90 Percent Project - Week 32

Friday, 3:20 pm

By Kate

Jan

11

2008

It’s that time again—for my weekly values for Week 32 (January 3-10, AM meter readings) of the 90 Percent Project.

Electricity
Week 32: 26 kWh used

This represents the first full week that the lad has been home with all of his electricity guzzling stuff. The first day of the accounting week set my hair on end from the shock of it. We used a lot of electricity. Well, a lot for this household...5 kWh. I asked the lad to please try to conserve a little bit. He did make an effort and the next day our use dropped to 4 kWh. Still too high, in my opinion. So, I made a deal with him.

If he could drop it another kilowatt hour per day, I’d plug the refrigerator back in. Of all the things in the house that he misses the most, it’s the fridge. He wasn’t all that opposed to going out on the deck to forage for food for himself, but when his friends had to do the same when they came over, he started not liking it quite so much. It seems to get a little tiring having to explain to them exactly why it is that his Mom has two refrigerators in the kitchen and neither is plugged in.

Plugging in the small fridge was a worthwhile goal for him. It took a couple of days, but he managed to pull his use down until our daily total was slightly under 3 kWh and I did plug the fridge back in. It’s all about trade-offs, I said. He uses a little less electricity for his entertainment, without any significant pain, so that he can have cold food and drinks in a refrigerator. Most of what he reduced in electricity use was waste, though he also decided to swap out a light bulb in his room for a much lower wattage CFL bulb. Having the fridge plugged in satisfies his requirement for civilized living and it’s worth the effort to be more careful with his other use. We’ve peeled our baseline use back to 3 kWh per day with the fridge plugged in. Some days will be slightly more when I do a load of laundry.

Well, yes, I’d like to peel it back more, but I think this is a realistic baseline, given that the lad didn’t sign on to this project. He’s being extremely agreeable about it and, in the main, supports the effort. He doesn’t appear to be suffering, so I think this is a good baseline to work from. I’m not willing to push it further at this point.

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Gasoline purchased (for 2 people)
Week 32: 4.848 gallons

This was not a fill-up owing to gadding about town and environs. It was a simple replacement for what the mechanics burned up last week while trying to sort my car’s emissions system out. Oh the irony. In order to make my car’s engine less lean, they had to burn up a half a tank of gas...letting off as much in emissions as I’ll probably save with the repairs for the next three or four months.

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Water (for 2 people)
Week 32: 299.24 gallons

The general toilet flushing rule in this house is the old “If it’s yellow, let it mellow. If it’s brown, flush it down.” Works quite well for the two of us. However, when the friends come over, that’s a different story. And I’ve had a rather continuous flow of young people in the house over the past week. They all seem to arrive with a full bladder, too. And they flush. And flush. And flush. What are ya gonna do? I’d be tarred and feathered if I announced the little ditty governing toilet flushing. Think what fun it would be if I had a composting toilet!

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Natural Gas
Week 32: 5 CCF

The snow and ice melted. I have no excuses for not reading the danged meter. We’re using more hot water, obviously. Though the lad manages to keep his showers short, it still kicks the water heater on halfway through his shower. Ah well. I have great expectations for spring, when the town water warms up. It’s so cold right now that it numbs my fingers. Takes a lot of energy just to heat it up to room temperature, say nothing of bearable shower temperatures.

Not entirely related to natural gas...but sort of...I learned something, this week, that I never knew before. Almost to a person, the lad’s friends walk through the door and immediately say, “Oh it’s so nice and warm in here.” They want to sit by the wood stove for a few minutes before venturing upstairs. It’s not that I keep the house hot or anything, but the wood stove produces an even and steady heat. There are no cold pockets in the house. It just feels warmer, even though the house temps generally stay around 68° in the evenings, though much colder during the day.

I mentioned that to the lad and he said, “Why do you think we hang out here? Everyone else’s house is freezing. There’s no place to get warm. It’s awful.”

I did not realize that. It’s sort of funny. Back when I first installed the stove, a number of his friends thought it was a rather strange thing to heat one’s house with a wood stove. Why do that when one could turn a dial on a thermostat? Twentieth century technology, baybee. Use it. I think their perception back then was that only poor people heated with wood and that seemed to be quite out of the ordinary in an affluent town like this one. With that perception came all sorts of weird baggage. But, as other parental units responded to high energy prices and thermostats started being set lower and lower, the kids made a radical discovery. Wood heat is really, really nice. It’s cozy. It’s even. It’s...luxurious. Funny how perceptions change. It kind of cracks me up to see them pile into the living room and huddle around the stove to soak up some much appreciated warmth.

