Our Water Bill VS Our New Washing Machine

Exciting times!  Our food dehydrator AND the latest water bill arrived yesterday!

After I've tested out the dehydrator more I'll blog about it but for now a quick post about the effect our new high efficiency washing machine has had on our water bill.

Our previous water bill showed that we used 46 cubic meters of water during the first 4 month billing period of January to April.

This latest bill showed that we only used 29 cubic meters!

I suck at math so correct me if I'm wrong but:
46 cm - 29 cm = 17 cm
17 cm / 47 = 36%

So that means we've used 36% less water!

If you've been reading this blog you may remember that our first water bill showed 79 cubic meters used!  I estimated though that our average was around 58 c.m. since our newborn baby probably bumped up our usage in the first billing period.

So this means that since earlier this year, we've dropped our water use from 58 c.m. to 29!  That's a 50% reduction!  Hopefully this trend will hold.

As I said before, I'm very impressed with our new LG high efficiency washer and dryer and would recommend them to anybody.

With the money we're saving from using less water and electricity while doing our laundry these machines are going to pay for themselves in a year or two!

You Know You're Getting Old When...

A few weeks back we received our new high-efficiency front loading LG washer and dryer set and I have to say, I'm pretty impressed by them.

 

The set was only around $1000 (on sale) but I felt like I'd gone from a Chevette to a Cadillac when compared to our old set.  A cute little luxury feature is that they play a little song when a load is done.  I told my wife I've always dreamed of having a somebody who loved housework so much that it sang to her.

 

The washer is very efficient at conserving water.  In fact, at first we weren't sure if we hooked it up properly because we couldn't see any water through the glass door.  It turns out that the machine weighs how much clothes are in it and only uses enough water to soak the clothes. I'm very curious to see how this affects our next water bill because I estimate we've gone from using approx. 20 litres a load to maybe only 4 or 5.

 

Although these style of washer do take longer to clean a load (about an hour), we can do much larger loads so the time spent works out to about the same.

 

Another thing that's great about the washer is that it spin-dries the clothes so well that they come out of the washer just damp and almost dry.  Sometimes I have to think twice if a load has even gone through the washer since so much water is removed. 

 

As for the dryer, I'm a little disappointed that it was rated as only average when it comes to energy use, however we're noticing that most loads get dried in under 25 minutes. Not only does the washer do such a great time spin-drying, but the dryer also has a sensor that can tell when the clothes are dry and it will shut itself off.  Very often the timer will show 30 minutes or so left but then a couple minutes later it shuts off because the clothes are dry!

 

In a few years time, after we build our next house, I'd like to look into getting a similar style propane or natural gas dryer.  This would really reduce our energy use.  Sure we could use a clothesline to dry our clothes, we used to and probably will again some day, but with two little kids it's much easier to just use the dryer.

 

On the "luxury" side of things I'm impressed by how huge the interior of the dryer is and it's kinda neat to have a light inside it.

 

So far the only minor downside to these is that I find we have to remember to leave the washer door open to allow it to dry out.  The front loading door is water/air tight and I've noticed that if we forget to leave the door open it is still damp inside days later.  I'm afraid that this could lead to a musty smell and maybe mold which probably explains why the washer has a "self-cleaning" feature.

 

We're pretty happy with our new washer and dryer set but also a little depressed.  When you reach the stage that the most exciting thing in your life is your new washer and dryer you know you're getting old!

Welcome to the Waterpik Experience!

A few days back my wife mentioned that the showerhead was getting clogged again and that we'd need to soak it in vinegar again.

Our last waterbill is still on my mind so when she told me this I thought, "What a great excuse to get a new water-saving showerhead!".

The model that had gotten blocked was a water-saving model and I had recently read that older models were prone to blocking in areas with hard water.  Newer ones also have rubber outlets so if they ever scale up you just rub them with your finger and it unblocks them and they're supposedly more efficient.

