid. mini van/small truck
Shouldn’t be that hard. Ford. Yoo hoo, guys! Hello, dere. Just put the hybrid in the Transit. I know you can do it. Go forward, guys, quit engineering backwards…
You toss around ‘just’ pretty easily. Nothing easy about making a plugin that is worth buying. The batteries are so expensive. And why do you think it’s the right thing for the environment? Those huge batteries take their toll.
What you want doesn’t exist from any carmaker. Why complain about Ford?
It takes energy to run a vehicle, whether it is a conventional drive system, a hybrid, a plug-in hybrid or an electric vehicle recharged from the grid. A vehicle that has regenerative braking, whether it is a hybrid, plug-in hybrid or a completely battery powered vehicle does take advantage of energy that would have been wasted as heat. An electric motor much more efficiently turns electrical energy into mechanical energy (about 96% conversion) than an internal combustion engine turns the energy in the fuel to mechanical energy (about 30%). The rest of the energy in the fuel is converted to heat. I once was going to purchase a used Citicar, a battery car made in the late 1970s to see how much savings I would have in my drive back and forth to work. I was investigating obtaining a separate electric meter to see how much energy would be used recharging the battery. Now there should be a savings over using gasoline. However, the electric power has to be generated and in my area it is probably coal. The electric motor is so efficient that it produces very little heat. The Citicar had a propane powered heater for use when the weather was cold. A plug-in hybrid takes its energy off he grid and that electrical energy has to be produced someplace. I finally took a pass on the Citicar because it really wasn’t a very safe vehicle.
I am in favor of saving energy wherever possible. I could use an icebox instead of a refrigerator, but the ice has to be produced someplace and that takes energy. I drive a minivan because I frequently am driving to rehearsals and performances with other musicians. About seven years ago I found a little three cylinder Geo Metro convertible that I thought about purchasing to save gasoline when I didn’t need the minivan. However, we don’t need three vehicles, the Metro wouldn’t be the safest vehicle to travel the interstates. I reasoned that I could buy a lot of gasoline for the purchase price, licensing and insuring the Metro. When I replace household appliances, we purchase the most energy efficient available. I did this when I purchased a refrigerator 18 years ago. The new refrigerators are even more energy efficient, but I am not about to discard a perfectly good unit that still works. I did see a show on energy efficiency starring Ed Bagley, jr. Ed even powered his toaster by pedaling his stationary bike which had a generator attached to the wheel. I had the plans to do the same thing with an exercise bike we weren’t using. I thought Mrs. Triedaq could pedal the bike for my morning toast. Unfortunately, she saw the plans and yesterday GoodWill picked up the exercise bike.
I’m for saving energy, but calculate the amount of energy you really save. I could go buy a more efficient refrigerator, but how much energy goes into making that new refrigerator? Am I not saving more energy by using my present box until it croaks?
Triedaq, that was a very enjoyable post, culminating with very good advice.
I must be schitzo. I couldn’t care less about new communications technologies, yet I’d love a Tesla. And new mechanical advances, such as the application of variable valve timing, and also the use of it to serve the purpose that was served by the EGR system, I find very interesting.
@Tridaq Great post. In 2004 we decided to do something about our energy use. We had two aging 8 cylinder cars and the house was not all that energy efficient. Kyoto required a reduction in CO2 generated of 6% or so by 2012 from the 1990 levels.
Using this 1990 level as the reference years, as determined by the our energy use , Kyoto Protocol, we went about reducing our use.
Insulating the house better and replacing the furnace yielded big gas saving for heating. Replacing light bulbs and changing out some very inefficient appliances yielded significant savings in electricty use.
Finally the cars were replaced when they aged, and also by driving less we saved about 40% on that as well.
We did not purchase solar cells, no windmill, did not purchase a hybrid or elctric car, but only bought things off the shelf.
Summary of greenhouse gas savings, based on dept. of energy computer model :
Transportation 50.7%
Home heating 52.5%
Water heating (gas) 3.85%
Lighting 39.3%
Appliances & Electronics 24.7%
Gardening 100% (all waste and clippings composted)
Household Waste 0.46%
Total greenhouse gas reduction; 1990 to 2007: 45.39%
Total actual energy use reduction: gasoline 44.9%, heating space & water (gas) 42.2%, Electricity use 26.3%
@Docnick - great examples of how practical, economic actions can have HUGE beneficial impacts. But they lack the ‘wow’ factor, so folks want to spend big money on things that either don’t help, or help very little. Or worse, they want the government to do that spending for them.
