A Little Spring Humor

Presented with a little giggle, but no comment:

Time to Call the Professionals

 

As you all know, I'm on a quest to squeeze out every penny of energy savings that I possibly can.  J.'s brother and wife had a professional energy audit done last year and, after implementing the recommendations, they significantly warmed up their finished basement and lowered their heating and cooling bills. At the time, I poo-pooed it, thinking that there was no way an energy audit of our holier-than-swiss-cheese old house.  (In my subconscious, I may actually have been afraid that they would recommend we bulldoze and start over!)

After doing some research, however, I discovered an Energy Star program offered by our local utilities (KCPL and MGE) where they will reimburse you up to $1200 for energy improvements.  That includes $400 for an audit by a certified energy auditor (which is the going rate) and then up to $800 if you implement just one of the auditor's recommendations.  The amount you can receive back depends on the improvements you made.  For example:

• Additional attic insulation up to R-49 is eligible for 2 cents x the R-value x sq footage
• Additional wall insulation up to R-19 is eligible for 3 cents x R-value x sq footage
• Air sealing is eligible for $10 for each % you lower air leakage up to 40%
• New windows\doors are eligible for $100 each

We just had our energy audit done and it was extremely informative.  They perform a "blower test" where they open one outside door to your house and then seal it off with a big airtight tarp-looking-thing that has a huge fan at the bottom.  The fan sucks all the air out of your house, and this helps indicate where air is leaking IN.  The auditor asked me to come up to our attic and, as I hit the bottom of the stairs, I could feel the cold air rushing past me.  We obviously have an insulation problem up there.  According to him, basements are the "leakiest", followed by attics.  They measure the blower door test in percentages and he explained that his brand new home measures at 40%, meaning that when his furnace or AC is on, he's heating or cooling 40% of that air every hour. Here's ours:

Um, yeah.....

He left me with 5 things that we need to look at and told me the good news is that they're all easy and they're all covered under the rebate.

1. Insulate the crawl space and walls in our addition (already planned!)
2. Insulate the rim joist in the basement
3. Increase the attic insulation to R-49 with blown-in insulation
4. Weatherstrip the doors in the attic and caulk\weatherstrip windows and doors all over the house, including caulking around the ceiling vent in the bathroom.  That's not something I probably would have thought of, but he noted it was VERY leaky!
5. Replace the remaining lightbulbs with CFLs or LEDS (already planned!)

If we do these things, the auditor said he's certain that we could lower our bills by at least 25%.  Here's a snapshot from the report that he gave us showing current energy costs and what we could save.

That's not bad, considering much of what we need to do is easy and will be paid for with the rebate and several of the things on the list were already on our to-do list.

The best part of this?  I paid no money out of pocket for this.  The auditor helps you do the rebate form, and then the rebate goes directly to him.  You keep the savings!

If you're in the Kansas City area and are interested in having an energy audit, I can highly recommend the contractor that did our test.  Email me at crankypuppy@gmail.com and I'll get you the information.  The only thing I ask is that you let him know we referred you, as he does pay a small referral fee.  :-)  

Hey, every little bit helps...

 


I've shared this post as part of this week's HomeAcre blog hop.  Go check it out!

Yep, We're Tree People

Not my driveway.  At least not yet.....

Some girls want diamonds, some want a new car, some want a fancy career, and others want a good man who will settle down with them and have kids.  Me?  I've got the good man department covered.  All I want now is my mother-in-law's driveway.  That's right...I'm outright shamelessly coveting it.

 

You see, she's got a beautiful tree-lined drive at their place and it's something I've always wanted.  It's been on the "to do" list for our acreage for some time and, now that we are out from under the thumb of the USDA, we can actually plant some trees there.

 

Earlier today,  J. headed off to an auction while I finished up some work (yes, this week has been h-e-double-hockey-stix and the reason why I've been away from here for several days).  It just so happened that they were auctioning off some nursery trees at what is normally our go-to farm equipment auction. If you're been following the goin's on here, then you know that we recently went to a class on tapping maple trees to make syrup.  Well, you're never going to guess what kind of trees they had at this auction.

 

Yep, oak trees!  Just kidding...they had several varieties of sugar maples:  Commemoration, Green Mountain and Fall Fiesta.  They even had some Autumn Blazes, which aren't sugar maples but, because of their fabulously beautiful spreading branches and drop-dead gorgeous orange and red fall colors, I've always wanted one of them in our back yard. J. did not disappoint, as he hauled an Autumn Blaze home for me.  And six 12' sugar maples to boot!

 

This pic doesn't show it, but one of these trees was sticking 12 feet off the back of this trailer.  I'm surprised he didn't get pulled over by the highway patrol!

