Lightening Online

Got meself some pink bling….. that phrase sounds much better in my head, set to music. Probably best I don’t break your eardrums by singing it to you though…. It had a kind of a swing feel to it…..you know…. with a bit of a sway and some finger clicking….

Thanks my beautiful Meg. This could almost say “your blog sucks” and I’d be excited that it was pink. Okay, maybe not. I’d be excited because it was pink but crying if someone said my blog sucks. Which they didn’t, so this is an unnecessary digression.

Here it is:

This award originated from Me and my Drum

To accommodate a variety of blog themes, I have created three different “flavors” of badges: Creamy Cabernet, Midnight Oil, and Pink Smoothie.

Earlier this year I was tagged with the blogging tip meme in which the tip I offered was “Be the Blog“. That phrase stuck with me because I think that really sums up what a successful blogger does. And what I mean by successful is that they make it their own, stay with it, are interactive with their readers, and just plain have fun.

Since then I’ve been thinking about creating an award of my own, but with so many out there, it’s hard to find a niche that remains untapped for recognition. So I said, “What the heck?”, and decided to shape the phrase into an award called (you guessed it): Be The Blog.

And now ladies and gentlemen (yes, some gentlemen read my blog, even if it is pink! Which is cool, cos pink doesn’t have to be JUST for girls does it!), I need to pass this award on to a few of my lovelies.

You know, I’m really tempted to give it to you all. But that doesn’t really do the link-love thing and it doesn’t leave more people for y’all to pass it on to quite the same does it? So I guess I’d better just bite the bullet and pick a few….

Gemisht - cos even though she’s new to blogging she’s a valued member of the blogging community through her regular commenting and interacting. And her new blog ROCKS!!! And she needs some bling to decorate it with.

Erin! - cos she’s back online and left me a few comment essays that made me smile when the power finally came back on this morning.

Fussy - cos she tells me how pretty I am and even though she has like a gazillion readers, I feel like she’s talking just to little ole me. There’s an art to having a large readership and still making each visitor feel like they’re important. And her caption contests sure do crack me up! Where does she find those photos????

Kin - cos she had the most gorgeous baby and is in need of some pink bling. So Kin, this bling is dedicated to Megwyn. (and that’s a kiss NOT hot lips thankyou Bettina! ) Did I get to give her her first ever bling???? Did I? Did I???? Although you might want to choose another colour to put it on your blog cos pink and orange…..ewwwww (just my personal opinion of course ). Pumpkin Patch seem to think they go alright together. Although maybe not this season since I went looking for an example and instead found this totally HOT jacket that matches my blog. Doesn’t come in my size but DD would look fabulous in it!!!! Anyone want to send me a pumpkin patch gift certificate? No? Okay, worth an ask. Perhaps if you all click on that link they’ll come looking to see where all the traffic is coming from and offer to give me one for FREE???? LOL. Okay, maybe not. Hey Meg, can I send a trackback to Pumpkin Patch??????

Yes, that was a long paragraph but it all needs to go together cos it just does. And it probably shouldn’t have any full-stops either cos my brain didn’t take a breath the whole time it was thinking here…..

And that will do for today cos I have a couple of other blings to fling and don’t want to wear out my bling flinging finger.

About The Power

We had none.

Sometime in the night it went out.

The kids woke up about a bazillion times and then I didn’t even have my lovely blogworld to visit over my morning cuppa. Actually, I didn’t even have my morning cuppa until farmboy felt sorry for me (or was it felt sorry for him having to deal with me when I haven’t had my morning cuppa???) and got the gas camping stove from the shed and made me a cuppa. But still no blogworld to share it with…. Cos blogging takes POWER yeah?

I really HATE power outtages. We have no water then too cos our water is all pumped via a pressure pump (cos it doesn’t come through a pipe with pressure like most normal other people’s does).

We get our fair share of them. Power outtages that is. BUT, they do sometimes gives us a little compensation for our inconvenience. The other day in the mail we got sent a cheque. Cos the power was out more often than it was on quite a bit during January.

DH took the cheque. Then I took it back again with a tiny little “I reckon that’s mine”. He kinda looked at me funny cos the electricity bills go through the farm books. But we still count them as partially personal income. It’s just an accounting thing that they go through the farm books.

And I was like “well the house was the one out of power wasn’t it?” Okay, the sheds and stuff were too but we were on holidays so it’s not like he NEEDED the power then. Me either, other than the tiny little problem of keeping stuff frozen. But we managed.

