A few weeks ago we went to Ikea and bought down comforters. We pay for our heat, which is somewhat unusual here in New York City. We like to keep our house cool, especially at night when we can hunker down under the covers. Our down comforter finally exploded a year ago, so we’ve been on the look out for an inexpensive replacement. At Ikea they rate their comforters on a scale of 6, with 6 being the warmest. Without hesitating, we grabbed a 6 for us and for Lindsay. At $49.99 the price was unbeatable.
I usually go to bed in the winter with ice blocks for feet and warm them up on my poor husband, who we refer to as the polar bear. After the first night of the #6 comforter I was insanely hot and so were Neil and Lindsay. We turned the heat OFF the next night. We were still hot (Lindsay had just gotten nice warm pjs for the holidays) so we went to bed in t-shirts and undies. It made trips to the bathroom in the middle of the night interesting in our no-heat house! I was still too hot. I was downright sweltering if Neil came anywhere near me. For the sake of marital harmony, we decided to get a #4 comforter and try to sell our #6s to friends with cabins or who wanted to hike the Andes. A queen size was $39.99, which was amazing! So far so good. We turn off our heat and we can still snuggle without overheating.
I was thinking about how much this little addition to our family has helped us save energy. I mean, who actually turns their heat off when it’s 20 degrees outside?
Looking around the internet I found some interesting facts that might help encourage you to turn down the heat. A warm comforter is a good first step!!
The rule of thumb is that you can save about 3% on your heating bill for every degree that you set back your thermostat” full time, says Bill Prindle, deputy director for the nonprofit American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy.
Try turning down the thermostat 5 to 10 degrees at night, and then turn it up again in the morning when the coffee is brewing. If you can get used to that, you’ll save 5 to 10 percent of your heating bill.
It does NOT take more energy to re-heat your house after the heat has been turned down than to keep it at the same temperature all the time. Nor does turning your thermostat up make the house warm up faster — it simply makes the boiler stay on longer before turning off.
Things you can do
Close curtains or blinds at night to keep out the drafts.
Turn your thermostat down or off at night. You can get programmable ones that will turn the heat on in the morning, so you aren’t freezing when you wake up. Then turn the heat down when you go off to work.
Check the seals on windows. We have a huge window in our apartment that is too high to reach. It is single pane glass and the wood between the panes looks brittle. Neil once put plastic up (don’t ask me how he got up there without killing himself) and sealed it with a sheet of plastic. That lasted several years, but has since come down. We rent, so we are at the mercy of a landlord who isn’t interested in fixing the window. We can see things moving in the draft caused by this window.
Wear sweaters around the house instead of turning up the heat. Whenever I complained to my father that I was cold, his reply was always to put on a sweater. Makes sense.
Put plastic up over windows that leak. There are lots of different plastic coverings that are made especially for this purpose. You stick them around the window and then heat them up with a hairdryer. This causes the plastic to shrink a bit and pull tight. We do that with the window in our home office and it makes a huge difference.
Today’s tip is about saving some energy and energy dollars by hanging your clothes up to dry. Clothes dryers are one of the biggest energy suckers in the home. A typical dryer can use somewhere between 1800-5000 watts, which is about 2-3 times more than a dishwasher, or vacuum cleaner. You can figure out how much energy your home appliances are using here.
Laundry that has dried outside has a wonderful fresh smell you never get with the dryer. But it isn’t always practical or possible to hang your clothes outside. I have a very short clothes line outside, so I choose the heaviest items to hang out there. You know the towels or the mattress pads that tumble endlessly in the dryer? They dry in almost the same time outside and save a bundle of energy that way. Sometimes the towels can dry a little stiff, but you can toss them in the dryer for a couple of minutes to soften them up.
If you don’t have outdoor space, you can get a bit creative in where to hang your laundry. Before buying a house, my sister used to have a line outside her apartment window. I often hang jeans up on our baby gates. In our laundry room (which used to be our darkroom when I first moved into this apartment) I hang a lot of shirts and other items up to dry. The fabric lasts a whole lot longer than if it was run through the hot dryer and it dries overnight without a care or practically a wrinkle. Some people hang lingerie to dry on their shower curtain rod.
Get creative! The less clothing that goes in the dryer, the less energy you will be using. Your clothes will last longer, so it’s a win-win situation.
Check out my sister’s insanely pretty clotheslines!
Take a look at this 20 minute video about the downside of our production and consumption patterns. Annie Leonard narrates the video and discusses the social and environmental problems with the current system of consumption. It’s animated and friendly, so you aren’t left completely depressed. There is also a section on the website called Another Way. It shows 10 little and big things you can do to promote sustainability. Take a peek.
Vincent Callebaut Architectures have designed what they call a metabolic farm for urban agriculture to be built on Roosevelt Island in New York City. It is called Dragonfly because it’s form is based on the wing of a dragonfly.
The building would offer housing, offices, laboratories in ecological engineering, vertical farming spaces that can be cultivated by its inhabitants.
In their own words:
Floor by floor, the tower superposes not only stock farming ensuring the production of meat, milk, poultry and eggs but also farming grounds, true biological reactors continuously regenerated with organic humus. It diversifies the cultivated varieties to avoid the washing of stratums of soft substratum. Thus, the cultures succeed one another vertically according to their agronomical ability to provide some elements of the ground between the essences that are sowed and harvested. The tower, true living organism, becomes thus metabolic and self-sufficient in water, energy, and bio-fertilizing. Nothing is lost; everything is recyclable to a continuous auto-feeding!
Here’s an idea that’s picking up steam. It is a way to reduce energy costs associated with transporting/storing/processing food. Take a peek at the video. What do you think about food grown this way?