We picked up the Waterpik Ecoflow from Canadian Tire (on sale this week for only $23.)

What I really like about this one is that it has a shut-off button so you can turn the shower off without closing the faucet and losing your temperature setting.  This allows you to get wet, shut off the water, lather up and then turn the water back on to rinse off.

The package claims you'll save up to 77% water by using the shut-off button.

When my wife brought it home she wanted me to install it right away, but feeling lazy I intended to only read the instruction so I'd at least look productive.

"Welcome to the Waterpik Experience", the instructions exclaimed before assuring me that installation can be done by hand in just a few minutes.

With my aversion to physical labour satisfied and a sudden urge to see first hand the "Waterpik experience (TM)", I decided to give it a try.

The original showerhead came off easy enough, though I did need a wrench to initially loosen it.  The next step was to just screw on the new showerhead and attach it to the hose.  Pretty simple I have to say.

I turned on the shower and there was a small leak in the two connections so I used a wrench to tighten them and scratched up the plastic couplings (Grr...).

After this it was still leaking so I went back to check the instructions and noticed that the rubber washers had fallen out of the hose.

I unscrewed the showerhead and installed the washers (scratching the plastic further).  I decided to just tighten them by hand this time to see if it lived up the claim of "no tools required".

I have to say I'm pretty impressed.  It was pretty easy to install and if you do it right you probably won't need tools.  If you avoid the mistakes I did the whole process can probably be done under 5 minutes.

According to our last water bill we're looking at close to $1000 a year for water charges.  With that expense my wife and I have been talking about getting a new high-efficiency washer which would probably pay for itself in a few years.

With a new shower head, dual-flush toilets and soon a new washer we're curious to see what our next waterbill will be like!

The Newest Excitement In My Life: Dual-Flush Toilet!

Last week I got my quarterly municipal water bill: $240!

That's about $1000 a year I'm paying for water which dries out my skin and reeks of chlorine.

This was ample motivation for me to finally get around to installing a dual-flush adapter to our existing toilets.






I picked this thing up at Canadian Tire for around $35 and it was VERY easy to install.  All I needed was a wrench to remove the old handle; the rest just goes in by hand.

Here's what it looks like out of the box:










The blue circles on the left is the water-water saving fill valve I installed a couple weeks back.  The white part on the right is the new dual-flush adapter and the white box on the left is the button which replaces the flush-handle.

Although it was easy to install, it took me almost an hour to adjust if so the "quick flush" option worked properly, but it was well worth it.

This is what the toilet looks like now with the buttons where the handle would be:

Now it takes 6 liters to flush "solids" (same as before) but it only uses about 2 liters to flush "liquids" using the "quick flush" option.

Watching the water level drop using the quick flush it only dropped about 3 inches, about a third of the water in the tank, but that isn't the best part...

The instructions that come with this device gives you tips on how to make your toilet more efficient.  One things it recommends is cleaning out the flush jets under the rim of the bowl with a wire.  When I couldn't get the adjustment right I decided to try this out and it made a big difference.

In fact it works so well, I find that I can flush "solids" with the quick-flush option!

This means that we'll reduce our water use by over 60% and it is estimated that toilets make up 30% of water used in the average home.

Now I have mixed feelings about receiving my next water bill; I'm not looking forward to paying it but I can't wait to see how much we've reduced our water use!

Product Review: Hydroclean Water-Saving Toilet Fill Valve

The other week my wife surprised me with a gift that only a prepper could  get excited over: a dual-flush toilet retrofit!

I'm really excited to try out this gadget, however when I read the instructions I found out that it doesn't work with the "ball and lever" floater style fill valves.  I'd have to switch over my toilet first before installing it.

There are many different types of fill valves and company that makes the dual flush recommends their own which also has a water saving feature. I picked one up at Canadian Tire for around $17.

There is also a "deluxe" version for $19 that includes jets which supposedly clean the inside of your toilet tank with each flush.

