An End to Only Wearing Garbage

February 3, 2009 at 11:16 am (challenge, clothing, dumpster diving, environment)
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On February 1st of 2008 I pledged to only wear clothing that came from the trash. Most of my clothes have come from a single dumpster that is located behind a thrift store.  A few have come from curbside “recycling” and a few I have found along the road while walking. The only things I wore that were not from the trash were underwear, socks and shoes. I am not completely opposed to wearing them from the trash, it is just difficult to find what you need in the right size.  Several pairs of socks, several bras and a pair of slippers did find their way to me. The rest I bought new or already had. Shoes generally come from thrift stores except for good walking shoes.

I have been very faithful to the challenge. The only times that I have worn items not from the trash have been minimal. I have a goretex raincoat that is 14 years old that I wore a couple times since I did not locate a dumpster equivalent. I wore a long sleeved shirt of a friends because I was cold and lazy. After much haranguing, I went to my car and got my own. The only other thing I can think of is wearing hats I previously owned. I found a few baseball caps that were acceptable enough to wear, but I didn’t stick to just trash ones.

So here is my confession of sorts. I recently forgot part of my challenge. I vowed to buy no clothing for myself for the entire year. So I am confessing that I have bought three articles of clothing, but with the honest intention of not wearing them until after Feb 1st. One blouse I bought at a garage sale, a T shirt and a Patagonia synchilla pullover were purchased at my local Salvation army. I did not buy anything new! This has really been remarkable since in a typical year I would probably buy 3-6 items a month at thrift stores and atleast one new item. Whether I needed them or not! I also did not accept any clothing and was not given any clothing as gifts from anyone.

I really had a fun time with this challenge. Had I not had a source of abundant castoffs, it would not have been as easy or as fun. I had lots of people comment on how nicely I dressed. I did make a point to dress nicely when I could. I intend on keeping many of the “new” clothes I acquired over the past year. Now my BIG problem is figuring out what I will keep from the old wardrobe and what I will keep from the “new” one. I now have so many more clothes than I need and it will be hard to get rid of things.

I definitely am done wearing ONLY garbage, but I will continue to wear garbage whenever I like.

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The Low Energy Fridge

August 24, 2008 at 5:07 pm (energy, environment, photographs, reduction, Riot for Austerity, Uncategorized)
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Awhile back on the Riot for Austerity on-line, support site, I saw a link to a refrigerator that claimed it only used 0.1Kwh/day. I was really intrigued by this and anxious to give it a try. Although it has not lived up to its extremely low energy use, it is quite a bit lower than the average fridge. Lower than average is what I seem to be about these days so we have stuck with it. Until Thursday.

Thursday was the day Tropical Storm Fay was scheduled to blow through the area. Schools were canceled and I was fed up with my 6.8 cubic foot fridge. So was my husband. Not only is it small, but it is a cube, so you have to layer everything in there and things can hang out at the bottom for weeks unnoticed.

Last year we had your regular fridge, 18 cubic feet, freezer on the top, no frills. I realize this in itself was less than average, since most people I know have larger fridges that tend to be side by side. These use a lot more energy. Our 1999, no frills 18 cu ft energy star fridge was using 1.6 Kwh/day. That is 585 per year. So what we did was buy a 6.8 cuft chest freezer for $200 and a temperature controller for $60. The temp controller allows you to over ride the freezer control so it maintains a temp of 38-42F. You plug the temp controller in the wall socket and the freezer into the controller. The controller turns the freezer on when the temp gets to 42F and then off when it reaches 38F. We have a killawatt meter to measure energy use. It told us that the new fridge was averaging 0.3-0.4kwh/day. Usage fluctuates more here in Florida, with higher energy use in the summer.

One of the main draw backs to doing this is that you no longer have a freezer. Well if you are like us, then you already had a 12 cuft chest freezer to store all your garden produce. So we really did not need that small freezer attached to a stand up fridge. If you are a small family, your needs could be met with two small chest freezers and one controller. Buying everything new might cost less than $400.  Not bad to get more freezer space than a small fridge with freezer would provide.