He still looked at me kinda funny. A bit shocked like I think. So I said “well, can you think of a good reason why YOU should get the money?”

He said “no”.

So I got a hundred and sixty dollars!!!!! (that was in a sing-song voice too if you didn’t catch it the first time round - a kind of neer-ner sing-song voice. Cos I am TOTALLY mature and all that! )

With all the Christmas festivity, I never did get around to doing an electricity challenge wrap up.  I’m going to run another challenge at some point in 2008. 

Here’s how we went for the 2007 challenge:

Our bill came in at less than HALF of what it did last quarter!!!!  HOORAY!  Admittedly last quarter was an unusually high bill for us for some reason.  Still, I’m really happy not to have a repeat of that shock!

My goal is to get our average daily electricity usage down to 16kWh’s per day (not including hot water).  So far we’re down to 19.2kWh’s which DOES include hot water.  So I think we’re getting pretty close.  This will be higher in the summer and winter months due to cooling and heating.  Given we use around 3kWh’s per day for hot water during spring, we are indeed VERY close.

Doing a direct comparison between average daily usage at the same time last year, we’ve reduced our usage from 21.5kWh’s per day to 19.2kWh’s per day.  So we’re heading in the right direction.

I do intend to do another electricity challenge in 2008.  I’m not sure when yet.  But I do have some new toys to play with next time so stay tuned!

Well, as expected, the recent heat wave has seen our electricity usage jump up somewhat to an average of 22.6kWh’s per day this past week. That’s almost as high as our highest week a while back when we were using heaters in both kids bedrooms. So, I’m a little bit disappointed about that.

BUT, as they say “what goes up, must come down”. LOL. So we’ve got some work to do on that. I would be extremely happy if I could manage to keep it down to around 20kWh’s per day over the hotter months.

In contrast, our hot water usage is now back down to zero thanks to the long days of sun we’ve been getting (solar hot water). I can’t ask for any more than 100% from it can I?

So, how are we going to go about reducing our electricity usage over summer? We have a few plans. Some of them require capital investment so will take some time to achieve.

Recently done:

• I finally got around to cleaner the filter on the reverse cycle air conditioner on Monday. It was FILTHY. We noticed a difference in the cool air coming out of it almost immediately. I *should* have gotten to it months ago. Never mind, it’s done now.
• We’re noticing an improvement in how hot our floor gets now that DH has installed the base infill around the bottom of the house. Before that, hot air blew under the house and heated it through the floor. This will be our first summer since it was installed so I’m hoping it will make a difference.
• Installed window coverings in office ($40 silver venetians from Spotlight) - I’m really happy with the way they look and they’re definitely helping with the temperatures in that room.

Short Term Plans:

• Purchase another blind from Spotlight for front lounge window to give a second line of defense from the hot afternoon sun (has curtains but they’re not brilliant at keeping the sun out)
• Add a door sealer to laundry door to help keep draughts out of main living area (have ordered - should arrive soon I hope).
• Work on keeping air conditioner at 25C (77F). DH currently has it set for 23C (73F) so we’ll see how we go. He feels the heat more than I tend to.
• Turn dishwasher off before it goes through the air dry cycle. This is adding heat to the kitchen. Will also save on electricity being used for that cycle. I can’t figure out how to do that other than manually so this will only work on days when it’s run during the day and not while we’re in bed.
• Use crockpot (and solar oven when we get one made) for cooking to avoid heating up kitchen/living area.
• Make use of fans as much as possible. Currently have a ceiling fan in lounge and our room plus 1 pedestal fan.

Medium Term Plans:

• Install a ceiling fan in family room where we watch TV so that we’re not as tempted to turn the air con on unecessarily.
• Replace curtains in lounge with ones that are better block out and cover the window better (what we have are seconds curtains and they’re not really the right size). Our lounge room is on the North West side of the house so bears the brunt of the summer sun.

Longer Term Plans:

• Build pergola with laserlight to block some of the summer sun.
• Install blinds to front verandah to keep the afternoon sun off of the house.
• Install solar panels for electricity usage (or at least partial electricity usage).

I just did some research and an air conditioner of our size (around 2HP - think ours might even be 2.5HP) uses on average about 2kWh’s of electricity per hour of usage. My goal to keep our electricity usage under 20kWh’s per day average would only allow us around 2 hours of air conditioner usage per day. Which means I’m not sure if it’s a realistic goal. Of course, it’s rare that the air conditioner would be operating flat out so that may allow us a little longer. I guess I’ll do some playing around and see how we go.

