Energy Efficient Refrigerator Hack

We mentioned in our last update that we are a bit obsessive about energy use.  How obsessive? Prior to all of the drama with our frozen pipes, we made a list of every appliance and phantom load in our house, its likely energy consumption in watts, and how many hours per day each appliance is in use in low, medium, and high energy consumption scenarios.  It looked like this:

We then compared our range of total daily energy consumption from the table to our actual daily energy consumption from our electric company.  The numbers matched up pretty well, although our actual allocation of energy use to specific appliances is just a ball park estimate.

Of course, we could have used an actual energy monitor that plugs into each individual outlet or our circuit breaker, but we don't have one and its probably for the best given our tendency to overanalyze...
 


High scenario: The 'computer' category assumes that we leave our desktop with an old monitor plus two laptops on for 24 hours (and the monitors don't go to sleep).  The heat lamps and light in our well house are only on when its cold, but when it is, they're on all night.  We're assuming that its cold AND wet, since the sump pump in this scenario is also working pretty hard.  "Plants" refers to the fluorescent grow lights we use for seedlings.  Our oven is gas powered, but has some auxiliary electric. We don't have cable or TV (see computers), which would be big energy consumers if we did.

What stands out in all of our energy use scenarios is that our ancient water heater and refrigerator account for over half of our electric bill. 

The water heater is going to have to wait for a little bit, as its a slightly larger purchase that will involve some professional plumbing and electric help and the payoff for switching it out isn't as immediate.

However, any excuse to get rid of the old, loud, big, in the way, difficult to close refrigerator! We did some research and what we found was disappointing.  The most efficient Energy Star non-dorm sized refrigerators (over 7cu ft) start at 249 kWh/yr, with most using over 300 kWh/yr.  That isn't so much, but in comparison, similarly sized chest freezers start at 189 kWh/yr to keep food substantially colder.

Most of the difference has to do with the basic layout.  When you open a chest freezer, most of the cold air stays down at the bottom, whereas when you open a standard refrigerator door, all of the cold air comes pouring out towards you.  The chest freezer is also better insulated and you never have to worry about the door popping open (unless you over pack it).

Chest freezers are also substantially cheaper, as they are basically just a box.  No shelves.  No drink dispenser.  No ice maker.  Just box.

So we did some thinking.  Our kitchen is small and limited in counter space.  Pretty much any upright refrigerator would partially block our lovely wall cabinet.  How attached were we to conventional shelves?  We pretty much only use the front 6" inches...the backs of the shelves being a graveyard for unlabeled jars and old mustard.  Did we want a drink dispenser? no.  Did we want an ice maker? no.  Did we even want a freezer compartment?

An investigation of our freezer revealed 10 ice packs, a single Tupperware of frozen berries, and 6 zip lock bags of malted barley from the last time we made beer.  But what if someday we want to buy ice cream?  What if someday we actually have leftovers that stick around for more than two days?

We ultimately decided on buying two chest freezers and a temperature controller (still cheaper than one refrigerator).  The larger chest freezer came with an energy rating of 248 kWh/yr.  Not particularly good for a freezer, but still better than the best refrigerator, and for our purposes it doesn't really matter.  We hooked it up to the temperature controller, and voila...a 7.2 cu ft, better than 248 kWh/yr, refrigerator.

We stripped our old refrigerator of its shelves and made a sort of sliding box system inside of the chest freezer...ahem...refrigerator. 

Somehow I never took a good picture of our old refrigerator before we moved it, so this is the most comparable before-after I can come up with:

            Before                                                    After

You can see the discoloration on the floor where the old refrigerator used to be.  The new chest refrigerator takes up about the same floor area as the old refrigerator, just in a slightly different orientation.

In the back corner we have the temperature sensor part of the temperature controller hanging inside of a plastic tube we happened to have (for protection) and not so neatly taped in place with painter's tape.  The actual temperature regulator sits in the corner behind the refrigerator.

On the top layer we have a basket that slides from side to side.  We're looking for a few more baskets with compartments to organize and store things we use often more securely.  The current basket is a bit of a mess.

On the second layer, we have a drawer from our old refrigerator (with glass shelf on top for a cover).  The glass cover slides over to give access to the contents of the drawer.  The entire drawer also slides out of the way to give access to a third layer (milk crate covered with freezer shelf).

For now we also have another crate on the bottom layer that can be lifted up to rest on the built in ledge

Kind of a clunky first pass at organization with materials we have lying around.   Once we have an idea of what works well for us we'll think about building something more permanent.  This is probably as full as our refrigerator will ever get, since we had an amazing, large CSA basket gifted to us today by the same incredible person that helped us track down a plumber.