Our family of four was having trouble using such a small fridge. 6.8 cuft isn’t that small, but doesn’t lend itself to great ease of use. It made it so my kids had to depend on us to get most things out for them, unless it happened to be right on top. The milk never was.

So FINALLY, this past Thursday, I was charged up by the storm, and decided to make a major change. Did we run out and buy a huge fridge to make up for how we had deprived ourselves? No, because we really had not, we just switched the fridge with the freezer. So now we have a 6.8cuft freezer and a 12 cuft fridge. WOW, it was SO easy. Aside from moving everything out, cleaning the inside and switching all the contents, the only thing I had to do was move the temperature controller. I think we will even save energy and money.  You see, keeping a freezer cold, uses more energy than keeping a fridge cold. Since we are keeping less space and stuff frozen. I have not hooked the killawatt up to the “new” appliances yet, but can let you know in the future what the energy use is.  Now maybe you are asking yourself-well where is all the garden produce going now? Well in the past year I have learned to preserve food by canning, lacto-fermenting and drying. I have a hot water bath as well as a pressure canner. So I shouldn’t need as much space. So far I am happy with the new arrangement, until I go digging for something at the bottom of the freezer. Atleast it isn’t a daily occurrence like it has been. Now on to some photographs.

6.8cuft chest freezer in refridgerator space

6.8cuft chest freezer in refridgerator space

We chose the 6.8cuft freezer because it would fit into the space where our refrigerator was. This picture was taken after the swith so the controller is not shown. Now our freezer is in the kitchen and the fridge is in the laundry room. So far, no big deal.
Temperature controller

Temperature controller

Sorry it is blurry. It is a Johnson Controls temperature controller. It was purchased at a brewing supply store for $60. You can get them online if you don’t have a supply store in your area. Notice at the bottom of the picture there is a small wire sticking down next to a large one. The large one is the power cord and the small one is the wire that leads to the temperature sensor that goes into the unit. See next picture.
Temperature sensor inside "fridge"

Temperature sensor inside

 At the end of the wire is a thick piece of metal that measures the temperature inside the unit.

Inside of 12 cuft freezer-now fridge

Inside of 12 cuft freezer-now fridge

This is our 12cuft chest freezer. I have like items organized together. Veggies in the center basket, cheese, sour cream and tofu in the basket on the right. Eggs and miscellaneous on the left. Then there is a lot of room under the baskets.

On the left of the photo you can see the black power cord and the silver temperature controller wire. The wire lays across the top lip of the box and continues in under the left basket. 

I think we will be happy with this new arrangement. Would you be?

 

 

 

 

 

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An Entire Year of Rioting for Austerity

August 6, 2008 at 9:05 pm (challenge, environment, recycling, reduction, Riot for Austerity, Uncategorized, waste, water use)
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I have had so much fun being a part of The Riot for Austerity/ 90% reduction project. The project started last June 1st and our family joined in July. Sharon Astyk and her friend Miranda were discussing George Monbiot’s book “Heat”, where he discusses the need for industrialized nations to reduce their emissions by 94%. They wondered what a life would be like lived that way, since Chinese peasants seem to be the standard for low impact living. So they challenged each other to reduce there consumption and emissions by 90%, which makes accounting easier than 94%. They did this on their blogs and what do you know, other people decided to give it a try as well. So they ended up being amazed that over 1000 people were interested in joining them. Before March 2007, I had never read a blog. I’m not sure I even knew what one was. I started by reading No Impact Man by Colin Beavin. His blog linked to Sharon’s and The Riot, and that is what got me where I am today.

So today I am revealing what a year of rioting figures look like in our household. When doing the numbers, we figure up how we compare to the rest of the country in terms of consumption of resources. We are a family of four, living in the USA,  so our numbers are compared to the average American or average American household. Figures can be represented as a reduction of average use or as a percent of average. I’ll list both so as not to confuse anyone. There are seven categories for this project.