@texases The total extra out of pocket expenses were $4200 for the furnace and $1200 for extra insulation, while all the other items faced replacement as they aged. We had been overseas for 5 years, and the house and appliances (including a 20 year old fridge) needed some upgrading. The furnace and insulation paid for themselves in less than 5 years.
All this stuff was well documented since we participated in a greenhouse gas reduction program. The government credit for doing all this came to $1440, but we did not count that into the savings. We would have done all these things without any subsidies.
Back in 1977 I moved into a rundown house. When I looked into the attic, I think there were insulation about 2inches thick. When the furnace would go off, the house temperature dropped almost instantly. At the time, K-Mart had building materials. I would pick up three rolls of insulation–as much as I could squeeze into the Ford Maverick I had at the time. I would carry the rolls up to the attic and roll them out. The cost wasn’t great, and even that winter, my heating bills went down. The following summer, I had insulation blown into the walls. I caulked around the windows, put insulating pads between the cover plates and the electrical outlets and switches and put aluminum siding on the house. The next winter, my heating bills were more than cut in half. When I put an addition on the house, I used 2 x 6 instead of 2 x 4 for the wall studs. The extra cost of using 2 x 6 was very little. When we had a new house built in 1989, I insisted on 2 x 6 for the exterior wall studs. I put in a heat pump backed up by a high efficiency gas furnace. The heat pump provides the heat down to 38 degrees and then the system switches to the gas furnace. The new house is half again as large as my previous house and yet the heating and cooling costs are less. Two years ago, I replaced the system since the manufacturer of the original furnace went out of business. The new system has even higher efficiency and my heating and cooling costs are even lower. I installed an attic fan in the old house that pulled air through the house and exhausts the warm air out through the attic. I would run the fan at night and then close the windows and turn off the fan in the daytime. I found that except on the hottest days, I didn’t need to run the air conditioning. I insisted the builder install an attic fan while building our present house. I’m sure in decreased air conditioning costs, the attic fan has paid for itself many times over.
There are many ways to save energy with the technology already available.
Triedaq, you brought back some memories. I grew up in a small town in Vermont. I knew people that did not have electricity. I remember the horse drawn ice cart and the ice man who used to give us kids chips of ice in the summer, he was our equivalent of the good humor man. Many people still had ice boxes.
BTW, the ice boxes did not consume any energy from petroleum sources. The ice company cut the ice from a lake in the winter and stored it in a block house with several feet of straw or hay bales around the edges for insulation. The sawing was done by hand and horses provided the transportation. All the energy was human and horse.
After my elbow was crushed when I was 7, I had to live in town with my grandparents for a year because I could not ride the school bus. BTW, a very talented elderly country doctor reconstructed my elbow and it eventually regained almost 100% range of motion. Anyway, my grand parents lived in a 150 year old farm house that was now surrounded by the town. They had electricity for lights and the TV and radio, but other than that, the house was heated by a coal furnace in the basement, no vents, just registers cut into the floors. They had an ice box and a wood stove. They also had a big garden, apple trees, a cow and a goat and chickens. I listened to records (78 rpm) on an old wind up Victrola.
I also remember the phone that had no dial, you just lifted the handset and told the operator who you wanted to talk to. At 4 or 5, I could pick up the phone and ask to speak to Granddaddy and the operator would know who I was and who Granddaddy was and if he was home or at the fire station. But then, sometimes that operator was my mother. When I was about 8, we got a dial phone and I had to learn to use it, but we only had to dial 5 numbers. A couple years later, we move to So Cal and the phones had touchtone and you could dial your own long distance numbers if you wanted to.
@Keith–I am glad someone else on this board remembers the ice box. My former doctor had old catalogs in his waiting room that dated back to around 1900-1910. There was a conversion kit to convert an icebox to a refrigerator. The evaporator went in the icebox and the refrigerant lines connected to the compressor, which, along with the condenser, was in the basement. This arrangement kept the heat pulled out of the icebox in the basement and did not add to the heat in the kitchen. I’ve often wondered if refrigerators and freezers could be built with 2 condensers, one inside and one outside. In the summer, the refrigerant would flow through the outside condenser and not add to the heat of the house. In the winter, the refrigerant would run through the inside condenser and help heat the house.