  

We've got an old weed tree in our back yard that dropped a huge limb last fall and it appears to be dying.  The tree guy  is coming over tomorrow to give us a quote on taking it down and removing some big limbs from our neighbor's trees that are overhanging where the solar panels will go.  Once the big tree is down, we'll replace it with the Autumn Blaze.  It's the biggest tree on the trailer in that picture above and is 20 feet tall!  It's going to be fun getting it off the trailer and into the ground, that's for sure.  The other trees will go up to our farm.  We don't have a house there yet, but this will give me that tree-lined drive that I've always wanted.

 

Solar Panels are Here!

Welcome to the seventh post in the series related to our solar energy project.

 Click here to start at the beginning!

 

They're here!  A big Conway Freight truck pulled up to our house on Thursday to deliver our solar array - all 2,976 pounds of it.  Good thing he had a pallet jack, because everything had to go up our steep driveway and into our garage.

 

First, we had two cardboard tubes about 12" in diameter and 14 feet long.  Each one contains 8 of the aluminum support racks that hold the solar panels. All we'll need to provide are the Schedule 40 pipes that are the vertical supports coming up from the ground. 

 

Then there were two pallets of 20 solar panels each.  We opened the boxes to look at them and the panels are actually stacked on their sides.  This makes sense if you think about how glass companies transport glass - it's stronger when it's vertical.  There was a ding in one of the boxes and a teeny little dent in the back of the first panel, but it won't be visible and won't affect the panel.  So we noted it on the shipping invoice and moved on.

 

Each 305 watt panel weighs 51.7 pounds, so we estimated each of these pallets weighed around 1,050 pounds each.  They were heavy enough that we couldn't get them up over the lip of our garage, so it's a good thing our neighbors came out to help.  It took 3 grown  men to push them off the jack and into the garage!

 

Then came the pallet with the inverters, the shut off switch, cabling, and all the other miscellaneous small stuff that we'll need to connect everything. 

 

 

Once we got everything in, it filled one entire side of our garage.  I guess I'll be parking outside until we get all this installed. 

 

The delivery driver asked what all of this stuff was and, when I told him it was our new solar array, he said "You're going to install that yourself?"  He seemed pretty incredulous.  I guess some people think we're nuts.  And maybe we are.  But really, this doesn't seem like an undo-able task to me.  A big project?  Yes. 

 

And now it's here and it's REAL.

 

I'll be back next time to talk about what's on these pallets, where we got the equipment from, and where all of it is going to go.

If you're interested in more on our solar project, please check the "Solar Project" section on the bar to the right.

 

 

Wait 5 Minutes

The saying around here is "If you don't like the weather in Missouri, wait 5 minutes."  It's not a favorite for no reason, trust me.  We'd had some spectacular 70 degree days today and Monday (today hit 79!) where the normal highs are in the 50's.  J. and I have been slowly cleaning out our basement and you could literally feel the temperature change as we were dragging things out to the trash trailer.  On our last trip out, the temp was down to 53 and it was starting to rain some random drops.  Time to go in!  A little over an hour later and it was sleeting. 

 

Crazy Missouri weather.

 

The reason we're cleaning out the basement (the whole house, really) is that I hired an energy auditor and he's coming next Monday.  Our utility companies (both gas and electric) have rebates that will fully pay for the audit ($400) and up to $800 of work that is recommended by that audit (caulking, new windows\doors, insulation, weatherstripping, etc.)  You just have to implement 1 of their recommendations (not all) to get the  money. 

 

The reason we're getting ready to gut our laundry room is because it's sitting over an uninsulated crawl space and the walls aren't insulated either.  You can literally feel the cold air coming up through the floor in the winter.  It also runs up through the walls up into the 2nd floor home office as well.  We have GOT to get that fixed to be more energy efficient.  Having that rebate money will help a lot on the costs.

 

In other news, we found an electrician that will help us with the solar panel project.  We have to have a licensed electrician sign off on it before the utility company will even come inspect it.  He's charging us $500 for the signoff and 8 hours to review our plans, answer any questions we have, and do any work we need him to do.  I think that's a pretty good deal and we can get a federal tax credit of 30% of that cost back on this year's taxes.

 

We have a lot to do but, for now, we're waiting.

 

Waiting for the energy auditor to arrive on Monday.

 

Waiting for the application to be approved by the utility. (They have 28 more days!)

 

Waiting for the solar panels to arrive.  (They should be here this week!)

 

Waiting for Spring to officially arrive so we can start the garden.

 

Did I mention that I am the most I.M.P.A.T.I.E.N.T person on the planet?

 

 

 

The Latest Buzz

Finally!  A chance to sit down and catch my breath this week, even if it was only to spend the day in a standing-room only Beginning Beekeepers Workshop put on the Midwestern Beekeepers Association.  They announced that they had expected about 60 people to sign up and they had 175, with another 60 applications that they had to turn away.  Who knew beekeeping was so popular?

