Reducing Our Electric Bill: Thermostat Replacement

Developmental Blogology. 2014 January 3

Reducing Our Electric Bill: Thermostat Replacement

Abstract:
Replacing analog dial thermostats with digital programmable and non-programmable models for electric baseboard heat increased subjective comfort, but did not show major energy savings to offset initial investment in replacement thermostats in a well insulated 1980's contructed duplex in State College, PA.

Introduction:
The house we're currently renting was built in the early 1980's, and has electric baseboard heat, an electric stove, and hookups for an electic dryer.  Each room was already zoned independently, and hooked up to these ghastly things:

Pros: Came with the rental Cons: "On-or-Off" Loud Wide temperature range

The Mears 602 thermostats have temperature marks on them, but they aren't very accurate.  Turning the heat to 65ºF resulted in the heat fluxating from the 50's to the 80's.  The relay in these thermometers is quite loud, and when the set point is reached you hear a loud "click".  The issue with older thermostats is that they are either "on" or "off", and by the time the register has warmed up enough to heat the room, it's well over the set point at the heat source, and just getting warmer at the thermostat.  The long cycle times and extreme temperatures the registers were reaching also resulted in a lot of noise coming from the registers with each heating cycle "click click click, ting ting ting, etc" and hot spots in the room followed by drastic cooling before the next heating cycle began.

Methods:
I decided to install a programmable thermostat in the main living area right after we moved in.  The major advantage to programmable thermostats is that you can set them to turn off whenever you're away, or when you're asleep, and warm back up before you get home, or before you wake up, so you don't notice the changes (except when you open your electric bill!)   I decided to buy the Honeywell TL8230A thermostat after reading several reviews, and trying to find what would work best for us.  The NEST thermostats looked pretty neat in that you can control them remotely, and that they learn based on activity,  but the price tag ($250 pays for a lot of electricity), the need for multiple units, and the fact it isn't compatible with high voltage electric baseboard heat disqualified it.  Installation of our first Honeywell TL8230A was quite easy  despite several trips to and from the breaker box (DANGER: ALWAYS remember to turn off the circuit breaker, and VERIFY the electricity is off when working with electric baseboard heat - 240V, 15 Amps can kill you, unlike the low voltage systems you typically find on heat pumps and other heating/cooling systems, and had I not read the instructions, I would not have realized this until I removed the existing unit from the wall and seen the Romex wiring).  The controls are straight forward, and the thermostat has a nice simple clean appearance with the side panels closed.  The thermostat is silent in operation, requires no batteries, defaults to a safe temperature in the event of an extended power outage, and the best feature is the "Proportional Integral Adaptive Control" which regulates the time the thermostat is energized, keeping temperatures very close to the set point.

Pros: Excellent design Easy installation "Proportional Integral Adaptive Control" ensures even consistent temperatures Programmable for additional savings Backlit display Cons: Still expensive compared with programmable heat pump controllers Need a separate unit for each zone

After installing the first unit in the living area, it performed fine until the warm spring weather eliminated the need for it.  We turned it off, and didn't worry about it until fall.  Once we started using the heat again, I realized the bedroom thermostats suffered from the same issues, and I'd go to bed freezing cold, only to wake up with an 80ºF room.  Knowing we had a baby on the way, I thought we should equally equip his room, since baby's ideal temperature is 70ºF, and I typically prefer a colder (and cheaper!) room around 62ºF.  Since these rooms are used only for sleeping, I figured a programmable thermostat might be overkill.  After doing some reading, I decided to go with two more Honeywell units, this time the RLV3120A units, which were cheaper, particularly with a promotion Amazon was running.  There were cheaper "dial" based thermostats, but I liked the design and the idea of having a set number displayed rather than the guesswork I was experiencing with the old Mears units, and thought the "Proportional Integral Adaptive Control" feature was worth sticking with. Again, installation was simple (although I had to do some experimentation with the wiring in the baby's room, as the master bedroom line was spliced in this junction box), and once installed the units worked just as well (and quietly!) as the one installed in our living area, and a fraction the cost.

