Mendolonium

 Anyone who knows anything about me knows that I am a classic “Type-A” personality:  focused on being productive, ambitious, and competitive.  Having children has mellowed me a bit, however, if there is a contest I absolutely want to win it.  So you can imagine my dismay when our utility company recently began sending out “Home Energy Reports” tracking our energy usage against those of our neighbors and our household ranked a dismal #78 out of 100 neighboring homes (with #1 using the least electricity).

We have all the typical electric conveniences of a modern American home:  electric lighting (nearly all with CFL bulbs), a dishwasher (energy star), a refrigerator (energy star) ,three window air conditioners (all energy star), a TV, and a computer, but we have one thing most households around here don’t have – an electric hot water heater.  When we moved in we actually had a hookup for an electric stove as well; which we promptly changed to gas.

Electric appliances are almost unheard of in older homes in Southern California and I wonder why our 1939 house was originally built with them – perhaps the builder of our home was swayed by all the pro-electric propaganda following the opening of the Hoover dam in 1936.  (As an aside, our house had no clothes dryer; electric or gas when we moved in.  Mildred, the 94 year old, original owner that we purchased the house from had simply used a clothesline to dry her clothes all those years.  Shortly after buying the house we took down the rusting old clothesline

and put in plumbing and venting for a gas dryer.  Ironically, two years ago as part of our efforts to use less energy, I had Jeff install a new clothesline and I now try to use the power of the sun to dry our clothes as much as possible, rather than the fancy dryer.)  We’ve known for awhile that the electric hot water heater was a huge energy hog – from casual conversations with our neighbors I knew that our electric bill was significantly higher than theirs and the water heater was really the only difference between their homes and ours.  The water heater also had the old yellow and black “energy guide” sticker still affixed to it which proclaimed that it was an “energy saver” model that was estimated to use 4933 kW/yr (411 kW/month) when it was manufactured in 1994.  Water heaters become less efficient over time with sediment build-up in the tank and it is entirely possible that our water heater was using double or more its original estimated energy perhaps 10,000 kWh per year!  Primarily due to efficiency concerns, a couple of years ago we obtained price estimates for switching from the old electric hot water heater to a tankless gas heater.  Our water heater is located in a half-bathroom off of the kitchen and the plumbers frowned and spoke of venting and moving the heater outside to accommodate a gas tankless model.  In the end, the estimates came in at around $4000 and we gave up on idea of an efficient heater.  Last year, however, I heard about a new hot water heater – the GE Geospring Hybrid Heat Pump.  The Geospring uses at estimated 1856 KWh per year at a water temperature of 135 degrees (we set our heater at 120 degrees so we should see additional energy savings).  Not knowing exactly how much energy our old water heater was consuming we estimated that the new hot water heater would pay for itself in no longer than three years and as little as one year.  As a heat pump the water heater had the additional advantage of cooling the air – which would be quite welcome on the hot, west facing side of the house where the water heater sits.  With that, we took the plunge and bought the water heater in December of last year in order to qualify for a 2010 energy tax credit of 30% of the purchase price.    The water heater then proceeded to sit in our garage for the next nine and half months.  It turns out that while the new heater claimed that it could simply be swapped in place of an existing hot water heater; installation in a 1939 house with an 17 year old hot water heater wasn’t so simple.  After receiving multiple estimates for the installation ranging from $500 to $1100 Jeff spent an afternoon on youtube looking up water heater installs and perusing the aisles of Home Depot.  With $100 of supplies, including a new propane torch* to sweat copper pipe together Jeff set out last week to replace the old heater with the new.  And after 14 hours of hard labor including a foray under the house at midnight to run longer electrical lines Jeff picked up a set of new skills (anybody need a plumber?) and we had a beautiful, space-age, efficient hot water heater installed.

A week later the new hot water heater is working perfectly and I am finding that it has an additional, unexpected benefit of making me strive to be more conscious of my electric use in general.  For so long, I had known that the old energy hogging water heater was far and away our largest source of electric usage and I slacked off on trying to be more efficient with other devices.  I now find myself shutting off the air conditioners unless absolutely necessary, admonishing Thomas for standing in front of the open refrigerator, and shutting off lights like a religious calling.  I don’t know if we’ll ever get to #1 on the home energy report (my neighbors house is vacant and she is #2) but I refuse to allow myself to wallow down at #78.  And after painfully paying bi-monthly utility bills of $500 or more (that covers sewer, trash, water, and electricity for two months) for years I am actually excited to get my bill next month and see just how low we can go.  I also just realized that I have blogged about my excitement for a new appliance – I fear this officially makes me a lame grown-up.

*Bonus:  I can use the torch for creme brulee! Seriously, this is what my pastry instructor uses to brulee desserts.  Awesome.

After he’s slurped down the last drop of apple juice, after he’s polished off the last morsel of string cheese; Thomas goes over to the trash can to throw “away” the empty juice box and the barren cheese wrapper.

If you live in Pasadena, Altadena, Glendale, South Pasadena, Sierra Madre, or San Marino this is “away”:  the Scholl Canyon Landfill.  Think about the name for a moment, the Scholl Canyon Landfill.  Beginning in the early 1960s the communities of the San Gabriel Valley along with the city of Los Angeles took a canyon in the foothills above Glendale and Eagle Rock and began to fill it with page after page of old Los Angeles Times, an unfathomable number of dirty diapers, water bottles galore, and everything else that we, as a community, have decided we no longer have any use for.   Our next door neighbor tells of how when he first bought his house he would have to drive down into the canyon to dump a load of trash.   Now Jeff, who has been to the landfill a couple of times cleaning our yard and house of all the items left by the previous owner, tells me that the canyon is essentially no more, filled to the brim.  The city of Glendale estimates that the landfill will be full by 2020.  It is not clear where our trash will go “away” to after that.