As for the freezer, we ordered a smaller Energy Star chest freezer that we'll keep somewhere out of the way and only use as we need it (or get a second temperature controller so it can double as an overflow fridge).   We ate the berries we had frozen and are feeding the defrosted malted barley to the chickens (who LOVE it).

Some of the other old refrigerator shelves have temporarily been installed in our utility/laundry room to hold our garden seedlings.  No shelf in our house is safe from plants!

Keep reading:

Energy Efficient Refrigerator Update: four months on

Return of the Chronotherm III

So, we apologize for not posting in almost two weeks. But it's cold, and we've had problems.

Picture of the cold. Apparently the white stuff on the ground is called "snow".

Melting snow on our stove, to have enough water to flush the toilet with. Just like the pioneers.

Being somewhat obsessive about energy use, we tend to keep our house pretty cold in the winter, and constantly scheme about ways to cut down in other ways.  Shortly after moving in, we signed up for pretty much every free and almost free energy-savings program offered by our local utility- including a home energy audit and a new programmable thermostat that was installed last week.

In Canada we never had a problem with keeping our house around 55F at night, because Canadians tend to take things like insulation pretty seriously.   Yet in our new house, in the humid sub-tropics of the Chesapeake Bay, we've had frozen pipes on an almost weekly basis, thanks in part to some creative plumbing by the previous owner.

Finally, after much freezing and thawing, a hydronic heating pipe out on our uninsulated porch burst.   Hydronic heating is basically a boiler heating water and circulating it around the house in copper pipes.  Why the previous owner decided to run some of these pipes outside is beyond us, and we'd already been looking into getting them removed. Unfortunately, everyone we consulted about it hemmed and hawed and gave us ridiculously high prices (one was almost $700) to remove the pipes.  Seriously? we said.  We could probably do it ourselves with a single SharkBite fitting.  And so the pipes burst, and we had our chance.  In the end it took a pile of SharkBite fittings, because when you're panicking because the rest of your pipes might freeze, you just buy one of everything at the store and don't worry too much about how it looks (we redid it later, and it did ultimately only take one elbow piece to cut all of the pipes out of our porch, for a total cost of $8).

We turned off the heat and got the pipes back together. Excellent. Now to turn the boiler back on...we flipped the switches for the gas and the circuit breaker and there were some clicking noises and the lights on the circuit board began to flash.  We raced through the list of warning light codes handily printed on the inside cover of our boiler, but too slow.  There was a pop, and then smoke, and we were done.

At this point it was about 8 pm on a Friday night.  We called a few large companies from the yellow pages and were basically told (without sympathy) to hunker down until Tuesday.  At a loss, we canceled our evening plans, drained our pipes, and pulled out our winter camping gear.  Next thing we know, our friend's uncle is calling us determined to find a plumber or else have us stay with them.  He rattles off the names of a few people we hadn't found online and says he'll call some while we call the others.  Pretty soon we got a call from Riverside Mechanical LLC saying they were on their way.  A very knowledgeable repairman arrived, who quickly diagnosed the problem while tactfully ignoring the 4-person dome tent in the bedroom.   The problem: a blown transformer due to our new thermostat, which the power utility had installed incorrectly.  So it wasn't our fault? we asked the repairman.  Nope, you did everything right. he replied.  We almost danced.  Goodbye, slick new web-programmable thermostat.  We meet again, Chronotherm III.

For the best.  The new one clashed with the "Remember the 80's" theme we have going on

Saturday morning, we're still over the moon that it wasn't our fault and that there are good people in the world who will stay up until midnight worrying if perfect stranger's heating systems are working (and then leave their porch light on so the strangers can let themselves in, just in case).  We go and do greenhouse yoga at Priapi Gardens and generally go about our business. That evening, we hear gurgling and rush into the bedroom to find another pipe has burst, this time inside the house (which was not below freezing). Why? How? Springing into action and using our rapidly diminishing stock of Sharkbite fittings, plus a fourteen-foot length of copper pipe that had been removed from the porch, we managed to fix it up. And this time, the boiler started up again.

All this is to say, sorry for the delay in posting, but it is cold and we've had problems.  But the heat is on...for now.

Fancy Graphs: Egg production update

It's been awhile since we last updated our egg production statistics.  I've been lazy about keeping track, so some of our recent numbers are approximate guesses.  Where I guessed, I erred on the low side

 

So either our egg production declined a bit or I just have a bad memory.  At any rate, we're averaging at least eight eggs a day, which means each chicken is laying 2 out of 3 days.