Gasoline:  The average American uses 500 gallons of gas per year. So  a typical family of four would use 2000 gallons a year. I break that down to 166.67 gallons a month. We used 230.72 gallons over a year. That is 19.2 gal/month and is 11.5% of average or an 88.5% reduction . And as reported previously, this does not include airline trips taken in November or any other time. So to be completely honest about the whole deal I am figuring up what these flights actually cost in terms of fuel use. I did a bit of research and found that according to one source a long haul flight gets 30mpg/person. Another site helped me figure out how many miles from home to Honolulu. 9,650 miles divided by 30mpg gives me 321gallons per person and with four of us equates to burning 1,287 gallons of gas for our vacation. A vacation I might add was planned and paid for 8 months before the riot began. Then in October my husband took my son to visit his Aunt and Grandmother. That adds another 198 gallons. Then in February our daughter flew to Indianapolis with my mother to go to a wedding and that adds another 73.4 gallons. So the grand total is really 1789.12 gallons. And that my friend brings us way down, or way up to 90% of average use or a 10% reduction.

Electric: The average household uses 900 kwh/month or close to 11,000/year. We used 4983kwh over a year. That is 415.25kwh/month so our usage is 46% of average or a 54% reduction. Many people doing the riot have the option of buying green energy. Wind and hydro give you an additional 75% reduction and solar gives you 50%. We pay for 750kwh of green energy each month, only ours is 5% wind and solar combined and the other 95% is landfill gas. I was never able to figure out what further reduction we should get. If in fact I could get a 50% reduction that would bring our electric use down to 23% of average or a 77% reduction. If it was more of a 25% reduction then it would look more like 35% of average or 65% reduction. 

Therms:  The average household uses 83.3 therms of natural gas per month or 1000 therms over the season,  much of it is used for heating. We have used no gas heat this past year, but did heat water and cook with gas. We used 112 therms over the year or 9.3/month. That equates to 11.2% of average or an 88.8% reduction. Having purchased a solar water heater, our future outlook is 4-6 therms per month or about 60 therms per year. This would be 6% of average or a 94% reduction.

Garbage:  The average person creates 4.5 pounds of garbage per day. A typical family of four would then produce 540 pounds of garbage per month or a staggering 6,480 pounds per year. We created 157.5 pounds of trash and 402 pounds of recyclables during the past 11 months that I have been weighing ALL our garbage. Recyclables count 80% of trash so the 402 pounds becomes 321.6 pounds. Adding the two together gives us a garbage total of 479.1 pounds for the time period or 43.5 pounds per month. That gives us 8% of average or a 92% reduction.

Water: The average person uses 100 gallons of water per day. That is 400 gallons per day for a family of four and 12 Kgallons a month. Over the past 12 months we have used 26 kgallons of water. According to the Riot rules, water for irrigation of food is not counted. We had a drought during our growing season and are estimating we used 6kgal to water the garden. That leaves us with 20kgal to account for. That would mean we used about 1.7 kgal/month which is 14% of average or an 86% reduction.

Consumer Goods. The average American household spends $10,000 a year or $833 a month. We easily spent the average amount of money since we purchased quite a few high ticket sustainability items such as a solar water heater, two low flow toilets, a pressure canner, a water filter, a new freezer oh yes and new windows. Having recently moved into a new/older house we have many things to upgrade and certainly not just for cosmetic reasons. A new roof is in our future as well as some new flooring. Not calculated.

Food: Food is a difficult thing to measure. Do you measure by weight, serving or by dollars spent. I never did any of these things because I could not keep track to that degree. So I can only say that our family went from eating a diet of mostly processed foods to one of few processed foods. We mostly buy fruits and veggies that are local and in season or pick directly from our garden. I have been buying much of our food from bulk bins and cooking dried beans and grains from scratch. The ideal that we have been shooting for according to Riot guidelines is to eat at least 70% of your diet from local and organic sources. Then 25% of your diet can come from bulk, dry goods like beans and grains, also loose tea or fair trade coffee. Then wet goods like conventionally grown meat, fruits and veggies, oils and milk should only make up about 5% of your diet. This last category is what makes up the larger portion of the average American diet. We started out at least at average and have ended up making it to 35% local/organic, 50% bulk, and 15% wet, conventional. This is the category we need the most work in. Getting enough local food is hard in a society that doesn’t value it. 

