I'm sure actually being green-colored would be pretty difficult. Just look at the Blue Man and what he goes through. But I digress...
This counts as a finished project because its something that I've been meaning to do for a while, but never seemed to find the time/money to do before. Thanks to my kiddo, though, I did!
Thing 1 brought home an energy-saving kit from school. It's sponsored by our local utility company, although I can't quite figure out why, and the only thing that they wanted in return was for us to fill out a brief survey about the products (like what was the flow rate of our old shower head vs. the new one, things like that). I'm all for free stuff, and stuff that will save me money, and stuff that helps to reduce our impact on the planet, so I took about an hour out of my time after the kids came home, and installed and tested all of the energy- saving items they sent us, including:
- a low-flow shower head
- a shower timer
- two 60-watt CFL bulbs
- a faucet aerator for the kitchen sink
- a glowing night-light
- a refrigerator/freezer thermometer
The longest part of the process was testing the flow-rate of the shower head and the faucet aerator, and removing the old aerator from the sink (that thing was on there tight!).
Oh, and I took a while talking DHubs out of immediately switching back to the old shower head.
He's generally supportive of my DIY urges, tendency towards frugality (okay, I'm cheap) and "hippie stuff", as he and the boys call any attempt I make to be more earth-friendly - in that he doesn't complain too loudly and restricts himself to head-shaking and loud sighing- but if it interferes with his established habits, he tends to draw the line.
And my man loves his showers.
But when I showed him the flow test results, and how it meant that we might cut our water bill in half, and promised to put back the old shower head, if after a month he decided he really hated the new one, he stopped looking at me in that special way he has that says "Woman, you are insane."
The fact that I could install everything (and talk DHubs into using it all) in less than an hour - including downtime to fetch the pipe wrench and search for the WD40, and flow-testing! - conclusively proves that it's actually pretty easy to be green.
So do it.
Seriously.
Don't listen to the frog.
Just as an example, here are some of the figures that we worked out about what we'll be saving using our new stuff.
- Low-flow shower head - Our old shower head, which I think is actually an older low-flow type, used about 2 gallons per minute. Not bad, right? I thought so. Until we installed the new one, which weighed in at using only 0.5 GPM. Seriously. So... four people taking 10 minute showers (4 people X 10 minutes X 2 GPM) would use 80 gallons of water a day, vs. the new shower head @ 20 gallons a day (4 people X 10 minutes X 0.5 GPM ), which would save us 75% of the water we would normally use on showering. Wow. And it took me ten minutes to figure this out and install it. This is the one that came in my kit, but there are plenty to choose from online, at any of the big-box stores, or your local hardware store (try there first!) for pretty reasonable prices. I used it this morning, and I actually like it better than the old one, which I often adjusted to half-strength, anyway.
- Shower timer - this may not actually save us any money/water, because I had already instituted a kitchen timer in the bathroom to limit shower times to 10 minutes (I'm not cutting down to only a 5-minute shower, and I don't expect anyone else in the family to, either!), but it may reinforce the idea so I'll take it. It's kind of fun to try to beat the hourglass, too. If you don't have a bathroom shower timer already, using one works wonders to make everyone aware of just how long they're in the bathroom.
- 2 60-watt CFL's - honestly, I'd much rather have gotten LED lights. This actually took a little thinking because it was hard for us to find two places in the house where we didn't already have CFL's installed. Luckily though, I had run short on cash a while back and got some standard lights when the CFL's in the hall died, so we replaced those. I believe the booklet we got with our kit said that a CFL uses 1/10th the energy of a standard bulb, and lasts nearly five times as long. I didn't bother with the math.
- Kitchen faucet aerator - I've actually been wanting one of these for a while. We had one on our sink in Florida and I loved it, more for the spray/flow feature and the fact that you can direct the flow wherever you like, than for the water-saving feature (we had a well in FL, and for as long as I can remember growing up in MI, so the water bill here was quite a shock!), but the water savings were quite impressive as well. Without any aerator on the sink, the water flow was nearly 4.5 GPM! With the old stock aerator (looks like it came with the faucet) it was about 3.5 GPM. With the new aerator, we are down to 1.5 GPM! Considering that I hand wash my dishes, and that the kitchen sink is the main hand sink for the house, this will make a huge difference in our water usage. I'm also looking into smaller (because this thing is bulky!) aerators for the bathroom sink. The only drawback? Takes a little while to fill the pasta pot and the dog's water dish.
- Glowing night light - We haven't really used night lights for a few years, and we already have one similar to what we got in the kit (it's a flat night light with a blue-green glowing panel, rather than a bulb), but I'm hoping to convince DH that we can use this instead of leaving the hall light on all night. We'll see.
- Refrigerator/Freezer thermometer - I'm not sure how this will save us money or energy right now, but I like being able to see that my refrigerator is 40 degrees and my freezer is 28 degrees, instead of trying to guess where on the dial is the appropriate temperature.
So, to sum up, skip the night light and CFL bulbs (go for LED's instead, replacing them gradually as the old bulbs wear out) but definitely install the shower head and sink aerator. It'll take ten minutes, and save you a bundle. Next 'green' project? I'm switching to these....