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Trash (for 2 people)
Week 32: 4.6 lbs.

Surprisingly little trash this week. It wasn’t an intentional effort, just seemed to work out that way. That’s probably a good sign.

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Consumer Goods
Week 32: $0

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Food
For the better part, I’ve still maintained the 100 mile food rule. We did have one meal that was way outside those boundaries, though...the one the lad cooked for me. It’s another one of those things...you can’t beat someone over the head with a new way of doing things all at once. It is, I think, a learning process. When we went grocery shopping, we discussed it and evaluated some of the produce that he wanted to get. We compromised and I’m okay with that. It is interesting, though, that he much prefers the flavors of the foods I’ve been getting at the farmer’s market. And he’s been totally ruined for grocery store milk. In fact, that was one of the first things he looked for when he came home for vacation...that bottle of local pasteurized milk.

Back to near normal

Wednesday, 8:56 pm

By Kate

Dec

26

2007

Christmas is over for another year. We had a lovely one, maybe one of the best—if oddest—ever. It was strange how it worked out, but the lad and I ended up talking all Christmas Eve night long and greeted the sunrise still talking. We decided to just keep going and open presents that had been so very recently wrapped. Needless to say, by the time mid-afternoon rolled around, we were just a little tired. But it was all worth it. We had so much fun that it’ll go down in my books as one of the very best Christmases ever. And, as it turned out, we both seemed to be on the same page and managed to offer each other a pretty eco-friendly selection of gifts. All well-loved and happily received.

Now the lad is off at his Dad’s house to do Christmas with the family in Alabama. I think they’ll fly out early in the AM. I’m not sure exactly when he will return. Sometime between the 2nd and the 6th. Whichever...it’s fine with me.

I drove the lad down to his Dad’s house about mid-afternoon. It takes just a couple of minutes shy of an hour to get there. I figured that I had rush hour beat by about a half an hour on the return trip. I figured wrong.

By the time I hopped on I-95 for the return trip (4:40 PM), the traffic was already bumper to bumper. I forget, sometimes, that rush hour in Boston starts around 3:30. It’s kind of a mesmerizing experience to be in four lanes of bumper to bumper traffic going 20 miles an hour. I just paid attention to the bumper in front of me and listened to the radio. So it went for several miles. And then, suddenly, I thought, “Hey, I shouldn’t be seeing signs for Cape Cod. What the heck?” And then I saw signs for Quincy and the JFK library. Oh boy.

To my everlasting puzzlement, somewhere along the line I departed I-95 and wound up on I-93, heading straight into Boston. During rush hour. O frabjous day. Speeds decelerated to about 5 miles per hour, bumper to bumper and I kept saying to myself, “How the heck did I wind up on I-93?!” I still have no idea. Guess maybe I oughta have been paying attention.

It is an alternate route and if it wasn’t rush hour, no harm done. It still gets me where I want to go, although a slightly longer route. But still. Not during rush hour. I didn’t roll back into my driveway until 7:03 PM. I surely wouldn’t want to do that kind of commute every day. After a couple of trips like that, I’d be purchasing a train pass.

Oh well. I’m home safe and sound. Now I have a few days in which to put the house back in order and keep things turned off.

I read the electric meter today and, while it wasn’t a shock, it wasn’t exactly a happy moment. The last I’d read it was on Monday morning. We used a powerful lot of electricity in the last two days. More than I used the entire previous week. Between the Christmas lights outside and those on the Christmas tree (plus extra lights on in the house and the large television going), we blew blew through 23 kWh in two days. I forgot to turn the outside lights off on Christmas Eve and the tree lights burned steadily for about 24 hours, too. Yeesh. I was totally excited and jumping up and down in my car seat when I pulled in the driveway tonight. My next door neighbor is done with Christmas and her Christmas lights were off. I can get with that program. I’m done with them, too.

