As of this billing period, I’m officially on Wind Energy!

NYSEG is now offering what they call NewWind Energy & even though it costs a little more ($5 for every 200 kilowatt-hours) when you factor in the money I’m saving from using the ever popular fluorescent light bulbs, that alone covers the extra cost.

I’ve got 4 run-of-the-mill motion activated flood lights in my yard & even on the lowest settings, they still go off when a leaf blows past them. It’s really horrible in the winter because they are pretty much on & off all night long.

But then I found this little beauty:
Motion Activated Solar Flood Light
And I have to admit, I just ordered 3 more. This thing is GREAT!

The purpose of a motion activated flood light is to give you some temporary light (otherwise, you’d just turn the light on when you needed it) This light completely charged in 2 days & it’s perfect. 30-60 seconds of light & it’s all free

The only downside is that now I need to call my electrician buddy & have him put the 4 old lights on a switch - but that’s a downside I can deal with!

That’s what the flyer in my last electric bill said. And I’m a moron for holding out so long

I’m one of those guys that like to see the bill come in the mail. I like to have it on hand in a folder for reference if I need it.

But it dawned on me that my life is pretty much spent in front of this silly computer screen, so I might as well get as many bills emailed to me & displayed online as possible.

So far, I’ve changed my electric, phone & gas bills to electronic. For some strange reason, the water company doesn’t offer this yet (even though I can view & pay my bill online)

So save a tree - go paper free with as many bills as you can

I ordered a bunch of products from Seventh Generation last week & I have to admit, I’m impressed. Here’s what I bought so far:

Toilet Paper - Made from 100% recycled paper with a minimum 80% post-consumer content
2-ply paper comes in large 500 count rolls
Bleached with environmentally safe sodium hydrosulfite and/or hydrogen peroxide
Septic-system safe

Paper Towels - Made with 100% Recycled Paper
Hypo-Allergenic
Whitened without Chlorine Bleach
Biodegradable

Trash Bags - Made from 100% recycled plastic with a minimum 30% post-consumer content.
Produced with 25% less energy and 90% less water than virgin plastic bags.

So far, I had no problems with these products. The Bride was a little hesitant about using the toilet paper, but I switched out an old roll with one of the new ones & she hasn’t complained yet. I’ll tell her once the roll is gone

I ordered a new set of solar lights last week & they came in yesterday. They are nice. Not perfect, but very close.

It’s the Grip On Tools Grip 6 pc Solar Light Set and here’s what I like about them:

1 - They’re metal - I can’t tell you how many times I’ve broken those cheap plastic ones when I was trying to put them into the ground
2 - LED Lights - they have a nice white glow to them, instead of the crappy yellowish glow that normal bulbs put off
3 - The Packaging - EVERYTHING they use for packaging is recyclable (cardboard & plastic bags that are clearly marked with the recycle logo/info)

I unpacked them & put them them in the window yesterday & today they’re almost fully charged. The light is not that bright, but it’s bright compared to every other small solar light I’ve ever seen.

Next on my list? The Motion Activated Solar Flood Light by Solite (and I think I’ll be buying a lot of products from them)

We’ve had a lot of construction going on around the house in the last few years. I really wish I was as active in recycling & conservation as I am now when it was going on, because I probably would have been able to heat my house for a couple of years.

During the last project, I asked the guys to pile up all the scrap wood near my fire pit in the backyard so that we could burn it over the summer. But last week I got the idea to borrow a table saw & cut up a lot of it so that I could burn it in the house. After weeding thru the top of the pile (it’s a big pile) for things that I shouldn’t burn (stupid plastic) I skull dragged it up to the house & cut it into pieces that will fit into my fireplace. I ended up with just over 1/2 cord of wood.

Am I right in thinking that this is a form of recycling? I’ve always believed that the most basic form of recycling is finding another use for something that would usually only have one use. Of course, multiple uses would be better, but one extra use has to help things.

As far as the energy conservation angle, by using this free wood to hear my house, I’m cutting down on my gas bill.

Try to follow my logic on this one.

I’ve been thinking about my hot water heater because we got a new one & it has a handy little temperature knob on the top of it. When we 1st got it, I set it to what the dial said was the standard & the water was plenty hot.

