We have three zones: living room, bedrooms, and another for the rest of the house. (Perhaps arguably four zones, since I use a space heater in my office — no reason to heat the whole house when only my office needs to be heated during the week.) When we bought the house, all three thermostats were cheap non-programmable ones; I considered upgrading to programmable thermostats essential, though the cost and features of the Nest were certainly a luxury. I purchased and installed a Nest (second generation) in the living room, and after just a few weeks of seeing both how well it worked and how informative it was, I purchased two more (also second generation) for the other two zones. The Nest proved that the features it offers weren’t just luxuries — more details below.

Installation of the Nest is easy. The programmability is great — it’s very intuitive, easy to use, and navigate. Making adjustments through the iOS app or website is even easier. We can’t use some of the capabilities, such as fan control, because we don’t have central heating. The monthly energy report is nice, too. But the feature that really makes it fantastic is the daily energy report. Not only does the daily energy report show how much energy is used (in our case, how much oil is burned), but it shows a breakdown of when the heat turned on and off. A daily report of our living room is the lead image, above.

In other words, the Nest is telling me exactly how much oil we used to heat the house yesterday, and with three zones I know exactly where that heat is going. Different schedules in each of those zones let me very easily get a feeling for how efficient the heat is working.

2015

In the beginning of 2015 I set out to better weather-seal the house. Primarily, replacing foam insulation around door frames and putting plastic over the windows that had an obvious draft, as well as plastic over the door to the attic. We could tell an immediate improvement to heating efficiency: we could feel the warmth. Our tank of heating oil lasted quite a bit longer — had I tracked the number of days I bet I could have figured out how much of an improvement there was to efficiency. I didn’t need to, though: by looking at Nest’s daily reports I was able to see a 25-30% decrease in the daily energy use to heat the whole house. A huge savings! Most of that came through sealing out the cold in the living room, where the majority of the heat was lost. I didn’t record more specific numbers than that, however.

The Nest was instrumental in helping me improve the efficiency because I could make changes and then see the next day’s heating report to understand how my change impacted energy use. As I said, the living room is where the majority of heat was lost. One of the windows had a terrible draft that I used plastic to seal. The other windows didn’t seem to have any draft but a lot of cold could be felt against the other windows. I suspected that the nine large windows were making convection cooling into a bigger problem, and adding plastic to those windows offered a little bit of insulation for us to see energy savings of a few more percent. We couldn’t feel a difference but the Nest was reporting that we used about 10% less energy in the living room.

2016

This year, I’m looking more critically at the data from the Nest about each of our zones. Thanks to Nest daily reports I see that:

• About 26% of our heating oil goes to heat the “rest of the house”: kitchen, dining room, and our offices. I’m quite pleased with this. I think I see a few areas we can improve this, but overall it is very efficient.

• About 37% of our heating oil goes to heat the living room. This might sound bad at first, but I think it’s reasonable given the size of the living room. Our living room measures 20- x 28-foot, or 560 square feet. The ceiling is very high and vaulted, however, so cubic feet is a more accurate measurement. With an 8’ ceiling that would be 4,480 cubic feet, however ours measures 8,310 cubic feet — nearly double!

• About 37% of our heating oil goes to heat our bedrooms. The thermostat is in the master bedroom, so this is an accurate description of only that room. Their’s a master bath that is also heated and the thermostat is effectively reading that, too, since that door is typically open. The master bedroom measures 11- x 15-foot and the bathroom measures 7-1/2- x 5-foot, for a total of 202.5 square feet. (It has 8’ ceilings, too, so that’s about 1,620 cubic feet.) Thinking about cubic footage, the living room is more than five times larger than the bedroom, yet it’s using the same amount of energy to heat! Clearly there is a problem here. I haven’t been able to locate any particularly troublesome spots with an infrared thermometer; I think I’ll have to rent a thermal camera to get a better understanding of what may be going wrong.

We have a wood stove in the living room and have started using it. With a supply of downed trees on our property for firewood, it’s essentially free heat. Using a fire to supplement the oil heat, we can cut the living room daily energy use by about half. Cutting the oil use in the living room by that much equates to about a 20% reduction in our total heating oil costs. We haven’t burned enough wood to say if it might be worth paying for wood in the future, but I suspect not. As long as we can get it for free it’s worthwhile, though!

