permaculture

["Robert Waldrop" <rmwj@soonernet.com>]

In the winter, the only electrical usage is lights, one television,
computer, refrigerator and freezer.  We don't have central heating so
there's no fans to run. No washer, solar clothes dryer, no electric
dishwasher.  We only heat two rooms in our former duplex during the
winter, plus the kitchen is only heated when we're cooking.  So both
the freezer and refrigerator are in nearly unheated rooms.

We have a woodstove, but two years ago the chimney fractured and we
haven't reinstalled it.  In the meantime, during the winter we make do
with 2 small propane heaters during the day, we turn them off at
night.

the number of people living here fluctuates, right now there's only
two, there's been as many as 11 (we heated 3 rooms then, one using a
kerosene heater).  During the winter we use 1 dekatherm  of natural
gas for cooking and hot water heating.  If it is really cold (tens or
below), we will use about 180 pounds of propane a month.  We don't get
much snow, but the temp and wind combination can be hard to bear
sometimes.  We put up interior shutters we have made or hang several
layers of wool blankets over windows at night.  We don't have much
insulation at all right now, but as soon as we get rewired we're going
into superinsulation (R 60 in the attic).  We have done a lot of
caulking and weatherstripping, but we're still pretty leaky, mostly
because of some window problems (the house was builtin 1929).

The more people that are around, the harder it is to get everybody to
do basic things like turning off lights when they leave the room,
etc., but somehow we seem to manage.

Robert Waldrop, OKC
http://www.oklahomafood.org
-----Original Message-----
From: Ted Markow <tbag.markow@verizon.net>
>Sounds a lot like actions I've taken here in the 'burbs, though I'm
>curious how you cut your electric consumption to <250 kwh/month in
the
>winter.  Is it because winters in OKc are mild, or do you have a wood
>stove?  I have a super-tight wood stove insert that I use as backup
to an
>oil furnace, and it helps a little.  - though, I know the furnace
isn't
>really a big electric draw, not like the electric heating elements
(oven,
>drier, etc.) and the fridge.