Pros: Cheaper than a programmable model Digital display Easy installation "Proportional Integral Adaptive Control" ensures even consistent temperatures Cons: Not programmable Dated design Display not backlit

There are still 4 more Mears thermostats in the house, but I haven't been able to justify replacing those.  I only occasionally use the heat in my office, and the bathroom doesn't require precision control, and the kitchen and storage rooms get ample afternoon sun and are adjacent to other heated rooms.

Results:
The total cost of installing these thermostats was near $100. Based on our very minimal electric usage (~10kwh/day), and inexpensive power locally (5.76 cents/kwh, plus distribution and customer charges), it's unlikely we will recover the investment in the thermostats in the time we'll live here, but it has increased our comfort and control despite the cold weather outside.  I've installed smart/programmable thermostats in every place I've lived since I started living off campus in college.  While I saw instant savings in heating costs in a poorly insulated building with a gas furnace and in another poorly insulated home with a heat pump, it is unlikely we would see as drastic a change here.  

Book Review: Zero Waste Home

Developmental Blogology. 2013 December 31

Book Review: Zero Waste Home

Zero Waste Home written by Bea Johnson and published by Scribner in 2013 is a biography of how a housewife and her family living in a 3000 square foot "McMansion" downsized to a more moderate 1420 square foot cottage more in tune with her childhood in Provence, France.  She charts their transition from filling a 26 gallon trashcan of waste per week to a single quart of landfill waste per year for a family of four.  

Bea explores every way of avoiding "throw aways" and at one point even considered ditching toilet paper for foraged moss (spoiler: she decided flushing was OK in the end)!  The majority of her tips are useful, like bringing your own bags shopping, minimizing packaging when possible, and refusing cheap throw away items (like pens at conferences), but some of her suggestions like bringing your own pillowcase to collect fresh bread at the bakery are a little far fetched, at least for where we live.  She does address some of  the major time sinks she had adopted as a way to avoid waste, like making her own butter, which in the end she decided was OK to buy as the paper wrappers were compostable, and her time was better spent elsewhere, rather than hand churning cream.

Bea's mantra modifies the familiar Reduce, Reuse, Recycle with Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and Rot, which more closely follows the European Union Waste Framework Directive, where prevention is the first step and aids in preventing the creation of waste from the beginning. Even recycling is minimized in Bea's house, particularly plastics, as their recycling potential is limited.  

This is a file from the Wikimedia Commons.

Reading this book prompted me to really consider some of the items in my closet, and brought back into focus some of the wastes in my daily life (styrofoam cups and disposable cutlery  in the cafeteria at work)  that would be easy to eliminate with a bit of planning.  I've already gone through my closet and pared down my selection of clothing (although I didn't cut down as much as Bea and her family, as they have just enough clothing to fill a suitcase!), and will be making a donation to Goodwill, as I'm sure there's someone who can get more use out of them (Reuse).  The simplicity in having less was immediately apparent as the closet was no longer cluttered, and for the first time since moving I was able to close the closet doors. 

Having less laundry to clean, fold and put away, and having an easier time finding what I'm looking for, helps prevent wasting both energy and time, which is another key element in Zero Waste Home.

Having a child, and knowing that the planet I leave behind will be his to inherit has made me want to go beyond minimizing our impact through energy conservation (something we already do, not only for the Green factor, but also because it saves us money) to having a more active role in making the world a better place by preventing waste from ending up in a landfill.  

Bea also offers a smartphone app called Bulk to help in finding sources of bulk food near you, but unfortunately, there's nothing listed near us in State College.

Overall, I enjoyed Bea's writing style, her systematic approach to reducing waste in different functions of the house (kitchen, bathrooms, bedrooms, etc) and her recognition of where conservation at the cost of sanity needed to be tuned down a little.  Some of her suggestions are a little difficult for us to implement (where can you buy bulk peanut butter to put in your French Mason jars in State College?), but she did give me a new approach to simple, waste minimized living.

