David Director's top energy hogs to watch out for

David Director is all about spreadsheets. And about saving energy.

He shared the experiences in his four-year odyssey to make his home more energy efficient -- and to do it without sacrificing cost or comfort -- in this morning's GreenSpace column.

His own in-depth analysis, complete with charts, is on the website of a local sustainabiliby group, aFewSteps.org.

One of the things I didn't have room for was a discussion of his top three energy hogs -- the second fridge in the basement, the dehumidifier and lighting in general.

But Americans still have plenty of them. The U.S. government's EnergyStar website estimates that There are nearly 20 million refrigerators in the United States made before 1996.

To help you decide if it's time to upgrade, the EnergyStar site has a very cool "refrigerator retirement savings calculator. "  Just plug in the model number of your refrigerator -- or describe it -- and the calculator will tell you how much you could save by buying a new one.

And, a dehumidifier simply addresses a symptom of an entirely different problem. Director had moisture in his own basement, and as the result of an Energy Works audie, he got the basement waterproofed.  Gradually, the basement dried out, and within months, they turned the dehumidifier off.

I have a dehumidifier as well, but we run it only when water seeps in after a heavy rain. The rest of the time, our new GE Geospring hybrid water heater, which removes heat -- and humidity -- from the air to heat the water, takes care of any latent moisture.

"A lot of times you'll see houses that have a lot of general room illumination, and often it's done very inefficiently," he said. "People don't have table lamps like they used to."

It's a matter of putting lights where you need them. And, in the case of something like an array of ceiling lights, putting in enough separate controls so you don't have to light them all at once. Also, dimmers really help.