Earth Hour -- are you doing it?

We try to conserve as much as we can on a continuous basis.

I had discussed, with the family, about joining in the Earth Day Hour for tonight. I was at a meeting until about 8:30 and when I came home, the entire place was in darkness. When I went inside, everything was dark too. Not even a tiny light to find my way around. I was proud of them.

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My big step for the day was to use the first of my box of "daylight" colored fluorescent spiral lights from a package from Costco. Daylight my foot. It's very blue. The white wall to the right is now blue. (Don't confuse me with facts like that daylight is on the blue side.)

Light is wildly important to me, as a painter, an extremely night blind person, as a simple human. I LIKE the yellowish light of incandescents. I don't know if I can stand to live in a steel blue lit house and it will probably play havoc on my paintings. I can only hope they manage to increase the color range choices for fluorescents by the time incandescents are totally phased out, or I might start with suicide thoughts.

We'll see. I'll report if I get to like it. There are five more in the package. If you don't hear from me over the next few months, have the paramedics check.

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Don't walk towards the bright light. Laughing

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Our last bill was $AU 2.70/ day. for 3 people. total greenhouse gas emissions (this account) 2.59 tonnes.

Quote:

I have the thermostat on the water heater set at the lowest setting that doesn't require any cold water to make it useable

b/fly I am not sure you are actually doing yourself or (the world) any favours.
To prevent the formation of ?'Legionella pneumophila' bacteria (which cause Legionnaires' disease) the ?'WA Code of Practice - Legionnaires Disease' recommends that hot water temperatures be set to at least 60 degrees centigrade (140 degree Fahrenheit.)

Reducing the temp to "as low as possible" means you use more water that has been heated. I found we (3) used a full tank of hot water when set to 50c. Therefore the water heater had to heat 315L to 50C. If set at a higher temp we used less hot water.

I wonder what some of our science and math gurus would have to say.

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That's probably close to where it is at. Next time I'm running the hot water I'll use an insta-read thermometer and see what it says.

I don't use very much hot water, I run the dish washer once a week, do two loads of laundry once a week and take very short showers. When I do monthly household cleaning, I use a few drops of bleach in 6 quarts of water in a steam cleaner rather than a bunch of chemicals to kill germs on floors and counters in the bathroom and kitchen.

Most of the energy and money is going toward maintaining that hot water temperature inside the water heater the majority of the time. If I had a choice, I'd have one of those instant hot water heaters that only heats water as it is being used rather than keeping the entire tank of water hot in case it is used.

Okay, curiosity got me. I tested the temperature. It is 132 degrees coming out of the tap, so it is probably hotter than that in the water heater since it has to travel quite a distance to get to the sink faucet.

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Butrflynet:

132F = 55C,
So your probably correct 60C in the tank.

I've asked the math and science gurus how the actual math on energy/electricity use stacks up cause I'm curious.

http://www.able2know.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=114284.

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And me, I'm wondering, can't the fluorescent light folks just tint the glass to a homier color...

Patent idea, copyright, copyright!!!!

Thanks the crowd, bows..

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sozobe wrote:

Sozlet's looking forward to it. There was some angst about missing the Kid's Choice Awards (Nickelodeon, she voted and everything), but then I saw that it's about turning the lights off, not all electricity. I thought she'd be happy about the loophole but no, she prefers to just have everything off and hang out by candlelight. (She's always kind of liked power outages, tho...)

There would be a mutiny in this house if the Kid's Choice Awards was to be missed.

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Yeah, we just finished the Kid's Choice Awards with much screaming
when the Jonas Brothers arrived. Oy!

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ossobuco wrote:

And me, I'm wondering, can't the fluorescent light folks just tint the glass to a homier color...

Patent idea, copyright, copyright!!!!

Thanks the crowd, bows..

Don't they already do that? There are tubes that cast a rosy light and tubes that cast a bluish light.

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Well, not that I see in the spiral bulbs one can buy. Yes, even a long time ago, one could get the big fluorescent tubes with different color temps, if one was a lighting designer, though not from Home Deplore, etc.... but I never sprung for one, for money reasons, natch.

It is nearly funny. One part of my hall is blue and the other a light yellow apricot (presently incandescent).

I'm not kidding that cold blue light depresses me big time.

I'm pretty amazed this hasn't been fixed, even with, say, pinkyellowish glass...

You heard it here first. Should I win in court, I'll share with the a2kers I know.

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I've a long time friend who is a patent attorney in Beverly Hills.

(Trying to think how I'd word the letter..) You heard it here first!!

Snork, but never mind. It's too damned obvious, to tint the glass.

Do none of these companies have a lick of aesthetic sense??

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Back on coloration re fluorescent tubes, there were several artists. Dan Flavin, for a start. Perhaps Robert Irwin, I'm not sure. Barry (and now I forget the name, but will be back.)

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I suspect Lightwizard will set me straight in a timely fashion. I'll pm him if he doesn't show up relatively soon.

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we did without metaphors

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I've had the fluorescent discussion here before, osso (can't remember if you were part of that), quality of light is also very, very important to me and I haven't found a fluorescent that I can live with yet. I'll keep looking.

At work, where I had to suffer through fluorescents (until we moved to the new place, specifically chosen because of its abundant natural light), I bought a pink sleeve for the bulbs (regular long thin kind, not sure what's available for smaller ones) that did help. Still sucked, but was better than naked.

My need for light tripped me up last night, too. Utter darkness wouldn't do -- I can't see anything which means I can't communicate and also can't read.

Sozlet was militant about not turning on the TV! I was a bit surprised. I was actually pushing it at one point -- was getting a bit bored -- but she wasn't having it.

We watched the last half hour, 9 to 9:30, then will watch the abbreviated highlights version on Tuesday I think it is. (She'll be at a friend's today when they replay it.)

Anyway, we spent most of the time in the kitchen around a candle. Sozlet had the most fun out of all of us I think.

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Any word in the US yet about how many participated? Any cool graphs showing usage dips?

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I did it last night. Sat in the dark listening to The Kite Runner (audio novel) on the battery operated CD player by candlelight). Handy torch nearby in case I needed to move around the house. It was so peaceful I fell asleep!

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ossobuco wrote:

Well, not that I see in the spiral bulbs one can buy. Yes, even a long time ago, one could get the big fluorescent tubes with different color temps, if one was a lighting designer, though not from Home Deplore, etc.... but I never sprung for one, for money reasons, natch.

It is nearly funny. One part of my hall is blue and the other a light yellow apricot (presently incandescent).

I'm not kidding that cold blue light depresses me big time.

I'm pretty amazed this hasn't been fixed, even with, say, pinkyellowish glass...

You heard it here first. Should I win in court, I'll share with the a2kers I know.

The girl was looking for some replacement bulbs for her desk lamp a few days ago and I noticed that there is a fairly wide variety of color temps available now for the CFL bulbs. When I had bought mine a few years ago you either bought CFLs or you didn't. There wasn't any choice at all. The local KMart has 7 or 8 different temps available on the shelves now. I was surprised at how many they had - and the absolute lack of incandescents too. CFLs seem to have taken over the shelves.

They (for some reason) still don't seem to match up with the temp of incandescents though. But maybe it's just my mind playing tricks on me...

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squinney wrote:

Any word in the US yet about how many participated? Any cool graphs showing usage dips?

That part was a disappointment here -- as far as I could tell we were the only ones doing anything. Not sure about downtown.

It wasn't publicized much -- I learned about it from an in-flight magazine on the way home from FL, then saw something on Yahoo about it and remembered.

I saw cool photos of the darkened Detroit skyline, though.

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Earth Hour -- are you doing it?

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