5 Energy-saving myths

If closing a room vent causes a significant temperature change, then you save money. On our HE Furnace, you can adjust the fan speed setting so you could lower it if necessary. The effect of one or two rooms would be small. The fan is not likely to wear out sooner, that is a myth. A higher flow rated fan just might increase the heat transfer across your hot/cold surfaces improving the efficiency. Myths 2-5 above are right on. Making sure that you plug all cracks, increasing your attic insulation to at least R 35 and prevent air from blowing though it is most important. After 30 years, I found that the builders robbed us by NOT putting in insulation in the attic (built 1976). I put in 10 bundles of cellulose paper insulation which the wind in not suppose to blow though and adding 6 in of mineral wool on top did wonders for at the time heating and then cooling in the summer. My neighbor has an identical unit minus the HE furnace. We both are end unit TH and he used twice as much gas as we did. The center unit next to us used 50% more than we did. It was worth the trouble to insulate properly.

Smart meters ?
when do they turn on/off ?
when do they report usage.. is it 5 minutes past the high energy hour ?
just think of the amount collected if there's a time lag between billable peaks..
who's watching the hen house... ?

When you close some vents in unused rooms the hot air in the ducts does not get wasted in that room but instead flows to other rooms which will heat up faster so the system does not have to run as long because it needs lesser air to heat. (you can even buy heating systems with automatic vent controls).

As for myth# 1, as an engineer I do not quiet agree with that. While closing several vents and opening several other vents means that you have an open system. So I hardly imagine that the closure of several vents would cause an extreme back pressure which would in return exhaust the fans.

we have replaced our appliances furnace air condi...bulbs ect...and our bills have sky rocked what is going on ..on top we have to pay 15% taxes..no laughing matter for seniors.

electricity is still better and healthier than natural gas, by a billion times! Safer too!

What a negative article. Obviously written by the natural gas producers. When its -40, windows are a major loss of heat, even if they are triple pane; covering with a heat shrink plastic, with lots of air space, saves a bundle. Weather strip your doors and put foam covers on your electrical outlets. Finally, insulation upgrades provide a good payback and increased comfort levels in the home.

Turn or not turn Hydro will be sold by politicians. How much kick back will change the hands no one will know.We Tax payers will be the loosers.
Millions of Dollars spent to keep roads in a good conditions. But we don't see any road in a good conditions. Contractors and uneducated labours don't know what to do. All repairs are not good. One example go and see Markham road s of 401 They just finished repair. It sucks. Look at 401 all ways repair. Does it happens in other countries? I don't think so.
Shame on the road builders. You must take care more better way.

Hey, my light just went on, but then I hit the dimmer................... Idea doesn't seem so bright right now.

Maybe I'll just start using candle power and cooking in the fireplace like in the old days.

I belive the light bulb myth for turning it on and off started when the CFLs came on the market. From what I understand it, it is not good to turn CFLs on and off, as it reduces the lifespan of the buld, and when you pay or used to pay 20x more tfor them compared to regular incandecent bulbs, it wasn't worth the investment.

this is not as prominent in newer types of lightbulbs. but turning a lightbulb on and off every few minutes can cause the bulb itself to wear out faster due to a heating and cooling cycle that causes strain on the bulb.. then you have to drive across the street to the store and buy more bulbs. so i feel like leaving the light on for a minute while i go to the loo is the lesser of two evils. since the cost in money and on the environment is greater for having to manufacture, package and ship more bulbs. for the delusion of saving a fraction of a cent

Save energy, move to Ecuador

New thermostats (not mentioned here). I bought a honeywell one. Now, my furnace turns on and off constantly to keep it at 20.5. Every time it turns on, it has to heat itself up a couple of minutes before it sends heat to the house. I would think it would cost more to warm up the funace 20 times per hour than to just have it go once, heat the house a degree or two and turn off. Sometimes when you purchase things that are marketed to make you think you're saving energy, you actually use more.

People get caught up with misinformation such as turning an electrical appliance off and on. This only applies to a motor that requires extra energy to start up whereas a lightbulb has no such problems...it's either off or on. We get charged for a kilowatt per hour...so, a 100 watt bulb burning for 10 hours = a kilowatt.
The reason the energy board wants everyone to turn off a lightbulb is that while individually it means very little, if they convince 30 million people to turn off a single bulb that add up.

This past summer, I was told by my condo board that a window air conditioner is not allowed to stick out of the window. Instead, I installed the air conditioner inside, against the screen, and put a support inside the window, instead of outside. What I found was the unit ran for less time than before, I think due to the unit taking in cooled inside air to pass through the heat exchanger, rather than warm or even sometimes hot outside air. I was expecting my hydro bill to go way up, but the bill only rose by a few dollars.

"The location of your house and the climate you are live in" could be a factor if you are live in the Yukon and not are live in Florida.

If you have single-pane glass, they are probably leaking lots of air and condense enough water to cause molding issues. If you thinks the use of double-pane glass is a myth, you must
think that there are a lot of stupid people out there paying double for nothing.

Kym McNicolas doesn't know what she is talking about!! *Snaps!*

I don't know about not saving energy, if you have good double pane windows. This is the first house I've ever lived in, where we have single pane windows, and it's draft heaven (winters here are absolutely uncomfortable, even if your house heat seems to be high enough, because the drafts are unbelievable - drafts I've never felt with double pane windows). Besides that, the moisture build up on those windows is incredible, and the constant mold problem is almost impossible to battle or live with. Quite frankly, I hate living in this place in winter, primarily because of the single pane windows. And, really, go back to the Middle Ages in Europe. People then didn't live with single pane windows, and I can speak of that from experience, as I grew up in Europe and lived there in a number of houses between 50 and 500 years old...