She also provides useful recipes for eco-friendly, non allergenic cleaners, home made tooth powder, and even lip balm!

You can visit her website at zerowastehome.blogspot.com for additional tips and hints, and you can purchase her book, Zero Waste Home, below from Amazon.com, or check it out from your local library.  

Dead Tree	Kindle

Note: Amazon links are part of their affiliate program.  Making a purchase through one of these links helps sponsor Developmental Blogology, and does not affect your pricing.

Cost of Having a Baby?

Developmental Blogology. 2013 December 30

Cost of Having a Baby?

Abstract:
Careful planning, responsible behavior, and even having insurance may not save you from large medical bills associated with having a child (or any medical event for that matter!).  Insurance is there for when your optimistic hopes that nothing bad will happen (it'll never happen to me!) is overwhelmed by reality (oh, so that happened!).

Recent changes allowing enrollment in healthcare exchanges may not really provide the uninsured with numerous ways of saving money (at least for our family as an example), and we found the great value my employer's group plan offers after the fact.

Introduction:
Having health insurance is not only a good idea, it's the law.  Or so I've heard from www.Healthcare.gov.  

The average costs of having a child in the United States in 2012 varied from $9,775 for a conventional delivery to $15,041 for a caesarean delivery  according to a recent article in the New York Times.  This is the actual payments agreed to by the insurance companies, not the list price given to the uninsured.

I've been insured most of my life (first through my parent's policy, then through an employer, then through a university program, UNINSURED, then through employers again), and I've always known the risks of being uninsured, but never has it been so clear as it is now, looking at the medical bills for the delivery of our child and realizing just how financially devastating it could have been if we had chosen the wrong plan - or had been uninsured.  

Methods:
When I switched jobs, my wife and I had to decide between a higher deductible HMO plan, and a higher cost PPO plan.  We chose the PPO plan to rest easy in the knowledge that we would have a wider selection of doctors, no deductibles and minimal costs during a time in which we would already be stressed with diapers and sleeplessness. Little did we know how valuable that choice that would be (and how lucky we were to have the choice and the ability to afford insurance at all!).

My wife made a point of taking her prenatal vitamins, eating right, making all of her prenatal doctor's appointments, and exercising whenever possible, and she stayed in excellent health, despite some rather unpleasant morning sickness in the first trimester.  Everything looked normal and mom and baby were doing excellent the whole way through the pregnancy.  When labor started, everything progressed normally, and then we saw our baby boy for the first time!

Results:
When our son was born, I was amazed, seeing him for the first time.  I was so happy to be able to hold my son in my arms, but quickly the happiness turned to concern as the we noticed he wasn't breathing normally. Rather than the normal cries of a newborn, he made a few weak gurgles, and his skin turned blue. He had aspirated some meconium in utero and was having trouble breathing.  My wife was only able to hold him for a few seconds before he was taken away to be put on Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP).

Another hospital's Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU)  sent a team to intubate our son and transfer him to their facility.  Once in the care of the NICU's talented staff, our son made a rapid recovery, and within a few days we were able to take him home. The stress of spending our son's first night away from him (bad weather, and hospital policy preventing my wife's early discharge kept us in place), and the concern about his well being in the NICU over the next few days was gradually replaced with relief as he recovered faster than expected.

Within a few days of his discharge, we started checking the medical bills, and the total quickly exceeded $100,000.  This was not just the amount billed, which insurance companies negotiate through deals with the hospital, but the amount the insurance company was paying for services rendered.  

If we were near the poverty line and/or uninsured, we might have qualified for Medicaid - or state programs that might have covered a portion of our medical bills along with the charity care that hospitals offer to those who can least afford their services.  In our case, our insurance picked up the expenses, leaving us with minimal co-pays, and room charges for my wife and son's time in the hospital. If we were on any number of high deductible-limited coverage plans, or if we were unlucky enough to be unemployed/uninsured temporarily during the birth of our son, we could have easily ended up with tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in bills.  

