BOM+vs.+Monthly+Payments



Improving the energy rating of the house is a good ecological decision, and can often save you money on utility bills. However, to improve the energy rating requires more expensive materials in some cases and more materials in others. It is very rare for a more energy efficient choice to initially cost less than the basic choice. The question is “does becoming more energy efficient actually save the homeowner money?” Under the loan conditions that Habitat for Humanity has set up, the homeowner pays the total cost of materials for the house in monthly installments over a 20 year period without interest.

This is only the initial cost of the materials, and replacements could cost even more. This prompts a look into the monthly cost of living in a Habitat Home, taking into account the following criteria: Bill of Materials (BOM), projected utility costs, tax, repairs, maintenance, and miscellaneous costs of ownership. Taking into account all these factors and being able to look at the monthly costs. Habitat will be better equipped to understand the effect that changes made to the house design will make on the cash flow of the people receiving Habitat’s assistance. Lowering the cost of living in a Habitat House will help achieve the ultimate goal of charity by helping people in need become self-sufficient.

The task is to come up with a way to do analysis quickly and easily; specifically, to come up with an automated way to compare multiple choices to see which choice (if any) has a significant decrease in the monthly cost of ownership in a Habitat House. This task will take the data gathered in other experiments, or collected over the lifetime of other Habitat Houses and organize them in a way that is easy to understand; then. see if the change does decrease the monthly utility bill more than it increases the monthly payment on the loan. Another part of this task is to compare multiple appliances that perform the same function to see if the life span of a more expensive model is long enough to make up for the increase in initial price.

One of the questions that this task brings up is, “in what manner is it best to organize the data collected to make it clearer to someone who was not involved in the experiment or data collection?” The answer to that will vary from data to data. Since most of the data will come from the other tasks in the engineering service project class, it is a little too early to make final forms of the output. For now the question is, “what data is needed for the decisions?” Some of the things needed are the cost to upgrade to the suggested change, and the expected result of the upgrade. A little more difficult aspect is the form in which this data needs to be. An example of this is the overhang issue. Is it ok for that group to say that the shadow will cover the window in the summer but not in the winter or do they need to have quantified data on the affect of the shadow in the different conditions?

The first decision was to use Microsoft Office 2007 tools to make the output reports. This decision was made because I have skill in the use of Excel and Word to make reports on statistical data from a previous job that I received. As such, I know that Excel is capable of doing the output calculations given the right formulas. The next step is to begin a little research into what information was available about the BOM for a Habitat Home; I found the BOM for a typical Habitat House.

I then began working on a excel sheet to calculate the expected lifetime (defined as 20 years) cost of an appliance. This spreadsheet was designed to be generic enough to apply to any type of appliance. It currently accounts for cost of a single unit, expected lifespan of the unit, and expected generic maintenance. Right now it is slightly confusing to use, but has a few helpful features.

Another task I have been working on is managing the Wikipedia. I have done a few things to understand how the Wikipedia site works and how to use this to display the information we have gathered. The first step in this process was to understand the tagline, what it means, and then decide how to use the tag line to organize the navigation list. This lead to the ability to organize the task’s outputs into groups without naming each page starting with the initials of the project it is for. This simplified the navigation bar for ease of reading the functions of each page.

The next task to accomplish is to fix up the Excel sheet to make it easier to work with and to include a few more variables that should be taken into account; such as cost to run. Another spread sheet that I will make is an automatic converter from energy use over time (in Watts) to an actual price. The variable involved will be the price for Kilowatt-hour of energy, and possibly making one specific to a heater/cooler situation that takes into account the efficiency of the heater cooler. This may have to be used to feed back into the previous spreadsheet if the only energy use data for an appliance is in kilowatts.

Another task will be to work on the use of Wikipedia’s search tool. I want to figure out a way to optimize the searches to make it easier for a viewer of the site to find the information that he/she is looking for. I will also be finding either a site or sites that have information on appliances that helps with the calculation on cost to lifetime relationship. Finally, I wish to create a report format for delivering the results of the data collection from the other tasks.

In conclusion, the only real decision made from this task is the form in which we want to output our data in order to help Habitat improve their houses. Excel will work do the calculations automatically. So far not enough information has been collected (to my knowledge) to make a full report to help Habitat for Humanity make any improvements.


 * **TASK STATUS REPORT** ||
 * **Project Description:** |||||||| Create a system to compare the expected mortgage and utilities cost for items in the Bill of Materials  ||
 * **Project Sponsor:** ||||  || Sponsor Rep: ||   ||
 * **Program Manager:** ||||  || **Project Manager:** Michael Gorman ||   ||
 * Period covered by the report: |||||| 1st week report ||
 * **Accomplished This Period:** ||
 * # Found BOM template from Habitat Website ||
 * **Planned But Not Accomplished This Period:** ||
 * # Look into getting Mortgage and Utilities information for a completed HFH house in White County
 * 1) Create a basic system for giving information ||
 * **Objectives To Next Reporting Period:** ||
 * # Research Monthly Cost
 * 1) Create a basic system for giving information ||
 * **Risks/Outstanding Issues/Problems:** ||
 * # Without access to information from other projects, projected costs of changes can't be made ||

References: []
 * **TASK STATUS REPORT** ||
 * **Project Description:** |||||||| Create a system to compare the expected mortgage and utilities cost for items in the Bill of Materials  ||
 * **Project Sponsor:** ||||  || Sponsor Rep: ||   ||
 * **Program Manager:** ||||  || **Project Manager:** Michael Gorman ||   ||
 * Period covered by the report: |||||| Initial Report ||
 * **Accomplished This Period:** ||
 * # Assigned Project Manager
 * 1) Brainstormed for possible methods ||
 * **Planned But Not Accomplished This Period:** ||
 * All tasks accomplished ||
 * **Objectives To Next Reporting Period:** ||
 * # Research Bill of Materials for a completed HFH house in White County
 * 1) Look into getting Mortgage and Utilities information for a completed HFH house in White County
 * 2) Create a basic system for giving information ||
 * **Risks/Outstanding Issues/Problems:** ||
 * # Without access to information from other projects, projected costs of changes can't be made ||