Week 10 of our electricity challenge!!!! Wow!!!! How did we go this week? Well, over the weekend, DH had the air conditioner running so I was expecting to be up a little this week (note to self - *must* get around to cleaning the filter on the air conditioner to make sure it’s running efficiently!!!!). I tend to be more of a cold frog so don’t need the air conditioning but he runs hot (ooh yeah! lol) so I can’t blame him really. A man has to be comfortable in his own house!

So, our average daily usage ended up being 16.80 kWh’s which I was actually pretty happy with given the use of the air conditioner. When you consider our average daily usage over winter was around 40 kWh’s per day! Of course, winter is a LOT higher usage for us than spring.

I’ve just worked out our overall average daily usage for the past 10 weeks and it works out to 16.14kWh’s. I had *hoped* to get it down to around 15kWh’s per day (which would be an average of 3kWh’s per person in our household) but perhaps that was too lofty a goal for us right now.

Comparing that with our “test” week figure of 18.45kWh’s, we seem to have succeeded in dropping it down by 2.31kWh’s per day. It’ll be interesting when the bill comes to see what that says in comparison with our overall usage for the same time frame last year.

Our hot water usage this week was back down to 1.44kWh’s per day. I must remember to check with DH as to whether he has turned the overnight boost off again. If we leave it on during the warmer weather we end up using electricity we don’t need as it heats it overnight (after the night-time showers) and starts the day off all heated off which we don’t really need when the sun is going to heat it throughout the day.

Our average hot water electricity usage for the past 10 weeks works out to 2.03kWh’s per day which seems pretty good to me.

I think my next task will be to do a “keeping cool” audit of our home in preparation for the warm weather.

Can you believe that we have been doing this electricity challenge for 9 weeks now!!!! That time seems to have gone so fast! I don’t expect it will be real long now before the meter will be read and we’ll get the next bill in the mail. Fingers crossed we’ll actually be able to *see* some results for our efforts.

This week has been a challenging week as it has been COLD and WET most days.

However, we have successfully managed to avoid using the TUMBLE DRYER! Yah us! LOL. Washing is a tiny bit behind but not too bad all things considered. I lost count of the number of times I thought I would have to give in and use the dryer. But it didn’t happen! Yah! Can you tell I’m excited about this? LOL.

We also managed to avoid using any heating - despite being VERY tempted. Thankfully the kids are all well so didn’t require heating in their rooms overnight. I have discovered 2 rather handy hints when it comes to staying warm.

1. Wear your dressing gown over the top of your clothes during the day. LOL. When my family came home from being out the other day it looked like I was still in my pj’s. Until I took the dressing gown off and I was fully dressed underneath.

2. Wear thick socks AS WELL as ugg boots. It takes 2 people and a sledge hammer to get the ugg boots on but once they’re on your feet stay nice and toasty!!! LOL.

So there’s two very handy hints for those of us heading into summer. LOL. Me thinks the weather is a mite confused of late.

We’ve really noticed the difference in our passive solar positioning of the house. When the weather acts “out of season” the house doesn’t cope anywhere near as well. For instance, we get virtually no sun in the northern windows at this time of year. Which means the house is very COLD on cold days. We have the reverse problem if we get a very warm April as sun is coming into those windows (as designed to warm them up during the winter months) and the house gets very HOT. There is only so much you can plan for and the unexpected isn’t one of them.

And the final figures for the week?

General Electricity: averaged 15.67kWh’s per day. Originally I was hoping to get our average down to around 15kWh’s per day. Currently overall it’s hovering around 16kWh’s per day so any week we’re below 16kWh’s I’m considering a good effort.

Hot Water: averaged 4.34kWh’s per day which is well up on what we’ve been using. Given the weather this week the solar system needed a lot of help to get the water up to temperature so this isn’t surprising. That’s our highest usage since we started the challenge (even higher than our first “test week”).

Today I have ventured into my laundry to see what I can learn about our electricity consumption there.

TUMBLE DRYER

Well, obviously I’m trying to minimise our usage of the tumble dryer. They’re known to be high energy users.

According to the energy rating label on my 5kg Tumble Dryer it uses approximately 4.5kWh’s per load. At a rate of 18c per kWh that adds up to around 80c a load.

