Leaves Leaves Leaves

It's that time of year again!  Where every weekend for the next few months will be devoted to blowing, raking, bagging, dumping, tarping leaves.  
Not this year!!

We built a compost over the weekend to help us manage our leaves.  So no more 12 bags every weekend going to the landfill.  Our 2 neighbors with the nice green lawns will be adding in their yard waste to help our compost work.  

DIY: 4 cinder blocks, 16 landscape timbers, 4 metal rods.

You can do it!

This weekend do this -- maybe you will save some $$ this year.

1. Change the 6 - lights bulbs you use most -- to Compact Flourescent (CFL).   
2. Buy this - and stop buying bottled water. 
3. Drop to 120 - on the Hot Water Heater...  (free)
4. Stay home tomorrow - and eat all the food in the Frig that's getting ready to spoil... (free)
5. Cancel - the RTD, and this Crap - you read it online anyway...
6. Don't water your grass, wash your car, or take a shower tonight - it's going to rain tomorrow. (just kidding on the shower part...)

Were wrapping the hot water heater tomorrow..  I'm not sure I totally get it -- I would understand if the thing was sitting outside -- but it's inside and isn't this thing already insulated? Am I really go to improve the heater by wrapping it in insulation???  

Almost Done!

We knocked out a few more light bulbs with CFL's over the weekend. (If you are doing the same - i'm finding them cheaper at HomeDepot - at the store - not online.)

 Anyway, when we added it up again all of our old bulbs equaled about 1800 watts. Now by replacing them all to cfl's it's about 720 watts. 

That's a big difference.

If doing the entire house is too much for you at one time.  I would recommend at least replacing the most used lights - such as the kitchen and porch lights.  We even did the closets, and the light above the stove. 

Bailing Water!

I showed you our electric bill.  and since then we have made some easy changes that anyone can and many of you  probably already do. Like turning off lights when you leave the room, turn the TV off when its time to eat (I'm referring to the 5 year old), and not forgetting to turn the Wii off (7 year old).  We have also changed many of our high wattage bulbs to CFL's.  Which turns out is not that easy.  The 60watt equivalent CFL bulb will not necessarily produce the same amount of light the original 60 watt produced.

Anyway, here is our water bill.  and this is going to be tough.  We water our GRASS and I take a 30 minute shower.  Enough said.. Goodnight!!!

This bill however, covers 7/21/08 - 9/23/08 - 63 days.  and shows that we used 15 CCF.  Which means we:

(15 ccf)748 = 11220 gallons

11220 / 63 = 178 gallons per day.  (wow)

178 / 4 = 44.5 gallons per day per person.

Now the 5yr, 7yr old probably didn't use 44.5 gallons of water and we were not watering our grass during this period.  But you get the point.  We use up a lot of water....  

Quick fixes --  shorter showers, fix some leaks, water grass less.  

HOW MANY CCF DOES YOUR HOUSEHOLD USE??

Update CFL

The previous post got me anxious and I remembered I had a 4-pack of cfl's laying around. I'm certainly not going to make a post for every light bulb I change - but I did want to make this one just to show what the difference can be in just 1 room.

Our upstairs bathroom had 3 - 40w bulbs. Which totaled 120watts. I replaced them with a 3 - 9w cfl. Which as lighting goes is pretty darn close to the amount of light that the 40watts produced.

 Total watts now being used 27. Saving 93watts. 





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