College House Energy Consumption Final Write Up/Reflection

ILS 252

Final Project Paper

Peter Allen

Chris Borgerding

 

Entering this project I will admit that I wasn’t that committed. However, the more research I did, and the more lecture went into our energy crisis, the more involved I became with actually making an impact. The best thing about my project is that not only was I making a positive impact on the world, but I, along with my four other roommates were saving money in the process. The one down fall was that we live in a very energy inefficient house already, and in order to make drastic improvements to our energy consumption, a lot of money would have to be spent, something we don’t have. So, the main focus of my project was to focus on low budget, around the house energy waste solutions.

As noted above, drastic measures weren’t able to be taken by our house, but that does not mean that we weren’t successful in the changes we could do. Because of this, questioning the feasibility of becoming more energy conscious as a college student is something that is very possible. Often times many college students don’t think they can make much of an impact because of the lack of money we all have. But to the contrary, there are countless things one can do daily for minimal if any cost. It’s just a matter of will and motivation.

I planned on getting last year’s November heating and gas bill to try and compare between us and the past home owners. Unfortunately, my landlord was unable to find/give me the information. However, I believe the difference would have been noticeable between the two years, unless of course they also were practicing the energy consumption tactics we were.

In my eyes, the most important thing to take from this project, for everyone, is to replicate all of our sustainability solutions daily. Just working on the project for a month will do no good. We must take what we learned from our research, lab, and lecture and apply it to our lives daily, as well as influence and educate others to do the same. I know personally, that my house will continue our practices further into winter and then change up our tactics to adapt to warmer climate.

This class has actually taught me more than any other class before. Like Professor Brandner said in the beginning of our semester, this class is like any other class we have ever taken. Simple rote memorization is not beneficial and does not help. By doing this project we have actually applied what we have learned, we haven’t just filled out multiple choice bubbles to get a grade, we actually learned.

 

Introduction – College House Energy Consumption

Introduction – Project

 

 

College House Energy Consumption

For my project I will be looking at how to conserve energy at my already energy inefficient downtown house. The main goal of this project is to reduce energy waste in the house that I share with four other roomates. Although it is nice to save energy, the main reason I’am doing this is to save a little money each month on our gas and electric bills. I have been doing a little research on energy saving tips and I plan to put these into action in my house, and hopefully see a positive outcome. However, like energy consumption around the world, I wont see much change unless my other roomates participate in my conservation efforts. I hope to teach them as well some tips and tricks so we can all make a positive difference in our world together. I want to be able to compare previous electricity and gas bill to the ones preceding my project.