Make Your Home Energy Sufficient
In other words, we must all ask ourselves, “How much energy is enough to fit my needs?” Notice I wrote needs, not wants; how often people confuse the two. And this is, of course, all about saving energy and money, right?! Let’s start with size. Just like with automobiles, large homes are energy pigs compared to smaller homes. Heating, cooling, and lighting large spaces is pricey. So unless your family is big enough to start its own baseball team, you don’t require a 6 bedroom/4 bath house. You’re just wasting energy and money. But, perhaps you already know that and you can afford it because your house is more of a status symbol of your upward movement through society and a way to cloak inadequacies, kind of like the little red sports car you drive. But… that’s just a guess.
One of the best things we can do to save energy is Get Small! My family fits comfortably into our two bedroom, one bathroom house. We may bump into each other on occasion like when the bathroom is needed, but isn’t haggling about bathroom time part of the family experience? I would also be hard pressed to come up with reasons why I should get a bigger home because it would just mean more stuff needed to fill it up. But that has nothing to do with saving energy, I just hate stuff. But my favorite advantage to a smaller home, as mentioned in the original post: less time needed to clean a house means more time and energy for me!
Location... They say location is the key to success in business. The same applies to saving energy. The location of our home is by far the biggest reason why we are able to conserve energy and money. The house we live in is not modern and not even well insulated. It's more than a hundred years old! The location, however, puts us within a short bike ride or walk from work, shopping, groceries, church, library, farmer's market, school, town activities, parks, and sporting events. So, though our home may require a little more natural gas in the winter, we recoup our savings by not having to put a day’s paycheck in the fuel tank every time we fill up.
Heating & cooling.... Turning down the thermostat during the winter and up during the summer keeps money where it belongs, in the bank. Our home never reads room temperature (72 degrees Fahrenheit) during the winter. We keep the thermostat set between 68 and 66 degrees while we are at home and awake. It's a comfortable temperature and if one of us feels a chill, she can put on a sweater!* At night, we throw on an extra blanket and turn the thermostat down to 62 degrees.
To keep the house cool in the summer we go old school. Forget the AC (we don’t have it anyway), we just use fans and windows. This non-technology is as old as the term Indian Summer. We open the house up at night to let in the cold air and close it up during the day to keep the sun and hot air out. The ceiling fan really shows its worth during the summer and a couple of well placed fans in the bedrooms at night keeps the air circulating. The few hot days we experience in Montana during the course of a summer do not necessitate spending a grand installing AC.
Those are my thoughts. Feel free to share your own.
* Ha-ha. That’s a joke. I love you, honey!
Next time...
The 3 R's
2 comments:
I could see not putting in AC if you don't currently have it and aren't planning on staying put. However if you do have it.. why not use it. It sure beats suffering through the heat. The heat makes me crabby, just ask Sam.
Agreed - No one needs more bathrooms than people in their house, but this is becoming more common. We have one bathroom for the people and a random basement toilet for the kitty.
How about using a Reel mower to mow the lawn? We just inherited one from mom and dad. Granted, I have to go over the lawn twice to make it look decent, but it's quiet and it's cheap.
I like the idea of the mower. I remember having one growing up. I hate mowing, though. So we'll either have a hay field in front of the house and get a few sheep and cows, or I'll just cover the sod with cement.
One advantage to living in MT is the dry air. Most nights during the summer you can expect a 40 degree drop in temperatures from daytime highs. You can sleep comfortably in MT without AC. But I can't fault people for having it around the rest of the country because I remember the uncomfortable nights growing up in the Midwest with no AC. Not using AC is a way to reduce our energy needs, however. Perhaps, since AC is almost always included with new homes, we need to invest in the research of more efficient, less expensive methods of cooling our homes. Think geothermal heating/cooling at a fraction of the price! Maybe, someday...
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