Living Green

Saving Plastic at the Bathroom Sink

admin — Fri, 03 Nov 2023 06:23:36 +0000

Plastic at Your Sink

Look at your vanity area. Do you see plastic bottles? Plastic tubes? Plastic deodorant containers? Plastic cosmetic containers?

Perhaps you use liquid hand soap? That’s an easy one… switch to bar soap! I like Bronner’s Peppermint soap, which is entirely vegetable based, but anything is better than liquid soap in plastic pump bottles that end up in landfills. Most bar soaps come in paper or cardboard wrappers, which will decompose and end up as dirt some day.

How about toothpaste? Plastic leaches into liquids, and that includes toothpaste. Personally, I don’t like consuming plastic, and I especially don’t like putting it in my mouth if I can help it. Fortunately, there are alternatives to toothpaste in plastic squeeze tubes.

Get Rid of Plastic Toothpaste Tubes

Alternative #1: make your own. Here is the formula I use:

In a small jar, mix:

3 tbsp organic coconut oil
3 tsp baking soda
¼ tsp peppermint oil

I dispense this using a ¼ tsp measuring spoon onto my toothbrush.

Alternative #2: Toothpaste bits

These are tiny “pills” that are stored in a glass jar, which you chew, then brush as usual. I am particularly fond of “Bite Toothpaste Bits“, which are available online (click the link). Sign up for regular deliveries, and Bite will send you what you need at an interval you can specify. They have two basic formulas, both of which incorporate sodium bicarbonate (baking soda), which neutralizes the acids that etch teeth. One contains fluoride, like Crest or Colgate. But the one I use contains nano hydroxy apetite which is literally the material that forms the enamel of your teeth. This works through re-mineralization — by basically patching the tiny pits formed by acidic food and the acids produced by the bacteria in tartar.

Bite also sells plastic-free deodorant and other personal care items.

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Saving Water in Your Yard

admin — Thu, 02 Nov 2023 16:56:53 +0000

Saving Water in Your Yard

For most of us in California, we get our water from one or both of two sources:

Ground water stored in underground aquifers and refreshed through the percolation of rainwater through many meters of earth
Snow melt from the Sierra Nevada mountains, which is piped and pumped to municipal water utilities.

Unfortunately, both of those sources are imperiled, the first through over-pumping (pumping it out faster than it is restored), the second by climate change, which is making the snowpack more variable, and making it melt faster and earlier.

As a consequence, water has become a very expensive utility.

My wife and I have reduced our summer water consumption by 75% and saved over $23,000 in the past 10 years by re-landscaping our yard with native plants. The results have exceeded our expectations. Our yard is now:

Easier to maintain
More beautiful
More diverse
Host to far more wildlife
Better smelling!
Less expensive to maintain

Maintenance

I used to have a lawn mower, a fertilizer spreader, a weed whacker, a gas can, oil cans, bags of organic lawn fertilizer, edge clippers… and a small shed to keep it all in! No more!

My maintenance equipment now consists of hand shears, lopping shears, a few shovels, and a wheel barrow — all of which I already owned. I got rid of all the rest, and freed up space in the yard where the shed used to be!

No more lawn mowing! While our new landscape still requires some maintenance, it is less, more enjoyable, and can be done on our schedule. Maintenance involves pruning native shrubs to keep them off paths, dead-heading flowers, and sweeping mulch off the walkways and back into the beds (the birds like to scratch it out when looking for bugs). Once a year, we cut back some of the plants to allow new growth for the next season, and evaluate what plants need to be replaced (they can get woody), which means removal and replacement (clippers and shovels).

Beauty

Our yard produces flowers year-round. Late winter through early summer is especially floral, with a changing kaleidoscope of ceanothus, California poppies, Wester redbud, salvia (sage), penstemon, verbena, coyote mint, buckwheat, ribes, coral bells, and others. But we even have flowers in December and January on our manzanita, and in the dead of summer on our California fuscia. This is great for the pollinators, which never go hungry – the bees, butterflies, moths, and pollinating flies, which we have in great abundance. It is also great for the hummingbirds, of which we have several in residence. And because our plants are not JUST flowering, they also produce seeds and berries, which the birds can eat year-round.

