Are You Losing Heat In Your Home?
Posted on 05. Jul, 2013 by Iqcguest in Home, House and Home
We all are aware with the term ‘HEAT’ and also using it in day to day life. But few of us are aware about what a heat recovery system is and how it is beneficial to people in their homes. Today various small scale solutions are used to do the recovery of heat in homes as well as in industries to save money.
Sources of Wasted Heat in Homes:
Generally in our home the kitchen uses a lot of heat while cooking and in doing other things. But unfortunately much of this heat is wasted into the atmosphere, through the stove exhaust etc. A large portion of the heat is also wasted in home heating and cooling process. Energy can be wasted in many ways, such as due to improper insulation on pipes and ducts, leakage in a duct system, penetration in home envelope, leakage through the doors and windows, inefficient home heating and cooling systems. So its better to install heat recovery ventilation systems which helps to recover that heat and reuse it to minimize the overall energy consumption and the waste of it either in same or different processes.
Heat extraction from various equipment:
Heat from various equipment like exhaust, hot water, refrigeration or heating /cooling system can be used to pre-heat the inner surrounding air or water which ultimately reduces the load on energy systems and thus it reduces the cost of that energy consumption.
To recover the heat, various methods are employed such as either by directly without the use of heat exchanger or by indirectly with the use of heat exchanger. In order to recover the heat, surrounding air or water is passed through the heat exchanger and is heated through heat energy which is captured from various appliances like stove exhauster, refrigeration system etc. In this way, this preheated air or water allows the furnace to consume less fuel which ultimately saves money.
The question on what amount of money any heat recovery system can save that depends explicitly on resulting cost savings against the amount of the capital cost spent for the installation of the heat recovery system. In any heat recovery system it is necessary to identify the type or nature of waste heat in terms of temperature and material used.
Methods to recover heat and saving the money:
1. Use of proper insulation:
Generally walls and the floor in home are main heat gainers and looser in summer and winter respectively. With proper selection of insulating material, it reduces the heating and cooling costs and reducing the noise level. Insulation is closely associated with different components of home like plumbing, electrical design of home etc. so when this linkage between insulation and components fails, effectiveness of insulation is lost. Experiments says that 5% failure in insulation decreases the effectiveness of insulation by half.
2. Proper sealing of ducts:
Ducts are nothing but a network of pipes which takes hot and cool air to the required space and maintains the temperature of it within comfortable limits. Any leakage or breaks in this ducts is a lost of energy against what is invested to run it. So it is important to find out such kind of failures in duct so as to minimize the loss of energy.
3.Air conditioning system performance improvements:
First of all, to get the optimum performance of any A/C system, its design and proper installation must be done. In actual practice, all air conditioning system lose more than 30% of the cooling capacity which prescribed by its manufacturer.So while designing the system, some parameters like size of space, flow of air, equipment specifications and its functions etc to be identified.
4.Windows and doors:
One should try to use newer windows/doors available in market like with sunscreen, windows with films which have a potential to replace older ones and minimizing the negative effects.These windows reduce the incoming radiant heat /ultraviolet rays and increase the filtration of air.
5.Installation of proper lighting;
The use of compact fluorescent light (CFL) instead of older one yellow light bulbs is one of the best and easiest way of saving much of the energy. Normally these CFL lights consume 70 to 80 % of less electricity and have a longer life then conventional bulbs.
6. Reducing the energy bills:
Energy Star certified house hold equipment must be purchased which use 15% of less energy than non certified models.This helps to cut energy bills with a big amount. Go to BPC for more information.