My Electric Heat Experiment Continues

I'm sitting here with my North Face jacket on, hands are cold and I can feel cool air throughout the house. Both new and regular readers might be saying "turn your heat on" or asking why don't I turn the heat on.

Well remember in one of my recent posts I had talked about reducing my electric usage this winter. One, I was curious with different temperatures and reducing my planet footprint, I really didn't want to pay to keep the house hot because 65° is the maximum setting I have liked over the years during the winters. Also a factor is my utilities raised not only their rates this past September for the first time in three years but they have a schedule where the highest rates per year are during the peak usages per year.

Smart people aren't they? Getting the biggest bang for the buck? So let's charge 'em more during air conditioning and when they use their heaters.

With the new EPA laws on the horizon, and the future of Indiana's coal based power plants, no one really knows how much the cost of electricity will increase ... but most everyone that writes about it or reports it on television agree there could be large increases after the new laws are implemented.

So with that lingering in the back of my mind, I was somewhat concerned yesterday when my local utility company emailed me a survey to complete from a 3rd party organization. They asked all the questions you would expect and it took about ten minutes to complete. While I went through the questions all I could see was, "how will the radical changes to coal based power plants affect you as a consumer".

I am seriously considering having solar panels installed on my roof that faces due east with a clear sky above it. When I have estimated that cost in past years and compared to my low monthly utility bill, the cost to install solar never was justified. It may soon be justified in a year or so.

That also brings up the thought it might be time to go completely mobile, with solar already installed, and hit the road, dogs and all.

Yes, I am concerned that much about future increases to my local utilities since Indiana's power plants in my area and Indianapolis are coal based.

So, where was I? Ah yes, cold hands and a cool 'breeze' throughout the house. Soup for meals never tasted so good as recently.

This past weekend outside was high 40's and some low 50's ... I know not exciting to read about but it ties in with my inside house temps. My house stayed at 60°. It wasn't a sunny weekend but a warmer weekend. Prior to that when the temps had highs in the 30's with lows in the lower 20's, the inside of my house stayed between 56° - 60°. Cold to most people and Heidi but ok for me, Winston and Sadie.

Some will call this an act of boredom but I call it my analytical curiosity by nature. I tried different experiments.

• Baseboard electric heat on until inside temps got to 65°
• Only space heaters on until inside temps got to 65°
• How long did each take?
• How many kilowatts were used during each time.

No, unlike most things I did not start a new Excel Spreadsheet like I do for everything else, just written notes to compare.

If you have not made it this far, clicked a different site link on the left, I completely understand. Still there are some interesting findings.

• It took approximately 2 hours to increase the inside temps from 60° to 65°.
• Baseboard electric heater used 3 kw per hour.
• Space heaters used 2 kw per hour.
• If I used the heat late afternoon, it lasted most of the time I was awake.

Adding in my cost of electricity per kilowatt, it proved to me it was much more money than I wanted to spend just to have a warm house 16 hours per day. MY cost included kw used, what they call a PCA tracker fee, sales tax (7%) and a facility charge ($34). With those additional fees that brings my kilowatt cost from around 11.5 cents to 22 cents per kw.

My bill also shows a cost per day just on kw usage. One year ago they said my daily cost was $4.33 per kw and that has increased this year to $4.70 before adding in the fees I listed above. That is an 8.5% increase in cost.

See how much time I have on my hands??  (laughing)

I think by this time in this blog post I am probably talking to myself right now ... but I'll keep going.

Temps are due to drop back into the 30's for the next 10 days with a couple of days of snow predicted. Based on past years, even though I was gone most of the time during the day working ... the house will stay close to 60° no matter what.

Overall I will say my experiment is working out well, at times better than expected.

My new sports blog is staring off well with a LOT of traffic so far after a week of existence. I write there every day but basically am writing the posts a day in advance of posting.

I need to pick up a new tripod to use with my Nikon D3200 I bought last fall. I have a smaller, lighter tripod I bought years ago for the small Nikon  Coolpix 3100. I want to take some night sky shots and need a tripod to take those types of pictures. I have enough Best Buy credits that I can get the tripod for free.

