Progress!

Last month I reported my monthly electricity and water usage for the mid-August to mid-September time frame.  It was atrocious, but it was also the hottest time of the year - when air-conditioning and frequent lawn watering is required.  Well, I got the new utility bill for the mid-Sept. to mid-Oct. period... and it is MUCH MUCH better!

Electricity
My electricity use went from 19.84 kwh/day to 7.13 kwh/day, a 64% decrease!  And there were several days in Sept. when I still had to use my air conditioner.  This new value amounts to about 300 watts being used all the time, though I imagine about half of it is still from the air conditioning needing to be fired up for several hours during the month.  It'll be interesting to see how much I use in a month without any air conditioning - which should be this month.

Water
My water usage went from 1.26 CCF/day to 0.75 CCF/day, a 40% decrease.  Again, this seems to be almost entirely dictated by how much I water my yard.  I've already decreased the watering frequency and duration again for this month, so it should be significantly lower next month.

This conservation saved me $82 this month.  Not too shabby.

Observations
1.  It's cold here at night now.   The average temp has been hovering in the low 50s (F).  Even if the temperature gets in the mid-90s outside, my house never goes above 78 or so.  Therefore, I don't need air conditioning.  This will probably be true until May, when the average temperatures are similar.  That means for 7+ months I will not need to use my air conditioner at all, and for another two months it will only sparsely be used.  This really does mean that upgrading to a more efficient air conditioning unit will not pay off for a LONG time.

2.  I'm still using 560 gallons of water per day.  This number is just completely unacceptable to me.  I still haven't really pushed the lawn watering to extremes.  I'm going to start watering it far less frequently now.

I've been accumulating good blog post ideas.  More soon to come.

Low Hanging Fruit II: Shower Head

Did you know the US uses 1.7 trillion gallons of water a year just for showering?  The EPA estimates that showers comprise 17% of all residential water use.

The shower head in my master bath felt amazing.   It had large holes and my house has fantastic water pressure, so there was a lot of water coming out.   I figured that I could decrease the water flux by a significant amount without decreasing the experience.

Well, I picked up a new shower head, one that is EPA Watersense certified.  It is supposed to offer the same performance, while decreasing water use by 30%.  I take this to mean that a good shower is not simply defined by the amount of water, but by its velocity and how evenly it's distributed.  When the flow is restricted on a regular shower head, the streams can be weak, and the shower experience sucks.  In a water efficient shower head, the exit holes are smaller so the water exits at a higher velocity, mitigating this problem, so you don't end up like Jerry Seinfeld...

Anyway, I got the new shower head and decided to do a test in real life conditions.  With both shower heads, I turned the water on full [note: my shower is either all on or all off, but the pressure does change depending upon how much hot/cold water is used so I was sure to use the same "temp" each time].  I measured the time for each shower head to fill up a 2 gallon bucket.  Here are the results:

Old:  51 seconds
New: 77 seconds

This translates to 2.35 gallons/minute for the old shower head, and 1.56 gallons/minute for the new shower head.  Success!  This new shower head uses 34% less water!  And it still feels great.  It's a no brainer.

I imagine my typical shower to be 8 minutes long (I know, I know, but I love showers).  So this shower head switch saves about 6 gallons per shower.  Not too shabby.  It's comparable to the amount saved by "letting it mellow."

Oh, and this also decreases by 34% the natural gas burned to heat the water.  Bonus.