Diversity

The yard is MUCH more interesting. Instead of a flat, grass mono-crop with perhaps some foundation plantings, we have dozens of different species and varieties of plants of varying heights, colors, textures, and growth habits. And it changes by the season. There is always something blooming and something bearing fruit. And despite never using either fertilizers, pesticides or weed killers, we have very few weeds, which we hand-pull.

Host to More Wildlife

We have been very deliberate in providing year-round food and shelter for birds, bees and butterflies.

Walking up our front path, you will first see bees and lizards. There is almost always a lizard or two sunning on the walkway, which will scurry away into the bushes as you approach. We have honeybees and bumblebees, sure, but we also get quite a variety of native bees, some of which are enormous, and some of which almost look like gnats. And there are several small butterflies that can be seen pollinating flowers.

Come around to the back yard, and you will see squirrels, as well as hummingbirds, mockingbirds, hooded juncos, goldfinches, sparrow, chickadees, mourning doves, and even robins. In the Spring, you can literally hear our prunus ilicifolia (native cherry) tree buzzing from 10 feet away, with hundreds of bees feasting on a canopy exploding with butter cream flowers.

Better Smelling!

Approaching our front door, especially in Spring and Summer, you are bathed in the scent of several varieties of salvia (sage), ribes, ceanothus, and coyote mint. It is truly aromatherapy of the best sort!

Less Expensive to Maintain

I have kept careful records of our water use for several years before, and the entire period since installing our native landscape. We immediately saved 75% of our summer water (the rest was mostly household use). As the price of water has gone up, this has added up to over $23,000 in savings on our water bill!

It’s a total win in every way — a more natural, more beautiful, easier to maintain yard that also saves us money! What’s not to like?

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Saving Plastic in the Tub and Shower

admin — Tue, 10 Oct 2023 03:52:16 +0000

Saving Plastic in the Tub and Shower

If you are like we used to be, you have a plastic bottle of shampoo, a plastic bottle of conditioner, and a plastic bottle of liquid soap on the shelf in your bath. Perhaps you and your spouse have different tastes in shampoo and conditioner, and you have two of each in your master bath. And maybe you have kids, each of which has their favorites in the second bathroom. Then, of course, you have a few in the closet as backup. And maybe you use liquid hand soap at your sinks.

Especially considering these are consumable products, this really adds up!

Of course you know that you can get bar soap, but did you know there are such things as bar shampoo and even bar conditioner? Bars are smaller, lighter and more concentrated than liquids, which means they consume less energy in shipping. And the performance of the good bars is excellent. Between bar soap, shampoo and conditioner, my wife and I have almost eliminated plastic in our baths.

We started with bar soap — we use Bronner’s peppermint bar soap, which has replaced Bronner’s liquid peppermint soap in our household. Then, we discovered Lush Cosmetics, and started trying out their bar shampoos and conditioners, as well as those from other companies. We have settled on different blends for each of us — I tend to have oily hair, and my wife’s hair tends to be dry. The nice thing about bars is that they actually last longer than liquids. The products we use are also wrapped in waxed paper and cardboard, so no plastic packaging.

We also got rid of the reusable liquid soap dispensers that we used to fill with a combination of Bronner’s peppermint liquid soap, clarifying shampoo, and water (to keep it from building up). There is now a bamboo soap tray at each sink, one in our master shower, and one in our second bath, each of which holds a Bronner’s bar.

The results: we have almost eliminated plastic from our bathrooms, and we are very happy with the performance of our bathing products. Try it — you might like it!

One Alternative: Bulk Liquid Soaps

Perhaps you just like liquids better. Or perhaps you just can’t find a bar that you like. Another alternative is to find a bulk store that will let you fill your own reusable container. There is one such store in downtown San Jose, and it is likely that there is one near you. Look for a food coop, or a grocer that caters to vegetarian lifestyles. Again, you may have to experiment, and the store may not be as convenient as your local grocer, but you can buy large quantities at once so you only have to go every 2-3 months. You’re still using plastic (glass in the shower is risky business!), but you probably already have containers that you can reuse.

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Saving Energy on Cooking

admin — Mon, 09 Oct 2023 23:08:32 +0000

Saving Energy on Cooking

Cooking can be a very energy-intensive process. Everything from blenders to ovens consumes energy. The worst offenders are ovens and stovetops.

Oven Cooking

Think about it: you turn on your oven, which turns on a flame (in the case of a gas oven) or an electric coil (electric oven), which takes several minutes to heat the air in the oven and the metal oven box up to your set temperature. Meanwhile, excess heat is venting into your kitchen. This is not so bad in the winter when you are already heating your house, but in the summer, it adds to your air conditioning load.