 

$60 for the 8-hour workshop included a book on beginning beekeeping, all of the slide materials, lunch and snacks.  There were vendors there with all the starter equipment and I came home with a ton of magazines.  You know how sometimes classes like this can be too high-level and just not worth your time?  Not this one.  Wow!  They covered everything from bee anatomy, their behavior, where to put your hives, how to extract honey, how to build your wooden hives, etc.  There were demonstrations with the equipment as well (without the bees, of course).

 

I wasn't in a spot where I could get really pictures, so I'm sorry I don't have any for you.  How about this picture from Wikipedia?  I don't know about you, but it makes me pine for Spring.

Picture courtesy of Wikipedia

So here's the crazy news.  They must have given away more than 50 door prizes throughout the day and I was so bummed when they didn't call my name.  But then they announced they had one final giveaway.  They called my name!  You are not going to believe this, because I still can't....I won a complete hive from Ed Fisher and a 3 lb package of bees from Cecil and Joli over at Heartland Honey.  It was so nice of them to donate those items - the hive alone is worth about $300 and the bees are worth $125!  I met and talked with them (such nice people!) and I am incredibly thankful to them and so happy to get started after I pick up the bees in April.

 

I hadn't planned on getting serious about beekeeping until maybe next year, since we have this solar project coming up, but I guess I'm going to have to make way for some fuzzy winged friends in the backyard.  Next weekend, they're holding a class on how to build a hive, so I'll be joining them.  Right now, the hive is just a box of pieces that need to be glued and  nailed together.  Then I'll need to paint it, find a good spot, and we'll  be ready for our newest residents here at Cranky Puppy.

 

I hope everyone is having a great weekend so far!

Breaking Records

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! 

We hit -6 last night, breaking the record for the coldest day in March in our area. 

 

I just updated the almanac stuff to the right and guess what said about February?  "Near normal temperatures...".  Guess what it says about March?  "Near normal temperatures..."

 

Uh-huh. February was one of the coldest on records.  I guess I should give them a little credit for saying that it would be coldest on March 3rd. 

 

Near normal temperatures for us right now should be in the mid-40's to almost 50.  Heck, that would be shorts weather after all this bitter cold we've had.  Is Spring ever going to get here?!

That's One Tasty Tree

March is roaring in like a lion and, with Winter Storm Titan nipping at our heels, we headed to the Burr Oak Woods Nature Center in Blue Springs this afternoon for a fun session put on by the Missouri Department of Conservation.

This is the class I tried to get into last year and it filled up the first day of registration.  But thanks for J.'s mom's fleet fingers (she was the first person to register!), we were able to get in this year.  Lots of families and kids came out to learn how to tap trees and turn tree sap into maple syrup, sugar, candy and other sweet treats.

 

We started off with a quick, very informative discussion of everything maple syrup.  Let me see if I can remember some of the points that you might find interesting. 

 

Did you know.....

 

...that American Indians were the first to collect and use maple syrup?  The legend is that it was discovered by Iroquoian Chief Woksis when he threw his tomahawk into a tree, causing sap to run from the wound and into a basket that his squaw then used to prepare their evening meal of venison.

 

...that maple syrup comes from maples trees - most notably the sugar maple, red maple or black maple?  The silver maple in our backyard really doesn't work well for this purpose, but did you know that you can make syrup from the sap of walnut trees?

 

...that the best month for sap production in Missouri is February?  That's due to the weather.  To get the sap out of the tree, you need cold nights below 32 degrees and days that are warmer than freezing.  In fact, the greater the differences in temps, the better the sap flows and the more sap you'll be likely to collect.

 

...that Laura Ingalls Wilder was fond of making a caramel-like candy from maple syrup by boiling it and pouring it onto snow banks to harden?

...that Mrs. Butterworth's syrup has NO real maple syrup in it? 

After the presentation, we were off to a taste-testing of popcorn coated with maple syrup and walnut syrup.  Since I didn't even know there was such a thing as walnut syrup, this was a great.  And the surprise is that it's MUCH tastier than maple syrup.  You can see a difference in the picture above - the walnut syrup is in the small jar on the left and the maple syrup is in the bottle on the right.  The walnut is much lighter in color and flavor.  We've got several HUGE walnut trees around us.  I wonder if the neighbors would notice if we hung buckets off of them?  *grin*

 

Then we were off to try our hand at drilling and inserting a tap into a log.  You need a drill, a hammer, and a spout.  See the hook on the spout (on the left below)?  That's for hanging the bucket to collect the sap.

 

 

With the weather below 32 degrees, the sap wasn't flowing at all, so we practiced tapping on a log.  While the kids were taking their turn at drilling, I was off snapping this picture of this interesting tree.  I wonder what kind of trauma caused this?

