AttemptGreen.com

We are all getting upset over gas prices and looking for ways improve the outlook for fuel.  A lot of people are looking at the cars they drive, ways they commute, or perhaps even instituting flextime at work or telecommuting.  But have you thought about looking within your home?   Most people don’t think about energy their homes consume when they feel the “pain at the pump”.

According to some stats published by Owens Corning (they cite the Department of Energy, but take it for what it’s worth), 80% of homes built before 1980 are not insulated to government standards and even newer homes are only insulated to the minimum standard.  They also have the following quote on their website:

“Many Americans assume that transportation and industry are the largest consumers of energy in the U.S., but it’s actually buildings,” said Wendy Burt from the U.S. Department of Energy. “The electricity consumed by one single home puts more carbon dioxide into the air than two average cars. The good news is there are simple energy-efficient upgrades we can make, such as adding insulation in the attic and caulking windows and doors that reduce our energy footprint and save us money.”

Owens Corning also offers a Home Report Card Quiz to figure out where your home ranks for energy efficiency.  I took the quiz for my house back in Cleveland (we sold it for those of you following my personal life as well) and it received a grade of B.  We were good with energy efficient appliances, good on the hot water heater, decent on the windows, but we could have improved on sealing up those cracks that temperature controlled air leaks out of.  Now I do realize all this information could be taken as slighted since it all comes from a company that produces insulation.  Even if half of it were true, this is still pretty amazing and they are things we should pay attention to.

Instead of getting mad and support off shore drilling, do something about it.  Add value to your home; conserve the energy you use, by making your home more energy efficient.  Whether it be to insulate your home, or just sealing up cracks around the home where heated and cooled temperatures leak.  While I’m awful at economics, I do know that by not using fuel for heating and cooling, it makes it available for other uses and would lower prices because there is less demand (or something like that).

A few posts back, Alex commented about the blogs he reads and would like to know what I read.  So now available on this blog is a blogroll, available in the right hand column.  There are many great green blogs available.  I also believe this is what finally put me up on the Best Green Blogs.  Best Green Blogs is a great website to go to if you want to find other blogs addressing the environment and sustainability.  Many of the blogs in the directory can get into very specific topics, like travelling green or raising a green baby.

Check out some of these other blogs that I read if the topics seem to apply to your life too.  If there is something that you read that you think I should check out, let me know.  Even though my life has been a bit crazy the last month or two with selling my house (YEAH, it’s sold!), I’m still on the lookout for new things to learn, read, and topics I want to write about.  My topic list is growing so look for more new topics in the future, like the dryer I’ve dreamed about, conserving more gas by improving a home’s energy efficiency and a fantastic top ten list.

As most of you know, I recently moved cities and while I’m waiting for my house to sell in Cleveland, I’m renting an apartment in Philly.  I’m not really a fan of apartment living.  I loved being able to change anything I wanted to in my house that I wanted to, especially to be more energy efficient.  But even living in an apartment, I found things that I can do to improve the apartment.

Ever since we moved into the apartment we have been unhappy with the water pressure in the shower.  There seemed to be enough water, but it just wasn’t spraying right.  Finally I had enough and decided to change the showerhead.  I walked over to HomeDepot (it is close enough that I just walked, no need to use the car) and took a look at my options.  My goal was to get a showerhead that would improve the water pressure and not spend a whole lot of money but I ended up getting so much more.

I bought this showerhead.  First off, it accomplished my goal by costing less than $20 and improved the water pressure, dramatically.  So this allows me to rinse the soap off much faster because the water pressure is there.  Still uses the same amount of water, just better water pressure, allowing me to get out the shower faster.  Overall I’m using less water.  Secondly, I found one of the settings to be very useful. I’m not sure what it is called, but I will call it the trickle setting.  This allows the water to still run but holds back most of the water and the water will just trickle out of the showerhead.  How is this useful?  (TMI warning) If you take some time soaping up, you can turn the water down while you get all soapy and then change the setting back when you are ready to rinse off.  Not that useful for me because I typically will rinse my hair out while soaping up, multitasking.  However, I found it very useful while shaving my legs.  I won’t get into the details.

This project took about 5 minutes to do, no exaggeration there.  I realize I’m a bit handy, but I feel confident that just about anyone can do this.  Not everyone would agree with me on the best way to replace a showerhead, but let me give you my tips that I find really work. 

• To remove the old showerhead, you need two things, vice grips and masking tape.  When you look at the showerhead, there is an arm (a pipe that sticks out of the wall) that you want to leave alone.  At the end of the arm, the showerhead is just screwed on.  So what I do is wrap masking tape around the piece of the showerhead that screws on to the arm.  This will prevent any scratching of the metal.  Then use the vice grips to clamp on to where the tape is and twist the showerhead off.
• The new showerhead I installed was plastic, so it did not need any pipe tape.  If you do need it, you simple take the pipe tape (looks like masking tape) and wrap the treads on the arm.  Then screw the new showerhead on.  If it doesn’t seem tight enough, you can wrap the new showerhead with masking tape and use the vice grips to tighten it up.

This is a simple, easy upgrade to make to not only improve the shower, but also reduce the amount of water you use.

I was reading this article today on CNN about this guy in London who figured out how to build a bicycle out of cardboard.  The market is for people who don’t want to spend a lot on a bike that might get stolen and hopefully make it cheap enough so that someone won’t even want to steal the bike.  Additionally the concept would be to replace the cardboard frame every 6 months.

Now CNN has put this in a very green aspect but I’m torn on how I feel about that. Yes, making biking an affordable and secure mode of transportation helps with all the negative impacts that cars have on the environment.  However, replacing an entire bike frame every 6 months can’t be ideal either.  I realize we aren’t living in an ideal world, if we were this blog wouldn’t exist.  Perhaps this is just a step, but is it the right one?  We get away from the infamous carbon footprint, but is generating more waste better?

Just some thoughts I had on the topic today.  Not an answer or something that we can do, but perhaps something to think about as we do look at the changes we are making.

On another transportation note, and an upcoming post will feature this, I have been taking the train into work every day and loving it.  I’ve been living here for 4 weeks now and have yet to go to the gas station to fill up.  Especially nice when gas is over $4 a gallon.

I was on the phone with my mom tonight, and she had a fantastic idea.  She said she was looking for a collapsible bowl but hasn’t been able to find one.  So I did some searching and found some.

Let me back up and explain.  When you go out to dinner, the portion sizes are usually way too big.  I at least try to control my portion sizes to be healthier, but that means there are always leftovers.  Most restaurants will put those leftovers in a “nice” Styrofoam container for you to take home.  It is hard for those of us that are trying to control what we eat and be better for the environment.  This is where my mom’s idea fits in.  A collapsible bowl will easily fit into purse and can be expanded at the end of dinner to bring home those double portion sizes.

I first found a really cute set of bowls at Crate & Barrel that really weren’t that expensive.  As I thought about those, they won’t work for this particular situation because there is no lid.  However, I found that Rubbermaid is making collapsible bowls with lids.  Check out the website, they also list places where you can buy them.  Several grocery stores are listed that you can find here in Philadelphia and in Phoenix.  There are also some national chains that carry them like Target and Kmart. I also found a similar product made by Foldtuk at Target.