by PhebaAndThePilgrim » Mon 10 Dec 2007, 13:02:45
Good day from Pheba, from the farm:
Here on the farm we have cut kwh from about 900 down to 450, and that includes lights for outbuildings, all hotwire for cattle, all water heating elements, etc.
We heat with wood, have a house that is very well insulated, and I have a quirky way I have evolved to do the laundry. We do not wear clothing just one time if we don't get it dirty. That's crazy and creates a lot of work. If I wear a nice outfit to, let's say, to the doctors office, then take it off when I come straight home, that article of clothing is not dirty. So, I don't wash it.
I only put clothing in the dryer for five minutes, then remove and hang up wet to dry in the house. The clothing dries beautifully this way. The five minutes in the dryer softens it up and I reduced our electric use by 150kwh a month by adopting this sytem. Since we heat with wood we are finding that our laundry is a very big drawdown for energy. I have become creative to try to reduce that. I know I am getting personal now, but one thing that always bugged me was bath towels. The energy used to launder a bath towel is silly. But if you dry a private body part with a bath towel, that makes it dirty in my book. So, I dry my body with the towel, and the private places with a dry washcloth. I can wash two weeks of wash cloths for the cost of washing one bath towel.
I purchased a nice toaster/convection oven. We love it. When it is just the two of us, and we want to bake something small I use the toaster convection oven. The amount of energy used is cut in half. By the way, our wood stove also heats all of our home hot water, so hot water is not figured into energy savings of 150kwh. All of that is savings from reduction in electric used to heat the dryer and run the washer.
I can not hang laundry outside. We have a clothesline, but I have asthma, and the pollen gets in the clothing. Ditto for road dust from our gravel road. Also we raise blackberries and during the summer the birds eat blackberries and then fly over and potty on my fresh clean laundry. The stains do not come out. I swear they always aim for the most expensive item on the clothesline. I have become very creative at hanging laundry to dry in the house. We also do not have air conditioning. We would like a ground source heat pump, but do not have the money right now. Pheba.