 

The Golden Comets are the winners out of all the breeds we have.  They're docile, good at foraging, seem to eat less of the layer feed, and consistently lay extra jumbo brown eggs.

 

The Silkies are also nice in that they mostly keep themselves, don't eat as much, are quick to roost when its time for bed and consistently lay three large pink eggs.  They were honestly kind of boring at first, but I appreciate it now that the novelty of having 4-5 squawking chickens run towards me every time I open the back door has worn off.

 

The worst of these are the Barred Rock, Brahma and Turken.  Barred Rock and Brahma are by far our fattest and most ravenous chickens, and I don't think I've ever seen the Barred Rock nesting.  While its nice to have an adoring entourage, constantly tripping over chickens gets old after awhile, and their affections quickly shift to whatever human is closest to the food bin.  These three also bite!  Particularly Turken.  Chicken bites don't hurt an adult, but I wouldn't recommend them for someone with children.

 

Auracana, gives us 4-5 eggs a week.  She's probably the funniest of our birds, but also frustratingly dumb (even for a chicken).  She and the Rhode Island are the best fliers and were using the chicken tractor (which we were storing in the shed/coop) to get up to the shed rafters for awhile.  Since the chicken tractor is outside now,  there's no longer an intermediate perch in the coop for them to get up to the rafters.  Don't tell that to Auracana, though.  She's on a mad quest to get back to the rafters by any means possible- which includes repeatedly launching herself off anything higher than 2ft.  She even managed to land on my head one night and sink her talons into my hair while J laughed.

 

Ah well.  And here is our cost summary:

 

We count our costs as we buy things, so we typically have 2-3 unopened or barely used bags of feed and supplements around, which is why our costs are so slow to decline.  We're running at slightly less than $7/dozen eggs if you don't count what we've spent on non-consumables (mostly chicken tractor materials).  We're selling our excess eggs at a $2 loss at the moment, and it will be another month before we break even (accounting for future purchases).

Which reminds me of the story of the farmer who decided to purchase radios for $2 and then sell them for $1.  When asked why he would do such a thing, he replied "Well, it sure beats farming!".

We might drop our price once our total costs go below $5/dozen.  Other local non-organic eggs are selling in the $3-$4 range.  The only more expensive eggs  around here that I've seen were $5.50 for "Nature's Yoke kosher large brown eggs" at the food coop (there was no kashrut symbol, just the word).

From "Is it Kosher?":
To be kosher, eggs must come from kosher fowl and be free of bloodspots in the white (albumin) and the yolk. Each egg must be checked individually after it is opened. If there is blood in an egg, it is forbidden...If an egg containing an embryo is cooked together with other eggs, none of the eggs are kosher.

I'm unclear as to how you can be positive that a brown egg doesn't have blood spots before cracking it, since the dark color of the egg makes them difficult to candle...so how are these eggs different from all other unfertilized chicken eggs?  A special machine? Extra careful candling?

I was curious and searched on the Nature'sYoke website and could only find that their eggs are primarily Amish and Mennonite sourced, and while they specifically advertise fertilized eggs, there was nothing about kosher or unfertilized eggs.  From searching on kosher certification sites, it seems that certified kosher eggs are really just a guarantee that the eggs actually came from poultry (and not a turtle or other type of bird) and individual eggs still need to be inspected after cracking.

So what makes the kosher eggs worth $2 more than the local free run brown eggs sitting next to them?

Meanwhile, at the other grocery store:  $3.29 for 2.5 dozen.



and Keep Out!

When we announced to friends in Montreal that we were moving to Delaware, one response we got was along the lines of "Delaware? Just wait until you wake up one morning wanting an brioche and espresso and discover there's none to be had...you'll be coming back".

In Delaware.  We call this the "ca-feh".

Luckily, The Coffee Place opened pretty much the same week we moved in to our new home (they must have known we were coming), so we've been more or less set on coffee and croissants (no brioche).

What has shocked me since moving is the isolationist, and often just plain mean, mentality I've encountered here.  I'm not sure if this is something that has increased since I last lived in the US, if I'm only noticing it now because I've been away, or if its just more intense in this area than elsewhere. 

To be clear, I'm not talking about a liberal-conservative, left-right divide here.  I'm talking about a "keep off my lawn mentality" that spans all economic classes and political convictions.  Its a me-first mentality.  Its a mentality that lacks compassion for anyone different or "outside".  It's the mentality that makes people go so far as to key each other's cars, just because someone parked in "their" spot or start sentences with "I'm not racist, but...", or "I shouldn't be saying this, but...", or "These people...".

