Day 20 - challenge was to not use the oven

One of the hardest challenges is to keep a house cool. The oven produces a challenge as while your cooking the oven is heating the house. We like hot food so we grilled when we were not doing salad. We did pizza and fajitas on the grill. We have a pizza stone. DW put the stone on the grill with an oven gauge. First pizza came out charred as we set the grease in the grill on fire. DW got the water sprayer and sprayed the flame out. Pizza was black on the bottom. The next three came out better as DW became more experienced... Despite the grill from hell food was good.

Day 19 - tomatos every day

Yes we have a tomato plant forest and is is giving us a sizable chunk of tomatoes for dinner and lunch. Not so overwhelming that we have to can some... though there are plans to can some stuff. We did fill some apothecary jars with various herbs that were dried over the weekend.

The day is nice but dry and I am not doing so well with my allergies. The dryness is not very good for me so much so that I think if I had a choice I would live in a rain forest. I do not want to travel to Arizona for example.

Pretty much regular, though I am going to use electric Sunday to print out an Algebra sheet for Marisa to fill out if she can for AP Algebra. I think that for this year she is already in for whatever math they have although they did "complain" that most of the students are advanced and would have to open perhaps two sections for advanced math. We still do not know if she did well on her end year tests. You have to plan when you do not use electricity at the house every day.

Day 18 - experimenting with electricity and gas

Well the Idea to measure the electricity and gas has entered into the equation. We would like to see what happens when we are in the dark compaired with in the electricity on Sunday. MiL will monitor the electric meter each day at the same time and then we will get an average saving.

Of course the high tech solution would be Ted: http://www.theenergydetective.com/news/ted-featured-nbc6-news/ for $200 dollars but you could use your internet connection to see what is happening from anywhere. I think that it would really be excellent when you have a house that is far away from you and you wanted to monitor electricity. Anybody staying there would or might turn on the lights if remote enough. I liked the video explanation.

The experiment goes on. We are getting a reading on thursday from the electric company so any saving would be reflected in our bill... if the electric company shows up.

Over the weekend, since we had electricity, some spices were dried. What you see is the top rack of Basil and underneath we have the rest. We have a dryer that uses electricity. Also, four loaves of bread and four of zucchini bread were made.

MiL just realized that she likes the sun to her back when hanging clothing. We chose the side for the clothing line because we have a strait shot to our basement to the tree. Easy to load things from the driveway to the basement and bring clothing up from the washer. It was an accident that the line happens to be on the west side of the building. Therefore we have learned a lesson to put the clothing line on the west side of the building with a strait shot to the basement.

We are also being more diligent in disconnecting unnecessary lines of power. Clocks were disconnected from the power grid and as always the computers are off and disconnected from the power source. Even when you have a disconnected inverter there is still some power going through the phone charger so that also is a good thing to only connect up when you have to power a battery device. Now if only I could figure out where the google house power reporter is... google has a widget that directly monitors power usage from the house. I do not know if this is active on the east coast but it is worth investigating. That is it for now!

Day 16 Electricity Day

Everything seems so bright today, I cannot even look at my computer. I think that my brightness is too much. I went to use the WC and decided to turn off the light and leave the night light on. It is rather nice to have the electricity, because we had English muffins that we toasted up. You do not think of a toaster till you miss one.

This is an example of how night reading occurs when you do not have lights. I like to block the candle with my hands to have the page brighter than the candle shining in my face.

DW cooked four loafs of bread today for the week. We had about a half a loaf at lunch with cheese and apples. MiL is supposed to make zucchini bread. Dinner is macaroni and cheese with stewed tomatoes.

We also cleaned the bathrooms and I ironed this after noon to keep up as we cannot properly do these things without light.

Day 15 - solar drying

Well the most excellent day today, We were cleaning up from the storm yesterday which got our screened in porch wet. Not a problem today as it was really sunny. We took our wooden steps outside to dry and I will have to put them back.

The big news today is that we have hung our laundry out side today. DW is excited to sleep on sheet that smell of the outside, shades of her youth. Unfortunately one of the problems with solar drying is that a bird may choose to soil the hanging sheets. Well the bird got lucky and nailed the bottom sheet and my light green Girl Scout Cookie Shirt. Both were taken down and washed again and we are awaiting the result.

Drying on the line is much more efficient as you have only to wait for the washer then start the next load. Rather than washer then drier, I think that the solar drying is a bit faster as well as non electricity using. Unless it is raining, the easiest thing is to hang dry. We were doing some catching up today and so we had three loads on the lines which shall not repeat for a while.

D14 - Burning the midnight candles

Just in case you are wondering after dark we play cards and or read. I usually use one candle to read but for playing cards you need to see the whole field. For reading, I prefer a high taper to my right Since I also like to read from a book stand I also will place one of the Jar lights between me and my book stand book with my elbow on the table blocking the light from the candle to see more from the reflection on the page. Neighbors might think that we are holding a spirit summoning but most days we are playing solitaire or reading.

