Just an FYI for those who live in the Chicago area and don’t have a rain barrel program in their town/county. Lake County has extended their rain barrel ordering deadline until April 23rd (for a early May pick-up). More details here:
Back on November 12th I wrote about the desire to chronicle the journey my family is on while we move to a more sustainable life. I said I’d write the next day about where we were starting and what we were already doing to ease the burden we are placing on the planet. Well, I never made that post. Several months later I’m starting.
I think my wife and I are doing well so far. The choices we’ve made for upgrades to our house have been the best we could possibly afford, not unlike many other people, but I think for different reasons.
As an example when we had to choose a new furnace the first Fall that we lived in our current home we chose a 90%+ efficient furnace. I’ve talked to quite a few people since then and most, given the same choice, would have chosen the cheaper 80%+ efficient model because it was cheaper and there wouldn’t be enough of a return on the investment on the more expensive, but more efficient model. Simply put the dollars saved in energy bills wouldn’t be worth the difference in price.
In our case I chose the higher efficiency model because I think that, regardless of the money saved, it is my obligation to use less energy. I could afford the higher price and the natural resources saved was enough of a reason to make the purchase decision I did.
This is not to say that I think I am better than anyone else for having done so. I also believe that is is very important that people need to live within their means and not overstretch themselves. The lower-cost models are still far more efficient than what they would be replacing (in my case the furnace in this house was from the 1960s!) so in most cases any choice would be a win. Someone living within their means and watching what they consume is just as big of a win, if not a bigger one, for the planet.
Another upgrade to the house we made was replacing all (well…mostly anyhow. The basement windows weren’t replaced.) of the windows on the first and second floor of the house. The old windows were the original windows from when the house was constructed in 1943. The glazing on most of them was in bad shape and they were single pane glass. They leaked air so badly that we always put the shrink-plastic over them in the winter and during really bad winds you’d see the plastic bowing out into the room every time a gust of wind came through (and the windows all had storm windows over them too.). The upstairs windows were simply just too dangerous.
They were all replace with the highest end vinyl window we could find. We got the low-e glass, argon gas filling, etc. Was vinyl the best choice from an environmental standpoint? Probably not but it was the trade-off we had to make. We couldn’t afford anything more expensive and the heat loss in winter that was cut down, plus the lower heat gain in the summer, were wins no matter how you look at it. There are no perfect choices in this type of situation but I think we made the right choice.
Christmas lights are definitely not very eco-friendly in their usual form. I do love them though and this year I started the move to the LED variety. Maybe those aren’t even eco-friendly but they are a damn sight better than the traditional type (4-5 watts vs 40 or so on average). I have my lights on a timer and I don’t do the Christmas Vacation style of lighting so I don’t feel too guilty about it.
So this year we have three strings of “white” LEDs along the rooflines of the house and they actually look pretty cool. They’re definitely more of a very-cool-white variety to the point they’re almost a light shade of purple but they look pretty cool nonetheless.
I did find something even cooler at the local Menards hardware store last night though. GE is making solar-powered LED christmas lights. Had I known about those before I would have purchased them for outside because from a power use standpoint you can’t get much better than powered by sunlight 
Maybe next year….
On another note….it has been awhile since I’ve written here. Over the last couple of months I’ve been doing the job search thing and started my new job last week so things have been pretty busy. I’m hoping to get back into the swing of things after this week once my new routine becomes…well…routine again.
I am not understanding why anyone would set their home air conditioner to maintain 72 degrees.
While listening to a podcast from NPR Climate Connections about the energy costs of heating and cooling they discuss the impact to the environment, in terms of CO2 production, of both heating and cooling your home. The bigger cost was from heating coming in at a whopping 6,400 pounds of CO2 for natural gas heat (they don’t mention what temperature setting this coincided with). What got me though was not the cooling cost but the temperature they use as the baseline to determine your energy savings if you increase that temperature. You guessed it: 72 degrees.
I find it almost insane that someone would keep their house that cool in the summer. I have a small house and if I kept the thermostat set at 72 not only would I be absolutely freezing but the AC would run far too much. I have talked to several people though who do keep their thermostat set at 72 (and some even lower). Pardon me but that is just nuts.
I keep my thermostat set at 77 and it cycles on and off too much for my tastes And we have a small house… I just can’t imagine the cost of cooling a large house to 72 degrees during summer. Not only a huge hit to the pocketbook but also to the environment.