As I’ve mentioned before, I’m looking for ways to cut my energy costs — without having to live like the Unabomber. Eyebrows McGee has been writing me giving me all sorts of great ideas, and now she has compiled many of them into this post on her blog. It’s well worth the read, especially since electricity costs are currently slated to skyrocket in January.
She’s what I would call a “sensible environmentalist.” When I see environmentalists on, say, C-SPAN or something, they’re usually advocating some totally unrealistic or radical method of saving energy (like living in a yurt), and I just roll my eyes and move on. But Eyebrows has some very practical things that don’t involve completely changing your lifestyle.
I can totally buy all her suggestions except for one: replacing incandescent light bulbs with fluorescent ones. I understand the energy savings, but I hate fluorescent lights. I hate how they look and how they make me feel. Their light casts a pall on everything that I find utterly depressing. (I know, I know, I should talk to a psychologist about this.) I prefer the soft yellow-white light of a burning incandescent globe, and I don’t think I could ever give that up. It’s easy to install. You can also hire electricians like W3 Electric to do it for you. You can also upgrade your Electrical Panel if it’s already old; this will help you save more money.
Other than that, great ideas — I especially like the idea of solar roofing materials; that’s clearly come a long way since big solar panels. Nice to know the aesthetes are making headway in beautifying (or at least camouflaging) new technology. For roofing installation, you can visit their site or contact experts like Bondoc Roofing.
On the lightbulbs, they come with different sorts of “colors” on the glass now; some are basically indistinguishable from incandescent light (particularly if you liked the GE Reveal bulbs). Lampshades can also do wonderful work for getting the right “warmth” from even a flourescent bulb. And if nothing else, you can stick them in fixtures you don’t have to spend a lot of time looking at, like bare basement bulbs or outdoor lights.
We haven’t put them in our dining room fixture yet because the bulbs in that fixture are in clear glass shades, and I can’t quite commit to looking at the twisty flourescents in the clear glass shades in my dining room. 🙂
GE has an LED “lightbulb” that will go in standard home fixtures in the development pipeline that may be out in stores in 2007. Some novelty LED bulbs for home fixtures are already in the design shows. So maybe that will be more your cup of tea.
Glad you liked the post, though!
Oh, PS — there are some seriously yuppie yurts out there these days: http://www.yurts.com/
While we’re on environmentalism – I’m going to take a campaign plug opportunity:
Rich Whitney, the Green Party candidate for IL Governor will be at the Rhythm Kitchen tonight from 5-7pm and later. Go meet him. I just did (here at BU). Nice guy. Seems down to earth.
And I’m not holding my breath for the next opportunity I get to talk to Blagojevich or Topinka.
And he’s polling at 6%. Jesse Ventura was polling at 3% at this time in his MN gov’s race. You never knoooo-oow…
When we bought our house, the kitchen, bath and laundry room all had fluorescents- the 4ft tube kind- and I took them all out. Besides being ugly, the light is horrible. I do have fluorescents in my workshop though. Why? They just seem ‘workshopish’. I will turn on some regular lights to soften the yellow harshness if I’m down there for a long time, though.
I have not tried the new screw-in type fluorescents; I might try some in the basement to see how I like them.
Here in the office I pay extra for full spectrum ultra-bright fluorescent bulbs. You know, winters are long enough, and my brain needs sunshine!
You can all just drop by my place and see how you like the flourescents in OUR lamps before committing to your own!
PI, I hate those tube-style flourescents too. We have one old tube fixture in the finished side of the basement and almost the first thing I did was hang an inexpensive Target “chandelier” from the drop ceiling (ran the wire up above the tiles) so I didn’t have to use it.
I was reading up on the Sunslate in their FAQ and it appears the price per 100 sq ft is 12 grand. And with standard installation you use 300 sq ft. I’m pretty sure 36 grand is a little more than 150% of the cost of standard roofing. Not sure it’s worth it at that price.
Swap to compact flourescents on the same day your electric meter gets read. Buy them in advance (they have really dropped in price recently). I watch the electric bill carefully. Today’s bill, which I calculated had 12 days of AC on in a 2000sf house and family of 5 was $72. Ihad switched all lights except exterior ones over back in January. I also have an electric dryer, 2 refridgerators and a deep freeze.
Left by Bob – the site states that those are the prices before any state or federal rebates. Anyone know how much these rebates are? Does Illinois provide any rebates?
I could probably look this up myself, but I’ll see if I get any answers the lazy way first …
Ooops … guess I should just read Eyebrows’ post, eh? She’s got the links right there. Laziness triumphs!
There are also lots of other suppliers out there (you can probably find them in the National Green Pages, linked in my post); SunSlates and Ovonics are just two of the nicest products, with attendant costs.