90 Percent Project - Week 27

Thursday, 2:58 pm

By Kate

Dec

06

2007

I am now one week into the last half of the 90 Percent Project—supposedly the slide into home plate with mostly small refinements left to accomplish. Well, in theory, anyway. It’s those small refinements that are driving me batty. Anyway, here are my values for Week 27 (November 29-December 6, AM readings) for the 90 Percent Project.

Electricity
Week 27: 16 kWh used

And this includes Christmas lights! They couldn’t have come at a worse time. Okay, any time would be a worse time because they are voracious eaters of electricity. I finally plugged the Christmas lights into the kill-a-watt meter and I almost passed out. They eat 358 watts. I leave them on 3 hours in the evening (cutting a couple of minutes off either side just to make me feel a little better) which translates to a daily total of 1074 watts or 1.074 kilowatt hours. So, this week’s total includes 6 days (6kWh) of bright Christmas cheer.

I also plugged my laptop computer into the kill-a-watt meter and it registered a modest 17-33 watts (compared to the 157 watts my desktop computer consumes), depending on what it’s doing. The average daily consumption is 22 watts per hour. I did turn the screen back-lighting down to about 50% which makes a measurable difference. It also goes to sleep after 5 minutes of no use. When I’m not feeding Christmas lights, I’ll splurge and turn the back-lighting back up a notch or two. Until then, I’m still looking for little economies to get me sanely through this Christmas light business. And, of course, the lad will be arriving in another two weeks, which will add to the weekly tally.

One other discovery...I couldn’t account for about 300 watts per day. Doesn’t sound like much, but when the day’s total is running around 2-3 kWh, 300 watts makes a difference. I thought I had EVERYTHING either unplugged or put on power strips. The one thing I hadn’t even thought of was the computer’s modem and wireless router. They’ve been running 24 hours a day, tucked away in a corner where I never look. Shutting them off at night was just enough to put my daily use (including Christmas lights) under 3 kWh per day. Little things really do add up.

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Gasoline purchased (for 1 person)
Week 27: 0 gallons

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Water (for 1 person)
Week 27: 157.101 gallons

How easy it is to slide back into bad habits. It’s hard to figure out exactly how I managed to use an average of 22 gallons per day. I’ll work on that this week.

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Natural Gas
Week 27: 4 CCF

WHATEVER!

I turned the water up a notch. My bathroom is routinely around 58° and a lukewarm (very, very tepid) shower is miserable in those temps. I am a warm blooded mammal and I don’t enjoy hypothermia.

My newest gas bill (for November) turned up online yesterday. It said I used a total of 16 therms (15 CCF) for the month. That is the lowest I’ve ever used. Two less than October, four less than September....and 15 less than in June when the 90 Percent Project started. And that’s just for marginally hot (warmer than body temperature) water once a day and cooking (not that much for one person). So, I am making progress. But I don’t think I’ll be able to drop it down to the project’s goal of 100 therms per year—an average of 8.333 per month. Not.Even.Close. Since June, I’ve already used 75 therms and we all know how I’ve been scrimping. That doesn’t even include heat and I still have to add the fire wood (20 therms per cord) to my final tally. About the only way I could see cutting my use in half would be a solar hot water heater and that’s not in the cards any time soon. But it is an option.

Well, I could just shut the water heater off after it’s warmed in the morning and then crawl around on my hands and knees on the basement floor, disassemble the hot water heater, and re-light the pilot light every morning. Not going to happen, either, but...it’s an option.

For the average household that uses gas for hot water and heating and cooking, I don’t think 100 therms per year is a realistic goal without replacing some appliances and energy input (solar, wind, geothermal, etc.). One thing that would help A LOT would be if appliance manufacturers would make it EASY to shut the gas appliances OFF and ON. Pilot lights are a plague on humanity.

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Trash (for 1 person)
Week 27: 8.6 lbs.

Residuals from the basement flood. Little odds and ends that added up.

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Consumer Goods
Week 27: $13.98

$3.99 for my new laundry appliance (plumber’s helper), $6.99 for Christmas lights, $3.00 for 9 of those little igloo blocks that can be frozen—they were on sale for 3/$1 and, well, I unplugged the refrigerator and needed them. I haven’t died yet.

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Food
Still hanging in there with local produce and local meat, cheese, eggs, and milk. Some not-local rice, barley, and pasta, but organic and available at the local green grocer. Oh, and I rescued the butterball turkey carcass from Thanksgiving dinner and made a lovely soup/stew out of it.