You've Got to Love Your Meter

November 24, 2011

It’s a funny thing how a conversation with a total stranger can bring back memories. Although it’s hard to call anyone in the North a stranger because there’s a common bond that ties people to each other. It’s much like other regions of the country whether it be the prairies, the east coast, Ontario, Alberta, Quebec and the French regions, the ocean provinces, we all have that regional bond.

These gals were out for a day of cranberry picking and ended up in our yard where the wild cranberries are plentiful. Next thing you know we were having tea in the kitchen and talking about energy. Martha and Miriza were raised in Fort McPherson in a traditional First Nation home. Martha recalls when she would stay with her grandparents. Her grandma was raised with oil lamps. When power came to their community, people had so much respect for it. Her grandma would eat a meal then turn the lights off. She had a respect for the power that was ingrained from not having it. My grandmother too was so respectful of power. I used to think she was afraid of it, like it would jump out at her or something. But it was actually about taking care of how it was used. Martha went on to tell me that she is habitual at turning of lights, a habit that became ingrained by her experiences as a young person where she was trained by her grandmother to turn off the power and not waste it.

When we started the energy diet, our lighting challenge was something that we felt we would have to contend with because we have low interior ceilings made of cedar and so we are accustomed to putting on a lot of lights to brighten the place, particularly in winter. When we spoke to the eco-consultants, Gord and Ann Baird, they recommended direct light over the areas we were working in. I thought they could not possibly understand, they were off their rockers and we would never get used to it! So I continued to secretly covet the idea of pot lighting or strip lighting or something else. But believe it or not, over time it has created an ambiance that is not only calming but we actually prefer it. No kidding! There’s something cozy and quaint about.

Last week we reported our success with the amount of savings we made in electrical energy. We reported around 240kWh saving from the previous two years. I think that is about a $30 dollar savings. Many people have since asked us specifically how we did this. We can only say it was very easy. It required nothing sacrificial, and just adopting a few new habits made the difference. This is what we all did:

• Changed all remaining light bulbs to the most energy efficient bulbs we could afford which was largely CFL and a couple of LEDs. (We are now exploring more changes in this area as suggested in our previous blog.)
• Used direct lighting in all areas of the house so we are only lighting the area we are working in.
• Turned off lights and reminded each other (nicely no doubt) to turn off lights in vacant rooms.
• Kept outside lights off when we were inside the house, including the sensor light in the driveway.
• Reduced laundry to a few combined loads a week and used cold water.
• Reduced dishwasher use to a few loads a week.
• Turned off and unplugged stereos and radios, and minimized their use.
• Marika didn’t use her lava lamp at all, but Simone kept her fish tank going of course
• Didn’t watch t.v. at all (by choice) except for a couple of news casts
• Unplugged small appliances and power packs that weren’t being used such as the extra alarm clocks, Brian’s toothbrush, battery chargers for cell phones and cameras.
• Unplugged the cell phone once it was charged and before going to bed (it only takes like an hour or less to charge it!)
• Ensured that the computer was completely turned off.
• Turned off power bars at night and when we were away from the house during the day.
• Purchased and used a more energy efficient computer to replace our ten year old PC. Although with the Energy Diet Challenge we do not feel we’ve seen the advantages of this yet because the girls require the computer for homework and preparing energy diet stuff, and so do Brian and I. Consequently it was most common for two computers to be running all evening for 4 or 5 hours at a time.
• One thing we forgot to do was turn off the dishwasher before the dry cycle was finished. We have a very quiet and efficient dishwasher so we just haven’t picked up the cues as to when the dry cycle is starting yet.

Propane
We have the added advantage of not having electrical costs associated with the kitchen stove tied to the meter because we have a propane stove and not an electric one. The main thing is that we also reduced our overall propane consumption by about half over the same month. This is largely due to changing how we use the stove top, such as only boiling the amount of water needed; turning the flame down when things heat up; and turning the stove off several minutes before food is actually finished as it tends to finish up with the remaining heat in the dish (thanks to a friend for that tip).
Finally we turned our pilot light off at night and also during the day when we are not home.
All these things together have amounted to a 50% reduction.

Conclusions:
Marika says that she doesn’t miss t.v. at all because she normally doesn’t watch it in summer so she just extended that…she’s surprised about that.

It was pretty easy to do all this once we got organized and in a routine. Things become habits quickly. Anyone could make some of these changes.


Yukon Energy Corp has an great website with lots of information and news. The following link takes you to a handy tool that helps you calculate your energy use. You can also find information by going directly to the site www.yukonenergy.ca and just poking around.
http://yukonenergy.ca/customer/tips_tools/calculator/