From reading my blog list, it sounds like overnight lows in the SW are about my highs in the "tropics" of southern Indiana. That is still cold no matter where you are. I am glad to see Al and Kelly got their inverter fixed and are planning on more traveling, some revisiting of old favorites.

That's about it from here. I haven't got out much to take photos, after all the hounds and I stay inside most of the time under sleeping bags trying to keep warm ... lol

BTW ... getting a lot of blog visitors from the Ukraine ... you think they are trying to hack me? Do you get them in large numbers on your blog?

I'm In Total Hibernation

It looks like it has been a while since my last post, that talked about being a nester or an explorer. In the past 18 days since my last post I have turned into a serious hibernator more than anything. It's not even snowing yet, temperatures are fantastic for this time of year but that hasn't got me outside a lot. It's like I am almost house bound and I'll tell the reasons further down the page.

The hounds and I are fine and still get in the daily dog walk unless the ground is so saturated where it is just too muddy, soft or wet to walk through the field. With Winston's belly so close to the ground when he walks, it doesn't take much to get his whole underside wet if the hay is damp when walking. Sadie will walk in snow, rain, wind or fire ... she just doesn't care what the weather is doing when she hears the word "walk". Heidi on the other had is strictly a good weather walker. If she finds herself having to 'tip toe' through the yard or field, she does a 180 and sprints for the house and refuses to go.

Heidi and I went for a vet followup visit on November 28 to check on her treatment for erythema and alopocia. There was improvement but not as much as I thought would happen after a month of daily doses of 100mg of Atopica, medicated shampoo baths every 4 days and diphenhydramine (benadryl 50mg) every 8-12 hours to prevent itching. Yet, the vet was very happy with the progress. We walked out with a $16 bill or a 'check-up' visit and a month supply of Atopica worth $150 for free because he had started the treatment process. She wanted me to continue the daily doses for 2 more weeks than move to giving the Atopica every other day.

I will say in the past week Heidi has looked the best she has in a long time, skin-wise. All 4 of her paws have a thick growth of hair, along with under her neck and her rear hocks are starting to show a layer of hair coming back. Of course whenever there is some kind of allergy involved, the question lingers in back of the mind asking, is t the medication working or is it the season change where allergies are not as prevalent?

Anyway, either way she is looking much better and it's nice to know that steroid shots were not needed for the improvement. We go back January 9 for a followup. After that I am hopeful the skin problem will be under control with doses of Atopica maybe every 3-4 days from then on. The vet says that is the plan and it should work out to less dosage year round for her allergy control.

One thing I like about blogging is the function of record keeping. When I glanced back through 2011-2013 in the month of December I saw that last year I only posted one time in December. It was on December 9th, a picture of the Coachman was sitting in the back covered with 12" of snow. I had forgot that it snowed that early in the month. After seeing that I was pretty happy with the current daytime temperatures in the low 40's most of the time. Also it also showed me that I rarely posted during the month of December, 3 times in 2012 and 5 times in 2011 only a couple of months after starting the blog.

So I guess for me it's just normal not to post much in the month of December.

I do write on two other blogs that I have now. One is a personal journal that I write in every morning. I started that journal in late August. I like doing that because it kind of clears my mind. Plus I wanted a way to record my mood swings and health conditions. It will also give me a record for any computer issues and solutions, and a history of what the hounds have done. That blog is in the private status and I decided to use that format because it was much more convenient using Blogger rather than Microsoft Word.

The other blog was just started this week. As you know I am a sports junkie. Over the years I would send out an email before every game IU played in football or basketball, to a group of friends I went to college with, back 40 years ago. These emails would cover stories, statistics or previews. This year the 'roar' seemed to get louder from the small group of friends saying "you need to start a blog and write about all of this".  I thought about it off and on but thought 3 blogs were too much.

Then I decided why not? The purpose would be a little different than the private journal and this blog about my rv research, retirement life and future travels. Unlike this blog, I also wanted to add some Google Adsense and some sports affiliate links for some possible income. So this week I decided to take the plunge and started a new sports only blog, talking about no specific team or sports, just sports in general.