I’ve always worked on a rule of thumb figure of $1 a load because that figure is going to be very approximate and well, saving $1 each time I hang a load on the line *sounds* so much better than 80c.

I decided to do a small amount of research using http://www.energyrating.gov.au/ to see whether tumble dryers have improved in technology (in terms of electricity efficiency) since ours was bought (about 10 years ago now) and was surprised to find that there hasn’t been much change at all in this area. The *most* energy efficient 5kg load dryer I could find used around 3.9kWh and the equivalent to ours (by brand) uses 4.4kWh’s.

I then did some playing around with figures to see if different sized dryers made a difference by calculating how many kWh’s it would take me to dry 10kg of clothing. I used only vented dryers and used the calculations for the most energy efficient dryer so these results are approximate and would vary from brand to brand.

Here’s what I came up with:

3.5 kg 8.08kWh
4kg 6.8kWh
5kg 7.8kWh
6kg 7.9kWh
6.5kg 7.1kWh
8kg 8.15kWh
9kg 9.24kWh
10kg 8.52kWh

My conclusions? When my dryer needs replacing I’m going to look into purchasing a 4kg dryer rather than a 5kg dryer. Of course, the figures may have all changed by the time I’m in the market for a dryer but it’s interesting to consider that not all SIZES come out evenly when it comes to overall electricity consumption. And when it comes to tumble dryers, bigger isn’t necessarily better.

Not having a tumble dryer at all is possibly a better option again but I prefer for now to concentrate on making changes that don’t create too large an inconvenience for our family. There are times when it just seems to be “necessary” or at the very least “very helpful” to own a tumble dryer.

WASHING MACHINE

When we made the decision to move to this farm, we also made the decision to go out and purchase a front loader washing machine. Thankfully these days they actually work out cheaper than top loading machines. When we originally bought our top loading machine they were still MUCH more expensive. We didn’t have the luxury in those days of purchasing for “later savings” (ie. we were broke) and really weren’t as aware of environmental factors as a factor in purchasing decisions at that point in our lives.

Like I said in my Blog Action Day post, “when we know better, we do better”.

Now the BIG advantage of front loading washing machines is their lower use of water. Here in Australia that is an even MORE important consideration than electricity consumption. If you need more convincing, you might like to read an article written by Snoskred called Humans Let Us All Waste Water .

They also use less detergent, don’t wear out clothes as quickly and strangely enough tend to use less electricity. I say “strangely enough” because their wash times are longer. I did a bit of investigating and I *think* the energy savings come in when you wash in warm water. I guess because you use less warm water so less costs involved in heating a larger quantity of water.

Regardless, I am really pleased that we have a front loading washing machine. Ours costs us around 11c per load (0.63kWh) in electricity. Only a small savings if we can reduce the number of loads we wash but small savings can add up to become bigger savings.

IRON

Using the iron costs around 11.9c per hour to run (based on 15c per kWh so more for me as we pay a little over 18c per kWh here). A simple way to solve this energy usage would be to not iron. LOL. I still can’t get my head around the fact that some people *really* don’t iron.

Apparently it’s most energy efficient to do the ironing all in one hit as the iron then only has to heat up once. In all honesty, my iron seems to take about 1 minute to heat up and I often start ironing with something that doesn’t require quite as much heat so I think the difference would be negligable and I do prefer to iron in smaller stints of 15 minutes (sound familiar? LOL). I guess that is still preferable to ironing each garment individually.

Running the iron on steam setting is supposed to use more electricity but then you have to weigh that up against possible taking longer to iron garments. I have to admit I do like my steam.

So, have we learnt anything from all of this? I just did a quick calculation and at 7 loads of washing per week and about 3/4 hour of ironing, my laundry is responsible for about 5kWh’s of electricity per week. Not as big a draw on our power as I was expecting it to be really.

If you were to add just 1 load of tumble dryer in per week you’d double that usage to around 10kWh’s per week. If I dried all 7 loads of washing in the tumble dryer (that would be almost 50kg of clothing so 10 dryer loads) we’re talking around 50kWh’s per week (with only 5kWh’s of those being NON DRYER appliances).

It’s certainly very easy to spot the culprit in the laundry when it comes to electricity consumption!!!!