I love being in the woods and snow was starting to fall, so it was even more magical.  From the corner of my eye, I'm pretty sure I saw a wood fairy dart out of that tree as I turned away.

 

Back inside, I just had to take a picture of this little chipmunk before we left. 

He's an ex-chipmunk, but still tiny and adorable.  Having lived in Missouri all my life, I have never seen one of these little guys.  Ever!

 

I had some coupons for chicken feed so we hit Tractor Supply and picked up 300 pounds before heading home to batten down the hatches for the storm.  By that time, the Jeep's tires were starting to leave tracks in the snow that was starting to collect on the road.  Someone had a really bad day, because we saw 3 wrecks on the highway and some poor fellow Jeep owner had somehow gotten their Grand Cherokee perfectly balanced on the guard rail.  All 4 tires were off the road!  I wish I could have gotten a picture of that for you.

 

Oh, and before I go.....I want to give you this link in case you're interested in learning more about collecting sap and making syrup:  http://www.tapmytrees.com/preparation.html.

 

Til next time, stay warm my friends!  We're slated to hit -10 tonight.

Solar: It's All About Location, Location, Location

Welcome to the sixth post in the series related to our solar energy project.

 Click here to start at the beginning!

According to our figurin' from the last post in the series, we know we need 32 panels rated at 305 watts each for our system.  That's not quite 10 kW (32 x 305 watts = 9,760 watts or 9.67 kilowatts). 

32 panels is ALOT.  And they'll take up a lot of space:  each panel is about 18 square feet, for a total of 576 square feet.  In fact, if we stack them in 4 rows of 8 panels per row, we'd have a rectangle that was 14 feet by 44 feet (on average). 

Most importantly, your solar panels need to point at the sun.  Here in the Northern Hemisphere, that means we point our panels DUE SOUTH to capture the best sunlight.  In the Southern Hemisphere, their panels would point DUE NORTH.

So where the heck are we going to put these at?  

Our complicated roof

Certainly not on the roof of our Victorian house with all its peaks, valleys and dormers.  To the right, there's a Google satellite picture of our roof line and I've highlighted the lines in green.  Yep, no place to put 32 panels up there.  Not only that, but we just had our roof replaced also.  Even though the solar industry claims to have leak-free roof mounts available, it would make me nervous to have all those screws through the roof to hold the panels down.  Lots of people do roof-mounted solar arrays but we can't....so we need to find somewhere else to put them.

So what other options do we have?

Well, we've got a detached garage that we built 5 years ago.  But it's shaded by our neighbor's tree in the morning and our tree in the afternoon\evening.  It's also not big enough to hold 32 panels, so that won't work either.

What we do have is the vacant lot behind us that we affectionately refer to as "Cranky Puppy Farm".  That's where our raised garden beds and chicken coop are located.  As you can see by the larger Google satellite image below that was taken at about 10 a.m. during the height of summer, there's a large amount of space that's clear from shade all day.  I've indicated where the panels could go with the red box.  Note that we'll probably have to move the chicken coop, so I'm glad that we were smart enough to build it on skids in case we needed to move it in the future. 



North at the top, South at the bottom

Placing the solar panels on a racking system on the ground is referred to as a ground-mount solar array.  As we'll see in later posts, there are specially designed racks to accommodate this kind of installation.  Whether you're doing a ground-mount or a roof-mount, you'll need to include the cost of the mounting equipment in your total costs for the solar project.

Whew!  Now that we know we have a location for our panels, in our next post we'll look at solar panel choices and talk about the system we've decided to install.

If you're interested in more on our solar project, please check the "Solar Project" section on the bar to the right.

Solar: Sizing Our System

Welcome to the fifth post in the series related to our solar energy project.

 Click here to start at the beginning!

Time to get back to talking about our solar project!  When we last talked about this, we were astounded at what big energy hogs we are. At an average daily usage of 45 kilowatt hours (kWH) per day, we're using a good 33% over what the average American household of 4 uses! 

So why is that important?  Because the first decision you make when looking at "going solar" is how much energy you need to generate (or want to generate).  Do you want to try to generate 100% of your energy or just offset 50% of it?

In our case, there were several things to consider:

• Our utility company is offering a $2.00 per watt  rebate and it's capped at $50,000.  That means we can install a system up to 25 kilowatts and get fully reimbursed.
• The rebate requires that the system be operational no later than June 30, 2014.  After that, the rebate drops to $1.50 per installed watt.
• If the system is under 10 kilowatts, the utility is required to approve an application within 30 days.  If it's over 10 kilowatts, they have 90 days to approve or deny.  If they took the entire 90 days, we'd be looking at not having approval until mid-May and that wouldn't give us a lot of time to get everything installed.
• With a system over 10 kilowatts, the utility and city have additional requirements: more expensive city building permits, we'd be required to have $100,000 in additional liability insurance on the property, etc. 