Once the oven is up to temperature, you put the food into it, and the gas flames or electric heating coils continue heating the air and oven to heat the container to heat the food. Not very efficient!

Microwave ovens are FAR more efficient at heating food, especially small portions, since they do not heat either the air in the oven or the container, but work by exciting the atoms of water and fat in the food itself. So using a microwave whenever possible is a major energy saver.

Solution: use the microwave to heat food whenever possible.

Stovetop Cooking

Gas stoves burn natural gas (methane, a fossil fuel), which heats air, which heats a container, which heats food. Notice how hot the air is around a gas burner… that is wasted heat! Plus, the burning gas creates not only CO2, a greenhouse gas, but also carbon monoxide (CO) and particulate pollution that is hazardous to your health! In fact, cooking with a poorly vented gas stove creates so much indoor air pollution, it would exceed EPA regulations if it was discovered outdoors!

So how about electric stovetops? These pass electricity through a resistive element (coil), which heats the coil, which heats the pan, which heats the food. While it does not pollute your indoor air, the conduction of heat between these surfaces is inefficient, so heat (= energy) is wasted. If your electric stovetop is a glass surface, it is even worse, since the coil heats the glass, which heats the pan, which heats the food. Not great.

There is a relatively new technology called Induction that is far more efficient than either gas or electric. Induction works through magnetism — a magnet interacts with the metal of your pan to heat the pan directly, which then heats the food. The stovetop surface only gets hot through contact with the pan! The advantages of induction include:

Faster heating: induction stovetops boil water several times more quickly than either gas or electric
Instant heat: no need to heat a coil to heat the pan
Instant off: Like a gas stove, when you turn it off, it stops delivering heat
Fine, consistent temperature control, from very low (simmer) to very high (boil) settings
Safer and cooler: the stovetop remains relatively cool, and cools more quickly once the pan is removed.
You can wipe up overflows immediately! The surface is just a piece of glass, which never gets extremely hot. Just lift the pan, wipe, and set the pan back down.
Easy to clean: its glass surface cleans like a countertop
No indoor air pollution
Lower energy use.

So are there any downsides? Sure:

They are more expensive than either gas or electric, typically costing about $1000 more to purchase. But the electrical savings really add up!
They only work with magnetic (i.e. iron or stainless steel) pans. You may need to replace your aluminum and copper pans. Make sure your new pans are “induction ready”.
You will need a very high wattage electrical service to the stovetop… typically a 30- or 40-amp circuit, since it draws a lot of juice.
You need to watch out for getting too close to active burner surfaces with electronic devices such as computers, smartphones and tablets, since the magnetism can damage internal components and/or wipe memory. But I wear a smartwatch when I cook, and have had not issues. Just don’t leave electronic devices ON the stovetop while cooking.

In the long run, however, the inductive stovetop pays itself off through energy savings, while giving you a wonderful, clean cooking experience.

Solution: when it is time, replace your current stovetop with a high quality induction stovetop.

But how about renters? I don't own my stove!

Good news! There are relatively inexpensive, single-pan, inductive “burner” units that are portable and can sit on your countertop. This is a great way to introduce yourself to inductive cooking, and you can take it with you when you move!

The post Saving Energy on Cooking appeared first on Living Green.

How can a Heat Pump be more than 100% Efficient?

admin — Thu, 28 Sep 2023 21:04:29 +0000

Making Heat, vs. Moving Heat

Many highly educated people are confused when they are told that heat pumps for HVAC and water heating are more than 100% efficient. After all, it seems to be counter to the Laws of Thermodynamics that we learn in Physics class!

Don’t worry — heat pumps don’t break the laws of physics! The confusion stems from a misunderstanding of what is meant by “efficiency”. In this context, efficiency is a function of the following formula:

energy added to (or subtracted from) the medium (the air or water), as measured in the duct
divided by…
energy put into the heating/cooling system (the water heater, furnace, air conditioner, or heat pump)

In other words, if you put 1 kWh (1000 watt-hours) (or kilojoules, or BTU, or kilocalories) of energy into the heating system, and you get 1 kWh (or kilojoules, or BTU, or kilocalories) of heat into the air or water, you are 100% efficient. If you spend 1 kWh of energy but get only 0.9 kWh of heating or cooling, you are 90% efficient. But how can you get more heat into the air or water than you put into the system (the heat pump)?