This week we went to the local city council meeting to check it out.  We arrived a bit late and were surprised to find the room packed.  The issue on the table was the establishment of a group home for recovering addicts.

Of course, this would give most people pause- you come home, and a vigilant person on your street has posted a flier on your door informing you that a group home is opening nearby, near where there is a school, and children walk to school, etc.  You call the city, which informs you that there is a public meeting that night (as there is every week- why don't you come!), and off you go.

However, as the city council pointed out at the meeting, fortunately or unfortunately, local government has no say in this particular matter because under Federal non-discrimination laws recovering addicts have the same right to chose where they want to live as other free people.  By definition, recovering addicts are actively trying to deal with their addiction and re-enter society, which is near impossible if you are stigmatized and shunned every step of the way.  Hence, laws to ensure they can freely find housing and jobs, without which they'd probably fall back into addiction.

The city council (having only just learned about the issue themselves) invited the leader of the half-way house to the meeting to present about its intended purpose and then gave the citizens a chance to voice their concerns.  The goal of course being a productive exchange of ideas in a controlled environment. 

The founder of the house presented.  He was well spoken and basically outlined how recovering addicts who are placed in communal housing are more likely to stay off drugs and find a well paying job compared to people who are hospitalized and "recover" away from society.  Communal houses are also cheaper to run than the in-patient model.  One of the city counselors mentioned he had called around to local real-estate agents to find out the impact on local property values- and they had said they didn't know or that there isn't any impact (which is essentially the findings of this paper when prices are viewed over the long term).

And then there was a line of people who got up to voice their opposition.  First up was a nurse who worked with recovering addicts.  She praised the founder of the half-way house for doing what he was doing, but then enjoined him to do it somewhere else, anywhere else, just not next door to her.

Then there was a string of people whose testimony remarked on how their neighborhood was getting a reputation for drugs and then went on to say that they couldn't have a half-way house because it was going to attract people doing drugs.  Some went so far to acknowledge the existing drug problem before  envisioning a world where the existence of a half-way house was going to cause their street to be suddenly littered with used needles and syringes, children falling on them right and left.

Two former addicts got up to testify how group homes had helped them while some in the crowd muttered and made sounds of discomfort and disbelief. 

The NIMBY attitude is nothing new and completely understandable.

What I found shocking was the that members of the community then started complaining about the Federal government meddling in their lives with these anti-discrimination laws, and accusing the local city council of being useless if they couldn't stand up to and fight the government for them.

Now, I'm not too crazy about the fact that my neighbors keep a "handgun" that looks like a super soaker, but it seems there are some federal laws that permit them to do that.  And I'm pretty sure most of the people at the meeting would have stood up to defend with equal vehemence my neighbors' right to do a variety of thing on their own property.  I've actually come to just expect that everyone I meet around here has the idea that every property owner is the "king of his own castle" and what goes on within those bounds shouldn't be limited or interfered with by government.



http://gordonspecialtyarms.com/?page_id=59

While there were many visions of a future with the young men of the half-way house grabbing young girls off the street, engaging in petty theft, and scattering needles willy-nilly for children to trip on, there were no specific concerns voiced about the fact that some of these young men might legally own a gun.

We chose to live in a neighborhood without a homeowner's association because its the very bizarre price we have to pay if we want to have a clothes line and a compost pile (although of course, this is still only a "privilege" afforded to us by current zoning codes).  The tradeoff is that our neighbors can do pretty much whatever they want to do as well.

So I was a bit taken a back to suddenly hear people arguing that the federal government has overstepped their bounds by ensuring that a property owner can rent to whoever they choose.

What is more basic than the right to live where you want to live without discrimination, knowing that you aren't blacklisted or judged every time you leave your house and walk down the street?

The section of the meeting dealing with this issue eventually concluded and 90% of the room bee-lined out the door rather than stay to find out what was happening elsewhere in town.  The next issue up was about a neighborhood that dissolved their homeowners' association, because the majority of residents wouldn't pay the fee, but are now unhappy that they no longer have private parking spots in front of their houses (since for the city to maintain the streets, all street parking must then belong to all tax payers). 

The overall effect of the meeting was a self-centered view of what constitutes "rights".  So long as it doesn't bother me, and I don't have to pay for it, its a right.
___

Full disclosure:  We used to live in an apartment building next to a group home.  One of the residents helped us make a solar oven and we exchanged recipes.  I've had worse neighbors.