Today we were clearing the area under the clothes line of rocks and construction waste and wisteria. It began to rain so we cleared the tools and escaped to the library. Tomorrow, Saturday it is supposed to be 95 degrees and or perhaps 100 degrees a new personal best for the day. I am sure that we will survive it but it will be a slow day.

Day 13 - Setting the line

Finally the lines are up for the clothing line. We have only to put the sheets on the line to save energy and they smell good. The only reason to use drier is for the towels uses for drying us. Towels tend to stiffen up like boards.


The girls are complaining about washing dishes while saving water instead of using the dishwasher. I am more worried about dry rot or some mold forming inside the dish washer. I should look into some preservative for non use of dish drawers. I figure we are still good as we are and should give both a run on Sunday.

Mother in Law attended the brew ha ha last night called the variance meeting and also attended the Green Team meeting. In the Variance meeting we are still pretty short of people despite having over 500 fliers put in doors. Nothing is being decided yet but without the people it will go against us. I guess no one is politically motivated any more. Seems kind of funny since this town has its political people . In the Green Team meeting, the MiL is being encouraged to go on local TV about the experiment... we will see. Else instead of retirement, MiL is currently being courted by a company who deals in construction.

The sad part of the computers is that we have become so dependant on them to contact people that MiL received an email in the morning from the hiring company for a phone screen a couple of hours later. She missed the email but we still ran her phone out to her when it rang. She being prepared did the phone screen at 8:30 AM. She received the email later that day. If we expect to talk to a person we should at least have the courtesy of 24 hours notice by email... the way it was in the "old" days? Email should not be central to life, unless they are providing the email.

Day 12 - Daily life

Still using gray water to keep the hydrangea alive during the voluntary cutback of water. Since we take navy showers... Turn on the water, get wet, turn off, soap up and rinse. We are not using as much water as before as a family unit.

DD12 wants to propose using the dish drawers during the week as well as on Sunday. I think that it will be voted down. Currently they are using two bowls in the sink one for soaping and another for rinsing. Again with the water saving and it is a good lesson for the children on how to clean with little water and no electricity.

I just filled in the ground around the cement post that we have for the clothing line. We had some burlap on the cement to allow it to dry slower but with the couple of days of storms I do not think it had the chance to dry out. It is still perfectly strait up and perpendicular to the ground from all around.

Checking out the Blog settings found out that I was set to Uganda, though I have never been there I reset it to New Jersey where I live.

Day 11

After not getting to the library yesterday, the girls decided to finish a bit later than usual today so we got to the library at 2 PM.

Grandmother taught me what we call snake which is a card game where you need the cards to add up to 10, 20, or 30 three cards at a time. You start on the left and place three cards down from left to right you pick up cards from the end or beginning and discard. There for you lay down a king, 2, and three. You got nothing. add a five and you pick up the two and three and turn over. Leaving the King to be piled upon. Next cards are a ten, one and 10. You pick up the two tens with the king leaving a one, and so on. You should end with only one card. Being tired I messed up a lot but finally did win three games of approximately 10 games. This is what happens when you have no computer.

The evening festivities continue, we have a Green Team meeting tonight and a variance meeting at the town hall tonight so it should be good entertainment either way attending. Green team is a local advisory board to recommend changes to the local government that would be ecologically efficient for the local government to employ to save money and to be more green.

Else looking for 802.11 b access point and router for wireless in the house. We need both to keep the wireless from being an entrance into our Ethernet network run by our current router. I have a Best buy cards and can bring it in for about 100.

I would prefer to have a big router for the many ports we have but a four port will do for now. Computers are off which helped last night as there was a big thunder boomer with rain. We needed a third barrel for water it came down so hard. We are using the barrel water for plants both to get rid of it and not to use the water from the tap as the county is on a voluntary water restriction. Walking around you see green lawns and those that are sun damaged. Vegetables are doing well we might have lost a couple of pepper plants as they were beaten down and we can not stand them up again we will see if they can be saved.

Sunday the day of electricity

You have to wonder what it takes to make a cloths line... well you need to find some hooks and some bolts.

Next you dig a hole very deep and then sink a post fill the tube with cement and you have a wonderful clothesline in a week. You have to have wife with power tools, mother-in-law with left over cement and wood, and daughters ready do dig. This was the weekend project of our clan.

Sunday was a wonderful day of air-conditioning except when I came up from the basement I turned off the emergency cut of at the top of the stairs. Go figure that I could not get through one day of full air.

My contribution to the cloths line was that I would make salad from the garden and tote the 100 bag of cement up the stairs from the crawl space. Wife mixed the morter and made summer squash lasagna. Daughters dug the hole and set the pole in the cement.

Anyway the Great Experiment continues by again pulling the plug on Monday with a few alterations of the rules. Night lights for the bathrooms, we were going through too many matches. It really makes you think about computer usage and to use the time that you are on them with better fore thought. Though the internet is a grab bag of everything, sometimes having it in little slices is better than not at all or at all hours.