I think I may have *made it* when it comes to being a TRUE farming woman. This morning I went out to read the electricity meter wearing my flannel jammies (which my SIL’s inform me are “passion killers” LOL), socks and thongs. DH told me I look like the shearers when they rock up. Apparently it’s quite common for them to turn up wearing socks with thongs (they have moccasin’s they change into once inside the shed). So I’ve got the “country” look happenin’. LOL. No, the shearer’s don’t rock up in their jammies! I would have taken a photo to show you but I hadn’t done my hair yet. LOL. I still have to maintain *some* sense of dignity.

Yeah, we do live out in the middle of nowhere BUT we also live on a main highway so it was a bit of a *risk*. Not enough to get me changing before I went out to read the meter though.

So, now I’ve scared you all away with that ghastly image, I should get down to the business of the day.

We did okay this week. Our average daily usage came out at 16.01.

I need to figure out how to do one of those snazzy little graph thingy’s so I can show you our overall progress throughout the challenge (not that it’s over yet).

I’m particularly happy with that figure as:

1. We’ve been home ALL week (well the kids have had school but we haven’t been away at all).
2. I’ve had some extra loads of washing due to being away last weekend.
3. We had a couple of days of shearing which means electricity use in the shed PLUS extra cooking PLUS the fridge in the shearing shed being opened numerous times.

So, all in all a good week. Depsite inclement weather we haven’t yet had to resort to using the tumble dryer. They’re forecasting a cool, wet week this week as well so we’ll see how we go with that this week.

Hot water usage was 0.68 average for the week. Up a little on last week’s 0.0 average due to the inclement weather (had to use electricity boost).

I want to delve into the laundry for my electricity audit this week. That should be interesting.

Here lies the sad attempts of my slow cooker cake experiment. LOLOL. It actually tastes quite nice (other than being a little burnt around the edges). BUT, it stuck (even though I did spray oil in there first). Me thinks some greaseproof paper or alfoil lining the pot might be a good idea.

The good news is that I did indeed bake a cake in the slow cooker. I need to do some experimenting and fine tuning with the high and low settings to see if I can in fact bake it without burning the outsides. Otherwise, we can just trim those bits off.

I do have a reason for attempting this *other* than electricity cost (and being able to bake in summer without heating up the house). When we do our 3 month trip in the caravan, we are not likely to have an oven (oven’s aren’t common in caravans these days and we’d prefer the cupboard space). I would like to take my slow cooker with me anyway (since it provides such easy, fuss free meals) so this would be a bonus if I could bake in it.

Funnily enough, this reminds of some of my disasters when I was a new bride. My DH had a single mate who would drop in from time to time and I’m sure every time he came I would have some kind of disaster in the kitchen. One time I attempted an apple cake in the microwave (my 1 and only attempt to bake a cake in the microwave) and it was sitting on the bench looking a little like the photo above (only not brown) when he dropped in one afternoon. It’s a bit of a joke between us. I can cook….honest!!!! Just not everything I make turns out quite how I’d planned.

As for the above disaster. DH turned it into a masterpiece by making some chocolate sauce, heating it up and serving with chocolate sauce and cream. Waaaayyyyyy too yummy for my waistline! The kids don’t seem to mind eating up the rest of the *bits* either. So, not too much will go to waste (only to waist).

To tie this back in with my kitchen electricity usage audit posted earlier today - total cooking time in the slow cooker was around 2 hours so cost approximately 4c. To bake a cake in my oven would have cost around 30c (plus heating up the house).

IF I do better with my next attempt, I’ll be sure to proudly show off my efforts. If not, you may never hear me say another word about baking a cake in a slow cooker.

I figured the most logical place to continue my electricity audit would be the kitchen. After all, the kitchen is the central hub of the home…appliances. Nearly everything in the kitchen uses electricity!!!! Have you ever noticed that?

Here’s a list of the things in my kitchen that use electricity:

* fridge
* freezer
* microwave
* oven
* grill
* hot plates
* fish tank…. which has *nothing * to do with eating I assure you
* breadmaker
* kettle
* rangehood
* dishwasher

Those are just the things that are on or plugged into power all the time!!!!

Then you have:

* toaster
* electric frypan
* foodprocessor
* popcorn maker
* donut maker
* sandwich maker
* pie maker
* hot dog maker….. mmm…. think we have too many “makers”?
* slow cooker 3 lt
* slow cooker 6 lt
* kenwood mixer
* juicer
* George Foreman grill
* egg poacher

Scarily enough, there is probably 1 or 2 items I’ve forgotten we even own. So it’s not surprising that the kitchen is responsible for a reasonable chunk of the electricity that we use.