Trees we've ordered

I should take the time to correct the notion that Soggy Bottom Homestead is all about chickens. In fact, we also ordered a number of trees ad shrubs. We got a big variety, mainly to see what will or won't grow well - presumably in the coming years we'd specialize more.

Buying trees involves two problems. The first is that the local nurseries, and many online sellers, tend to sell relatively expensive trees, at $30 or more each. Clearly we need to do better than this.

The second problem is that most of the trees that are available are ornamentals, which is something I frankly can't understand. I mean, why spend a lot of time and money on a plant if you can't subsequently eat it? Who do I look like, Louis XVI or something? And even he had an orangerie.

After some web searching we solved both problems by ordering from the Arbor Day Foundation. For $10, you can get an Arbor Day membership, which entitles you to discounts on the trees from the shop, plus ten free trees (we chose the Wild Bird Garden pack). And, because we ordered so many trees, they threw in two free Forsythias and a free red maple! What are we going to do with a red maple? We don't know yet. In total we got 39 trees/shrubs, for just below $6 each. Arbor Day doesn't have an enormous variety, and if you're looking for local cultivars you're out of luck, but the price is great and the trees are useful. Apparently they will all come as bare root trees sometime between March and May.

We also found that the state of Maryland will give a coupon to buy one native tree at a nursery. And if you're willing to buy trees 50 at a time, you can get them from the state for free. (You do have to show that you actually planted all of the trees, though, so this program is really suitable only for tree farms).

Here's the full list (sorry for the poorly formatted table): 

Tree	Notes
Hazelnut Project Charter Patron (3 free hazelnut bushes)	Kind an impulse buy – we get a new hazelnut cultivar and report on the results. Mmm, nutella.
Arapaho Blackberry	Milburn Orchards, nearby, has blackberries and raspberries and they do well.
Free Red Maple	Free maple!
Early Golden Apricot
Rubel Blueberry	Apparently blueberries like acidic soil, and we already have a few pine trees, so it should be a perfect match.
2 Free Forsythias	Our concession to middle-class conformity.
Early Richmond Cherry (Dwarf)	Subject of a lovely poem by AE Housman, as well as a medieval Christmas carol.
Concord Grape Vine	Bring on the Manischevitz.
Elberta Peach (Dwarf)	I don’t have the heart to tell them they misspelled Alberta.
Damson Plum (Dwarf)	Bring on the Slivovitz.
Kieffer Pear (Dwarf)
Heritage Everbearing Raspberry	Also found at Milburn Orchards.
Sourwood	Apparently the leaves make a good jam.
Dwarf Russian Almond
Fragrant Lilac
Bar Harbor Juniper
2 Pecans	Who cares if it’ll be decades until they mature? I like nuts.
Carpathian English Walnut	Tasty nuts, plus excellent lumber (but not both at the same time).
Witchhazel
Weeping Willow	This is intended for the pond at the back of the property, where we effectively have a natural wetland. Also, having a degree in Classics, I'll be able to finally fulfil my dream of underwater basket-weaving.
4 Baldcypresses	This is a tall, majestic tree that does well in wet areas – it even grows in swamps. The wood is supposed to be very good. One for each of the nieces and nephews!
Blue Hydrangea

Egg production: economic update

Let's revisit chicken economics! Since the last economics post, the hens have made a lot more eggs. Sadly, we've also spent a lot more money:

The chickens have laid 115 eggs. Our spending on chicken-related paraphernalia has gone up to $192.27. The chickens don't seem to be eating as furiously as before, and our neighbour gave us a bale of hay. But, we also put down more money building infrastructure for the chickens: a chicken tractor and a chicken hoop house (which we'll talk more about in a future post).

Fortunately, we made $30 by selling some eggs to Jan's colleagues. The "fortunate" part is partly because we made some money, but mostly because we didn't have to eat 115 eggs. (The egg revenues are not included in the graph above).

Our costs per egg have gone down, but not quite as much as we predicted before. In fact, they seem rather to have stabilized:

Our cost per egg is now $1.65. Not great, especially given that the chickens, along with some of the equipment and feed, came for free. But, our egg economics model (i.e., the linear fit we put on the curve with an awesome R-squared of .7361) predicts that we will become profitable tomorrow!

If you take out the "infrastructure" costs, the marginal cost per egg goes down to $1.06.

The costs breakdown to date:

Percent of total costs	Percent of operating costs		Category
37%	58%		Feed
16%	25%		Bedding
7%	10%		Electric
36%			Infrastructure
4%	7%		Consumable

NOTE: This post was written by Adam Delved. Eva Spun spurns Excel graphs.