not snus related whatsoever...electricity trivia

[RealmofOpeth]

Ok I got this roommate who's a complete doofus. He is so hopelessly ignorant about electricity. At the same time he is ridiculously cheap.

Examples:
Unplugs everything. I mean everything..except what's in my room.

Doesn't drain warm bath water, as though it's heat will add some time before the next time the heater comes on. I think after I called him out on that bullshit and his girlfriend was laughing he won't bother with that again.

Doesn't flush the toilet after pissing, afraid of using too much water.
Doesn't pay for a garbage service.
Tried to build some sorry ass 'solar heater' thing to be used in front of the window last winter.
Among other excessively cheap things. Yet he has a girlfriend. No wonder right?

Anyways. I've just been getting particularly annoyed with him unplugging the microwave. Me and him both use it very often. He thinks just it being plugged in when not cooking food is wasting some type of considerable energy.
So I would like to explain to him a relatively reliable figure for how pointless his exercise is. Such as 1 second of the magnetron firing in the microwave is about a weeks worth of powering the clock and whatever refreshing of capacitors is going on...something of that nature. To show that maybe the energy expelled in his arm going to the wall to pull it is much greater than what he's saving and therefore the money he's saving is next to impossible to determine.

I mean he even unplugs the ****ing toaster! There's no power supply in that thing at all as far as I've ever seen...just the wires going straight to some resistor bank and only passing any electrons when the lever is down for toasting something.

Meanwhile I'm in my room with an 850 watt power supply on my computer, 5 hard drives, 2 video cards, 7 case fans, 21" CRT, as well as charging batteries constantly for RC...and he doesn't say a word to me about it.. I left it on all last night too for no reason. Of course I would've rather remembered to shut it off and I'm not proud of leaving it on, but I just find it really ironic.
Anyways, I've been ****ing with him and constantly plugging shit back in, especially the toaster just to see if it's been unplugged when I come home from work. I've got no problem talking to him about it, but I would like a reliable, relatively general figure (not expecting model specific) of the energy used in the microwave clock vs. it cooking.

[RobsanX]

Well say you have a 1000 watt microwave, and your electricity cost you $0.10 per kilowatt-hour. You can run your microwave for an hour for $0.10. The clock power is probably about 0.2 watts, so you could run it for about 200 days for $0.10, or about 15 cents a year.

[Premium Parrots]

Does he reuse condoms too?

[Zero]

For what it's worth, physics is my job and you can tell him that I said he doesn't need to unplug appliances like toasters or microwave ovens - they use basically zero energy when not in use. A microwave with a clock on it might use a few watts - like two or three. The cost of leaving it plugged in for the year would be a few dollars - like two or three. Just give the guy two bucks and ask him to leave the damned thing plugged in.

Letting a hot bath cool down before letting it drain, though, that's not a stupid idea. A typical bath in a bathtub uses about 180L (40 gallons) of water. If you say that the water is about 60C and you let it cool 40 degrees to room temperature, 20C, then using the specific heat of water (4.2 joules/g per degree celcius), then you can calculate the thermal energy released to the room as

E = 4.2 J/g°C x 180 L x 1000g/L x 40 °C

= 30.4 Megajoules = 8.4 kWh

It's not a huge amount of energy, but it's considerable. Enough to run your tricked out computer rig at full tilt for probably 5-6 hours, assuming it was electricity rather than heat.

To put it another way, the saved heat from one bath could power your microwave clock for a third of the year*. To compromise, you could save the heat from your next bath and use that savings to splurge on leaving your microwave plugged in.

(* again, assuming it was electricity and not heat)

[sentry103]

sounds like your roomie has obsessive-compulsive disorder. Here's the test. When both of you are on the couch watching TV, take a piece of paper, wad it up and throw it on the floor in front of him. If it drives him mad to the point where he has to get up and throw it away during the TV program--well, he has O.C.D. Tell him there are really good drugs for that.

Repeat the test when you feel like having a little fun.

[RealmofOpeth]

Does he reuse condoms too?

