WATER AND ENERGY-SAVING TIPS

Dear friends:

Synchronicity! I was going to post a message today with energy and water-saving ideas, and just so happened to receive an email from Sen. Barbara Boxer today with water-saving tips. Here is the website link, with other sites and links to go to from there:

http://boxer.senate.gov/features/water/

These sites include water -saving tips such as showerhead information, rainwater harvesting tips, how to wash your car with minimal water, lawn irrigation, home water saving tips, etc.

HERE’s HOW TO BEAT THE SUMMER HEAT WITHOUT TURNING ON THE SHOWER, THE AIR CONDITIONER OR FILLING UP THE POOL!

Simply take a towel, wet it down, wring it out and store it inside the freezer for half an hour or more. Wrap it around your head like a turban, and the cooling effect will be remarkable! My friends and I did this while helping them move on a hundred-degree day, and even in that glaring heat with intensive body exercise, the cooling-off effect was so good as to refresh us for on-going physical work. It was just about as good as turning on the air conditioner! Your freezer will be running anyway, so you might as well take advantage of it and not add extra CO2 to the environment by turning on the air conditioner.

 Apply the frozen wet towel to your spine and boy, you will be chilled in two seconds flat!

During intensive summer heat waves, you might even consider keeping a damp towel in the freezer at all times, ready for use at any moment. (If you don’t have room in your freezer, make room! This technique works so well and is such an energy-saver, it’s just plain worth it. Think of how much you will save the environment, not to mention savings in air conditioning bills!)

Another way to cool off:

Run water on your wrist (palm of the hand facing upward) and elbow (ditto). Veins run close to the surface in these areas: You will feel a lot cooler in a hurry. Better yet, take a damp washcloth, put it in the freezer as above, and wrap it around your wrist and elbow. Wow! How do you spell relief? Frozen wet washcloth, that’s how!

Apply the water or frozen washcloth to your temples, nape of the neck, and behind your knees. You will feel so much better, in a hurry, even on a very hot day!

Buy a kiddie wading pool and fill it with water. Lie down in it, wriggle like a fish, take a splash and you will feel so much better. Dumping out the water means irrigating the lawn. When my neighbor did this, I thought it was so cute. If you feel a bit shy, do it in a private area. You can also use your tub for the same purposes, but not fill it all the way. Just enough to cover your body and wriggle/splash. It feels good and saves both water and money, at the same time!

I simply put water in a bucket, use a towel and wash the car down. Then I rinse with the hose, towel-dry and…tada! I barely ever have to use any carwash cleanser. The elbow grease is what cleans the car, very little water is used and it comes out looking beautiful, every time! I preserve the finish with car wax. That’s all I need, and I am very happy with the way my car looks when I do it this way. In fact, I find that using the cleanser makes zero difference in the sheen, so long as the car is waxed to begin with.

Before washing your car or other upholstery, consider a steam cleaner instead. Or, a professional job which uses steam instead of water. It’s much better for the upholstery, and the effect is just beautiful. That’s what I did when I sold my last car, and it came out absolutely spiffy. Stains gone, upholstery like new...with no chemical cleansers needed!

“An acre of lawn needs 1.3 million gallons of water a year to stay green and healthy…During the summer, the majority of household water is used for keeping yards green”. ---PG+E’s 30 Simple Energy Things you can Do to Save the Earth

WIth that in mind, it makes sense to rip out one's lawn and replace it with a drought-tolerant one. I have seen very soft and plushy-looking plants at exhbits: Check with your nursery which specializes in drought-tolerant plants.

Especially during the hot weather, water your garden either early in the morning or in the evening. The water will not be evaporated by the hot sun, the plants get increased benefit, and the soil won’t be baked hard by the hot sun beating down on your wet soil.

Using a good garden mulch also keeps roots shaded, soil moist and prevents weeds from growing. Less water is needed than in the same unmulched garden. Win-win!

Water slowly so the water doesn’t run off.

Dig a cup-like structure around your plants which need lots of water, such as roses. The cup around the plant holds the water in right by the roots of the plant, which is where you want it. This minimizes need for watering, prevents run-off and keeps roots moisturized. If you build a rim of soil up around the dripline of the plant, you will not only be retaining water but also shading and keeping the roots of the plant cool.

Using drip irrigation puts water directly onto the plants, while saving water in other areas. You can buy drip hoses at local hardware and nursery stores, if you don’t have drip irrigation formally installed. Cover the hoses with mulch and you won’t see them. You can hook up your regular garden hose to the drip hoses, then roll up the garden hose. All hoses will be invisible in this way, you will save water and all will be healthy. Ta-da!

I was amazed at how much less water we needed than we thought, when our kitchen sink broke down. Because of the plumber’s significantly over-inflated repair quote, my husband and I were washing our dishes outside in the garden, a la camping style, until we could fix the sink ourselves. We simply filled up a quart-sized container with water and dish detergent, into which we immersed our sponge, with which we scrubbed our dishes. Then we used another suitable container for rinsing off the dishes. A second such container for a second rinse and …tada! That’s all we needed. No running water while scrubbing dishes. No frills, no waste. It’s amazing how little water we think we need, but how little we actually ended up using!