That got me thinking about what the house uses hot water for. For the last year or so, I’ve been washing all my clothes in cold water (and I can’t tell the difference) So other than bathing/showering/washing, I can’t think of a need for hot water, let along really hot water (and if you can think of one other than a baseboard heating system that’s hooked up to the hot water tank please post it)

So I’ve been adjusting the temp down after each shower & I think I’m to the point where when I shower, I don’t need to mix in a lot of cold water to have a comfortable shower.

My thinking on this is that:
A - I’m saving water by not mixing the hot with a lot of cold (yes, the pressure is a little less in the shower, but it’s not bad)
B - I’m saving on gas because the hot water tank does not have to maintain such a high temp.

Does this make sense?

I can’t believe that I did this, but I actually stopped recycling after two street magicians told me it was a bad idea. But I started back up a couple months ago & my family thinks I’m nuts every time they see me digging thru the garbage for things to put into my recycle bins.

I’m putting about 3 or 4 full recycle bins out to the curb each week. Last month, I noticed my garbage man putting all my recycling in with the regular garbage (the trucks have 3 bins on the front - 1 big one for garbage & 2 smaller ones for paper & containers) I called the garbage company to complain & when I told the lovely lady that answered the phone that the garbage man mixed my recycling in with the garbage, she promptly told me “No he didn’t.” I asked if she could see my house from her desk, which seemed to upset her. She told me she’d have a talk with him when he got back & then hung up on me. I was livid! I instantly typed up a letter to the company and cc’d our small local paper as well as the town. 2 days later, the paper called & said they were going to print the article. The next day, the town supervisor called & informed me that I was not the only one that had noticed this. It seems my garbage company has “too much recycling” and not enough trucks, which is why they mix it in with the garbage from time to time. She agreed that this is completely unacceptable.

So now the garbage company is reviewing their recycling practices. Whoever was in charge got fired (I sorta feel bad, but not that much) They are looking into creating an incentive based recycling program where we’d get a large bin that’s for nothing but recycling. It’d have en electronic control panel on it & they’d weigh it before it was put into the truck. The more weight you recycle, the more reward points you get for discounts & whatnot at local merchants. We shall see.

Things I have done so far to try & conserve energy (and these things have contributed to me cutting my electric bill almost in half in the last 6 months as well as my gas bill)

• I have pretty much replaced every light bulb in the house with fluorescent light bulbs. You can find them for about $2-3 each if you buy 4 or more. And, if you wanted to by hip & different, they also have colored fluorescent bulbs: black light, bug repellent yellow, red, blue, green and more. They even have different sizes for refrigerators, ceiling fans & more. Just click here to see a lot of different options.
• Based on the recommendations from An Inconvenient Truth I have turned down the heat in my house. They recommend 2° and I really don’t remember what we had it set on last year, but I’ve been keeping it around 66° during the day & 64° at night. I usually pump it up to 68° when I wake up so that the house gets warm before The Bride wakes up & yells at me. I also have AC and I’ll be making sure that’s not set too low during the summer.
• I’m using an indoor dryer vent during the winter. This serves 2 purposes: it heats the house with something that would have just been completely wasted and it also ads moisture to my house, which is very dry in the winter. I came up with this one my self
• I had an energy efficient hot water tank installed & I will be having a 98% efficient heating unit installed shortly.
• I’m having areas of my house re-insulated.
• I’m turning off unused lights & electronic goods.
• I’m washing all my clothes in cold water (my family would never have known if I didn’t tell them)
• I’m trying out some organic cleaning products.
• I’m also recycling, but you can read more about that on the recycling page.

Things that I hope to do in the near future:

• Use recycled paper (I’ve got about 1/2 a ream sitting here that I need to use up 1st)
• Install low-flow shower heads (I have to get one & hook it up to see how it is before I ask The Bride if it’s ok, if she even notices)
• Buy a Fuel Efficient Car. I’ve got a Yukon Denali now - and I do love it - but 13.7 MPG is not gonna cut it. Lease is up on October & I’m really hoping that there’s a decent SUV on the market by then (I need 4 wheel drive - we live on a hill & it’s almost impossible to get up the driveway in the snow)
• Plant some trees & get some indoor plants (The Bride has a tendency to kill them)
• Buy Organic Food

While I’ve never thought of myself as a “tree hugging hippie” and I know for a fact that I am not even close to being 100% environmentally friendly, after watching Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth I decided to step it up a notch.

This area will cover some of the things I am trying to do so that my family & I are a little more conscious of the environment.