Day 8 - Petition to continue passes

Well we are continuing the great experiment despite some problems that we have had with matches and lighting of candles. Our biggest use of matches is going to the bathroom, with each of us going at random times. To address this issue we are leaving the nightlights on to bathroom... unfortunately that means that they run non stop for 24 hours. I think of this as a stop gap measure till with think of something else. Besides a candle lit shower is rather nice and I will probably continue the practice.

The next item of interest is the proposed Sunday of air conditioning and free computer use has passed. Perhaps TV will also be introduced but I doubt it. The girls will have one day free of the library which is usually closed on Sundays.

In case you are wondering what the girls do... they are watching Disney channel and during the commercials reading J-14 magazine though dd8 likes the commercials. I figure they are out of the heat for an hour or two and occupied. The parental units usually are doing Face book or job search not necessarily in that order.

Hole digging today was how the moring was spent. The girls are great help troweling out the dirt and packing away the construction stuff in the crawl space...where it is very cool. Dd8 is great at cleaning leafy green food from our garden, she is enjoying the independance of the search and preperation of the food for salads and sandwiches.

Day 7 - the heat is back

Dd8 has successfully learned how to light matches. I still want to watch her as the first time she is burned she will panic and burn a hole in a towel. The big time of the first bath room candle lighting came. She lit the match and the candle but burned the back of her fingers. I had run some water in the basin, stoppered at the drain. I told her to throw the match into the drain. She was more frightened than burned and remarked at how hot the match had become.

Today, she asked me to light the bathroom candle. She was too scared tn it. This too I will have to work through with her.

Dw (Dear Wife) found some fifty hour small jar lights for the bathrooms at $.89 per glass. They seem to be working well but I should go through the proceedue again with dd8 and the new candles.

Day 6 - the rain has ended!!

The monster plant in the center of the photo is our tomato plants... six in all planted maybe 8 are there. In the foreground we get cherry tomatoes perhaps 3-8 a day in the back are green tomatoes about the size of a fist that we are waiting to harvest.

The leafy thing on the left, by the gate, is a rhubarb plant that I have almost killed by accident but seems to have taken gigantic proportions with the rain despite the dry spell from a couple of days. We have had a water restriction on where we can only water the producing plants and not the flowers or the hydrangea plants. We have kept them pretty nice so far but the dry spell with the water restriction about near killed the bigger hydrangea.

We have been using our dish waste water to water the hydrangea and keeping a couple of trash bins full of water so that when the rain stops we can water from the run off trash bins the vegetable garden.

Progress is being made with the cloths line, we will hopefully be digging out some holes to plant the poles for the line this weekend. Right now we are cleaning the area so the clothes lines do not interfere with anything that we are storing on the ground.

My Dear Daughter of 8 years is also excited as I will be teaching her how to light the matches at some time today after her chores are over for the day. We still have to do our weeding today, one bucket for each of us, but I am excused as I hurt my right hand digging up some weeds. I will be moving boards to the crawl space to expose the part of the yard that is planned for the clothes line.

The great experiment continues as we have decided to continue indefinately with Sunday being the day of unlimited use of home computers (Libraries are closed). Lights if we want to use them.

Day five - rain

We have moved a couple of garbage barrels to catch the rain that is coming down in droves. One barrel was 3/4 full so we installed a tube to equalize the water level between the two barrels. We plan to use the water instead of depending on the water company to supply the water for our vegetable garden.

We are running out of candles and matches at this time, it seems that each person when going to the necessary is lighting a candle this has depleted our small source of candles. Since we are using candles the question came up as to why candles burn. Well, I said that the wax was the fuel that the wick or string uses to burn. I was correct but also found out that parrafin is made of fossil fuels, I knew it at one time was made of whale oil but missed that it is a still made of oil. Soy candles are totally cheap candles that are made from soy oil. I do suppose that the soy oil comes at a great cost kind of like fuel from corn but is cheapened by the resources afforded us by having oil wells. Who would have thought it. Seems like soy candles were invented in 1992 by Michael Richards who was looking for a cheaper alternative to bees wax.

It is suggested that we continue the great experiment indefinately with Sunday being the off day to use the computers that we depend upon in the house. I am OK with the heat and walking to the library but the library is not open on Sunday therefore this is good.

Day four - rainy day at the library

The Great Experiment ... what to say could be carbon saving or could be saving money or being really green or camping in your house. Lots of reasons and a few excuses but a friend of mine by the name of Radio Ned said I should blog about the experience. Therefore, I am using blogger.

The Great Experiment is where we do not use the lights in the house, microwave or the computers. Gas stove and oven are OK to use. Somehow the coffee maker did not make the banned list nor the electric clocks. It is not a complete ban of everything electrical but on the most abused or overused items.

Showering and bath rooming seems to be the most challenging area because you have to turn on a light to see. Our youngest does not know how to strike a match to light the candle.

Computer use is restricted to outside the house which has promoted daily walks to the library where the adults and children play games and search for jobs while our computers remain unplugged. The exercise is good but having the rain shower walk home wouldn't be good so am starting this for Radio Ned and others that think that we are nuts.