AAAHhhaahahaha. good one. You know what, I did find one in the laundry room. I should'a told him to make sure that shit goes in the trash. hmm, i could use it as blackmail when he wants to bitch about me for something stupid

[RealmofOpeth]

Well say you have a 1000 watt microwave, and your electricity cost you $0.10 per kilowatt-hour. You can run your microwave for an hour for $0.10. The clock power is probably about 0.2 watts, so you could run it for about 200 days for $0.10, or about 15 cents a year.

good point. i'm a dumbass for not having thought about that. i have no idea what we pay a kilowatt hour. if it's anything that cheap then he doesn't have shit to worry about...which I already knew generally, but just wanted to put it into official sounding terms.

I think he gets the impression that the appliances that run clocks and generally anything plugged into a wall acts like a wall-wart ac/dc transformer power supply that gets warm just sitting on the the socket not really powering anything. then again, that only happens to certain types I've noticed which the others i guess are switching types. I should tell him that those do use power and are simply inefficient compared to native power supplies. I would be curious however how much besides the clock is being used when the microwave isn't heating. Such as keeping the signal drive circuitry charged so when start is pressed it's ready to fire the radiation.

[RealmofOpeth]

For what it's worth, physics is my job and you can tell him that I said he doesn't need to unplug appliances like toasters or microwave ovens - they use basically zero energy when not in use. A microwave with a clock on it might use a few watts - like two or three. The cost of leaving it plugged in for the year would be a few dollars - like two or three. Just give the guy two bucks and ask him to leave the damned thing plugged in.

Letting a hot bath cool down before letting it drain, though, that's not a stupid idea. A typical bath in a bathtub uses about 180L (40 gallons) of water. If you say that the water is about 60C and you let it cool 40 degrees to room temperature, 20C, then using the specific heat of water (4.2 joules/g per degree celcius), then you can calculate the thermal energy released to the room as

E = 4.2 J/g°C x 180 L x 1000g/L x 40 °C

= 30.4 Megajoules = 8.4 kWh

It's not a huge amount of energy, but it's considerable. Enough to run your tricked out computer rig at full tilt for probably 5-6 hours, assuming it was electricity rather than heat.

To put it another way, the saved heat from one bath could power your microwave clock for a third of the year*. To compromise, you could save the heat from your next bath and use that savings to splurge on leaving your microwave plugged in.

(* again, assuming it was electricity and not heat)

very interesting about the bath water calculation. however I don't really think he heats up to 60C and whatever he has left in there is probably close to 20 gallons or something. but i don't quite understand how that heat is really going to go throughout the house much, especially when the furnace is right next to the bathroom which of course the bathroom gets the heat first from the first tap off the vents and is baking hot while the rest of the house suffers. it doesn't help he has two addon rooms that aren't insulated worth a shit...holes in the floor from trying to make another bathroom he started almost a year ago and never finished.
I try shutting the vent so that the heat gets pushed to the other rooms more but he keeps opening it, saying that it puts pressure on the furnace to work harder. Which I do know is true, but I wouldn't think one vent would do it and it's also not worth having the bathroom hot and every other room half as hot.

anyways, it sort of sucks having to take a shower really quick and then find the bathtub full of cold dirty bathwater that i have to wait for to drain out.
what's really stupid about all this is that he has a tendency to leave lights on. and i'm quite a stickler for turning off lights that aren't used.

[RealmofOpeth]

sounds like your roomie has obsessive-compulsive disorder. Here's the test. When both of you are on the couch watching TV, take a piece of paper, wad it up and throw it on the floor in front of him. If it drives him mad to the point where he has to get up and throw it away during the TV program--well, he has O.C.D. Tell him there are really good drugs for that.

Repeat the test when you feel like having a little fun.

he may have that but I think he's just so obsessively CHEAP. He also uses candles for light when taking a shower.
oh and he tries to buy stuff from stores and resell them on ebay. then he gets mad ebay charges him a fee for the percentage of a sale and then wonders why he can't sell anything anymore because they locked his account from refusing to pay it off. his car is a rusted husk of some old 80's buick...only one seat. yet he has a camaro and a truck sitting in the backyard. other than that he's really not too obsessive about things. I mean the kitchen is a shithole with all my helicopter parts occupying the table and around it yet he doesn't raise any hell about it. Except maybe his girlfriend because he's only here at noon for a little while and a couple nights a week..the rest of the time he's with her and wonders why he doesn't have time to do anything.

[bakerbarber]

How did you end up being roommates?

My wife does irritating shit, but I'm stuck with her unless I have a reason not to give her half my assets in a divorce. Cheaper to keep her. :shock:

A roommate seems like an easier situation to walk away from civilly with much less turmoil.

