(continued ...) and latent energy down the drain as condensate that drips off of the indoor air conditioner coil. Oh yea, all this thermodynamics talk is getting me excited! Well, not really. And we are way off of point again: cooking energy.
Now back to that 16,000 to 24,000 Btu of heat energy, of which, a bunch was junk according to my previous definition. It just floated into your kitchen and then into your house. What happened to it? In the summer, you eventually paid your utility company to pump it outside using the air conditioner. Likely, your air conditioner ran 45 minutes just to offset that batch of junk heat energy. "But wait," you're saying "I have to eat, what should I do?" It's sum-sum-summertime, get outside and cook dinner on the barbie, mate! Not only does BBQ cooking taste better but that junk heat energy is left outside. Conversely in the winter time, cook those meals in your indoor kitchen. Let that junk heat energy assist your primary heating source but only so much as is needed to cook a meal while fully supervised.
We talked earlier about it taking fifteen (15) minutes to heat up your water for pasta. There are a few tricks here to reduce that time and wasted energy. The process of getting the room-temperature (or cooler) water to a boil goes something like this. You put water in pot, put pot on stove and turn burner on. Then you wait. Water, if left to sit in open air, will eventually evaporate away if it the air is not already saturated. Unless it is raining, the air is not saturated. When that's true, regardless of whether we are putting heat into the water or not, the water is taking heat from the surroundings for the evaporative phase change. Read the article on high energy efficient boilers and furnaces for a discussion on phases and phase change. You experience this in the process ...