I attended a consolidated school in the country that housed grades 1 through 12. The building was built in 1924. When I went there right after WW II, there was a big horn that sat on a shelf above the blackboard. The horn was mute. I puzzled over its purpose and finally asked my teacher. She was new and didn’t know, but said she would find out. What had been installed in the school was a central radio system. The receiver was in the principal’s office and a program could be beamed to one or many classrooms. Unfortunately, the radio receiver had been stolen. It was recovered and repaired, but it never did work right. Nobody used it anyway, so it wasn’t missed. The urinals and the stools in the restrooms were self flushing. The urinals would flush after a certain amount of time. The seat on the stool was spring loaded. When one sat on the stool, the tank would fill. When one got up, the toilet flushed. Many of the country kids did not have indoor plumbing, so this system was used to be certain that the urinals and stools were flushed. The school was served by a single telephone in the principal’s office and it was on a party line. To call out, one turned a crank which operated a magneto. This lit up a light on the switchboard of a town about 2 miles away. The operator then plugged into the jack where the light was lit and got the information. I lived 4 miles from the school and a call to our house was a long distance call that cost a dime. We did have dial service. The building was heated by a coal fired steam boiler. There was no thermostatic control–just a valve at each radiator in the classroom. I can remember in my elementary years, that a couple of high school students brought walk-behind garden tractors to school. One was fitted with an open rotary blade and the other was fitted with a cycle bar. Some of the high school boys took turns mowing the grounds in the fall and spring. These boys would be excused from study hall to do the mowing. Despite not having the latest in facilities, a lot of us went on to college from that school. What we lacked in facilities was made up by a a sense of community.
@Triedaq
Regarding home energy efficiency…you’d be amazed by the additional benefits gained by recent advances in “air sealing” ceilings, walls, and floors (and more careful insulation installation than is done by the average insulation contractor). Air sealing is even more important that insulation.
I’ve worked with some home performance contractors using the latest methodology, and have had some training, and have seen that the potential improvements are dramatic. No matter how good the insulation is, significant air infiltration / exfiltration still exists unless the building envelope is sealed with foam or caulk. With that air flow, a building loses conditioned air to the outside, heated or cooled depending on season. I was surprised to learn that with a well sealed building, it’s cheaper to then install a positive ventilation system, bringing in clean outside air, than to heat and cool a poorly airsealed building. There’s a major side benefit of this ventilation: healthier indoor air than most of us have ever experienced indoors (think the adhesives, chemicals etc in building materials, paints, carpet, etc), plus the fact that the insulation in the walls serves as a sort of filter. If you’ve seen insulation removed from a wall or ceiling, and noticed areas that were darkened, that shows air flow through the wall or ceiling where it should not occur.
For retrofitting, the celing / attic is the place to start for the most bang for the air sealing buck, then the floor, and only after that the walls and windows (unless windows are single pane). In many cases, a carefully air sealed and insulated house can be heated with just a quality water heater and a hydronic air handler, no other heat source (no furnace necessary). That also offsets the standby losses of the water heater, increasing the efficiency of that device too.
These are new developments, still in infancy, so contractors who build with this technology are few. But with classes in building science becoming more common, more contractors are producing tighter “building envelopes” with better comfort and health, for little or no additional cost in new construction, without deviating from “normal” looking homes . The potential for huge energy savings is not far off.
@WesternRoadtripper–I can see where a positive ventilation system installed in a well-sealed building is more economical than heating and cooling a poorly insulated building. As I understand it, these positive ventilation systems have a heat exchanger that, in the winter, uses the heated air in the winter that is exhausted from the house to heat the incoming fresh air. I suppose the reverse occurs in the summer.
Thank you for sharing information on new and future energy savings.
Actually the idea of deliberately releasing conditioned air, heated in winter, cooled in summer, seems like a big waste of energy. But the instructor assured us that it’s still better to “build tight and ventilate right” because it results in greatly improved indoor air quality.
With an efficient building envelope and efficient heating and cooling equipment, the cost of “discarding” conditioned air is small, and worth the health benefits from improved air quality. There are indeed some heat exchange systems as you point out to reduce some of the energy loss.
I find all these developments quite exciting, the small amount of work I did with the contractors was very interesting, I’d like to do more.
The heat exchangers recover a lot of the heat during the winter. But during the summer I’d be more concerned with bringing in humid air, that’s a major load on the a/c system, and a heat exchanger doesn’t solve that problem.
Son lives in a house full of urban farmers (girls). They have a toy pickup, used. Their house has rabbits, chickens, and bees. Of course a garden.
Not sure if transporting bees in a enclosed vehicle is a good idea. I think #1 reason for single car accidents is from bees/insects/snake in the car. #2 is sneezing (( got rearended from someone who sneezed), and #3 is having a spouse in the car.