Next year, I am going to do my best to prevail with the non-electric decorations. Starting early with attractive alternatives to entice my neighbor into an electricity saving Christmas. Putting the Christmas tree up on Christmas Eve was kind of cool, too. That stands a pretty good chance of becoming a new tradition. Well, we’ll see.

Anyway, it’s over and time to pack everything up for another year. I was sorry to see it go so fast, though. I would love to have been able to bottle up some of the magic of Christmas Eve this year. It was very, very special.

90 Percent Project - Week 28

Saturday, 3:36 pm

By Kate

Dec

15

2007

Alrighty then. It’s time for my weekly values for Week 28 (December 6-13, AM readings) of the 90 Percent Project.

Electricity
Week 28: 15 kWh used

Not bad at all considering the Christmas lights. It’s a matter of making some trade-offs. I briefly mentioned last week that I unplugged the refrigerator to make up for the lights. A number of people on the 90% list have also unplugged their fridges and I was kind of curious how that would work on a daily basis. Some people claim that they don’t need a fridge at all—ever—and have been fridge-free for years. I’m not there yet. Not sure if I will be. I’d say I’ll never be, but I tend to prove myself wrong repeatedly in these matters.

Nevertheless, for now, winter has offered free ice. I put out my ice containers in the late evening, bring in the already frozen ones, and put them in the cooler. Everything stays nice and cold. I’m not in the least inconvenienced by it and opening the cooler isn’t much different than opening the fridge door. Stuff is cold and that’s what matters. As long as nature provides the ice, I’ll continue doing this. When nature quits providing the ice, I’ll probably plug the fridge back in. For now, it works well for me.

Is unplugging the fridge a little extreme? Well, I’d have said so a few months ago. But, it’s interesting to learn what I really, really need and what I have gotten used to thinking I need. It’s also interesting to learn what actually needs refrigeration and what doesn’t. We over-refrigerate in our culture. I still think that I need some refrigeration, but I have concluded that it doesn’t matter whether it’s electrically provided or nature-provided—at least in terms of effectiveness. I do quite enjoy the benefits to my electric meter that taking advantage of nature provides.

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Gasoline purchased (for 1 person)
Week 28: 0 gallons

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Water (for 1 person)
Week 28: 97.253 gallons

A little better than last week.

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Natural Gas
Week 28: 3 CCF

Not sure why I bother to fight with the bushes to read this meter. Nothing changes.

May I just say that I detest my gas utility? On November 1, they raise the rates nearly double for the winter. It’s like we’re being held hostage to winter. It’s one thing to pay nearly double if we’re actually getting some appreciable benefit from the gas use (though still a reprehensible practice), but I’m not deriving much appreciation. My current bill is $36 for a couple of pilot lights and a water heater parked on the vacation setting. How vile is that?

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Trash (for 1 person)
Week 28: 2.7 lbs.

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Consumer Goods
Week 28: bigger than a breadbox

I bought some Christmas gifts and I’d better not say or a certain someone might put two and two together. ;)

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Food
Most food procured is still of local origin. Many fewer varieties of local vegetables now, but there are still plenty of Cucurbits and root vegetables available. They’re ideal for heavier winter meals. Next year I plan to grow a lot of tomatoes so I can preserve them in various forms. I’m going to have to buy non-local tomato sauces and canned tomatoes pretty soon. I am having tomato withdrawals.

90 Percent Project - Week 27

Thursday, 2:58 pm

By Kate

Dec

06

2007

I am now one week into the last half of the 90 Percent Project—supposedly the slide into home plate with mostly small refinements left to accomplish. Well, in theory, anyway. It’s those small refinements that are driving me batty. Anyway, here are my values for Week 27 (November 29-December 6, AM readings) for the 90 Percent Project.

Electricity
Week 27: 16 kWh used

And this includes Christmas lights! They couldn’t have come at a worse time. Okay, any time would be a worse time because they are voracious eaters of electricity. I finally plugged the Christmas lights into the kill-a-watt meter and I almost passed out. They eat 358 watts. I leave them on 3 hours in the evening (cutting a couple of minutes off either side just to make me feel a little better) which translates to a daily total of 1074 watts or 1.074 kilowatt hours. So, this week’s total includes 6 days (6kWh) of bright Christmas cheer.

