It’s been a while since I’ve found the time (nor the desire) to post on this blog. Let’s just say that every time I think of something that needs posting that it takes so long to get around to writing up a blog about that a twitter post seems more… reasonable.
That being said, with summer finally here in the interior (now above freezing at night, about 70 degrees F during the day), it’s time to turn to energy conservation - at least for myself. Here’s an update on what’s been changing around the Lazarus household:
Just turned off the heat in its entirety last night - downstairs is staying at a extremely comfortable 63-66F while upstairs has unfortunately been blistering hot anytime the mercury outside moves past 65F. We’re averaging about 70-74 during the night at 74-78 during the day. Time to break out the fans. Even though I say that the heat was only off starting last night - to be honest, it hasn’t kicked on for probably the last week - I’m just now insuring that it won’t even do that. Looking back at fuel consumption for the last year we’ve been in the house: it looks like we’re right about average for this house and keeping in its 5-7 year track record of about 1000 gallons per year. Now we’ve got something to beat.
I finally purchased a outdoor umbrella-style clothes dryer last week and have already dried at least a set of clothes on it 5 out of the last 7 days - about 7 loads total. If that doesn’t kill my electricity bill, I don’t know what will. Lights are rarely used outside of our TV room - being that we’re getting usable amounts of sun from about 4am till Midnight currently. The unfortunate thing about the lights in the TV room is that being that the room doubles as Aidan’s playroom at times, all the lights have to be on, and, even though they’re a nice addition, I have yet to be able to find usable “dimmable” CFC lights for these sockets. The only dimmable CFC’s that I’ve found have a nasty habit of acting like 3-way lights in these dimmer sockets for some reason - I don’t know enough about home improvement to even guess what the problem is. It’d be nice, although I know it’s not much, to reduce the last bit of remaining incandescents we have in the house in our six dimmable light sockets - I mean, 40×6 = 240 vs 9×6=54. More than quarting the amount of consumption in those well-used sockets would be nice. As it is, electricity is running pretty low lately - still not beating out last October’s record of 396kwh/month, we’re currently sitting at 412kwh/month. Still under half the national average - not bad but it can definitely be better. My extensive use of the Xbox 360 (rather than my Wii) over the past few months have been keeping that high, unfortunately.
Water keeps on going back and forth - still near or very slightly below the national average. Not impressive but I have taken it upon myself to shower faster and less frequent - which would usually set alarms for most people, harkening back to my years in Nerland - but you’re talking to the guy that generally takes 2 showers a day - 3 if it’s particularly humid. I could do with a few less if I’d wear shorts and sandals more.
I’m currently waiting on a big enough paycheck that I can rationalize wasting enough money to buy a solar-powered USB charger for all my portable devices - between our collective iPods and portable gaming systems and cell phones - that slow trickle of money out of our house can be plugged by a simple $80-$150 charger that can provide me with power in the middle of nowhere as well as in my home.
The garden is starting - we’ve got two trays of seedings going (Snap Peas, Beans, Broccoli, Sunflowers, Dill, Thyme, etc) and others will be started soon (Potatoes & Tomatoes - probably Lettuce). Deanna’s folks are coming up this next weekend and we’ll be using some of the time to construct some square-foot gardening space so that our garden expands out from the measley six half-whiskey barrels we had last year.
Aidan is still in cloth diapers. I’ll have to admit, a month or so ago when he started actually eating real people food (not just Gerber Pastes) I wanted to give up after having to clean Lord knows how many putrid poopy diapers - but thankfully we found a cure for all that: We’ve started having to use paper liners to deal with his enormous amount of poop. These cheap, flushable paper liners manage to catch most of the poop and will save us headaches and additional wash cycles. I just definitely have to say how utterly proud I am of our family for keeping with the cloth diapers - we’ve had a couple of friends try and give up - and I understand why - and we’ve had a lot (and I do mean a lot - even doctors) of people try to convince us not to use them. If my only debt to society when I die is that I prevented a small hill (nay - mountain) of non-biodegradable chemical-laden plastic disposable diapers from going into a landfill - well, I think just for that Mother Earth owes me one.
After the snow disappeared our darling Yaris started giving us the mileage we expected her to give - in fact, we’re getting the expected 35mpg for highway by just driving around town a bit more gingerly than the rest of you out there - and with gas prices going back up (Fairbanks is now at $2.60 again) it’s a welcomed change.
That’s it for now - hopefully I’ll manage to talk about something other than my green aspirations or my wonderful son next time!
Blog of J. Jason Lazarus, techno-geek, retro-gamer, ranter, avid photographer & new dad.