Just tell him you got a better deal somewhere else and it's closer to work. Something.. I'm sure if you're really friends and you don't want to insult him by moving out can be your excuse.

At least he doesn't get bitchy and cry for no reason every 28 days. :P

I feel you on the lights. When I used to work nights I would get infuriated to come home to my wife sleeping with every single light in every single room in the house ON. She also would leave the computer and two televisions on. The worst was in the summer to come home to her under a blanket on the couch smiling, on a 95 degree day with the air conditioning on 60. I almost had an aneurysm a couple times.

[RealmofOpeth]

How did you end up being roommates?

My wife does irritating shit, but I'm stuck with her unless I have a reason not to give her half my assets in a divorce. Cheaper to keep her. :shock:

A roommate seems like an easier situation to walk away from civilly with much less turmoil.

Just tell him you got a better deal somewhere else and it's closer to work. Something.. I'm sure if you're really friends and you don't want to insult him by moving out can be your excuse.

At least he doesn't get bitchy and cry for no reason every 28 days. :P

I feel you on the lights. When I used to work nights I would get infuriated to come home to my wife sleeping with every single light in every single room in the house ON. She also would leave the computer and two televisions on. The worst was in the summer to come home to her under a blanket on the couch smiling, on a 95 degree day with the air conditioning on 60. I almost had an aneurysm a couple times.

We only met over me searching the internet for a place to move into so i could go to college. We don't hang out or talk about much, don't have much in common and he's just mostly an airhead with an airhead girlfriend. We get along ok for the most part. I'm pretty sure he's sick of a lot of things I'm doing but I think he's too scared to tell me because I guess that would risk me leaving...therefore he would go apeshit trying to steamroll every tenth of a penny he could get if he doesn't have a renter (he owns the house). That's why he tried to build another bathroom and amp up the image of the kitchen for which he quit trying to finish once he realized he wanted more money to do it and possibly also realizing I wasn't leaving at the end of the lease. Apparently the last guy he had was an extreme slob and total douchebag so even with how slobby I can get, I guess I'm a win-win for him.
I don't really plan on leaving soon. I absolutely hate moving. Unless I win the lottery. It's really not that bad considering i got a decent amount of area for the money, it's relatively close to school..but not work. I'm paying 400 a month here compared to a couple hundred more for most other places in the area, free internet and 50/50 split the other costs, despite I'm here almost all the time and he's here about a fourth of the time.

I used to get bitched up and down for sleeping with the tv on from my parents. But the difference between me at that time and your wife who has no sense of what things cost and my roommate is that my roommate is nuts about saving money yet contradicts it entirely with leaving the lights on.

[lxskllr]

The best thing to do is probably not worry about it. It sounds like your generally satisfied with your arrangement, and he's too old to change. Pushing the issue will just get both of you irritated, and nothing will come of it.

[Jason]

I remember reading about phantom power consumption in the home, and there was something about average power use being around 5 watts or so, if even that. It pretty much saves nothing for an individual household; it's only noticeable when you look at the big picture (city-wide or state-wide phantom power consumption).

He may as well be driving a hybrid on a highway full of Hummers for all the energy he's going to save.....and leaving the lights on really makes no sense after all of the trouble he's going through to unplug everything. :?

[airwoodstock]

I try shutting the vent so that the heat gets pushed to the other rooms more but he keeps opening it, saying that it puts pressure on the furnace to work harder. Which I do know is true, but I wouldn't think one vent would do it and it's also not worth having the bathroom hot and every other room half as hot.

How hard an HVAC system works is dependant on where the theromstat is located. Shutting off a vent won't put anymore of a strain on the system. It will actually make the system more efficent since your decreasing the amount of space it has to heat/cool. In the summer months, I shut the vents in the basement since it stays cool down there and dosen't need the a/c. In the winter, I open them and shut some of the second floor vents. My thermostat is on the first floor, in the center of the house and, by following this routine, I save an average of $25 a month on my energy bills. I live up by the IL/WI border and it can get pretty cold/hot depending on the season. Just my opinion.

[Zero]

Agreed. Shutting a vent near the furnace will absolutely not somehow cause you to burn out your blower motor :lol: The torque on the fan will increase a bit, but it's certainly well within the design specs of the system and it will save you money on heating to distribute your heat intelligently.