I enjoy calculating our numbers, heck I even enjoyed weighing all the trash. It was just so satisfying to see the difference you could make. Why don’t you try some of the easier things. To make things even easier, there is a calculator on the Riot site that will figure things up for you. You don’t have to join the Riot, just become aware of how much of our planet’s finite resources you are using.   

The best advice I can give anyone in how to make a difference to our planet is USE LESS. Use less of EVERYTHING.             

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June Riot Update

August 3, 2008 at 5:29 pm (challenge, environment, recycling, reduction, Riot for Austerity, waste, water use)
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Riot for Austerity/ 90% reduction project started last June 1st and our family joined in July. For those who started when the project began, the year has come to maturity. I had not planned on keeping data for another month, but since I did, I figured I would post it. I am pretty sure this will be my last update.

We are a  family of four, living in the USA,  so our numbers are compared to the average American or average American household. There are seven categories as follows. 

Gasoline: We purchased 20.1 gallons in June. The average American uses 500 gallons of gas per year. So  a typical family of four would use 2000. I break that down to 166.67 gallons a month. Our use of 20.1 gal was 12% of average.  

Electric: We used 456 Kwh from  June 12 to July 14 . The average household uses 900 kwh/month so our usage is 50.6% of average. We have started using the air conditioner full time and even though it is not set as high as last year, we are using less energy because we bought new windows last October. Our usage one year ago however was 884 Kwh for the same month.

Therms: We used 6 therms of natural gas from  June 12 to July 14. Our usage is 7% of average. We are only using natural gas to cook with currently. The average household uses 83.3 therms per month or 1000 therms over the season, much of it is used for heating. 

Garbage: We created 4 1/2 pounds of trash and 8 1/2 pounds of recyclables in June. We are at 2% of average.  The average person creates 4.5 pounds of garbage per day. A typical family of four would then produce 540 pounds of garbage per month. We have the smallest garbage can the city provides and we could go a whole month before our can was full. I put our trash out every two weeks. 

Water: We used 1 kilogallons from June 12 to July 14. It went down from 6!  I have not had to water our garden since it started raining June 1st.  The average person uses 100 gallons of water per day. That is 400 gallons per day for a family of four or 12 Kgal a month. Our 1 Kgal is 8% of average. Glad to be back to normal.

Consumer Goods-I dropped the ball on tracking this. I think I spent quite a bit less in this area, mostly because we did not need any more toilets. We did spend some money on chicken wire to build our chicken coop. I know we bought a  few more things, but no where near $833 the average family spends per month. 

Food: I think we did really well this month for food choices. I think our purchases ended up with local at 35%, bulk category at 50% and I think the wet, conventional, processed food is down to 15%. I have been to the farmers market almost every Saturday and am eating out of the garden as well.

Now that I have a years worth of information, I am going to do a year end summary, to show how our family fared over the course of a year. I said that last month, but have better numbers for this June than last, so will use this years. It isn’t cheating since we didn’t start the Riot till July anyway.

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Independance Days Update for June

July 2, 2008 at 2:45 pm (challenge, environment, Independance days challenge update, reduction, waste)
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I have been lazy about posting my Independance updates. I have only done one prior to this. This is my update for about the past month or more. I don’t think I have the mental energy to update every week. What have you guys been up to?

PLANTED- Rattlesnake pole beans(94)

HARVESTED- lots of tomatoes, 4 veg marrow, one EGG, 14 lbs potatoes, black eyed peas.

PRESERVED- Froze 4 lbs blueberries, Canned blueberry jam and whole blueberries. Made 3 pints sauerkraut, 3 pints watermelon preserves. 2 pints dilly beans.

