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In our household we have put into place the minimum use of energy and at the same time maximising the benefits of energy with minimum or no wastage. We have instantaneous hot water heated by gas. No more storing hot water, so gas is only used when turning the tap on. The temperature of the hot water is set at a comfortable 46c. We cook by gas and only heat water by gas. No electric kettles, no terrible wastage of energy by electric cooking and boiling water. All our 50 watt down-lights with 10 watt transformers are being replaced by either LED or 9 watt fluorescent lights. We were horrified that our town house had those very dangerous down-lights. They can produce 320C heat and are a fire hazard anyway. Not long ago our houses had one light per room and a couple of power points. Now houses are bristling with dozens of lights and all sorts of CO2 producing gadgetry. Our modestly sized town-house had 33 of those high energy burning down-lights. One bathroom had 3. Why? At the more advanced age that most of us are creeping into, even half a light would suffice. Burning just a candle would be even better, if not more romantic as well.
Of course, TV size is the next one to economize on. What about the 82 cm model to the max? Those giant screens are so ugly and dominating, who wants to see our politicians and their egos blown up even bigger? Why would you want to look at most of the TV programs anyway?
For our kids, definitely no extra TV’s in bedrooms. Most experts reckon that we ought to get tough and ban kids from anything with buttons and remotes. Dr Spock had it all wrong and whole generations of scowling and nervous kids have been spawned by letting them set the agenda instead of parents and teachers. If they protest, let them take out the garbage or take the dog for a walk.
As for wasting water with those obsessive twice daily showering, stop it in the bud. Don’t even shower daily. It’s not the bunch of flowers that regulates this game of love; it’s our smell and pheromones that drive the opposite (or same) sex into frenzy. No wonder there are so many lonely but well scrubbed people about.
We complain about the rising cost of electricity, and no doubt, they will triple in the next ten years. The obvious answer is to reduce the power consumption equally. It can be done. Our last gas bill was $94. -. This was over a period of three months and included a $42. ‘-availability’ charge. Total usage for hot water, cooking and heating was $52.-, and to paraphrase a popular slogan ‘the lower costs are just the beginning’.
The lowering of energy consumption should be joined together with lowering consumption of all superfluous items as well, especially when those items are phrased in the most terrible two words ever to appear in a western consumer driven society, “LIFE STYLE”. Simply never buy anything associated with those words, if you have; repent and chuck them out or never plug them in. Do you really need an electric knife or lettuce spinner?
Life style is simply not something you can buy.
Naturally, using conventional electricity to keep out solar energy to cool or heat our houses is pure tautology as well as total earth vandalism. Chuck the air-conditioner on the foot path or install solar.
Perhaps the idea of a total ban on consuming anything should follow Earth Hour? Don’t keep a date with the Earth Extinction, consume less.
Window Dresser's Arms, Pig & Whistle 
How about joining – DigitalSilence 26th-28th March! helping #EarthHour, join in 3 days without technology http://bit.ly/emsZBp
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An impassioned article Gez of reflection and musings… my kitchen in my new property (rental) has a strip of lights- spot lights- I think they are called and the kitchen is large so they are a great convenience. I try to however not use the kitchen after dark for cooking, turn off lights, turn off electrical equipment at the wall. It was not always so to the degree I now exercise conservation yet at 20 years of age I would not more waste anything than fly. My recent – on t’other hand – winter electricity bill in the big smoke was so horrendous I mused with guilt no rational single person could justify using that much for any reason. I had lamps I left on for selfish comfort, one for ambient decoration, one to oppose computer glare, one over the television, then not to forget the computer on all day, printer-fax, television, DVD and Videos with green and red indicator lights glowing pointlessly as the case may be, yet I was aware of all of these shortcomings and fell into denial from a state of previous grace. It’s a mental health issue as well, Gez and anyway if you weren’t mental before you got the leccy bill, guaranteed you’ll be in the disturbed basket after if you don’t rein it in.
Thank you for a wonderful rant.
