E&E Engineering

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Only when we live do we begin to die

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With the latest trend in energy saving I felt it might be a good idea to cover an outlet timing device. If you watched the video above then you already know that a timing device can be rather useful in everything ventures. You can set them and forget them to say the least. If you have outside lights you only want in some of the time, this is what you need. How else can it save you energy though that's the big question. Is it worth buying, should you go out and buy on, or is it wasted money.

Starting off we should look at the price these can be had for very cheap online. I also believe you can find them in stores as well, prices may vary of course. These work best with areas you forget to turn lights off in, or just anything off in general including the TV. You can also set it to completely disconnect your appliances from phantom power at night, saving you a few pennies. It's important to mention at the start though, phantom power is very little power use. If your TV is plugged in then it's constantly being provided with power. That's just how they work, otherwise they can't listen for you to hit the remote control power button.

When using phantom power these items can use only minuscule amounts of power normally. There is a few exceptions with cable boxes etc. that have gone a little overboard. A typical television in this day in age though will only idle at 1-6 watts of power. It would take you ten hours (or all night) leaving the TV on to equal a single 60w light bulb on for an hour. As you can imagine it may not be worth even touching the TV. However something that you could certainly use one on is the water heater, we discussed saving water earlier in the blog, and now we discuss saving electric by shutting off the heater.

The general population only uses their hot water two times during the day, yet the water heater runs all day. Why would we need to be heating water up when it doesn't even get used most of the time. If it's summer time in your home then not only are you wasting electric, but it's seeping out into your air-conditioned home, heating your home, and cooling off the water, causing both units to run more. So we have a crazy cycle being raged between the AC unit and the water heater.

This device here can connect onto the power lines for your electric heater and turn it off for 22 hours a day, or as much as you want. Luckily a water heater can stay very hot for quite some time so this being off means next to nothing minus a savings. It's a win win situation for water heating and energy saving for you. They key is to find a quality unit, some seem to be dwindling in quality as of late but I am sure more exist.

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How to save Energy

Saving energy is at the top of many peoples lists including mine. I have been trying to save energy anywhere I can for years now. I see other people doing things that could lower their bills without bothering them. Yet they continue to not care, or just be unaware. If you're one of those unaware people then I am here to help you! If you just don't care, then that's fine also but maybe I can help! In this first portion I will cover a super easy way to make your power use go down and lower another bill! The first thing we're going to cover is your shower head, yes that object that sprays water out at your soapy head is costing you money!

My Shower Head Is Perfect!!!!

Your shower head might be perfect! However the kicker is that it can put out almost twice as much water per minute as you really require for daily living. That's where I come in, they make shower heads that flow less than 2.5 gallons per minute. If your shower head is super old, then five gallons per minute may be normal. This is a massive waste of water as you can imagine. You may also be thinking that water doesn't change your energy bill. However if you're using hot water it certainly does. Each gallon of water you use your hot water tank has to reheat from cold. As you know if you run the shower long enough it turns cold because the water heater can't keep up.

So let's look at all the benefits from using a lower flow shower head. First of all you will be using less water, which means less electric to reheat your water heater in the first place. This is where the bulk of the savings take place. The best part is most shower heads don't lose any pressure at all if you go with a lower flow. The volume of water goes down but it still remains a nice strong shower pressure. The other massive benefit to all this is less water use. I don't mean just any water either, I mean hot water! You can now shower nearly twice as long before running out of hot water.

If this don't sound good to you then you must not like taking long hot showers. You may also live by yourself, if you have a family of four though who showers every night you could be saving nearly 50 gallons of water PER DAY just from this, that's 600 gallons a month! You basically cut your water use in half for what the shower normally uses up. Shower heads are a cheap and super easy replacement also, just screw the old one off and put the new one on. I recommend some teflon tape of course to prevent leaks. Other than that though you're good to go with a new shower head. I recommend the 1.5 gallon per minute shower heads for the best results though. Plus they offer good savings.

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Tearing Down An LED Light Bulb

Today we're going to be tearing down one of the newer Cree LED light bulbs. These bulbs have been growing in use for many years now. They used an extraordinarily low amount of power for a light bulb, coming in at around 9 watts for a 60w bulb equivalent. It's important to note just how low that is, you could run this bulbs the entire year non stop, and it cost you hardly any money. Where a standard incandescent bulb could cost you hundreds. However these do come at a cost, these Cree bulbs are around $9 each or higher depending on where you shop for them.

We always stopped and grab them at the Home Depot, places like Lowes doesn't carry them which is a real shame. The bulb is made up of glass, and some sort of padded rubber around the bulb area. The newer versions are just a plastic case with vents. A big difference is also in the warranty, the metal heat sinked bulbs have a ten year warranty. While the regular plastic bulbs only have a 3 year warranty. That's a massive difference in how long they think these bulbs will last. If you compare them to a normal incandescent bulb though they're lasting much longer. Not all LED bulbs are created the same though.

Some LED bulbs are made to last hardly any amount of time at all, close to 1000 hours. Where the more expensive high grade bulbs can last 25,000 hours. That's another big difference, so if you see a one dollar LED bulb it's cheap for a reason. If you're not careful you can get carried away in the price and end up spending money on something that won't last. I have experimented with bulbs that were cheap and most of them worked OK. However after less than a month one of the bulbs decided to work when it wanted to. The other times it would work fine, I never knew when I could depend on it or not.

On wards with the tear down of course, it seems they used pretty high quality items in the original cree bulb with the metal base. Including nichicon capacitors which are an industry standard. However looking at the life span graph it's clearly not made to last ten years like this bulb is warrantied for. I guess if the warranty goes out we can just get a new bulb for free from Cree.

Claiming your warranty:

I did have a bulb go bad from Cree, although I suspect it was my fixtures fault, because both bulbs blowed at the exact same time. Since then I have had no issues with that fixture though. I contacted them and they sent me two bulbs in the mail within about two weeks. Both bulbs worked great and I have had no issues since then. Overall I like Cree as a company, and they seem to make some of the best LED style devices which is a welcomed addition for me.