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We had a little snow in DC, this weekend. And Egypt has a little sand.
While our temperatures might be in the normal range, our weather is almost Biblical. It didn’t just snow in DC, this weekend – it SNOWED! The wintery white stuff buried this city.
It started on Friday and continued into Saturday. Of course, it wasn’t even over on Saturday and people were out cleaning off their cars.
Do you know what I did? I cleaned off my heat pump.
Guess I’m getting pretty geeky about saving energy.
These are before and after pictures of my heat pump. Your heat pump needs room to breathe to operate efficiently. I didn’t think it was going to do that buried in all that snow.
WARNING: Be careful digging out your heat pump; there are wires and cables that run from the heat pump to your house.
 Photo by Ron Keith. All rights reserved.  Photo by Ron Keith. All rights reserved. Here are a couple more pictures of Snowmageddon:
 Our courtyard. (Photo by Andrea Pellegrino. All rights reserved.)  Tree brought down by snow. (Photo by Ron Keith. All rights reserved.)
As I’ve become a more aware of how I use and waste electricity, I’ve noticed I leave more lights on than I need to.
I suspect I have a Holmes-on-Homes basement. Whoever finished the basement probably did just enough to “finish” it so the house would have a higher resale value, but no more. Unfortunately, cheap design is usually inefficient design.
I used to leave 3 lights on coming down to the basement. Part of the reason for this is the long, middle room leading to my office. Though it’s about 16 feet from stairway to my office, the middle room only has one light switch by the stairway. There isn’t a switch by my office and that middle room is pretty dark without a light on. Before I started this energy efficiency challenge, I used to leave that light on. Now, I leave the stairway light on. The light from the stairway provides enough light to move easily through that middle room without tripping over something and breaking my neck.
Human beings don’t see too well in the dark, but if you’re anything like I am, you’re probably leaving more lights on than you need.
What’s the big deal? Really, how much can one light cost?
Let’s say the ceiling light in my dark, basement room uses a 60 watt bulb. (I actually use a CFL, but we’ll get to that.) I’m in the basement about 4 hours a day, so that light’s on at least 4 hours a day. 4 hours per day is 240 watt hours or .24 kilowatt hours a day.(What’s a kilowatt hour?) My cost per kilowatt hour is about 8 cents. So leaving that light on for one day costs a whopping 2 cents.
Big whoop. Bah. Most of us can afford 2 cents, right?
But as Benjie Franklin said, “A penny saved is a penny earned.” This is particularly true with electricity. Over the course of a year, those 2 cents a day become $7.30 annually.
If you have 3 or 4 lights around the house you leave on like this – I’ve discovered 3 in my house – the cost is about $22 -$30 a year. Just a few light bulbs and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.
If you’ve replaced your light bulbs with compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFL), congratulations. You’ve cut your costs by about a third. Still try to turn out the lights you don’t need, those pennies of kilowatt hours start adding up to dollars. We all like to save our dollars.
(Plastic bag footprint: 40! 2 more Posts, plus a trip to the grocery store – 8 plastic bags for veggies and fruit.)
January is usually a cold month in the DC area, but this January has seemed colder than usual. I thought I might be able to use that as an excuse for not doing better on the challenge. (Reducing my electricity usage by 40%.) There have been some cold days, recently, often with temperatures reaching down into the teens, overnight. Brrr. It’s sooo cold. This can’t be normal, right?
Guess what? It is.
In fact, during January, according to the National Weather Service, the temperatures in the DC area were almost spot on normal:
Average temperature in January was 35.3. Average minimum was 28.0. Average maximum was 42.5.
Average temperature in January from 1971-2000 was 34.9. Average minimum: 27.3. Average maximum: 42.5.
It was actually a smidge warmer, this year! So no excuses allowed.
The weather stripping goes in this week. Given my less-than-handy proclivities and the possibility I might not get around to it until the spring thaw, we’ve hired a handyman we’ve worked with before to come in and do the weather stripping. If you’re even moderately handy and you know you’ll do these types of projects, right away, don’t take this approach. Save yourself some dinero and do it yourself.
Plastic bag footprint: 30, now. Washington Post, plus one bag from 7-11. Had to walk to 7-11 in the snow. There wasn’t enough room in my pockets for everything.