I also plugged my laptop computer into the kill-a-watt meter and it registered a modest 17-33 watts (compared to the 157 watts my desktop computer consumes), depending on what it’s doing. The average daily consumption is 22 watts per hour. I did turn the screen back-lighting down to about 50% which makes a measurable difference. It also goes to sleep after 5 minutes of no use. When I’m not feeding Christmas lights, I’ll splurge and turn the back-lighting back up a notch or two. Until then, I’m still looking for little economies to get me sanely through this Christmas light business. And, of course, the lad will be arriving in another two weeks, which will add to the weekly tally.

One other discovery...I couldn’t account for about 300 watts per day. Doesn’t sound like much, but when the day’s total is running around 2-3 kWh, 300 watts makes a difference. I thought I had EVERYTHING either unplugged or put on power strips. The one thing I hadn’t even thought of was the computer’s modem and wireless router. They’ve been running 24 hours a day, tucked away in a corner where I never look. Shutting them off at night was just enough to put my daily use (including Christmas lights) under 3 kWh per day. Little things really do add up.

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Gasoline purchased (for 1 person)
Week 27: 0 gallons

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Water (for 1 person)
Week 27: 157.101 gallons

How easy it is to slide back into bad habits. It’s hard to figure out exactly how I managed to use an average of 22 gallons per day. I’ll work on that this week.

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Natural Gas
Week 27: 4 CCF

WHATEVER!

I turned the water up a notch. My bathroom is routinely around 58° and a lukewarm (very, very tepid) shower is miserable in those temps. I am a warm blooded mammal and I don’t enjoy hypothermia.

My newest gas bill (for November) turned up online yesterday. It said I used a total of 16 therms (15 CCF) for the month. That is the lowest I’ve ever used. Two less than October, four less than September....and 15 less than in June when the 90 Percent Project started. And that’s just for marginally hot (warmer than body temperature) water once a day and cooking (not that much for one person). So, I am making progress. But I don’t think I’ll be able to drop it down to the project’s goal of 100 therms per year—an average of 8.333 per month. Not.Even.Close. Since June, I’ve already used 75 therms and we all know how I’ve been scrimping. That doesn’t even include heat and I still have to add the fire wood (20 therms per cord) to my final tally. About the only way I could see cutting my use in half would be a solar hot water heater and that’s not in the cards any time soon. But it is an option.

Well, I could just shut the water heater off after it’s warmed in the morning and then crawl around on my hands and knees on the basement floor, disassemble the hot water heater, and re-light the pilot light every morning. Not going to happen, either, but...it’s an option.

For the average household that uses gas for hot water and heating and cooking, I don’t think 100 therms per year is a realistic goal without replacing some appliances and energy input (solar, wind, geothermal, etc.). One thing that would help A LOT would be if appliance manufacturers would make it EASY to shut the gas appliances OFF and ON. Pilot lights are a plague on humanity.

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Trash (for 1 person)
Week 27: 8.6 lbs.

Residuals from the basement flood. Little odds and ends that added up.

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Consumer Goods
Week 27: $13.98

$3.99 for my new laundry appliance (plumber’s helper), $6.99 for Christmas lights, $3.00 for 9 of those little igloo blocks that can be frozen—they were on sale for 3/$1 and, well, I unplugged the refrigerator and needed them. I haven’t died yet.

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Food
Still hanging in there with local produce and local meat, cheese, eggs, and milk. Some not-local rice, barley, and pasta, but organic and available at the local green grocer. Oh, and I rescued the butterball turkey carcass from Thanksgiving dinner and made a lovely soup/stew out of it.

In the interest of harmony

Friday, 1:19 pm

By Kate

Nov

30

2007

I mentioned, a couple of days ago, that my next door neighbor had decided to go for a more traditional look this Christmas season in the house decorating department. Just a few pretty wreaths and non-electrified garlands and ribbons and whatnot for outside prettiness. I jumped on that bandwagon with enthusiasm. Told her that I liked that idea because Christmas lights use too much electricity. I probably should not have said that. She always looks at me a little strangely when I pop out with these sorts of statements. I dearly love the woman and couldn’t ask for a better neighbor, but she is resistant to anything related to conservation. She won’t even do curbside recycling because she ‘doesn’t believe in it’.