That small group of friends liked the first post so much they passed the blog link out to their sports friends and family scattered all over the USA and it is showing me through google states I am getting some pretty good traffic after just a couple of posts. One friend even said that I might have to go into hiding after writing in such a controversial tone about our favorite team....lol. I even signed up for a Google + account, put all the settings to public to get the blog spread out as much as possible.

No matter what time of the year or where I am, my interest in sports is always there and I am always reading about it or watching it, so the sports blog should be pretty fun. I'll not have any problem finding something to write about.

Speaking of those Google stats that are provided to bloggers using Blogger as their blog platform, behind the scenes on your blog traffic, it showing this past month that the Ukraine not only passed Canada in number of visitors but also moved to the #1 spot above the blog visitors in the USA. How strange is that? Are they trying to hack me or do they just like the hounds? I don't know.

So I have added a couple of new blogs to the list of blogs for those that are interested in security news, online or shopping. One is the LastPass blog. It is the free service I use for all of my passwords to my banks, and any other sites, all encrypted passwords. The other blog is about security not only on your computer but also credit cards. That blogger usually has a new post every day M-F with some great information. Like today I found out that my browser updates did not run and install automatically along with the Microsoft Office for Mac. His blog will always be near the top of the list because he blogs frequently.

Since I am hibernating there might be some readers wondering if I am sitting in front of my computer 15 hours per day or am I still using that Nikon D3200 camera I bought a few months back and if I am why not any pictures?

I am spending very little time on the computer. Just enough to write, read blog updates and sports news. The rest of my day is including a lot of book reading, more than I had planned on but I can't stop reading and am finding books that I have bought but never read until now. I am still downsizing plus some normal indoor maintenance/updates that comes with home ownership. I pop in an occasional movie. I finally sorted all of my DVDs alphabetical. That will prevent this older brain from buying duplicate movies which I found about 7 different shows where I did that after I sorted them.

I use the camera almost every day but those photos are not much different than what you have already seen of the back field, sunsets to the west taken from my yard or the hounds. The hounds are not really doing much besides winter sleeping. Sadie won the war on changing the dinner time for her and the bassets. When we "fell back" in the fall for the time change, she would come and sit by the desk at 3pm not 4pm if she had not been fed yet. Then as Heidi started feeling better she started barking at 3pm wanting to be fed and Winston walks toward his bowl but just sits and stares as if to say "what are their problems". So we eat by 3pm based on the bloodhound's demands. So much for the time change.

I will say there have been a couple of close calls but I have NOT dropped the camera or lens, I haven't dropped the new iPhone or iPad Mini. I love the Mini iPad even more than the larger, heavier 1st generation iPad that I used previously. The retina display is fantastic and I can tell the difference with my eyes. My glasses are not needed to read the smaller fonts.

Well it looks like I have rambled on enough here. I'll try to load some photos on my next post and will try to start blogging her more. It's hard to decide sometimes what is boring and what is interesting to readers since my current lifestyle is pretty mundane.

I do enjoying reading my blog list to keep track of everybody. Weather-wise it sounds like the best place to be most of the time is in Gulf Shores, Alabama.

An Explorer or Nester?

One of the blogs I read hit home the other day, as she explained the differences and "the whys" some people are constantly in the exploring mode and some people are nesters. It was a subject I had thought about over the past 3 years but more this past year. I even had friends asked me if RVing was something I really really wanted to do. That's not a typo but two "really" for emphasis. It made me look at my situation more in depth and helped me understand why I changed my mind so much since starting this blog with an interest of living in an RV of some type.

I think I am in between an explorer and a nester.

Take To The Highway along with some of the replies to her post, brings out good information about the differences between people who love to explore and people that feel no need to get out of town. I thought this might help some readers that have stopped by my blog looking for the same answers as I about the lifestyle. If they have gone back into the blog archives and read posts from previous years they would see my mind changing a million times. Some people email with questions about traveling or my lack of traveling because they are also in the decision making process on whether they should, can or want to travel full or part-time. A lot of them have more than one dog, some large, some small.

I know that after reading her blog post the other day, I thought of just this past year and how this past spring, once retired I was so close of getting on the road. If you remember it was just 14 months ago in September 2013 that I bought the Class C, 2003 Coachman 258db, in great condition with one minor repair that I did myself. It sat here during some great fall weekends and never went anywhere. That was the first red flag that made me wonder.