STORED- 10 more jars of organic peanut butter(purchased for $1 each), 7 bags of rice 5lbs each, granola, pinto beans, couscous, 4 bottles lemon juice, sugar, coconut milk, 18- 1lb boxes pasta(buy one get one free), canning salt and 4 jars salsa.

PREPARED-working on chicken coop, purchased more emergency supplies like first aid kit, got hurricane box together and stored. Bought more canning jars and lids.

MANAGED-reorganised pantry to fit everything in.

COOKED-Peanutty Asian Coleslaw and potato salad

LOCAL-talked about food storage with 2 other people locally

REDUCE WASTE-preserved watermelon rind, eating weeds from garden

NEW SKILL-nothing yet

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May riot update

June 29, 2008 at 7:52 pm (challenge, environment, recycling, reduction, Riot for Austerity, waste, water use)
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I seem to have messed up my original post. I’ll try to fix it when I have time.

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No Time To Waste

June 24, 2008 at 6:46 pm (environment, waste)
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This appeared on a website called The Daily Kos. My mother reads it every day and sent the link to me. I thought it was so important I wanted to spread the word. To read the whole post click on the link at the bottom.

“Hansen on Warming: We have ONE year.. ONE election (Updated)”

by chapter1

Mon Jun 23, 2008 at 07:25:51 PM PDT

In 2006, the great climate scientist James Hansen famously said

I think we have a very brief window of opportunity to deal with climate change … no longer than a decade, at the most.

Since then, things have gotten much, much worse.  The Arctic ice is melting faster than expected.  CO2 emissions are accelerating.  Global warming is accelerating.

Hansen no longer stands by his estimate that we have one decade to turn things around. He now thinks that was too optimistic.

Today, James Hansen told congress that  we have one year.

Daily Kos: State of the Nation

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April Riot Update

May 25, 2008 at 8:20 pm (environment, recycling, reduction, Riot for Austerity, waste, water use)
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I have had so much fun being a part of The Riot for Austerity/ 90% reduction project. The project started last June 1st and our family joined in July. There are a growing number of people all over the world, still joining this movement to help halt climate change. What are you willing to do to help save the world as we know it?

I finally have all my numbers for the month of April. As I stated last month, as part of The Riot For Austerity we usually figure up how we compare to the rest of the country in terms of consumption of resources. We are a family of four, living in the USA,  so our numbers are compared to the average American or average American household. There are seven categories. For two weeks we had my husbands mother staying with us so I will adjust the figures that are per person. 

Gasoline: We purchased 13.11 gallons in April. The average American uses 500 gallons of gas per year. So  a typical family of four would use 2000. I break that down to 166.67 gallons a month. Our use of 13.11 gallons was 7.9% of average.  Our 11 month cumulative total is 223.02 gallons or 12.2 % of average. And as reported previously, this does not include airline trips taken in November. If I add in two weeks of gas allotment for an extra adult, we come down to an even 7% of average, woo hoo!

Electric: We used 315 Kwh from  April 11 to May13 . The average household uses 900 kwh/month so our usage is 35% of average. Our lowest usage was in January and the numbers have been slowly climbing. We jumped from 25% last month to 35% this time. The warmer weather makes the fridge and freezer work harder. And one week before the meter was read we had our water heater switched from gas to electric to have a solar water heater installed. Electric is per household, but we did have an extra member for two weeks.

Therms: We used 9 therms of natural gas from  April 11 to May 13. Our usage is 11% of average. More hot water was used with an extra adult.  The average household uses 83.3 therms per month or 1000 therms over the season, since much of it is used for heating. We have used no gas heat this past year, but do heat water and cook with gas..

Garbage: We created 14.75 pounds of trash and 20.75 pounds of recyclables in April. Recyclables count 80% of trash so we are at 5.8% of average. If I figure in two weeks of an extra person it brings us down to 5.2%. The average person creates 4.5 pounds of garbage per day. A typical family of four would then produce 540 pounds of garbage per month. We have the smallest garbage can the city provides and we could go a whole month before our can was full. I put our trash out every two weeks.