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I bought those new flourescent bulbs when they were the newest thing three years ago and they were terrible. Dim and unstable. It’s an interesting challenge keeping energy usage down. I think it depends a lot of the size of the space you are using. I put in one big opaque glass window between two rooms so that one could get light from the window in the day, one light could light two rooms at night. I’m not very good at turning off lights so I prefer to get my energy brownie points with the occasional innovation.
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Hello Lehan, friend of mine asked me did i want to go to the toilet and I said, puzzled no, and he said it’s just that I think I’ll turn on the light in the bathroom because it takes a while.
I found out about theses dim lights thus. His brighted up after it had been on for a while!!??
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Oh Gez, who was it who went out to buy a loaf of bread and came back with a small extra TV . The kids were happy to watch it laying on MY bed during the school holidays…now I feel like chucking it out, the ugly thing stands in front of one of your lovely paintings…waiting for the next school break!
As for showering…there’s always room for two in Milo’s house!
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All true and correct Gerard. Trouble for some is that they do not have gas. We are all electric and when I built the house solar water systems were a hit and miss affair and cost a lot and there was no money. I had to take out a small separate personal loan to pay for the dam. The gas is now 6 kms away but the Council has not had the foresight to ask for more extensions and at the same time has allowed a lot of rural residential development and it is all electric Those big screens are too intrusive and ugly but a small second TV is vital if you have a cricket lover in the house! As for kitchen gadgets I do have an electric kettle, a 20 year old blender and a toaster. We do our best.
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Yes, we had the same problem on the farm where our electricity bill often exceeded $500.- UNTIL, we swapped to bottled gas. We chucked out the electric stove and cooked on gas which at the most used one bottle a year (45Kg) we used several gas bottles for heating supplementing the wood heaters.
We boiled our hot water on the bottled gas. The worst aspect of electricity is hot water storage which used 30% of our electricity usage.
Country living is expensive. If we did it again I would also run the shower&kitchen hot water on an instantaneous bottled gas system. It would pay for itself within a couple of years.
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Did you have to do a lot of new plumbing to get the bottled gas to the various points in the house? Our hot water has always been off-peak and the last bill was $36 plus gst for hot water. The rest of the account just keeps going up even though our usage is stable and sometimes less. I look at what it costs on a daily basis to get some perspective.
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We had the bottled gas at two different locations outside the house and then had a plumber connect to two rinnai unflued gas heaters in both the lounge and dining room. We had a connection done to the kitchen area where the electric stove used to be. The third connection was to the cottage that was 60 metres from the farm for both heating and cooking. We had a very large electric hot water storage on the farm that was put in by the previous owner.
Of course, storing hot water and kept to a certain heat is wasteful because most times one doesn’t use hot water. It’s a bit like cutting butter with a chain-saw.
You can now get instantaneous hot water, both electric and by gas.
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I’m not arguing with you Gerard but off-peak hot water only gets heated during the night. As it is used during the day it gets less hot and so having a shower in the evening could mean just a warm shower (especially in the winter). Of course it is wasteful if it never gets used so I would assume you disconnected it once you had the gas connected.
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Hi Vivienne,
No, on the farm we put up with this huge electric hot water storagewhich was also off peak. We could have converted to bottled instant gas hot water. The trouble was, apart from the cost, that the distance between kitchen and bathroom meant that we would have to install 2 of those gas systems. During winter, even with the pipes lagged, too much heat would be lost between the different hw outlets.
One other problem we had on the farm, that often the electricty either dropped out or there were up and down surges (brown-outs), making anything with timers useless. The ‘off peak’, simply did not work because of that.
The system of power poles and insulators on rural properties are often old and rotten. I was amazed that so many of our neighbours accepted the poor supplies of phones ,internet, electricity as normal. Really stoical and accepting of this rural fate.
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All interesting, what we put up with in the country. Our power has always been pretty good except for black outs during electrical storms and car accidents way off in town tripping heaps of the countryside off. But the off-peak only failed three times when the town based Country Energy failed to switch the switch. No hot water in the morning. At some stage they recently realised they had a problem and they came out to all us out of towners and tweaked the meter box or something.
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The flowers don’t work, you say ? Wow have I made a big mistake or two million.
Seriously, Gez, many thanks to you and others like Big M for more leads into a newer more frugal suck on the energy teat.
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