Instead of loading up the hounds and heading off to a State Park or National Forest within a 50 mile range from home, I never left home for those weekends of great weather. I had more of a desire to do some outside stuff in the hours before noon, then spend the rest of the day watching college football. The hounds loved getting in the Coachman, they each had their own spots to lay down. They rode well on the few test drives we did. Still, we didn't go camping.

Then the spring came and after I retired in April 2014, I have nothing to keep me here. For years all of my banking, transactions, etc have all been electronic. Some of them are automatic and others only required an internet connection. So no problems there. I had just bought the Chevy 2500HD 4x4 pickup truck to tow a bigger trailer but only kept that a little over a month before buying the 4x4 Toyota FJ. That put me back into the range of a small fiberglass trailer. The desire to hit the road was strong at that time.

The weather wasn't a decision factor but it was very nice weather and enjoyable for that time of year, as was most of the summer being cooler than normal. With that I really enjoyed living here this summer.

Thinking back to my days of growing up, like I have mentioned before somewhere in this blog, my family did not go camping or rving when we grew up. My dad was a teacher/coach, so our time was focused around sports 12 months per year. That was many years before the current AAU system but we still spent the summers playing on more than one baseball team, summer basketball and preparing to play football in the fall.

Our vacations were a few weeks of traveling, excited that we were able to visit different cities and that the motel had a pool. Traveling included the Wisconsin Dells, the Smokey Mountains, and a lot of time on the beaches of Florida. We were more beach people than camping people.

I was the only one in the family that showed any kind of camping interest. I had a two-person tent that was used a lot during the summers at home. We would use it in someones backyard or a vacant lot in the new housing additions where we lived. Those camp-outs were during the ages before the driving age. Once I was old enough to drive, I don't recall that tent ever being used again.

I was never the exploring type growing up ...  but I did enjoy the traveling and liked moving down the highway. My cross country bicycle trip one summer was one of the best things I ever did, I loved it.

So, I think I am somewhere in between being an explorer and a nester. By that I mean, once on the road, or getting out to look at things locally ... I like that. It's just getting the kick in the butt to get started. Once I am out I love it. Still, I don't have that "burning" desire you read about with other people that just have to see the next adventure.

While I have hibernated in my house for the winter every year, I still had the urge to travel. This is the first year that I have time to do that traveling if I choose to do so. Right now I have more interest in riding my road and mountain bicycle next spring than packing the hounds up and taking off to travel the country.

Time is full of changes, some unexpected and some are planned out in detail by people. I'm no longer a "schedule" person. I do not have plans or goals listed anywhere. I have no expectations or burning desires but I do plan on doing things I enjoy. I am content with what I am doing and where I am.

I am still enjoying the camera I bought. It was a great purchase and used daily. I will be getting out into the local area more to take photos and post here what I find. A lot of the photos I have been taking recently are nothing different than what I have posted here.

Heidi has improved but not as much as I was hoping for. Her follow-up vet appointment is next Friday. Winston is good most of the days but at times his lower back/back legs will act up where getting up the two steps into the house is hard for him. Sadie is Sadie ... zero problems, my clock watcher and obnoxious as ever at the age of 6+ years.

Just back in from a great morning dog walk. almost 50°, windy, no snow on the ground and a lot of fresh smells for the hounds ... they were going crazy with their noses.

What Will the Three Months of Winter Bring?

If it's this cold in the month of November, with 50% of the USA having snow on the ground this week, what does that say for the months of December, January and February that are waiting ahead? We were warned. The Farmers Almanac stated months ago that this winter would be colder than last winter with more snow. It looks like that forecast is off to a good start.

Still the hounds are warm and that is all that matters. They don't care about the cold temperatures and would stay outside I think forever if I didn't go out to call them into the house. I mean only two of the hounds don't mind it. Heidi stays outside no longer than it takes for her to dump her tanks and she SPRINTS to the door to come back inside.

I am not sure what drove my decision to try this experiment but it might be ending just after a week or so of cold weather. Then again I may continue doing what I am doing now. You will probably think I have mentally lost it when you read what I am doing.