Installing it was super-easy and just took around 10 minutes.  The only tool I required was a wrench to remove the old fittings, the rest is done by hand.

These things are supposed to save water through a little lever valve where you can adjust how much water goes down the refill tube and into the toilet bowl.

The instructions include a simple technique to determine the proper amount of bowl water, however I decided to try the "trial and error" method.  I placed the valve at half open and there is a noticeable difference in the amount of water in the bowl.  As far as I can tell this hasn't affected the flush and I estimate we're saving at least a liter each flush.

I'd recommend people try give this device a try, however, one thing to keep in mind is that it isn't meant to be used with those toilet pucks that you put in the back of the tanks.  The instructions don't explain why but I assume it's because the chemicals will breakdown the plastic parts.

Soon I'll get around to installing the dual-flush retrofit and I'll post the results.

Has anybody else tried these gadgets or a similar device?

Setting Goals and Life Plans: Our Dream House

As I  mentioned in the last post, our plan is to begin building our dream home in 5 years or so.

Many people build their own homes though; what does this have to do with prepping and modern survivalism?

Building our own home actually involves prepping in two ways: planning for the home and living in the home.

1) Planning for the home

Part of modern survivalism is financial preparedness. By paying off debts and saving money we're moving to a position where we'll eventually be able to afford to build this home.

Secondly the things we're doing now are preparing us to live there.  For example, I'm reducing our electrical use because I want our dream home to eventually be off-grid.  Getting us used to energy conservation now will help us adapt to our new home.

Currently we use about 1200KW a month, but in our new energy efficient home I estimate that we will use between 5-700KW.  Amazingly, despite being a larger home with more gadgets, thanks to energy efficiencies our needs will be less.

My family and friends might think I'm nuts obsessing over things like CFL bulbs, my small vegetable garden and organic lawn care but they don't see the big picture.  Each one of those things are little preparedness steps to freedom!


2) Living in the home

Once we build and start living in this dream home I'm hoping to start living the prepper dream!

I don't think I've clearly stated it before but I'm hoping this new house can become a "homestead" that will provide for most of our needs: electricity, heat, food, water.

Electricity:

By being super-energy efficient my goal at first is to greatly reduce utility expenses.  Eventually I'll upgrade the system with so we'll be able to comfortably live during a winter power blackout and hopefully eventually reach the point where we can live off-grid.

For budget reasons I plan on starting with a minimum of 5 165W solar panels tied to the grid.  Over time I'll add more panels and a battery bank so we can have power during blackouts.  We'll also look into if a windmill generator is feasible.  Eventually I'd like to be able to live off-grid so we won't cut off the grid totally  because in case of emergencies it can be our backup.

Secondly, if we do things right we'll actually be able to make money by selling excess electricity to the grid!

We'll also save a lot of electricity by switching our stove, fridge and dryer to ultra-efficient propane models and cooking when I can with a solar oven.  If I can convince my wife, we'll cook with an old-style kitchen woodstove (but with modern technology) to be truly off-grid.


Heat:

For a number of reasons I want a minimum of 4 acres for our dream homestead.  One of these reason is because we want to install geothermal heat exchange to heat our home and water.  The pipes used in this system are often installed horizontally beneath the frost-line so we'll need room to do this.  The pipes can also be installed vertically but we don't want to limit ourselves to one option.

Geothermal is very energy efficient however it needs electricity to operate the heat pump so we'll include a wood stove as a back up source of heat for on the very cold nights or when the power goes out. Hopefully much of our wood will come from our own property.  Another great thing about geothermal is that it can also be used to efficiently cool your house in the summer by just reversing the pump!

Heating our water will be done using an instant-on tankless water heater.  Geothermal will also be used to pre-heat the water to further reduce the energy use.  I'll also look into solar water heating, especially for the planned indoor pool/sunroom.  It's possible that solar heating and geothermal could provide most of our hot water apart from the coldest winter months!

