First Decision Before Saving Energy at Home
by Don Ames
Detect Energy, working to bring energy savings and lower power bills to your home. Along with energy saving ideas and tips, conservation, environment, clean energy and weatherization are all a part of Detect Energy.
It’s going to be a nice sunny day in the 70′s again today. Unfortunately, I think my wife has yard work planned for me. There is a time to plant and a time to whack all the plants down – I think I am scheduled to take part in the whacking season today. Here where I live, there is about 3,400 degree heating days and about 800 degree cooling days.
Do you have more degree heating days or more degree cooling days?
From Weather Data Depot: “Weather Data Depot is a free service from EnergyCAP that provides degree day charts and reports. You may ask, so what exactly is a degree day? A degree day is a measure of weather severity as it affects building energy use. More heating degree days mean more winter energy use, while more cooling degree days mean more summer energy use. Being aware of your degree days can help you make decisions on how to save energy at your home.
Living north of the Mason Dixon Line means you probably have more heating degree days than cooling degree days. South of the line and you have more cooling degree days. Let’s not get into the techno part and try to define degree day. Some people smarter than most of us thought all this up. Either that or people with out anything else to do. In order to compare energy efficiency of one house in one part of the country with another house in another part of the country, we need to know the heating and cooling degree day stuff. For you and me, if we have more heating degree days than cooling degree days it means that we should concentrate our energy savings efforts on efficient heating. Just the opposite is true if we live south of the border, concentrate energy savings efforts on efficient cooling.
www.weatherdatadepot.com can help you find your degree day information.
Degree days for your area can help you make decisions concerning the best windows for your home and the best place to plant shade trees. Degree days can answer questions like – should you be looking for a more efficient heating system or cooling system? Heat pumps are rated for efficiency in both their heating modes and their cooling modes. Which heat pump is best for you and your home?
Come back soon for some more boring technical stuff… but, I won’t leave the light on for you…Donames