I’ll admit that a long shower or a luxurious soak in the tub has its therapeutic value. There may be times we even need it, such as when soothing achy muscles or a bruised psyche. However, in general, we probably can get away with shorter showers and still be doing just fine. We can reserve the therapeutic doses for the times when we really need them, while conserving for the greater duration of time. You will be amazed at how much water you conserve, and how much money you save!

Using your hose, wet the roof down. This causes a cooling evaporation. When the roof is cooled, the rest of the house follows suit.

Insulate your house well. Insulation not only keeps warm air inside during the winter, but also keeps hot air outside during the summer. The reason why houses become stuffy is because of poor insulation and air circulation. Your attic and basement are key here, along with walls and edges around doors and windows. Caulk windows well and have weather-stripping around your doors and windows. Check for air leaks by putting your hand around doors, windows and directly on the walls: In cold weather, the walls will feel cold wherever air is leaking in.

The old Southern trick of opening windows up at night, then drawing shades shut and closing windows/doors during the day, really works. You’ll be amazed at how much cooler your house is when you trap the cool air inside the house, as preserved by the tightly-shut windows and drapes.

Installing mesh drapes over your skylights *From the outside!* is more effective than when installed on the inside, for one simple reason: The outdoor mesh prevents the glass from heating up.

Plant a tree or fast-growing vine on a trellis to shade your most exposed windows.

If you are re-roofing your house, use lightly-colored shingles instead of darker ones. The dark colors absorb heat, whereas the lighter ones absorb less. This results in a cooler roof, which results in a cooler house.

While you are at it, consider the newest solar technology: Solar roof shingles. Yes, they exist! No more ugly solar collectors atop your roof. Let your roof do the work for you! Improve your home value, go off the grid or greatly reduce your energy usage, and the energy savings will help to pay back the costs of your roof. And…save the environment. Win-win!

Check for air leaks by putting your hand on the walls, close to window and door edges as above. If you feel a cold wall or any cold air coming in, insulate.

Just prior to snowfall, we used to rake bags of leaves and pile the bags around the foundation of our house. When snow fell, the resulting snow bank would insulate the foundation of the house. It worked beautifully: We needed much less furnace or woodstove heat during the sub-zero weather, and the house felt warm and cozy.

Rugs keep toes and feet warm, while insulating and shielding from basement drafts.

The trick to keeping your house warm in the winter is not so much using the heat as it is keeping air currents still. That’s the ticket. A house with minimal air currents feels warm. Period. (Though of course you will obviously need some supply of heat. Just much less of it, that’s all).

Please post your own ideas for energy and water saving, below! Thank you for helping the cause along.

SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING:

See Pacific Gas and Electric’s (PG+E’s) book, 30 Simple Energy Things You can Do to Save the Earth. It’s simply marvelous. It also tells you what percentage of your bill goes to which utility. Very informative, helping you to chart your own carbon footprint reduction strategy. The Earth Works Group, distributed by Pacific Gas and Electric, published 2006 by the Earth Works Press.

Another great book is World Changing: A User’s Guide to the 21st Century. This includes info about urban planning, green home building, going off the grid, and consumer usage information not discussed in the book above. I recommend the PG+E book for home and daily energy use information, and the World Changing book for larger projects such as building et al. Edited by Alex Steffen, with foreword by Al Gore

Green This by Deirdre Imus has wonderful green cleaning ideas, while also stressing the health impact of chemical cleaning in a very important and often overlooked way. She points out that children may experience increased asthma symptoms as a result of chemical cleaning exposure, discusses which chemicals result in which symptoms including cancer and nervous system malaises, and other matters of importance to the public knowledge. Her methods of green cleaning also include green plumbing and drain unclogging tips, which really work. In fact, they work better (in mine and my husband’s experiences) than the commercial drain openers, with zero harm to the environment. And her ideas are inexpensive, too! One pleasant and therapeutic idea of hers is to put fragrant (and anti-microbial) essential oils onto cloths and stuff them into heat vents, with a resulting fragrant breeze blown around the house. Lovely! Eseential oils are secreted by plants to kill insects, viruses, and other invading pathogens: Not only are they pleasant in fragrance, but they are disinfectants too! Published by Simon and Schuster Papaerbacks, ISBN 13:978-1-4165-4055-7 OR ISBN 10: 1-4165-4055-5

CAUTION: As a certified herbalist, let me alert you that while essential oils are very beneficial on the health level, they also are extremely potent. One or two drops in a cup of hot water are sufficient for drinking as a tea. Ingestion of half an ounce is so strong that, in some cases, it can kill. Keep out of reach of children.

 An excellent book about which essential oil has which therapeutic values, including anti-microbial information:

Reference Guide for Essential Oils, by Connie and Alan Higley, published by Abundant Health, 11569 S. Burch Circle, ALoathe, KS 66061 AbundantHealth4U@juno.com (913) 438-2957/ fax (913) 438-2194