By the way, 1 kWh = 859.2 kcal = 3409.5 BTU = 3600 kJ

Traditional heaters work by directly generating heat. The best you can do is to transfer all of that heat into the medium. Heat pumps move heat between two mediums.

Traditional Electrical Heaters

A traditional electrical heater generates heat by passing an electrical current through an element — a wire or coil — that has high electrical resistance. The electrical energy (voltage) that is lost during its transit through the heating element turns into heat. In theory, the maximum efficiency of the element is 100%, but this assumes that:

the voltage on the output of the element is zero volts, and
that all of the resulting heat is transferred to the air (in the case of HVAC) or water (in the case of a water heater).

Neither of which is ever the case. The very best traditional electric water heaters have a Uniform Energy Factor (UEF) of 0.93-0.95, meaning that they are up to 95% efficient.

Traditional Gas Heaters

In a gas (or wood, or oil, or coal) heater, the fossil fuel is ignited, and the burning fuel releases heat — along with pollutants such as CO2, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, hydrocarbons, and particulates that are secondary byproducts. That heat is then transferred through a membrane (usually metal) to the medium (air or water) that we want to heat. Think of it like heating water on the stove. That transfer is inefficient — some of the heat goes into the surrounding air or “up the chimney” (or flue, or vent pipe) and heats our atmosphere. The very best gas furnaces (used to heat air) use secondary heat exchangers, which capture some of the vent heat and claim UEF of 0.987, or 98.7% efficiency.

Tank vs. Tankless Water Heaters

There are two options when it comes to water heat — tank and tankless. Most water heaters heat the water and store it in a 50- to 80-gallon tank. The advantage of this kind of system is that it buffers the supply of water against demand, which means the heater itself does not have to create hot water at the same rate (measured in gallons per minute, or GPM) it is being demanded, which in turn means it does not have to instantly draw on as much electricity or gas to heat that water. The downside is that hot water loses heat through the walls of the tank as it sits, waiting to be used. This is an issue especially if the tank is poorly insulated, or if hot water goes unused for a long period, as in a vacation home, or in your primary residence when your family goes on vacation.

A tankless water heater generates hot water on-demand. If the system is sized appropriately, it means you have effectively unlimited hot water. But it also means that the capacity of the system has to be sized to generate as much instant hot water as will ever be demanded of the system at once, as from multiple showers, dishwashers, washing machines, etc.

And if that happens, it draws and extraordinary amount of energy. A tankless gas water heater burns a lot of fuel, very quickly. And a tankless electric water heater can pull a huge current. One way around this is to install separate tankless heaters at every point of use, but this is expensive and not always practical.

Tankless water heaters are more expensive to purchase, but they do save energy, and they last up to 2 or 3 times as long as tank heaters, as long as they are well maintained. And they take up much less space. They are therefore a better “green” investment than traditional water heaters.

But (and this is a big but) the efficiency of both gas and electrical tankless water heaters are still limited by the Laws of Thermodynamics. In other words, they are less than 100% efficient. They are therefore less “green” than heat pump water heaters.

How Heat Pumps Work

Heat pumps work not by generating heat, but by transferring heat between two media. Those media may be air, water, or even earth! It therefore does not have to create the heat itself… it basically steals the heat energy from one place and delivers (or “pumps”) it to another. In this way, a heat pump can be 300% or even 400% efficient, in terms of electricity input vs. heat delivered!

This is not a new concept at all. Air conditioners have done this for decades — they transfer heat from the air inside your house, to the air outside your house. This is the same way a heat pump works when in cooling mode. A heat pump in heating mode is quite a bit like an A/C that is working backwards… it transfers heat from the air outside your house to the air inside your house.

Factors that Impact Heat Pump Efficiency

The efficiency of a heat pump depends on the following factors:The temperature of the medium to be heated or cooled

The temperature of the external medium to or from which heat must be pumped
The refrigerant being used in the heat pump
The efficiency of the mechanicals (the motors, coils, radiating fins, etc.)

Efficiency depends to a significant extent on the temperature difference between the two media. In other words, they are less efficient in heating when there is less heat to “steal” from the source (i.e. it is very cold outside) or in cooling mode, when it is harder to dump the heat (as when it is very hot outside).

