Berkshire Hathaway’s new environmentally friendly manufactured home is getting a lot of hype and was on the “Most Viewed” and “Most Popular” page on Yaho News yesterday morning. The AP story even created the single biggest day of traffic to the Clayton website and even brought the website down momentarily.
The innovative green home by Clayton Homes called the
i-house may be the wave of the future as it features solar panels and other energy saving products allowing for electricity and heating bills to be only $1 per day. The home went on sale over the past weekend and costs about $100-$130 per square foot.
May 8th, 2009
Alex
The economy is not looking too good. The Dow is near 7000 and the California unemployment rate just hit 10.1%, the highest level in 26 years. Here is a list of items you can buy to try to save some money. Yes, you do have to spend money to get the items, but you have to look longterm and hopefully, it will pay back for itself after a couple months or a year.
Compact fluorescent
lightbulbs
Price: $2 to $3
Description: The CFL, as it is called, is longer-lasting and more efficient than the incandescent bulb. All fluorescent bulbs contain small amounts of mercury, though, so just make sure that you dispose of them correctly.
Savings: Around $10 per year per bulb.
Window insulator kit
Price: About $20
Description: An hour or so with a window insulator kit – which requires the use of a portable hair dryer – is an easy and cost-effective way to keep out drafts.
Savings: Windows and doors account for about 11 percent of heat loss in a home, so insulating windows could pay you back in a matter of a few months.
Smart strip
Price: $41.95 for the 10-outlet
model.
Description: This device allows you to turn off the “power sucker” devices – like VCRs and DVD players that cost you around $4 a year, even when idle – when you turn off another device, like a TV. At the same time, it lets you keep power going to things that need to stay on, so your DVR will still be able to record your favorite programs overnight.
Savings: Use it to control six or seven devices and it can pay for itself in energy savings within a year.
Draft stopper
Price: $10 to $20
Description: Especially in older buildings, drafts coming in under the doors can account for 20 percent of a home’s heat loss. You can find lots of door draft stoppers in home improvement stores or online, but if you’re a crafty sort, you can also take the leg of an old pair of jeans, sew up the ends and fill it with buckwheat or sand, or even clean kitty litter.
Savings: Varies from house to house.
Low-flow showerheads
Price: around $12
Description: Not only do low-flow showerheads save water, they also help save on energy because you’ll use less hot water. Federal regulations require that new showerheads cut the water flow to 2.5 gallons per minute, but this low-flow showerhead can bring your water flow as low as 1.2 to 1.4 gallons per minute, which for most households means that it will cut down, not only on water used, but on the energy used to heat that water.
Savings: Recover the cost of the showerhead within a few months.
Insulation blanket
Price: $20 to $30
Description: Wrapping your water heater in an insulation blanket will reduce the amount of heat lost through the tank’s walls by about 25 to 45 percent.
Savings: They’ll pay for themselves in reduced heating bills in a matter of months.
Child-safe plugs
Price: $3.29 for a package of 12 caps.
Description: Electrical wall outlets are another small, often overlooked culprit for drafts. Plug them up with plastic childsafe plugs and keep out small fingers and drafts at the same time.
Savings: Overall heating cost savings varies.
Lamp socket auto-off
light control
Price: $11.99
Description: If lights are consistently left on in places like the bathroom, the garage or the closet, this little gadget inserted in the socket automatically switches off the light after 15 minutes, and it works with both incandescent bulbs and CFLs.
Savings: Say a 100-watt light is left on each night for 10 hours, the auto-off control would pay for itself in a few months.
Slow cooker
Price: $149.99 for the
KitchenAid 7-quart KSC700.
Description: If you can’t afford a new Energy Star stove, think about investing in a slow cooker, especially if you like to make casseroles or large batches of food like beef stew or cassoulet. Good slow cookers can range from the $19.99 to $279.95.
Savings: Varies, but the typical slow cooker will have used less than a kilowatt of power after seven hours of cooking.
via SFGate
February 27th, 2009
Alex
Boston University’s College of Engineering has launched a program to develop a Smart LIghting system that uses LEDs to trasmit wireless communications. The Smart Lighting Engineering Research Center is part of an $18.5 million, multi-year NSF program awarded to Boston University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the University of New Mexico. The goal of the program is to one day be able to have LED lights replace WiFI access points so that all your computer gadgets and electronics can talk to each other by using the available lighting in the room. It also keeps security limited to being in the room as lighting does not go through walls. However, they don’t mention how it works during the day as the data transmission is done over the electrical wiring but would the light have to be turned on for the signals to communicate? The idea is pretty cool and can be applied to other usages as well such as in cars so that brake lights can trigger cars behind you to slow down when you brake.
via Treehugger and Boston University
October 9th, 2008
Alex
Are dishwashers green or are you better off manually washing your dishes? The simple answer is that normally if you have a water efficient dishwasher and it is filled with dishes, then it will most likely use less water than hand washing all of those dishes. I have talked about this comparison in a previous post and there are studies that show a dishwasher would use less water. In the study done by Scientists at the University of Bonn, in Germany, dishwashers usually use half the energy, one-sixth of the water, and less soap than hand washing the same set of dishes. If you have a old dishwasher, however, they may not be as efficient as newer ones. Older dishwashers may also require you to rinse your dishes first before you load them in, but most new dishwashers do a pretty good job and actually do not need any rinsing or scrapping. Even though most people dont, you can actually put your dishes right in after you are done eating.
Many people may think that a dishwasher is not green because they think that it uses a lot of water, and in addition, it also needs electricity to run it, and then also to dry it. Hand washing dishes can vary significantly between different people because there is no correct way to do dishes. Some people tend to let the water run the whole time. There are also different techinques that can vary such as soaping all the dishes first, then rinse, etc. The main point is that as long as your dishwasher is full, you are using it to its full capacity and it is performing efficiently. Obviously, if you just have a couple of dishes, it is better to hand wash them or to just put them into the dishwasher and wait to fill it up before you start the dishwasher. For some asians, they may not even have this problem because a typical stereotype, yet true, is that asians dont use their dishwashers very often and tend to use dishwashers as a dishrack!
September 5th, 2008
Alex
If you have been meaning to replace your regular incandescent light bulbs at home with energy saving compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFL) but are using the excuse that they cost more, then this post just nullified your reason. If you are looking for cheap CFLs in California, then go to your nearest 99 Ranch Market. They sell 4 Greenlite CFL bulbs for a dollar. That’s like ….. a quarter a light bulb! They aren’t even the dimmest ones either! They only have one model and its the 23 watt one which is equivalent to 100 watts for an incandescent light bulb. They are sponsored and discounted by PG&E. Maybe asians need a good cheap deal to convince them to buy CFLs? And no, you don’t have to be asian in order to buy it. The 99 Ranch Market that I go to has them located at the checkout stands. So go get your CFLs and change all your light bulbs at home to CFLs! With gas prices so expensive, saving money on electricity is always a good way to save some money. If you want to read more about CFLs, you can do so here.
June 17th, 2008
Alex