Lastly, we plan on building our home with Insulated Concrete Forms.  There are kinda like big styrofoam Lego-blocks that you build a home with.  After you make a wall with them they're filled with concrete.  This makes a very sturdy and energy efficient structure, (also water/air-tight, bulletproof, fireproof and hurricane/zombie resistant). With an R-Value of 45  ICFs will greatly reduce our energy needs.

Food:

I'm currently learning all I can about organic gardening and permaculture.  I don't knock those that use fertilizer and weed chemicals, however, to me that seems like a lot of work that you have to do every year.  I'd rather do it all naturally and although it might not look as pretty, at least it will be self-sustaining and low-maintenance.

My plan includes, a small orchard, a greenhouse, a number of raised bed squarefoot gardens, a goat to "mow" the grass and possibly milk and maybe chickens and bees.

With enough acres I could also start hunting or allow other to hunt there in exchange for some of their game.

These won't be enough for us to live completely off of but every little bit is less that I have to rely on the grocery store for and less sales taxes to the government.  It all equals more money in my pocket!


Water:

As I've mentioned before, living in a rural area will allow us to have our own well and avoid paying municipal utilities.  However, having and managing your own source of water also means that you must become a conservationist.

We plan on installing dual flush toilets and a grey-water recovery system in our homestead.  This will save the water from the sinks and bathtubs to use for things like flushing the toilets or watering the lawn.

We'll also install a rainwater harvesting system to save all the water that falls on our roof.

Not only will this prevent our well from drying out, but it will also save electricity by using the water pump less and it will extend the life of our sceptic system.

Our homestead plan will probably change and it may take longer than expected but one thing is for certain:

When the zombies come; we'll be ready

If I look in a mirror while dreaming this is what I see.

LED Bulbs at Home Depot

I don't know about you but I love just walking through Home Depot, looking at all the stuff and making mental inventories for our dream home.  I've always got an eye out for new energy efficient products and my latest trip did not disappoint.

On the shelves in the lightbulb section they had a display featuring Phillips brand LEDs.  I was immediately impressed because some of the LEDs were giving off a warm light which I've had difficulty finding.  In the past, despite claims of having "warm light" all the LEDs I've tried have been a harsh bluish colour. As you can see in the pic though, these don't.

They also come in both a bulb-style and a spot-lighting style for recessed light fixtures. 

Unfortunately I'm not sure if I'm ready to replace my CFLs just yet.

The bulbs are a little pricey at $30 each, though it's reasonable when you consider CFLs were over $80 when they first came out.  I bought my first CFL 10 years ago for $30 so hopefully the price of LEDs will drop as they have for CFLs.

Secondly, they use 7 watts and the spotlights are supposed to replace a 35 watt incandescent, while the bulbs replace only a 25 watt.  Currently the CFLs I have use 9 watts and are the equivalent to a 40 watt.  In terms of light output there probably isn't much of a noticeable difference, however, $30 a bulb probably isn't worth the 2 watts per bulb I'd save. 

That being said, if I wasn't already using CFLs I'd probably switch over to these LEDs and I'll probably buy one soon just to play around with it (I get excited over strange things).

For example, I'm slowly renovating my basement and I plan to use pot lamps in my ceiling.  These spotlight LEDs would be great for that.

Also if you're an off-grider these bulbs would definitely be worth a second look since every watt counts in that type of situation.

Pros

- only 7 watts
- warm colour
- no mercury
- no heat

Cons

- $30 a bulb
- not very bright, equal to 25 or 35 watt incandescent


FYI: Costco has a set of 3, 1.5 watt LEDs on sale for only $15 this month.  I've tried this brand before and didn't like the blue light they have but at that price I'd consider buying some for use outdoors.  They're "candle-style bulbs" but also come with 3 adaptors so they'll fit in regular sized sockets.