Energy Savings

We got our first energy bill since the heating challenge started.  It was $95…which is about what we used in October when we ran neither heat nor air conditioning.

From Nov 2006, the average temperature outside was 50 degrees and we used 33 KWH per day on average.

For Nov 2007, the average temperature outside was 48 degrees and we used 17.9 KWH per day on average.

So we used 46% less energy than last year at the same time.  Sweet.

Green living

I have been feeling very green lately.

Derek and I spent quite a while yesterday taking a huge amount of recycling to the recycling center. We played baseball for a while with an aluminum can and a cardboard stick…maybe this is where that time went…

I have learned that it is entirely possible to live without heat even when the temperatures get near freezing. Just wear more clothes and keep your feet covered. 58 really isn’t so bad. Since our house is small, even cooking or taking a shower warms the house up a couple of degrees. Sun coming through the windows in the afternoon makes a nice little greenhouse effect.

Aside: Speaking of the heater challenge, it is not really a competition anymore. We have some really wussy, but perhaps logical friends, that are afraid of their pipes freezing. Now the minimum temperature is 57 or 58, which we’ve been living at for quite a while. It’s still a challenge, but not a competition, no more stakes. So pretty much it means that we can whine about how cold out houses are, but no one wins.

Yesterday instead of using chlorine bleach to do laundry (all of our towels and bed linens are white), I used hydrogen peroxide. It worked really well—they are WHITE. I just put in about a cup of 3% hydrogen peroxide in the in wash, the kind you can buy at the grocery store, and let the whites sit for about 15 minutes in it, then started the agitation. No noxious smells. Chlorine bleach gets me high sometimes… I did not, however, have such good luck with peroxide in the shower. I did a side by side test of peroxide vs bleach to get rid of shower mildew. Chlorine bleach won by far. I’ll have to try something else. I read something about lemon juice and baking soda…

After we go to the grocery store, we keep the grocery bags to pick up Emma’s poop. I always felt pretty good about this. It is the reuse part of reduce, reuse, recycle. But lately, I don’t feel so good about it–that’s still a lot of bags going into the landfill. They have bags that you can buy that are made of cornstarch and are biodegradable. So I am considering buying or making cloth grocery store bags and being the smug asshole at in the grocery checkout line that says “No, I care about our planet, I use these” and sucking it up and buying the biodegradable doggie bags.

Now if I could just suck it up and put compact fluorescents everywhere in our home, I would feel better. I just hate the light that they make so they are only in select spots.

The heater challenge

Derek and I have taken on a heater challenge with two other households. The first one to turn on their heat for the winter loses and must buy the other households a dinner.

It is currently day 10 of the heater challenge. Our house has been holding steady at about 59 degrees during the day. I’ve heard from the others that their houses are much colder. Lucky for us, we are insulated on three sides by three other townhomes and only have 4 windows.

There is a rule that when you have guests, you are allowed to use the heat. It requires 3 party consent and the other 2 parties may also use their heat during that time. Tomorrow is heat day. Whether or not we will actually use it remains a question.

Rumor has it that everyone in the challenge thinks I am going to lose…probably because I complain about being cold all of the time. Little do they know, that since I am always cold, I am actually used to being cold. I think it gives me an edge.