While we are not in poverty, the sudden addition of "mortgage payment" for a decade or more in medical bill repayment would've easily pushed us towards bankruptcy - a situation shared by more than 60% of Americans filing for bankruptcy, many who have insurance.  

Since I'd like this to be educational, I went to www.healthcare.gov and looked at the price of un-subsidized plans available to us as a family of 3 - Two Adults, One Child - no catastrophy plans (I'm too old!), and no subsidy, because I'm too successful (ha!), and figured roughly what it would have cost us if we had our son covered by one of these plans in 2014.

Geisinger Plans (comparable to our existing plan)
Plan Source	Level	Name	Premium		Deductible	Out of Pocket Max	Copayments		Baby Cost
			Monthly	Yearly			Primary	Specialist
Marketplace Plans	Bronze	Marketplace Solutions 13	$477	$5,724	$12,000	$12,500	No charge, after deductible		$17,724
		Marketplace Solutions 12	$478	$5,736	$8,000	$12,700	30% Coinsurance, after deductible		$18,436
	Silver	Marketplace Solutions 10	$498	$5,976	$7,000	$7,500	No Charge, after deductible		$12,976
		Marketplace Extra 3	$506	$6,072	$4,000	$12,000	$10	$50	$10,072
	Gold	Marketplace Extra 2	$553	$6,636	$1,000	$10,000	$10	$40	$7,636
		Marketplace Solutions 5	$572	$6,864	$2,700	$5,000	20% Coinsurance, after deductible		$11,864
Employer Plan	Existing	Geisinger Choice PPO	$241	$2892*	$0		$20	$20	$3,133
		PPO Employer Cost
Uninsured, at our income level						∞			$100,000+
NOTE: Plan comparison is of actual plans on Healthcare.gov for 2014, that would not have been available to us at the time our son was born (2013). Theoretical costs include premiums paid, deductible, and any co-insurance payments. This does not account for prenatal visit co-pays (covered deductible free in all plans, thanks to Obamacare), and ignores if any out-of-network providers were used, because in our case none were, and of course, no data is available to reliably estimate what costs would've been if we used out of network providers. The epidural my wife received may not have been covered by all plans, which could add $1000+. In plans with co-insurance, the total costs would've hit the out-of-pocket maximum. *Employer contributions are not considered, but will be updated once I get my 2013-W2 showing what my employer paid, so we have an accurate idea of the total cost.

Even with the optimal plan on the exchange, we would've had to pay $7,636 for the birth of our son.  Granted, this money would have also insured us against any other health problems, as it would have paid the premium for the year, and maxed out our out-of-pocket deductible for any other qualifying medical events between the beginning of December and year end.  The other factor is that choosing the "right" plan retrospectively makes the opportunity of being "over insured" impossible. Obviously, the best deal for us is the employer provided plan which is subsidized by my employer (I'll update this once I get my W2 and can calculate how much my employer paid), but not everyone has such a generous employee benefit package.


Conclusions:
First, we'd like to thank Mount Nittany Medical Center's Labor and Delivery, and  Respiratory Therapy; Geisinger Gray's Woods Pediatrics; and the Janet Weis Children's Hospital NICU at Geisinger Medical center for their professional and knowledgeable staffs' care of our son.  His quick recovery would not have been possible without them.  Having him home for Christmas was the best present we could have ever hoped for.

Second, get medical coverage, or review your medical insurance coverage.  Even if you're in good health, follow all your doctor's recommendations, and use facilities covered by your plan, you can rack up significant medical expenses through no fault of your own - you may be transferred to a facility or treated by a specialist who is not covered (and this may be beyond your control!).  Even with insurance (the plans illustrated above), you could end up with monthly payments for your outstanding balance between $64 and $154 for 10 years, or more than $800 a month for a decade without insurance coverage!  Clearly having insurance is better than not (unless you' hope to have the debt discharged in bankruptcy, or rely on charity care), and in our case, having employer group insurance saved us a fortune.  

