Energy efficiency and diminishing returns
Ok, I've been a real geek here, I set up a simple spreadsheet to calculate the energy usage and savings of switching to efficient lighting types. As I said before the previous owners were profligate with electricity. I made certain assumptions based upon our room usage pattern to produce a baseline energy demand. Call it a before and after snapshot of lighting costs (for details of the original lighting scheme see lj post early Feb) With the exception of the bathroom's subtropical lighting scheme we have replaced all lights with compact or strip fluorescent units (under kitchen cabinet lighting) this has reduced our peak (i.e. All lights on) load from 1,900 watts to 690 watts. Given our usage pattern the vast bulk of the savings come from the kitchen and lounge which had both high power lighting and long(ish) lit times This saves around three kwh per day. Replacing the bathroom lights is not a high priority from the energy pov as stripping out the existing setup and replacing with (say) a single fluorescent fitting would save maybe £0.02 per day. Oh we'll get around to it fairly soon but not for purely conservation reasons.
We've made a start on insulating the loft, but this has been more of a side effect of preparing a safe, floored area to store boxes of things we don't need immediately but want to keep. We will expand this area to make a base from which we can properly insulate the loft (and, in the fullness of time, tidy up the bathroom lighting!).
We've made a start on insulating the loft, but this has been more of a side effect of preparing a safe, floored area to store boxes of things we don't need immediately but want to keep. We will expand this area to make a base from which we can properly insulate the loft (and, in the fullness of time, tidy up the bathroom lighting!).