For this reason, some heat pumps have heat exchangers that are buried underground, allowing them to transfer the heat of the ground to the house, or vice-versa. While more expensive to install, this is especially effective in extreme climates that get very hot and/or very cold, since the ground several feet down maintains a more consistent temperature than the outdoor air.

Heat Pump Water Heaters (HPWHs)

The same principles apply to a heat pump water heater (HPWH). The heat pump “pumps” heat from the air (or ground) into the water, which is then stored in a well-insulated water tank. A tank is generally required because, while several times more efficient, it is slower than an on-demand water heater, and requires the buffer against high instantaneous demand.

A HPWH heat exchanger can of course be outdoors, but unlike an HVAC heat pump, it can also be indoors or in the garage (mine is in my garage). The only caveat for an indoor HPWH is that there must be enough air volume around the heat pump to provide sufficient source heat. And bear in mind that an indoor HPWH will cool the air, in effect acting as an air conditioning unit. This is great in the summer, when you want to cool your house, but not so great in the winter, when it will add to your space heating burden.

Also unique to HPWHs vs. HVAC heat pumps is that the temperature of the incoming water also affects efficiency — if it is already relatively warm, it does not require as much energy to heat it to the target temperature.

Many if not most of the HPWHs made in the US are what is know as “hybrid” systems… they have both heat pumps and a backup electrical heating coil. The purpose of the coil is to provide supplemental heating when the air temperature is too cold to provide efficient water heating. Obviously, coils are far less efficient that heat pumps, and this affects the overall efficiency of the system.

Regardless, heat pumps are far more efficient than traditional gas or electric furnaces or water heaters.

About Working Fluids (Refrigerants)

Heat pump efficiency is also a function of the “working fluid” that is used as the refrigerant in the heat exchanger. This chemical is compressed such that it is near its “transition temperature”: when it is warm, it is a gas, and when it is cold, it turns into a liquid. The transition between those states either absorbs (as when going from liquid to gas) or releases (going from gas to liquid) a tremendous amount of heat.

There are several chemicals being used as refrigerants in heat pumps, these days. They vary based on their efficiency at different temperatures and pressures, and in their function as greenhouse gasses. There is a good explanation of this at this link.

To summarize, hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) initially replaced chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which were banned by the Montreal Protocol because of the harm these chemicals were doing to the ozone layer in the upper atmosphere. These are still in wide use in the US. But they are powerful greenhouse gasses, with CO2 equivalence of 675 (for R-32) to 2088 (for R-410a)!

Using an HFC-based heat pump is still far better than a traditional gas or electric system, but there are better alternatives.

HC (hydrocarbon) based systems based on propane (R-290) are now available that have relatively low global warming potential and which operate well in the range required for heat pump systems. However, these hydrocarbons are highly flammable.

Even better is a CO2 based system. CO2 is future-proof as a refrigerant (CO2 equivalence of 1), and operates efficiently to below 0F (!!). They therefore require no supplemental electric coil to provide heating in cold weather, and are therefore incredibly efficient. I personally have a CO2 based HPWH from Sanden in my garage that has worked beautifully. The heat exchanger is a separate unit from the 80 gallon storage tank, so each can be replaced or serviced independently if necessary, but the quality of both is such that I anticipate a very long life from both.

However, CO2 based systems are less widely available, and require a high-compression system that must be more robust and is therefore either less reliable or more expensive. CO2 based systems are very popular in Japan from companies such as Mitsubishi and Sanden, but it may be harder to find qualified parts and service professionals, at least until they become more widespread.

but still in older systems, , the working fluid (refrigerant) used for most heat pumps nowadays is tetrafluoroethane, otherwise known as r-134a. It has replaced chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) Unfortunately, r-134a has a CO2 equivalency factor of 1430, meaning that one kg of r-134a released into the atmosphere has the same impact as release 1430 kg of CO2.

A General Comment about Electrical Systems

Electricity is a secondary energy source — it was generated using a primary energy source. Most often (currently in the US) it is generated by a utility burning fossil fuels — which itself is inefficient and polluting — then transmitted and distributed to your home through wires and transformers that lose over 24% of that energy through resistive and inductive losses.

Ideally, the energy is generated locally, in order to minimize transmission losses, and it is generated using renewable energy such as wind or solar. So the best energy is rooftop solar.

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