The differences between exchange based plans were pretty minimal given one major medical event in a decade, but would still require the policy out-of-pocket maximum be available (emergency fund, anyone?)   Taking a look at the long term consequences of a single Out of Pocket Maximum claim in a decade, with no future costs beyond the premium,  the difference between the optimal and most costly plan on the exchange is less than $3000 (assuming no increase in premiums, as if that could possibly happen), or less than $23 a month.  Assuming the same increase in premiums seen in 2013 (the lowest in a decade), the cost difference over a decade  is just over $1000, or $10.32 a month.  Although the differences aren't that great, nearly $70,000 spent over a decade for a family of 3 is no small amount of money in any budget.  

Cost of Health Insurance Over 10 Years With One Out of Pocket Max Claim During Year 1 (No Cost Increases)
Type	Name	Total Cost										Annualized Cost
		Year 1	Year 2	Year 3	Year 4	Year 5	Year 6	Year 7	Year 8	Year 9	Year 10
Optimal	Marketplace Extra 2	$7,636	$14,272	$20,908	$27,544	$34,180	$40,816	$47,452	$54,088	$60,724	$67,360	$6,736
Most Costly	Marketplace Solutions 12	$18,436	$24,172	$29,908	$35,644	$41,380	$47,116	$52,852	$58,588	$64,324	$70,060	$7,006
Cost of Health Insurance Over 10 Years With One Out of Pocket Max Claim During Year 1 (3.3% increase, as in 2013, the lowest in a decade)
Type	Name	Total Cost										Annualized Cost
		Year 1	Year 2	Year 3	Year 4	Year 5	Year 6	Year 7	Year 8	Year 9	Year 10
Optimal	Marketplace Extra 2	$7,636	$14,491	$21,572	$28,887	$36,443	$44,249	$52,312	$60,641	$69,346	$78,134	$7,813
Most Costly	Marketplace Solutions 12	$18,436	$24,361	$30,482	$36,805	$43,336	$50,083	$57,053	$64,253	$71,690	$79,373	$7,937

We were lucky in that our (sizable) monthly premiums, along with my employer's (sizable) contribution provided coverage for care that saved our son's life and gave us the ability to continue on with our life as a family, saving for his education, our retirement, and our goal to buy our own home, rather than spending the next decade (or more) paying medical bills.  We'll continue being productive, employed, tax paying citizens, because of our healthcare plan, and I'd gladly pay the amount I'm paying in insurance premiums (including the "compensation" my employer is contributing towards our plan) in taxes instead, to ensure that everyone receives routine and necessary care without the fear of financial ruin.  

Meta Conclusions:
Trying to use Blogger to insert tables SUCKS.  I tried adding them in a number of different ways, and ended up manually creating the tables in notepad, only to have them become unusable after switching from the "HTML" mode back to "Normal".  Until they get this sorted out, I've resorted to using some handcoding (boy, it's been a long time since I've done this!) and doing some quick WYSIWYG editing in KompoZer.

Welcome to Developmental Blogology!

Developmental Blogology. 2013 December 30

Welcome to Developmental Blogology!

Abstract: 
Welcome to Developmental Blogology!  The aim of Developmental Blogology is to follow my experiences as a new dad, the growth and development of my son, and any other interesting things my family is involved in (particularly if it involves SCIENCE).  

Introduction:
I'm a biologist by education; an engineer at work; a husband, and a father to a newborn baby boy, at home.  Our family lives in State College, PA and we enjoy all the benefits of a university town in a more rural setting.  Posts will loosely follow scientific journal style, with a lot more first person narrative.  

Methods:
I'll be observing our life, sharing what I've learned and experienced, and also will hopefully learn something additional from our visitors.

Topics I'll be addressing will include:
Child Development (n=1)
Hiking and Backpacking
Brewing / Wine Making
Cooking, Dining, and Gardening
Sustainability and Conservation

Results:
We'll have to wait and see!