Water: We used 4 kilogallons from April 11 to May 13. It went up from 2. We have been watering our garden since about April 11th. We went five weeks with no rain! The average person uses 100 gallons of water per day. That is 400 gallons per day for a family of four and 12 Kg a month. Our 4 Kg is 33% of average. The creators of The Riot say that water used to water your vegetable garden or crops does not count the same as household water use. We cannot separate the two. But I can guess that we used 2 Kg for household and 2Kg for watering. That would take us down to 16% of average. And if I add in the allotment for another adult for 2 weeks we come down to 14.9%.

Consumer Goods. Well during April I was participating in the buy nothing challenge with Crunchy Chicken.  I was not able to truly buy nothing. I bought 24 books from our friends of the library book sale. $16 but counts as $1.60 because they are used. We spent money on a camping trip for spring break, but didn’t buy anything tangible. I did really need to buy my daughter some new tennis shoes for $21.85. Then our big expense/purchase for the month was a new toilet. $347.00.  It counts as half under riot rules since it is infrastructure to reduce usage. The average American household spends $10,000 a year or $833 a month. We spent adjusted $326.98 or 39% of average.

Food: This category is always hard for me. I just guess what I think we eat and spend money on and then I double check what my husband thinks. I think we did better than last month with local at 30%, bulk category at 45% and I think the wet, conventional, processed food is down to 25%. 

In summary our gasoline use decreased by 2 percentage points, Electric went up 10 percentage points, Nat gas use went up a percentage point.  Garbage had been dropping but went up 2 percentage points. Water use increased by 50% again, increasing 16 percentage points, but really staying the same for household use. Consumer goods is higher since we bought a big ticket item and will be next month since we plan to buy another toilet. And the food category is pretty much the same but with a definite move in the right direction….towards local!    

I have to say that my mother in law was a great sport the entire two weeks she stayed with us. She turned the water off while soaping up and shampooing, she sat outside and read books using natural light and enjoying the warmth(she is from Wisconsin). She gave us money for the farmers market and ate quite a bit of local vegetarian food. She even discovered some new foods she liked. It was a great visit all around!

If my mother in law can have a great time doing this, you can too. So why don’t you take some time to look at your utility and gasoline bills, and see where you fall on the percentage chart. To make things even easier, there is a calculator on the Riot site that will figure things up for you. You don’t have to join the Riot, just become aware of how much of our planet’s finite resources you are using.                

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Saving water in the kitchen

May 13, 2008 at 4:28 pm (environment, reduction, waste)
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There are quite a few ways to save water in the kitchen. First, lets look at where water is used. There is food prep, cooking,  clean-up, and miscellaneous use.

A great way to make the water in your kitchen do double duty is to have a grey water system. It can be as rudimentary as washing vegetables in a dish pan and then carrying the dish pan outside to water plants. Here is a great post on grey water. http://thesustainablehome.blogspot.com/2008/04/safe-use-of-household-grey water.html Another method for capturing grey water is a funnel called Envirosink that is installed behind your sink and allows you to run the water till it is hot or cold, and capture that water for reuse. You could also pour water into it from containers like your dish pan. The Envirosink can be directed to a collection tank for processing or direct use.

When preparing food for meals, be aware of how much water you use. If you do not have an aerator on your kitchen tap, get one. It should slow the flow to 2 gallons per minute. When vegetables or fruits get washed, wash them in a dish pan or large pot of water. Don’t let all that valuable water run down the drain. We keep a five gallon bucket near our sink so we can pour water into it throughout the day and empty it onto trees, bushes or plants. Don’t use running water to defrost foods. Let them sit in the fridge overnight or use your microwave.

If you cook food by boiling it such as pasta, vegetables or eggs, let the water cool down and add it to your compost pile or garden. If you have ants or weeds in an unwanted location, the hot water water will kill them both. When cooking, chose your pot size wisely. Too large a pot will not only use more water than necessary, but use more energy to heat up as well.

