Hypermiling, anyone? March 29, 2008

http://www.hypermiling.com/

I thought it was a bit extreme at first, but have you SEEN the numbers on the gas station signs?  Will they take Monopoly money, do you think?  I already unwittingly practice some hypermiling techniques; I don’t have a heavy foot, don’t brake until necessary and let the engine do that for me, don’t step on the gas straight out of a stop etc.  But this guy takes it to the max!  He even has a video that was pretty enlightening about how often people get zero mph by getting crazy with the brakes.  They also have training for businesses with fleets!  My father owns a business but hypermiling would kill him.  He has a heavy foot.

 I’ve been out of the blogging loop due to unforeseen home improvement projects.   NOT a way to save money, that home improvement thing.  The projects multiply and have babies over night.  One thing leads to another! We just wanted to finish laying the laminate!  Then we realised we had to pull out the cabinets in the bathroom to do it properly.  They fell apart so we had to get a new set which doesn’t sit in the same place, so now we have to tear the wallpaper off and repaint.  If we are going to repaint the bathroom, we should just do the whole house since we have to in a year anyway.  Although, FYI if you do mostly one colour, you can just get the 5 gallon buckets and save at least the cost of one gallon.

We are trying to get reassigned to a base with more doctors for our daughter, the reason for the sudden burst of Home Makeover.  We are aiming for a compassionate reassignment which means we could be out of here lickety split, leaving little time to get the house sold.  We are looking at it like a rental property for at least a year, so we are trying to get things accomplished on a tight budget without looking cheap. It’s not easy!  We are saving on the paint by going with 5 gallons of the semi-gloss in a neutral off white colour.  Semi gloss is easy to clean and the neutral shades will attract more people than my usual colourful preferences!  We decided to carpet the stairs instead of doing laminate.  In our house, they are the first thing you see and since we are doing it ourselves, we don’t want to do a botched job that immediately greets the eye.  We managed to find some cheaper but durable carpet that wasn’t hideous and Home Depot was doing a free measurement incentive.  It looks like we’ll get the job done for less than $400 and it will be much nicer to see professionally installed carpet than amateur laminate with gobs of maple coloured caulking! 

Switch flipping penny pincher! February 2, 2008

There is always something we can do to save on the household bills.  Here are the ideas that have lowered our bills significantly:

• Turn the lights off. Duh, that one is a no brainer. It’s easier said than done!  I had to work hard to train myself to flip the switch as I walked out of a room.
• Adjust the thermostat.  At the very least, lower it when you leave the house.  Ours normally hangs out at 69* or so, we just wear sweaters and slippers.  It’s Alaska, we’re going to put on a sweater anyway!  When we go on our many zillions of appointments and errands, we knock it down to 65*.  We definitely saw a drop after we started doing that regularly. 
• Switch regular light-bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs.  We took it a step further and switched our main dining/living room light fixture with an Energy Star rated one.  That sucker puts out mega light but uses a fraction of the kilowatt-hours that the run of the mill fixtures use.  The one that was there was also energy efficient, but too small so we moved it down to my sewing room and did away with the oldskool fixture down there.  We haven’t bought a lightbulb in ages!
• Wash dishes as you go. And don’t leave the water running as you do it.  Or, if you have enough dishes, just wait until the dishwasher is full before running a load.  I also opt out of the final heat drying cycle and choose the air dry cycle.  No matter what the appliance is, if it uses heat it’s eating your wallet.
• Don’t use the dryer. You’re laughing at me now.  The neat thing about our split level house is the bathroom downstairs that is ultimately unused.  It’s neat because it makes a great dryer.  In the winter I set up a couple of drying racks and hang anything I can on everything that will hold clothes.  When you close the door the heat from the vent turns it into a very large, very quiet dryer.  Clothes last longer, you’re not wasting heat on an unused room and you aren’t using a mega money eater.  I do put things like bath towels in the machine, and if I need a certain pair of jeans, they get a cycle.  But most clothes don’t really need a dryer.  Sure they are a bit stiff, but when you put the shirt on, your body heat softens it up.  It also saves wear and tear on the cloth diapers.
• Use the microwave more than the oven.  This was a fairly new discover for us.  I was reading The Green Book by Elizabeth Rogers and Thomas M. Kostigen and they pointed out that the oven uses a lot more energy than the microwave.  I’m not sure which healthier, but I know I like the taste better when it’s slowly roasted in the oven versus zapped dry in the microwave.  The dryness can be fixed by putting a little dish of water in with the thing you’re zapping.
• Figure out where you are losing heat, then seal it.  Our house was built in ‘83 and has the original windows and doors.  Yeah, they leak.  We are replacing the front door as soon as the temp gets above 20.  Right now you freeze as you walk by and we keep a towel stuffed around the bottom to keep some of the cold air from coming in.  The windows are not that great so we shrink wrapped the ones that we aren’t “using”.  If you go to any home improvement store, you’ll find window kits for adding insulation.  It’s a special tape that you apply to the frame, press the plastic to it and use a hair dryer to tighten it.  If the problem is higher, say in the roof, then you should probably consider the savings of adding some spray insulation to your attic, another tweak will hope to make soon.  I know the attic “door” itself was a nuisance.  It is located in our daughters closet and when the seal was broken, it turned the closet into a deep freezer, in turn keeping her room colder than the rest of the house.  Husband caulked the opening and we stuff a towel in front of the closet, making her room a little toastier.
• Don’t keep the seldom used plugged in.  For us, our TV is seldom used…until I get my hands on the second season of Desperate Housewives!  Sometimes days will go by before we turn it on again.  Apparently things suck energy just being on standby.  So we unplug things when they aren’t used and also switched our computer to energy save mode.  That was also in the afore mentioned book, but we beat them to it!