Eating really has a LOT to answer for doesn’t it? How often have you heard people say we’d have plenty of money and time if we didn’t have to eat? Of course, life would be a lot less fun too!

I have been doing some research into what certain appliances are costing us (approximately) to run.

A 600L fridge costs somewhere around $0.06c per hour to run. A 450L freezer costs around $0.03c. This isn’t something I can change but keeping them full is supposed to help with their efficiency.

We’re also *trying* to train our children NOT to stand in front of the fridge for half an hour while they decide what they’d like to eat. Perhaps I need to keep a list on the front of what is in there that they can have so that they don’t do this. Hmmmm…..there’s an idea. Note to self: make a laminated A4 sheet for the front of the fridge.

Come summer, I also plan to keep cold water in one of those esky coolers with a tap so that everyone isn’t going to the fridge for cold drinks all the time.

Boiling Water:

I did a little *test* this morning with boiling enough water for 2 cuppas which is around 4 metric cups.

Kettle took almost 2.5 minutes to boil. @ 0.45c per minute (27c per hr) that cost 1.12c.

Microwave took 5 minutes. @ 20c per hour that cost 1.67c

Stovetop took 8 minutes. @ 18c per hour that cost 2.4c

Obviously the kettle is the way to go (which we all knew anyway). I also timed the kettle boiling with double the amount of water and it took just over 4 minutes. So you don’t double the time to boil double the quantity of water.

Something else I noticed with the kettle was that I could hear it boiling for almost a minute before the automatic cut-out cut in. So I could save myself around half a cent by manually turning off the kettle each time when I hear it boiling.

One thing I could be doing is boiling water in the kettle for things like pasta and rice rather than simply putting cold water into the saucepan. It’s one more step for me but would be quicker as well as use less electricity.

Cooking:

To cook a 2kg roast:

Oven takes around 2 hours + (well, mine does anyway) so @ 36c per hour that is 72c

Microwave on convection only takes 2 hours so @ 24c per hour that is 48c

Electric Frypan takes around 2 hours so @ 20c per hour that is 40c

Microwave on combination (part microwave and part convection) takes 1 hour so @ 24c per hour that is 24c

Slow Cooker takes around 4-6 hours so @ 2c per hour that is 8-10c

The slow cooker beats everything else by miles in terms of cost of cooking. Which is great as I much prefer most of our roasts done in there anyway. It’s so much easier and my oven is painfully slow for some reason.

My next project is to attempt to bake a cake in the slow cooker. Has anyone already tried that? I wonder if I need a special recipe or whether my usual recipes would work the same?

I do have another plan for summer cooking though. DH is going to help me make a solar cooker! You can find some examples of solar cookers here . When it comes to cooking, well you can’t really beat *free* can you?

Washing Up:

Here’s one I’d rather not know about. A dishwasher costs around 36c per hour to run (on average). Our cycle is around 90 minutes so that’s around 54c a day (we run it once a day). Generally all our cooking dishes are washed by hand so the dishwasher takes all the cups, plates and cutlery for the day. I’m not quite ready to give up the convenience of the dishwasher though.

* Figures based on Country Energy: Energy Wise Guide. All are approximate and will vary depending on the actual cost per kWh from your energy provider as well as the number of watts the individual appliance actually draws.

I’m happy to say that this week we had a MUCH better week with our electricity usage. With the kids back at school, no coughers and splutterers requiring night-time heating and being away over the weekend, it certainly SHOULD be.

Soooooo……..drum roll please (just kidding).

Our average daily usage this week worked out to 13.37kWh per day!!!! I’m pretty happy with that.

BUT, there is even BETTER news!!!!

Our hot water electricity for the week…… 0.0kWh for the WHOLE week, giving us an average daily usage of ZERO for hot water. I thought that was pretty awesome. Until DH told me that of course it would be that as the electricity boost for our solar hot water system is currently turned OFF! LOL.

Still, I do like my “hot water free from the sun”.

All in all, I think we’re doing okay.

Travelling home today my DD (who is not quite 7) made the comment that they shouldn’t use their gameboys too much as it will use up the batteries and then they’d have to use electricity to charge them. I thought that was quite sweet. We explained to her that it is okay to *use* electricity. What we’re trying to achieve with our electricity challenge is to make sure we’re not *wasting* electricity. And of course, looking for ways in which we can reduce our usage (without feeling deprived). Often overuse of electricity (at least in our case) is more about habits than anything else.