Since we want to take advantage of the larger rebate amount, we pretty much decided that 10 kilowatts was the max size for our system - we'd be assured quick approval and also it would be manageable in terms of size for us DIYers (as we'll see in just a minute).

Now I'm sure you're thinking "But that's only about 1/4 of the energy you use each day!"

This is where we need to talk about the difference between kilowatts and kilowatt hours.  Solar panels are rated in watts, and there are 1000 watts in a kilowatt.  If you have a 250-watt solar panel, that means they are rated to produce 250 watts per hour under ideal conditions (no cloud, sun directly above them, etc.)  But the sun shines more than 1 hour per day (except for you poor folks up in Seattle or Portland).  When you're sizing your array, the  next piece of information you need is the "peak sun hours" for your location.  Here's a chart for Kansas City:

The sun's higher in the sky in the summer and more directly overhead, so it makes sense that we get over 6 hours per day that are ideal for solar during those months.  Conversely, we get just 1/3 of that in the winter months.  These numbers apply only for our location, so you'll need to find the peak sun hours for your specific location by doing a Google search (there are lots of sites out there).  Here's a map that provides a good rule of thumb for each state:

Now we have all the information we need to determine how much a solar array can generate each day.  The formula is this:

# kilowatts  X  peak sun hours  =  kilowatt hours generated

In our case, we'll plug in the numbers for our proposed system as follows:

10 kilowatt (kW) system  X  4.5 hours  =  45 kilowatt hours (kWH) generated per day

Since we're using an average of 45 kWH and our 10 kW system can generate that much per day on average, then we can come close to offsetting a large chunk of our energy.  But not all of it...solar panels only generate energy when the sun is shining so we'll still need to use power from the electric company during the evening or when it's cloudy outside.  An arrangement where you are tied to the grid through your utility is called netmetering and, in most of these arrangements (including ours), you'll receive credit for the extra energy that your solar panels generate but that you don't use.  That would help offset the energy you'll use at night.  By the way, solar arrays that are tied to the grid are also referred to as grid-tied.

There are also off-grid systems that are stand-alone (not tied to the grid).  They're self-sufficient and are great for locations that may not have utilities readily available.  In order to store energy for use at night, these off-grid systems use a bank of special batteries to store the energy generated by the solar panels during the day.  These batteries are expensive and our utility company frowns on their use for grid-tied systems, so I'm not going to spend a lot of time on them.  If you're interested in learning more about this, just Google "off-grid solar" and you'll be overwhelmed with all kinds of information.

Okay, so what does a "10 kilowatt system" look like?  The answer is that it depends.  Not too long ago, 190-watt panels were all the rage.  But technology marches on and, while 250-watt panels are still favored by installers (at least here in KC), there are now panels available in the 305-watt and 310-watt range.  The higher the wattage per panel, the less panels you will need.  That also means they will take up less space and your cost will be less.

As an example, let's use 250-watt panels and do the math on how many panels we'll need.  Remember, a kilowatt is 1,000 watts.  Therefore, the number of panels we need is:

10,000 watts   /   250 watts per panel   =   40 panels

Now let's look at the same 10 kilowatt system with 305-watt panels:

 10,000 watts   /   305 watts per panel   =   32.8 panels (round down to 32)

Since solar panels are generally around 3.5 feet x 5.5 feet and cost around $320 right now, using the more efficient panels is saving us 126 square feet of space and about $2,560 in the cost of the additional 8 panels. 

This post has gotten pretty long-winded, so I'm going to stop right there for tonight and come back tomorrow and pick up where we left off.  Next up, we need to talk about finding a location for our panels and then we'll talk about the specific system we selected. 

Stay tuned!  If you're interested in more on our solar project, please check the "Solar Project" section on the bar to the right.

I've shared this post with this week's Down Home Blog Hop and Backyard Farming Connection Hop.  Go check them out!

Views from the Western Farm Show

It's Saturday, which is normally "run around" day for J. and I, but we took a couple of hours out of our busy day to stop in at the Western Farm Show that's going on this weekend at the American Royal.

We were just here for the Home and Garden Show, but this Farm Show is definitely bigger in size.  The bottom and top floors were packed with all kind of farm implements, including some pretty big boys.  When the tire is almost twice your height, you know it's used for some SERIOUS farming.

I had to practically drag J. away from the massive John Deere display.  In fact, I'm pretty sure he left a trail of drool through the American Royal.

This trailer advertising wrap caught my attention and I couldn't help but giggle.  Not very good advertising,though since, for the life of me, I can't remember who the company was or what product they were selling!