It's strange and laughable that I would never hesitate to put a $1,000 on a crap table with no hesitation nor worries, yet I hate paying my local electric bill every month. It is the same amount every month and then in May either I pay the difference due or they pay me a refund for paying to much over the year. Then they adjust my monthly payment for the following year, which may go up or down based on current usage with a little bump for extra use. I have received refunds in the past that have always been $100 or more.

The long time readers of my blog will remember that I love Excel spreadsheets and track a lot of different things with those spreadsheets, including my monthly electric usage. The kilowatts used really doesn't vary much from year to year for me but what does is the cost of electricity. My current utility company charges more per kilowatt in the "prime usage" months of Dec, Jan, Feb, June, July and August, than it does the other six months. In this past September they had their first cost increase in three years.

To me it just wasn't worth letting the heater run via a thermostat, keeping the house warm at all times, it wasn't worth the cost. I've never liked a hot or warm house but somewhere around 65° in the winter. My heat for the house is baseboard electric with each room having it's own control switch.

A few years ago when my cost for electric really jumped higher than I liked I tried using a portable electric heater, designed like the old steam registers. It worked so well that I bought a second one. What I found to be the difference, the house temps stayed at 65° but at 1/3 of the cost of using my 1970's baseboard electric.  

Since the month of May I have built up a pretty good credit amount on the account. I made it through a few weeks of very hot summer weather without using air conditioning as I usually do. I did NOT go as far unplugging electrical accessories if not in use, didn't feel the need to go that far to save energy.

So this fall I decided I would try to use the least amount of energy throughout the winter. I remembered back to 1977 due to the fuel shortage in the US, it was recommended to keep the inside temperatures at 55°. Any of you remember that? I was lucky because I was in the process of moving to sunny southern California that month so I missed most of it. I do remember how cold my sister's apartment was during my my last visit to see her before heading west.

Well this year I decided I could do that 55°. Even during the coldest temps of the winter. I have plenty of camping gear to keep me and the hounds warm enough and in the meantime I would be saving a lot of dollars that will be refunded in May 2015. That refund was tempting enough to try to save energy used.

As so far I have been able to use the heaters sparingly, even with the temps droping to the teens last week. Even now with the temps outside in the low 20's, my house is sitting at 60°. Slightly cooler than normal but the hounds are not shivering, have not lost their appetite nor are they whining. So they must be ok.

Am I crazy?

Is this financially motivated as a retiree making less income than when I was working a job.

Am I that bored enough to try different little experiments around the house?

Or am I somewhat concerned what the increase per kilowatt will amount to?

Those were just some of the questions I asked myself as I sit here wearing insulated long sleeve shirts under a sweatshirt. Or sharing my sleeping bags for the hounds to mix and match with their Mexican blankets while I use my down comforter. I must admit with the house at 60° - 62°, my hands are colder than I expected.

Those cold hands have prevented me from finishing my Mahjong games on my iPad Mini in record time. Each game is timed and I have over 80 of those games now under 6 minutes. That game has been my new form of entertainment. Much better than tv and definitely better than any news on the tv or Internet. I downloaded a cribbage app yesterday and it was the first time in many years playing a game that I use to play every day in the 80's. I had to go back and read the rules to play the game but was able to get back into the swing of things to beat the computer.

So at least in the Mahjong game and racing on the Playstation3 playing Grand Turismo, the cold hands are a factor. The portable heaters work well and they were only $37 each at Walmart a few years ago.

The thought has occurred to me lately, wondering if future costs of electricity and the cost of owning a home in this area with extreme weather 3-4 months out of the year, will increase to the point of that the better option will be selling it and relocating. With the change of EPA laws predicted in the near future, that could raise my utility cost substantially because large power plants in Indiana are coal based. Coal is the major factor.

In closing I will say I am pretty sure in the middle of the winter when the temps outside are in the single digits day after day, the heat will come on and will be used more than I am using it now. I will still be monitoring the cost of using the electric heat as I do all my other costs. In the meantime the hounds and I are managing the experiment of saving energy quite well and leaving a smaller "footprint" on the planet.

At least we don't live in the Buffalo area.