When cleaning up, don’t throw all those food scraps and peels down the disposal, start a compost pile. If you are in an apartment or have a really good excuse for not composting, use that grey water from washing your veggies to run the disposal. Think creatively. There is a big debate about whether or not dishwashers use more or less water than hand washing. Well my answer is sometimes more and sometimes less. What it boils down to is exactly how much water is used in total for each method. Some people pre-rinse all their dishes before loading them into the dishwasher. Don’t do this if you have a new D/W. I do this because we have an 18 year old D/W. I only use about a gallon of water for all the pre-rinsing. An older or non energy star D/W can use 14 or more gallons per load. Whereas an energy star model will use more like 8.5 gallons/load. So, if you could measure how much water you used to hand wash dishes, it would have to be less than your D/W used to be saving water. One method for hand washing, if you have the sink room, is to have a basin for the initial de-grimming of the plates. Then a basin of warm soapy water. Then a basin of warm water to rinse. The first two basins could hold as little as one gallon of water. The rinse basin may need three. This gets you five gallon/load. So not only did you save water, but you saved electricity as well.  If you hand wash in basins, you can save the water, if you use a D/W you cannot. Just remember to use biodegradable soap. [Edited to add: When using a dishwasher always run a full load of dishes.]

The last couple of miscellaneous thoughts about saving water in the kitchen are, first, don’t let the water run till it is cold to get a drink. Keep a pitcher of filtered water in the fridge. And lastly, but may be the most important is to fix any and all leaks as soon a they are discovered. A leaky faucet can waste thousands of gallons of water per year. If you can’t fix it right away, keep a container under the faucet. As long as the container is clean, the water will be clean enough to use.

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Homemade cheap solar water heater

May 5, 2008 at 9:45 pm (environment, photographs, reduction, waste)
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Have you ever turned on your garden hose to find out that the water was so hot you would cook your plants unless you let the water run awhile?  Well if you haven’t, give it a try. It is the inspiration behind our cheap solar water heater. Several years back, my Dad gave us a bunch of irrigation tubing. We decided to try to turn it into a solar water heater. It worked really well, so when we moved, we brought it to the new house. This is how we hooked it up.

The solar water heater we have is a black garden hose connected to an outdoor spigot at one end. The hose travels up the side of the house and onto the roof.

            

The next end is connected to another hose, then about 100 feet of irrigation tubing.

         

Special fittings were added to be able to connect it to the hose.

The next part is a hose that is designed to withstand hot temperatures. It is red. We got it at Lowe’s.

At the end of the red hose is a metal piece that allows you to shut the water off.

We keep the water turned on at the spigot all the time. This keeps water in the hose. We have had problems doing this. The hoses sometimes weaken with the hot sun and you get leaks or large busted holes. Then my husband repairs it and we may turn the water off each time we use it for awhile, then go back to leaving it on. Even if you turn the water off in between uses, there will still be enough left in the hose for the next time. If you had the mental ability to do this, you could turn the water on about 30 minutes before you needed it and then off when finished. My mind just doesn’t work that way.

Obviously, the more hose length you have, the more water you can heat up. There is a formula to find out exactly how much water a hose will hold according to its diameter and length.  Someone else can figure that out. I don’t know how many feet of hose we really have, but we can get about 10 gallons of hot water. Now remember, we only use about 4-5 gallons of water for bathing. The only other thing we use the water for is laundry. The washer needs 7 gallons to get it going. I don’t add more for the rinse cycle. The other thing to consider is that the water temp will vary from 110F to 140F when it is in the sun. If you do a bucket bath you may need to add cold water to get a reasonable temperature. Don’t burn yourself!

If you were to attempt a do it yourself version like we have, remember we live in Florida. We have less than 20 days of below freezing temps. If you live in a colder climate you may need to drain all the hoses and store them for the winter. For even more information on various DIY solar projects visit this site:

http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects/WaterHeating/water_heating.htm  They even have the garden hose as an option. Any questions?

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