(HOST) Commentator Deborah Luskin remembers the water conservation slogan to "Save Water, Shower with a Friend", and has come up with a similar suggestion for saving money on heat.
(Luskin) Back in May, it seemed all sidewalk conversations were about how to make our houses more energy efficient.
And if it wasn’t energy efficiency we were talking about, it was energy generation. By now, I’ve lost track of the friends and neighbors who have taken advantage of installing solar panels, collecting their tax rebates, and selling power back to the grid.
In these interesting conversations I learned a lot about the mechanics of how we heat and light our modern lives.
Those who weren’t installing state-of-the-art solar collectors were now at least thinking about what they could do to reduce the amount of energy needed to heat and light their homes.
My husband and I looked into the feasibility of installing some of these new technologies. Our house is only twenty years old. It’s well insulated and faces south. It has a hot-water heating system fueled by oil, but we almost never use it. The furnace also supplies our hot water.
We use about three hundred and sixty gallons of oil a year for hot water, about a gallon a day.
We mostly heat with wood and-on sunny days-benefit hugely from passive solar gain. Our hours was tight to begin with. All that was left to seal the envelope was to install insulating shades and to replace a leaky storm door.
In the fifteen years we’ve owned the house, we’ve also reduced our electric bill by twenty per cent. As the original appliances have broken, we’ve replaced them with Energy Star units. We’ve switched to compact fluorescent bulbs. Most recently, we’ve learned to turn off our printers, computers and other electronic devices. They draw a surprising amount of power just to glow.
Still, despite our low energy profile, we didn’t want to be left out of the green revolution. We wanted solar panels the way our oldest once wanted her bellybutton pierced. But just as we told her no, we stopped ourselves from this green impulse. When alternative energy becomes more cost effective for us, we’ll reconsider. For now, we’ll continue to do something that has worked well for us – a simple measure with a big return.
We don’t heat the bedroom.
In fact, our house is zoned, and we keep all the bedrooms just fifty degrees. Unfortunately, this zone includes my office. But when I get tired of donning a hat, polar fleece and fingerless gloves to work, I move my laptop closer to the woodstove. In addition to the heat, I enjoy the companionship of the fire.
We have a different solution for the chilly bedroom, where even flannel sheets are cold. We get in bed together. It doesn’t take long for two people burrowing under the covers to warm up. In fact, turning down the heat in the bedroom not only saves fuel, it promotes domestic harmony. It’s hard to stay angry with someone you depend on for shared warmth. So again this winter, to save fuel and keep our marriage warm, we’ll turn down the heat, and snuggle up.