Saving Energy At Home, Part II

Turn off your air conditioner at night....and use fans.
Here in Texas, the temperature during the day has been 90 degrees or more for the last two weeks. But at night, by 10pm or so, it's cooled down outside to about 80 degrees. My house is reasonably well insulated, so it takes a long time for the heat to seep in. If you have a similar situation, try this: turn off the A/C at night just before you go to bed and turn on your bedroom ceiling fan, or buy table fans and aim them at your bed.. Sleeping with just a sheet for covering and the cooling power of the fan, you may find yourself quite comfortable at night with the A/C off. Just make sure you turn the A/C back on in the morning. If you have a thermostat, set it to turn off just after you go to bed and turn on just before you normally get up.

Two ways to cut your use of hot water
I keep seeing experts on the internet and in the newspaper suggesting that you take a bath instead of a shower to save on hot water. Does that really work?

By and large, it depends on who's trying to get clean. Try this little test. Ask yourself how deep you'd want the water when you take a bath. Six inches? Twelve inches? Then take a shower with the drain closed and see how deep the water gets. You may be surprised.

I decided that I'd need bath water to be at least ten inches deep. I took a shower, with the water at half-pressure, which is how I normally take a shower (see below) and was surprised to find I could take a leisurely 10 minute shower and the water was only five inches deep. So a shower works better for me.

By the way, I see no reason to spend $100+ to install "low flow" faucet heads (at a cost of $50 each) in your showers, since there aren't any laws on the books that say you have to turn the pressure on full-blast in the first place. I turn it on about 3/4 pressure, just enough to make the transition from main faucet to shower head, then back it off a bit to a perfectly pleasant half-pressure stream. Try it!

Buy yourself a large toaster oven.
It makes no sense to fire up a full-sized oven to bake a single pan of brownies or broil four chicken breasts or cook an 8" x 10" dish of lagsana or broil four hot dogs.. A large toaster oven with both top and bottom elements and a moveable rack can cook an astounding variety of food--mine is just big enough to cook a four-pound whole chicken. (As a single person I find the only time I use my full-sized oven is to cook a full-sized pizza). One caution: Because food in a toaster oven is closer to the heating elements, you may want to set the temperature a bit lower than a recipe calls for. And when you first start using one, keep an eye on your food when broiling. (By the way, I bought my toaster oven at a garage sale for $7-- and had the seller plug it in and demonstrate that it worked before I handed over the money, something you should do with anything electric.)