Life on the Road

I wanted to share how proud I am of the power bill I just got…  but I guess I need to begin at the beginning.

The house we live in is provided by Knaus Berry Farm for the person doing the job Wolf is doing.  Instead of that much more salary, they give us a place to live. 

They keep the power bill in their name, and we just write them a check for it every month.  This means that the bill includes the cool historical data like “this month last year” - with the previous occupant’s usage.

 When we first moved here, we were warned that - especially not being accustomed to the weather - the power bills would be astronomical.  They said that the guys who were in here before us spent about $300 a month!  Whoa!

There is just no way I can put $300 a month into the power bill, so we worked like mad the first month we were here (before the Berry Farm opened for the season) doing the structural things we could do to help. 

• We shelled out $250 for a new air conditioner unit in the main living area.  They had a big old thing in here that was drawing WAY more power than was needed to cool the space, plus it was old and inefficient, PLUS it had the old school kind of thermostat so that the fan ran all the time while the compressor cycled on and off as needed.  The new one is half the wattage, plus it’s an Energy Star model with a great thermostat system.  We figured that would pay for itself really quickly.
• Wolf (who is afraid of heights), and Nick (who is just learning to be a handy guy) climbed up on the roof and installed three turbines to let the hot air out.
• We installed a door in an open doorway between the part of the house that’s climate controlled and a room that’s not.
• Wolf switched out a badly rotted out window in the master bedroom with one we removed from the living room wall (here’s that story, if you missed it).
• Caulk, expanding foam, weatherstripping, thresholds…

I boldly… BOLDLY! put $150 in the budget monthly for the power bill.  It was a bit of a nail-biter…

Of course we did all the usual power-conserving things:

• Turning off lights when you’re not in the room
• Setting the a/c thermostat a degree or two higher than you might really like
• Using the ceiling fans rather than (and in addition to) the a/c when possible, to minimize a/c usage
• And so on.

The first two months came in just under $150.  I made it!

Needless to say, I quickly decided that wasn’t good enough.  I want to be a better steward of the money that Wolf is working so hard to earn.  But what else to do?

God provided the answer, of course, and the blogs and newsletters I read regularly all started pointing out quirky little ways to save power, all of which we pounced on!

• A single ceiling fan running all the time, rather than switched on and off at need, costs an extra $7 every month.  And they don’t actually DO anything unless you’re in the room feeling the breeze, so it’s just wasted.  We because more vigilant fan-turner-offers.
• Energy vampires are loose in your home!  Everything with a little green “ready” light, everything that remembers your stations, or the time, or anything else… is using power to do that - often a surprisingly high percentage of the full “on” power.  To simplify the vampire-slaying, I plugged things in groups into power strips (themselves vampires - ack!).  Now with the flip of one switch I can slay the stereo, DVD player, and video game consoles, and with another I can nullify my computers, printers, and accessories.  And I do, overnight as well as when we’re leaving the house.

But the biggest thing I have been doing battle with is ELECTRIC APPLICANCES!  [insert horror movie music]

There is no natural gas service in this area at all, and this house doesn’t have an outside propane tank, or any other option.  Not owning the house, getting one installed doesn’t seem like the way to go, either.

• I really prefer cooking with gas, so the electric stove/oven is a struggle for me anyway, not to mention costing more.  But nothing I know of to do about it, either.
• I don’t know how much power the washing machine uses, but I don’t suspect it’s too huge, relatively.
• “Luckily,” as odd as that sounds, the refrigerator gave out, and the owners replaced it.  It’s still not wonderfully efficient, perhaps, but I have no doubt it’s far better than the old clunker was.
• The water heater is, I susect, a major, major power theif, that I also have no idea how to improve.  It’s old and corroded on the outside, so can’t help but be that way on the inside, too, drastically reducing the efficiency of the already-expensive process of heating water with electricity.  (The water here is horrible, so the lime and mineral deposits are plentiful).  Maybe I’ll have some more “luck” and it will need to be replaced, too! 

Then, there’s . . . The Dryer

Yes, it’s the grand-daddy of expensive electric heat generation, and you can just watch the wheels on the power meter fly when you push that “On” button.

When we finally got our things from storage, I was eager to put my folding drying-rack to use.  In this humid weather I can’t rack-dry everything, since it takes so long.  I’d like to find a place to string up some clothesline to make it easier to dry linens and things - but again, the weather is somewhat limiting, and I’m not sure were to go with that (we’re having a weird, brief rain storm again as we speak, even though it’s 82 degrees outside and I’m running the a/c!).

So I’d say I’ve cut our dryer usage to somewhere around 1/3 of what it was.

It’s hard to compare apples to apples, of course, since other factors get involved each month.  There were actually a couple of days last month - for the first time since we arrived in Florida - when we didn’t have to run the a/c, which of course makes a difference…  But I’m still awfully excited about this:

$86.95

Woohoo! 

That’s just 23 kWh per day, and this month’s usage last year (for two bachelors who were working 80 hours a week the whole time) was 50/day!

So it’s possible to do far more than I ever realized, with the cumulative effect of all those “little things.”  Now, where do I go from here??