In conjunction with the show, they're holding a truck and tractor pull.  I haven't been to one of those since I was a kid and we both wanted to go, but they want $27 a ticket!  I remember tractor pulls as one of those free events that pulled you into the State Fair or the local harvest celebration.  Not that I'm being a cheapskate, but don't you think $27 is a bit much for one ticket?   If it had been more like $10, we would have gone.

Here's one of the modified old school tractors from the Pull...a modified White 2-85 called VooDoo. I think it looks like something out of the Mad Max movies, don't you?

And there couldn't be a tractor pull without the John Deere green making it's presence known.  Check out the exhaust pipe on this puppy:

Finally, I wanted to share my favorite bronze statue with you at the Royal - this is a pair of draft horses named Lottie and Maude.  Just beautiful....

I'm not sure we really got any usable information from the Western Farm Show, since it is geared more for serious farmers and not hobby farmers like us.  But, hey....it did entertain us for a couple of hours.  If you're around KC, you might check it out, as it runs through Sunday.

On another note, we've picked our solar panels and vendor.  Several folks have comments or contacted me asking for more information, so I *promise* I'll be back next time with detailed information about panels we chose, where we're buying them, etc.

Stay tuned!

Thunderstorms and...Snow?

This is the view from my windshield on the way home tonight.

The one thing you won't see is any trace of the 10 inches of snow we got last week.  Yesterday actually hit a balmy 65 degrees.  That may have caused me to say some naughty words, but I can neither confirm nor deny that.  Why can't we get 65 degree sunny days on the weekends in February??!!

 

Crack of thunder as I type this and I think I hear the telltale ping PING! of hail on the roof.  I bet the chickens are less than amused about this late winter storm ushering in colder weather.  They have been happy to get out of the coop and stretch their legs in the sun.  I bet they're really going to be ticked if we get that snow they're talking about tomorrow.  Come to think of it, I'll be ticked also.  Damn that Punxatawney Phil!

 

I'm still gathering data with the new Efergy electricity  monitor and hope to have some concrete information to share with you soon.  The biggest milestone was writing the check for the solar panels today.  The amount gave me heart palpitations.  I have much to share with you in the next couple of days, including what our plans are and where we're going to put the panels!

 

But for now, it's late and I'm going to enjoy this thunderstorm by laying in bed and listening to the thunder.  Am I the only one that finds it relaxing?

 

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.......

Bringing Out the Big Guns: Efergy Energy Monitor

(This is the fourth post in our DIY solar project.  Click here to start the beginning.)

 

I am in full-on battle mode to find out what the heck is using so much energy in our house and have been spending a ton of time with my new friend, the Kill-A-Watt.  This fight is about to get real, though.  I can practically hear the freezers and dishwasher quaking in fear.  That's right...I've got a new toy ally called an Efergy Elite Wireless Energy Monitor. 

 

The Kill-A-Watt process is slow, because you have to leave the appliance plugged in for at least 24 hours to capture a true picture of how much power a device is using - that's especially true for things like freezers that cycle on and off.  So you can only do one device a day.  The Efergy monitor looks at the bigger picture by reading the actual current flowing through the wiring from your meter to the your breaker panel and then calculates the power consumed. 

 

I picked this up from Amazon with a gift card for just $84 and it arrived yesterday - just in time for me to hook it up this weekend.  Here's what I found when I opened the box:

Components of the Efergy Elite Wireless Electricity Monitor

It's a pretty simple design, actually.  The box in the upper right hand corner is the receiver that displays the data. The oval thingy in the middle of the picture above is the transmitter.  The two smaller boxes with the cables coming out of them are the clamps that go on the wiring.  There's no need to cut wires, as these "clamps" open up so that you can place them around the wire and then snap them shut. 

 

J. was out helping his mom with a project today, so I put on my big girl panties, swallowed the lump in my throat (I'm a little scared of electricity), and down the basement stairs to the main breaker panel I went. 

Breaker panel before and after the Efergy installation

It took longer for me to remove the front panel than it did to install those clamps. They fit loosely on the wiring and went on easily.  Once they're on, put the AA batteries (included) in the transmitter and then plug the leads from the clamps into the bottom.  Then pop the other 3 AA batteries into the receiver and press a button and voila!  You've got energy usage data! 

Yikes...we were at 1.307 until the furnace kicked on!

The display shows the amount of energy currently in use as well as the cost per day (if that level is maintained).  There are 4 buttons on the top that allow you to configure different settings and view additional screens.  One of them provides the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions related to your energy usage.  It also displays the temperature and humidity for the room the receiver is in, which is kind of a cool feature.  And you can set it to sound an audible alert if usage goes over  an amount that you specify.

 

The receiver is wireless so you can take it from room to room with you and even up to 3 stories from the transmitter.  The data that is displayed is real-time and it updates every 6 seconds, so you can almost instantly see how turning something off or on impacts your whole house energy usage.  Since installing it almost 4 hours ago, I have been wandering around with my notebook flipping lights on and off and writing down the results. 