Last year Jeff and I talked about making a New Year’s resolution to try and go “zero waste”; to throw nothing away.  We quickly realized that doing so was a radical life change, something we couldn’t accomplish overnight.  Over the past year, we’ve made many small changes to eliminate waste.  Last week we made a change which might seem trivial to some, but to us was significant.  Those of us with children know the value of having convenient, healthy, snack food; two of our favorites are string cheese and apple juice boxes.  But, you know what…an apple and cheese slices packed in a reusable container are just as convenient and don’t fill up a canyon.   There will be no more string cheese, each piece individually sheathed in plastic, each group of eight bagged in another casing of plastic bought in this house.  There will be no more cute little boxes of juice, each with their own straw, each “family” of four sheathed in a plastic wrapper.  Giving up string cheese and juice boxes won’t save the world from environmental degradation, but it is a few more things that won’t go in a canyon to hang around long after we are gone.  I also hope that I am teaching our children that there is no such thing as throwing it “away”.

I’ve got plenty of food stored in the house to sustain us (and my sister*) through an earthquake, zombie siege, or comet strike – whatever apocalypse du jour may come, but there are some products that you just can’t store – like cream.  When I went to make some much desired yellow cupcakes with chocolate frosting this afternoon I realized that the cream (called for in my frosting recipe) in my fridge was far, far beyond cream at this point.  I contemplated going out to the store, however, organic cream is at a minimum a 1 mile walk + train ride and then back again or a car trip away.  I thought about going without frosting as well, but that just wasn’t going to satisfy my craving.  I didn’t want to waste the time and energy going to the store and I didn’t want to go without.   So I did what we’ll probably all have to do more of in the future – I made do.  Thomas and I got together and came up with a fabulous, creamless  recipe.  Should you ever find yourself without cream, but with a hankering for some chocolate frosting here’s what you can make do:

Ingredients:

• 6 ounces semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 8 Tablespoons (1 stick) butter, cold
• 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
• 2 Tablespoons milk

Directions:

1. Melt the chocolate using either a microwave set to 50% power (stirring every minute) or a double boiler.  Stir until smooth and then set aside.
2. Mix the butter, sugar, and milk together until light and fluffy.  An electric mixer on a moderate to high speed works best.
3. Slowly pour in the chocolate (while mixing) and mix until frosting is smooth and homogeneous.

Yield:  Enough to spread a thick layer on 16 cupcakes.  If I was going to pipe the frosting on I would likely make a double batch.

Today’s lesson is that in a world of constrained energy and resources I need to remember to make do with what we have more often.  And the bonus is that I came up with a fabulous frosting recipe that I never would have made otherwise.  Sometimes making do is making it better.

*I assume Sara Ann would definitely want to hang out here during the end of days, and besides, we’ll need someone to nanny for the kids while we rebuild a new utopian world.

I’ve never gone hungry, never wondered how I would procure my next meal, never had to deny my children dinner but I know that every day I walk among those who have.  I can’t imagine many things worse than not being able to provide for one’s family; it is a physical ache – the desire to take care of those we love.

I went to the grocery store this week and outside stood a man with a sign “Family of 4.  Living in a motel.  Please help.”  He wasn’t much older than I was and he looked shy, embarrassed.  He didn’t call out to the people bustling in and out of the store.  He just stood there.  I’ve never given money to anyone on the street.  I’ve certainly had the opportunity, but I remember what a family member who has been homeless once said “Don’t give them any money.  They’ll just use it for drugs and alcohol.”  I am sure that many people do, but still, I want to help.  I can donate to food pantries and support politicians who talk of helping the homeless but the machine that is our economy keeps on spitting people out with no where to go.  Over the past year I’ve seen the number of people begging on the streets of our city increase.  There is now typically someone stationed at every corner of the freeway interchange nearest our house.  Some of those people, I am suspect of:  what is the young man with the nice bike doing begging?  Others, like the woman who is probably 40 but looks 70 and talks to herself, I feel deeply sad for.

One day soon, Thomas is bound to realize that there is something not quite right about the man outside of the restaurant with a cup asking for change.  He’ll ask “Who is that man?” and I wonder how to answer.  We walk by homeless persons all the time.  In fact, there are a couple of guys that have a  spot on our way to/from preschool that greet us regularly, commenting on our super stroller.  We respond with a “Good morning” and Thomas has never seemed to think it out of the ordinary that the men sit on the curb with shopping carts piled high with all their worldly belongings.  Perhaps, it is because we often seem to look like “bag people” ourselves; walking about the city with groceries spilling out of the stroller baskets and  bags hung over the handle.  He will ask though and I don’t know how to tell him that there are people with no homes, no mother to bake them cookies, no bed to sleep in.  Because when you think about it; the fact that there is anyone in this country at all that doesn’t have a place to go if they want one is wrong.  Just plain wrong.

As I left the grocery store, I went up to the lonely man and gave him a loaf of bread out of my bag.  He smiled and thanked me.  I walked away with a faint smile and a question in my mind of how to do more.  Modern society may not be kind, but we as individuals and communities can be…I’m just not sure how to go about it yet.