Bulbs and Hot Water Heaters

Can you believe that we are still talking about bulbs? Who knew that there would be so many things to say?

Turns out there are four main points that this Pod Leader feels compelled to (re)communicate:

1. Order the WARM ones. They are the ones most like the incandescent bulbs we are used to. Now I have said it three times and I shan't say it again.

2. Be careful how you clean them up if they break. They contain small amounts of mercury, and so you should use a wet cloth to pick up the bulb, then throw both the cloth and the bulb away. Disposing of unbroken bulbs should be done with care also. You may be able to take them back to the store where you bought them, or find a place near you to recycle them--but generally speaking its currently pretty difficult to find the correct way to dispose of these suckers--hopefully that will change soon and in the meantime you should have a pretty long life with your new bulbs.

3. You CANNOT currently use CFLs in dimmer switches, although the technology will be here soon. Putting them on dimmers now could be a fire hazard, so please don't do it.

4. You can buy all manner of specialty bulbs including ones that fit in funny shaped chandeliers, etc.

NOW ONTO THIS WEEK's TASK:

Most people's hot water heaters are set at 140 degrees, but usually 120 degrees is just fine. I switched mine over three weeks ago and have not noticed a difference. For every ten degrees you lower your hot water heater, you can save between 3-5% of your total energy costs. Reducing your water temperature to 120ºF also slows mineral buildup and corrosion in your water heater and pipes. This helps your water heater last longer and operate at its maximum efficiency.

Consult your water heater owner's manual for instructions on how to operate the thermostat. You can find a thermostat dial for a gas storage water heater near the bottom of the tank on the gas valve. Electric water heaters, on the other hand, may have thermostats positioned behind screw-on plates or panels. As a safety precaution, shut off the electricity to the water heater before removing/opening the panels. Keep in mind that an electric water heater may have two thermostats—one each for the upper and lower heating elements.

Here is one of those funny little statistics: If every household in America turned its water heater thermostat down 20 degrees, we could prevent more than 45 million tons of annual CO2 emissions - the same amount emitted by the entire nations of Kuwait or Libya. Who comes up with these things?

A SAD AND PAINFUL CAVEAT: If you have a dishwasher without a booster heater, it may require a water temperature within a range of 130ºF to 140ºF for optimum cleaning. Ack. Check inside your dishwasher or in your manual to see what its optimal temperature is.

ALSO: Please report back to me Ye of Apartments and Co-ops, and let me know what your landlord/irritating co-op board has to say about the whole thing. This is a good time to point out that not everyone will be able to do everything suggested by the pod, but if we can all do what we can we will still accomplish a lot. But here's an idea: if you can't change your own hot water heater, call your parents or some other respectable person that lives in a house and ask them to do it--then report back to me and I will put a smiley face next to your name in my little book.

HEY LOOK AT WHAT WE HAVE ALREADY DONE:

7 confirmed new consumers of their power company's Renewable Energy
26 newly installed compact fluorescent lightbulbs
1 confirmed hybrid car, maybe as many as 3 sometime soon
1 pod in Pennsylvania, with Pod Leader, eagerly awaiting instructions
1 fifth grade class in Pennsylvania, with Pod Leader, eagerly awaiting instructions

I am keeping a spreadsheet, so please do write with details of what you are doing!

COURAGE!

Bulbs--very glamorous

New Pod Zero member Ari Handel asks the following question: "Mostly we use this track lighting that takes these tiny little bulbs. They're sorta triangular shaped with a flatish bulb. You know that kind? Are those super energy burners or are they ok?"

Here is what your fearless Pod Leader has uncovered: The way to tell how much energy a lightbulb uses is to check the wattage--a typical incandescent bulb uses between 40-100 Watts, while a typical compact fluorescent uses between 10-40 Watts. I never know how they come up with these kinds of statistics but at any rate, "they" say that replacing a single incandescent bulb with a CFL will keep a half-ton of CO2 out of the atmosphere over the life of the bulb. I have found the folks at Service Lighting,1-800-624-4488 to be very helpful in terms of figuring out what kinds of bulbs you need--the woman I spoke to most recently said they make the CFLs in just about every shape.

That said, Ari, maybe your light bulbs are LEDs, which are also extremely energy efficient, and wouldn't require replacing. There is an excellent review of all types of energy saving lightbulbs at EARTHEASY.COM.

Eartheasy makes several important points--one is, again, order the WARM bulbs if you don't want to feel oppressed by the hideousness of the cool ones, and two is that CFL bulbs contain small amounts of mercury. The mercury poses no threat while in the bulb, but if YOU BREAK ONE, BE CAREFUL NOT TO INHALE THE MERCURY - immediately use a wet rag to clean it up and put all of the pieces, and the rag, into a plastic bag. (Although household CFL bulbs may legally be disposed of with regular trash (in the US), they are categorized as household hazardous waste. As long as the waste is sent to a modern municipal landfill, the hazard to the environment is limited. However, CFL's should not be sent to an incinerator, which would disperse the mercury into the atmosphere. (The best solution is to save spent CFL's for a community household hazardous waste collection, which would then send the bulbs to facilities capable of treating, recovering or recycling them. We'll work on figuring out where to do this East Coast/West Coast style. If anyone finds out anything about this, please post a comment)

ONE MORE THING, my googling this morning has turned up the following resource for determining just how much energy your products are using. Nerds who are interested should go visit Mr. Electricity.

Week One--baby steps

So it seems from email responses that many people are extremely interested in participating, some people are not so interested in participating, and at least one person does not actually believe in global warming. Lucky duck.

If you are reading this, I assume that you are at least somewhat interested in participating, so thank you, you are being very nice. A number of you actually volunteered to be Pod Leaders, great news, but first lets do a little beta test--Run our one little pod (Pod Zero? Home Pod? Best and First Pod?) for a few weeks and see how we do. My intention is to come up with a list of positive changes we can all fairly easily commit to, guide us through making those changes at the rate of one or two a week, and record the results, all the while discussing with First and Best Pod Members how they might see this continuing to take shape.

To that end, I am declaring the week of August 6-12 the week of Changing Over to Green Power and also Switching to New Lightbulbs. Many of you have already done these two things, very good, let me know that you already have and I will include it in my status report.

Here's the deal:

ACTION NUMBER ONE
(You can do it without leaving your computer)

If you live in New York City or Los Angeles, or any other place really, you can very easily upgrade, at the cost of a few extra dollars a month, to renewable energy that comes from regional wind and low-impact hydro power sources.

Read more about it and switch yourself over at the following links:

Click here if you live in New York City

And here if you are in Los Angeles.


ACTION NUMBER TWO

Get yourself some of those Compact Fluorescent Bulbs and switch out the other (bad) ones. For every 3 frequently used light bulbs you switch, you'll save 300 lbs. of carbon dioxide and $60 per year. Its easy to get those lightbulbs--you can go to the store or order them online. Make sure you order the "warm" ones or you will be pissed like me and have to return them to the store because they are so hideous.

ACTION NUMBER THREE
Email me with questions, problems, etc. Laura Wolf, you mention needing a ladder, does anyone have a ladder thay can loan Laura Wolf?

ACTION FOUR
Email me when you have done these two action items.

I will keep track of responses, send out a gentle reminder at the end of next week, as well as a status report and a new set of action items.

Also, just for my internal records, how many members of this pod own or plan to own a hybrid car some time in the near future?