 

While the receiver will keep track of historical averages for the day, week and month, I'd have to buy the separate Efergy hub to track specific data throughout the day. The hub is another $60+ so I opted to wait and see how effective the Efergy monitor was before spending too much on it.  The hub tracks all the energy usage information throughout the day and sends it to Efergy's servers where you can monitor it on your Apple or Android devices or on your PC.  If you're a geek like me, you'll like the idea of being able to download all that data and build spreadsheets and charts out of it.

 

I have to confess that I'm hooked already.  It is so much fun to see that immediate impact of unplugging or powering off!  This is going to be much faster than going around with the Kill-A-Watt and it should allow us to also figure out energy usage for those big appliances that we can't monitor with the Kill-A-Watt.  I'm off to go do some more testing and, shortly, I should be able to share some results.

Click here to go to the next post in the solar series where we'll talk about how to size a solar panel system.  (If you're interested in more on our solar project, please check the "Solar Project" section on the bar to the right.)

Sweets for Your Sweetie

Valentine's Day is tomorrow!  Can you believe it?  If you've got a special someone (or just want to treat yourself), then this is a super quick and easy recipe that might be a great way to start the day.  I'm a cheese danish N.U.T. so, for me, this recipe is really dangerous.  I may have to forget about it before I gain 50 pounds from eating all that cream cheese.

Anyway, on to the recipe...

Fresh out of the oven and ready for icing and my teeth.

Easy Crescent Cheese Danish
Servings:  8 servings    <----- (or one or two, if you're me!)

Ingredients:

Danish
1 package of Pillsbury Crescent Roll dough without perforations (or Crescent Rolls)
1 8 oz. package cream cheese, softened and at room temperature
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 tablespoons all purpose flour

Glaze
1 cup powdered sugar
4 tablespoons heavy cream
Splash vanilla extract

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
2. In a small bowl, cream together the cream cheese, sugar, flour and vanilla and set aside.  TIP: It's important that the cream cheese is at room temp or you'll have trouble combining everything together.
3. Unroll the crescent roll dough on a cookie sheet.  I like to line the sheet with parchment paper first so the danish doesn't stick.  If you're using regular crescent rolls with the perforations, pinch the rolls together to seal the perforations.
4. Spread the cream cheese filling down the center of the dough in a strip that is about 3 inches wide.
5. Cut 1/2 inch diagonal strips up each side of the dough in the same direction.
6. Fold 1/2 inch dough pieces up over filling from one side and then the other to get a braided pattern. At the ends, fold in the excess dough and then braid.
7. Bake for 20 to 30 minutes or until the filling is set and the dough is golden in color.
8. Set aside to cool.
9. In a small bowl, mix together powdered sugar, vanilla and cream to create icing. You may need to add more cream to get the desired consistency.
10. Drizzle icing over danish.

Maybe spice things up by sharing a slice with your sweetie tomorrow for breakfast?  Enjoy!

I've shared this recipe with this week's Home Acre Hop!

It Was So Cold

Question: How cold was it?

 

Remember me mentioning that the temp was hitting -12 last week?  It was so cold last week that...

 

(drum roll please)

 

....when J. bent over to work on something on the tractor, his hat touched the metal and froze to it!

 

(Too bad I don't have pictures.  When he told me about it, I kinda pictured this scene from "A Christmas Story"!)

Fortunately, it didn't require the fire department or the cops to free his hat.

 

 

Our Goal: Keep $800,000 Away from The Power Company

Welcome to the third post in the series related to our solar energy project.

 Click here to start at the beginning!

WARNING: Math ahead!

 

I'm an energy hog and I'm not proud of it.  Let me tell you how I came to this realization recently and how what I found out might be of use to you. 

You can't talk about implementing solar without first looking at your energy usage.  What I'm going to talk about in this post applies to everyone, though, and not just folks like us that are interested in going solar. 

I'll admit to being that person...the one that grumbles about their high energy bills and then grudgingly writes the check to the power company.  When they raise their rates every year as our provider, Kansas City Power and Light (KCPL), has over the last few years, this puppy goes from cranky to downright surly.  On average utility rates increase 6% to 8% every year - KCPL has raised theirs 7.3%. In 2009, the increase was 16.4%.  So it's safe to assume that we can only see increases coming in the future.  The kicker is that our energy rate is really darn low (10.7 cents per watt) compared to the rest of the country.  Hawaii is over 34 cents per watt!

One nice thing that KCPL provides on their website is a history of your energy usage and I was absolutely mortified to find that our average energy usage over the least year was:

• Around 45 kWH (kilowatt hours) per day.  The average American household uses around 30 so we are definitely energy  hogs!
• A total of 21,904 kWH used last year. The average American household uses anywhere from 10,000 to 14,000!
• At a cost of $2,551.34
• We're about 33% over average! 