So, this morning, I heard a lot of hammering and banging going on out front. When I looked out the window, she was hanging her icicle lights across the front of her side of the house. I poked my head out the door with a questioning look...she said, “It looked too bare without the lights. I didn’t like it.” Well, I thought it looked nice, but there you go.

So, in the interest of harmony, I’ll hang my icicle lights, too. The house will look lopsided if I don’t and that’s just about as irritating to me as hanging the lights. Just because they’re hung doesn’t mean I have to plug them in. Well, I suppose I might for an hour or so in the evening, under protest, but in the interest of harmony. I haven’t plugged the lights into the kill-a-watt meter, so I’m not sure how much juice they gobble. I read somewhere that each individual light consumes 1-2 watts. With a 200-300 light string, we’re talking some serious wattage. If I do plug them in, I’ll have to figure out where to eliminate another 200 watts out of my daily use to compensate. Thinking...maybe the coffee maker. I can use the French Press and boil a kettle of water on the wood stove since it will probably be running most of the month of December.

When I look around my neighborhood, at all the mini lights that have appeared this week, it makes me cringe. There is enough wattage burning out there at night to run a couple of entire households. I’ve noticed that people are really decorating this year. More than usual. Maybe it’s a response to the tone of the news lately. It’s as if people are determined to create their own little oases of good cheer. I can understand it and even feel the same way. Except...without all the lights.

Back to normal

Sunday, 1:52 pm

By Kate

Nov

25

2007

The lad is delivered to his Dad’s house, I listened to Christmas music all the way home, and I am in a good mood. This was a perfect weekend. Nothing will get in the way of that. You hear me, house? Nothing!

That’s probably called tempting fate. May no more hoses, pipes, or anything else burst. I think I shall call a plumber tomorrow. I got to thinking that water hose attachments are probably not something I should experiment with. Perhaps I should leave it to someone who knows what he’s doing. And I have decided that I am nowhere close to being able to part with my washing machine. Hand washes are fine between times, but I need my washing machine. Or want it, I guess. Anyway…

On my drive home, I observed that our trees haven’t dropped their leaves yet. They’ve turned colors and dried up, but are still stubbornly clinging to the branches. It looks like vast swatches of huge dried bouquets covering the hillsides and lining the roads. I don’t know why the trees have clung to their leaves, but it’s a very strange sight. If they haven’t let go by the time the first snow storm arrives, we might be in for some trouble. Heavy snow on leaf laden trees? Bad combination.

Coming back in the house, I sort of sighed. I’ll be spending some time cleaning again. Didn’t I just do that a couple of days ago? Holy cow, it looks like a bomb went off downstairs. How can one lad turn the place upside down in less than 24 hours? Such is life in a tiny house. I don’t mind. It was worth it. I’m humming and smiling with a pretty warm glow and I’m reluctant to let that go, while, at the same time, rather looking forward to getting back to the normal daily routine and trying to live just a tad lighter than I have in the past couple of days.

Since I have obviously become compulsive about reading meters, I suppose I should just bite the bullet and do up a Week 26 of the 90 Percent Project and call it a wretched, horrible, very bad week. Life happens. It’s very gratifying to have the energy available when needed in higher than usual amounts. I certainly don’t enjoy using that much and I don’t intend to make it a habit. But, overall, it will balance out.

The lad was quite gracious about turning stuff off and being careful this weekend. He told me that last summer definitely rubbed off on him because he finds himself going around the frat house turning off televisions and lights when no one is using them.

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My laptop: I love this thing. And, despite what I’ve heard about Windows Vista, I really like it. As far as I can tell, there isn’t that much difference between it and XP, other than cosmetic improvements and a few nifty new gizmos. Nothing has crashed on me yet, so it appears to be stable.

As for the scratch and dent...beats the heck out of me where they are. I’ve pored over every square nanometer of it and I can’t see any scratches or dents. And the case’s jet black exterior is very pleasing. I am delighted with my refurbished laptop. Works great, looks really pretty....

Most of all, though, I really love the way it makes my electric meter crawl. Of course!

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Another thing that made my day....

When I drove back in the driveway, my neighbor was out decorating her side of the house for Christmas. There were no icicle lights dangling from the eaves! Instead she opted for pretty wreaths and non-electric garlands and dangly things. I am so happy! I asked her where her lights were. She said she thought we should try something a little more traditional this year. Was that okay with me? Oh bless her!