I haven’t updated my total in a few posts.
Plastic bag footprint is 26.
5 more Washington Post deliveries and 1 bag from GameStop.
The GameStop bag wasn’t even necessary. I’m just so used to automatically taking merchandise in bags, it didn’t even occur to me to tell him I didn’t need one. Oh, well. I’m becoming more aware of this and I’ll catch the clerk, next time.
I thought I was pretty good about turning out the lights when I leave a room.
Turning out the lights in a room when you leave is a great and easy way to save electricity and money. Every hour those lights are on is money out of your pocket.
As I said, I thought I was pretty good about turning out the lights when I leave a room. As I’ve become more aware of my electricity usage, I’m going to have to revise pretty good to kind of okay.
I’ve discovered sometimes leave a trail of lights on behind me, my thinking being, “I have to come through here, again, in just a few moments.” The problem is a few moments often turn into a few hours.
Don’t be like I am, turn out those lights when you leave the room. Given my electric bill from last month, I know I’m going to do that, now.
How old is your weather stripping?
I was looking at the instructions for putting up the weather stripping I bought and saw something on the back that kind of made me feel like a dope. The packaging for the weather stripping said their product was made to last for 3 years! So using a little extrapolation, it’s safe to assume after 3 years I should probably replace it.
This got me thinking about the last time I replaced the weather stripping in my house. I had to think back a long ways.
Guess how long it’s been.
Did you say, never? That’s correct. Never.
I’m willing to bet the weather stripping around the doors hasn’t been replaced since the house was built in 1980. That weather striping is 30 years old!
Maybe every 3 years is a little too often, but I’m thinking 30 years is too long.
Again, one of those things I just didn’t think about until I started this project.
Alright. I did a mini home survey of sorts, trying to find drafty places. All the windows seem pretty good – we got those replaced about 5 years ago, and the fireplace seems fine, too. That’s kind of a surprise, since fireplaces are notoriously drafty. But I’ve closed the vent on ours and we have a glass screen which does a pretty good job of closing off the fireplace.
So what are the biggest problems in my home? The doors. In particular, the french doors with the pillows in front of them and the front door. Also, one of the windows in the basement is a little drafty.
I’m ready to tackle this problem, now, so, today, I made a little trip to Home Depot.* I bought 3 rolls of weather stripping for the doors and some weather sealing tape for the windows.
Total cost $14.63.
That’s pretty cheap. Now, the hard part is going to be installing it; I’m not the world’s handiest guy.
I’ll let you know how it goes.
*I’m not endorsing Home Depot. They just happen to be near my home. If Lowe’s or ACE or whomever was closer, I’d go there.
After the weekend, the plastic bag footprint is now +5: The Post, Friday through today, and a trip to Barnes and Noble. Went to 7-11, too, but stuffed what I got into my pockets.
Plastic bag footprint is 20.
Our pup died, today.
 Our pup, Maia. (Photograph by Andrea Pellegrino. All rights reserved.) Her name was Maia.
She was the best dog ever.
This blog is at least making one person plastic bag aware: My wife.
We love to shop at Whole Foods for lots of reason. Great cheese and fresh produce, and they give you a nickle back for bringing your reusable bag. They were one of the first grocery stores to promote reusable bags and they’ve gone to great length to get rid of plastic bags at check out. But…
Today, my wife went to Whole Foods. She returned with 4 reusable bags brimming with groceries. She also realized she had returned with 6 plastic bags.
The Whole Foods she went to doesn’t have plastic grocery bags (Does any Whole Foods grocery store have them, now?). So where did the plastic bags come from? Well, while there aren’t any plastic bags at checkout, they’re still available throughout the store and people still pick them up an use them with thinking. Whole Foods still makes plastic bags available for produce, fruit and other assorted groceries.
So while you may not be able to get those plastic bags at checkout, anymore, they’re readily available throughout the store.
I don’t have a solution for this, but it’s a great example of how pervasive plastic bags are in society. The grocer might not be giving them to you at checkout, but they haven’t completely removed them from their stores.
Quite the jump in my plastic bag footprint, today: 15
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