Where is all that power going!?  It's not like we leave all lights blazing 24 hours a day + 5 blenders on non-stop + 6 loads of laundry a day.   It's just the two of us here.  So I am now on a mission to figure it out and try to get us down to average usage which would result in just shy of $1,000 savings per year.  If you couldn't use an extra grand per year, then you might be tempted to stop reading.  But wait....

I'm 43 so, if we use the average life expectancy for women, I have about 30 years left.  (Ummm...typing that made me anxious.  Doesn't seem like a lot of time left, does it?!)

Now let's leave the solar stuff out of the equation and say we save $1,000 per year just by lowering our energy usage.  That means we would have an additional $30,000 in our pocket over the remainder of my life.  If we let it sit in the bank!  Using Dave Ramsey's investment calculator, if we invested that money in the stock market at the average rate of return of  11.69%, those energy savings would grow to $255,884.37!  That's just with cutting our energy usage by 33%.  If we do this project and go completely solar so that we're paying nothing for electricity every month, that savings turns into $800,000 over my lifetime.

You think that's awesome?  Check this out...if I added that money consistently to my existing retirement account rather than paying it to KCPL, I'd be this much richer:

$3,594,665!

Still with me?  Now the question is how to get our usage down. 

As a first step, I'm going to start looking at what are called PHANTOM LOADS.  I'm talking about all those ghostly appliances that stay plugged into our outlets and are sucking up power even when we think they're not. 

• See that clock on your coffee pot?  Sucking power.
• Think your sleeping laptop isn't using power when it's plugged in?  Sucking power.
• You turn your TV off when you're not watching, but what about your cable box? Sucking power!

The Kill-A-What in action

How do I know this?  I put this whizz-bang gadget called a Kill-A-What on my Christmas list last year.  Santa didn't disappoint, and I've been measuring energy usage on our appliances ever since.  I've found some surprising things.  Like my 24" Energy Star monitor still uses 0.12 kWH even when it's in sleep mode.  So does my laptop *if* it's plugged in (which it always is). 

Amazon sells the Kill-A-Watt P4460 for $26.00, so it's affordable and will easily pay for itself in energy savings.   The first thing I did was to go around the house from room to room and make a list of everything that is plugged in.  Don't forget your kitchen appliances!  And especially don't forget those freezers and refrigerators.   Then pick what you want to test.  Unplug the appliance, plug the Kill-A-What into the outlet, and plug the appliance into the single outlet in the front of the Kill-A-What.  If you program in your electrical rate, it will show you both the kWH the device is using as well as the cost.  Typically, I let these run over a couple of days because some devices cycle their use on and off.

I'm still testing but I hope to come up with a spreadsheet that shows all the "phantom loads" and how unplugging all this stuff could help us meet our goal.  Each one may seem small but when you add them all up together, I think it could be significant. 

After that, we need to look at the big ticket stuff: furnace, freezers, appliances, hot water heater, etc.

What do you think?  Think a 33% reduction is doable?  If you've got ideas for getting energy usage down, I am all ears!

UPDATE:  Click here to go to the next post in our solar series where we're talking about a cool tool to help you figure out what vampire appliances are sucking your energy.

I'm sharing this with this week's Farm Girl Friday, DIY Linky and Homestead Barn Hop hops. Go check them out!

Watch out below!

It seems there's never going to be an end to this nasty Winter.  After watching everyone else get dumped on around the nation, it's now our turn.  A beautiful 10 inches of snow fell yesterday and last night, bringing the city to a quiet standstill. J. and I were lucky enough to get to stay home yesterday and today as our employers were smart enough to close in preparation for the storm.

 

It's bitterly cold in the aftermath of the storm.  We hit 4 degrees this morning and the wind chills aren't expected to go above 0 all day today.  Thursday is forecast to drop through the floor to a record-breaking low of -14.  Yikes!  It's never been that cold in my adult life.

 

Compare that with what our normal temps are this time of year:

 

It's this time of year that we worry about the animals because that kind of cold can be deadline.  The chicken furnace is keeping the girls' coop at a comfy 50.3 degrees right now.  And Henrietta is cozy in her new condo in the basement, but she's a little lonely so I'll go spend time with her after I do a little house cleaning and laundry folding.

 

Having these two days off work is "found time" - time to take care of things that are always at the bottom of the list and never get done like filing paperwork or doing taxes.  (Done!) 

 

And I've been a busy little bee researching and planning for the solar project.  One of the first recommendations is to try to get your energy usage down so I've been flitting around the house with a Kill-A-Watt trying to figure out what's using energy around here.

 

What's a Kill-A-Watt?  Tune in for my next post and find out how this inexpensive little piece of equipment can help you find big savings!

 

Stay warm my friends!