Summary

Between the savings measured in 2015 energy usage and now the savings realized in using the wood stove in 2016, the daily cost of heating our house has decreased to as much as 56% of what it originally was. (Though only occasionally burning wood in the stove means that number is going to be higher, depending upon how much we burn, perhaps up to about 65% of what it originally was.)

As I wrote I need to look into the bedroom heating and insulation to decrease the energy usage there, and I’m hopeful we can make significant improvements to save even more on heating costs.

The Nest is expensive at $250, and we bought three of them (total: $750). I estimate that, so far, the Nest has let us save about $600 in heating oil costs. By the end of this winter the Nest thermostats will have completely paid for themselves.

I paddled under this bird’s nest and went back to try to capture a photo of it. It looked pretty cool with the light shining through all of the branches and needles. I don’t think this quite captures it, but it’s a fair start.

First up: the casters. I wanted big and fat ones so that the backhoe would roll easily on the concrete of the garage and maybe be manageable on the hard-packed dirt driveway. 5” casters seemed the biggest I could go, however most of the 5” options used only 1” - 1-1/4” wide tires. I eventually found that Harbor Freight has some 5” x 2”-wide casters. These are some big and weighty casters! They don’t have locks, but otherwise fit the bill. I bought four of them, all swivel. Patrick helped me take advantage of 25%-off coupons so the total cost was just over $50 for them.

The casters have big mounting plates so I got 3/8” lag bolts to mount them. In each caster plate I used two 2-1/2” lag bolts to go through two pieces of 2x4, and two 1-1/2” lag bolts to mount the other side that only goes through one 2x4. Washers on all of them.

And a couple 2x4s, of course. The dolly measures 40” long and 18” wide. There are three 18” wide support members. The gap between the first and second member (where the bucket sits) is 7”. I ripped another piece of 2x4 to 2” wide, and this is against the support member where the backhoe frame sits. This 2” wide piece is important because it brings the height of the backhoe frame closer to the dolly at the point where the backhoe will pivot off of the subframe on the tractor. A handful of deck screws holds it all together. I set the casters 1-1/2” in from the edge of the dolly frame, just because I thought it looked nice spaced like that.

Total cost was under $60.

The dolly is low enough to roll under the backhoe. It angles between the left-right swivel for the boom and the stabilizer. There’s less than 1/2” of clearance between the top of the dolly and bottom of the backhoe so there’s not a lot of room, but it fits in easily.

Line up the dolly below the backhoe. The dolly is just long enough to get the backhoe off. The bucket needs to be lowered into a somewhat-level position and the dipper stick needs to be as close to the tractor as it’ll get. Under the backhoe, the dolly will bump the left-right swivel pivot for the boom. Lower the boom to the dolly enough to take pressure off of the backhoe subframe so that the pins can be released from the top of the subframe, then raise the boom to lift the backhoe off of the backhoe subframe. Stabilizers don’t need to be lowered.

That extra piece of 2” wide 2x4 allows the backhoe to pivot off of the subframe and easily clear it. Here the boom arm is all the way “up,” tilted back onto the dolly and the backhoe pulls away!

Woot, it works!

It’s not perfect, or, Version 2.0:

• Most obviously, the dolly could be two inches shorter, negating the need for the extra 2” wide 2x4.
• I should have used 2x6s for the long pieces. The caster plates are big, slightly wider than the 2x4 (so, probably about 3-3/4” wide). I hope there’s enough material left on the 2x4 around the screw holes to support the weight of the backhoe. Using 2x6s would have provided that extra width.
• Caster selection is a big consideration. Harbor Freight has 6” x 2” casters that I looked at using, but I’m fairly certain they are too big, even if the caster is mounted to the 18” horizontal supports on the dolly, preventing the dolly from rolling under the backhoe. These are some big casters, though. Most of the other (narrower-wheel) casters are not quite as tall. I think that means 6” casters might fit if mounted to the horizontal supports on the dolly. Other 5” casters would be shorter, but I think they would still be big enough for the backhoe to go “up” and lift off of the subframe without use of the stabilizers. The reason I’d consider other casters is to get something with locks. I have nightmares of the backhoe rolling over and smashing my beautiful fiberglass kayak!