Friday, July 16, 2010

E is for Electricity and Energy

So officially we are using the energy from the sun to dry our clothes!  

It's been a sultry July, and we've been sweating it out around here, NOT using our window ACs to cool the house, even at night.  To the chagrin of the family, I've opted to deal with a little bit of humidity and pull the cooler air in by window fans because the thought of our electric bill doubling due to ACs has not been appealing!  During the cooler morning, we suck cool air in, use the window shades to keep out the heat, but,  I now will feel less guilty about using the ACs if the mercury rises because we are not sucking power for the dyer....and in this house of 6 we do more loads per week than the average household (that is a discussion for another time!).   

On a side note, I do need to invest in a dryer rack as well because the ladies of the house (excluding myself) are in an UPROAR that their unmentionables might be seen.  Mind you our backyard is as private as can be this time of year, we can't see any of our neighbors houses because of the gloriously green trees!  

I couldn't resist a quick tally of the watts used by the 5 window units: including  4 window units in the bedrooms and one larger unit that cools the downstairs...those ACs use up a grand total of 4026 watts!!! 

And then I had to compare the wattage of the overworked and underpaid dryer - that baby sucks up a whopping 4400 watts and gets a workout weekly, and often daily all year long!!!

I'm hoping that using the sun to dry the clothes will offset the times that we use the AC, and that in the long run we will save electricity and energy since we can use the clothesline even when we don't need the AC :)  

Can't help but smile about summer!

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