The new house is coming along. We’ve — or, rather, Fred and his folks have — pulled up most of the carpet on the main floor. Sadly, it looks like the original hardwood underneath is in too rough a shape to just sand and refinish, so we’ll probably be installing a floating floor on top of the existing wood floor and subfloor. Add this to the other “soon” projects (tankless hot water heater FTW) and the to-do list is starting to look a bit daunting.

That said, I did receive power tools for the holiday (so lesbionic, non?), and I’ve already used them. We had purchased new handles and locks for the two screen doors, mostly so that we won’t need a key to operate the locks from the inside, but the new handles didn’t fit in the existing holes. As a result, I got to break out the new drill and new bits and work my way through the doors. It felt mindlessly Republican, like I should be chanting “drill, baby, drill” or something, but I managed to get through the task without starting any poorly-managed wars or demonizing any minorities.

I think the next project is going to be re-re-caulking the bathtub; I can already see a few gaps where water can get through, and the whole roasting-pan-on-the-kitchen-floor-during-showers thing is getting old fast. After that, who knows?

Shortly before our second closing date, we discovered that the sellers’ sewer cabling had caused the house’s sewer lateral to collapse. (It’s irrelevant whether the collapse was a direct or indirect result of the cabling, so we didn’t bother pursuing.) The sellers agreed to pay to remedy the problem and extend our rate lock, and the work started about a month later. We finally closed November 7 and moved that weekend. Since then, we’ve been unpacking; replacing locks, light bulbs, hydraulic screen door closers, and thermostats; fighting latent plumbing issues (leaky shower, leaky faucet, valves that break off in my hand, et al.); pulling up carpet to reveal hardwood in iffy condition; and generally trying to make sense of the new place.

Things are starting to come together. We’re planning to spend the long weekend making things somewhat presentable for a month-late birthday dinner – a little paint, a lot less carpet, and maybe even a clothes dryer that is hooked up and working. (The washer is awesome and all, but hang-drying everything can be a bit tedious.)

Now that we’re moved, though, I have lost one massive excuse for teh blogslack. dammit!

I know, two months. Sorry. I’ve never exactly been consistent here, though, so this particular hiatus was unexpected but not unprecedented.

We adopted Kooper and have been working on getting him fully adjusted to us, and us fully adjusted to him. He’s bigger than we had planned, and his size does make him a little intimidating to some people, but so far everyone who gets to know him falls in love with him. Now all we have to do is get him to realize that car rides are not punishment.

We’re also in the process of buying a house. The current housing market really isn’t bad if one can get credit, and as it turns out, we can, thanks to FHA loans (a New Deal program that the Republicans haven’t dismantled yet) and a nifty benefit from my employer that will be providing 5% towards our down payment.

The house itself is a story and a half, so the dog and cats can be on separate floors if they so desire. It’s in wonderful shape thanks to the conscientious efforts of its current owners; the house inspector only found a couple notable problems, and they’re relatively small fixes. We’ll be living in a well-managed inner-ring suburb that would have been part of the City except for the 1876 secession; the daily commute will be very short for me, and it’s very close to most of the stores we frequent. There’s also a backyard that’s big enough for both an energetic dog and a modest vegetable garden.

Closing is set for early October. Once we take possession of the house, we’ll be pulling up carpet, refinishing floors, and upgrading dual-prong electrical outlets to grounded outlets before moving. Later projects will include some work on the kitchen cabinets and upgrades to the air conditioner and water heater, and possibly even a photovoltaic system on the roof. In the meantime, though, Fred’s packing stuff and I’m hashing out details on the mortgage and insurance and down-payment program.

More on all that as things develop. Any questions?

The quick version of this post:

energy efficiency saves you money, stupidhead.

The long version:

Look. We all know gas prices are ridiculous, and that market forces are going to be scrambling to catch up for a while, and that there are environmental reasons to be energy-efficient, blah blah blah. Much of our collective problem, is that it’s apparently pretty easy to forget about energy efficiency when energy prices are low. So let’s crunch some numbers.

To calculate the per-hour cost of running a particular electrical item — a light, a refrigerator, a TV, whatever —

• Determine its electrical usage in watts. Some items, such as light bulbs, list this outright; those are easy. Other items, such as computers or refrigerators, list voltage and amperage; these use differing amounts of electricity depending on what they’re doing, but you can figure the theoretical maximum wattage by multiplying volts by amperes.
• Divide usage in watts by one thousand to get usage in kilowatts. (Americans: “kilo-” means “one thousand”. It’s that icky metric stuff, I know, but stick with me.)
• Find your local utility’s rate per kilowatt-hour. It should be on their Web site, though you may have to wade through several types of rate. (Right now, I would look at my utility’s summer residential rate, which comes to 7.92 cents per kilowatt-hour [PDF].)
• Multiply the per-kilowatt-hour rate by the usage in kilowatts. Your result is the per-hour cost to operate this item.

As an example, let’s discuss lighting in my kitchen, where there are five bulbs in a ceiling fan. On an average day, we’re in there using those lights for about three hours total; those lights are typically off when they aren’t in use. Throw in a thirty-day average billing cycle and here’s how much it used to cost to light that room, before we swapped incandescent bulbs for CFLs:

• Five bulbs, 60W per bulb = 300W total to use
• Three hours of usage per day, 300W while in use = 0.9kWh per day
• Thirty days in a billing cycle, 0.9kWh per day = 27kWh per cycle
• 27 kWh per cycle at the rates above ~= $2.14 per month in summer

Using 14W CFL bulbs in the same pattern providing the same amount of light:

• Five bulbs, 14W per bulb = 70W total to use
• Three hours of usage per day, 70W while in use = 0.21kWh per day
• Thirty days in a cycle, 0.21kWh per day = 6.3kWh per cycle
• 6.3kWh per cycle at the rates above ~= $0.50 per month in summer

And that’s just one fixture in one room, at rates that are relatively low for U.S. urban centers. The savings are even more pronounced at higher rates: in Juneau, where rates recently hit 56 cents/kWh, that one light fixture would have cost $15.12 per month with incandescents (ouch!), but only $3.53 per month with CFLs (much less ouch).

While it will cost around $10 to put five CFLs in that fixture (vs. $2.50 for five new incandescents, using multi-pack prices from a Home Depot near me), the extra up-front cost will be recaptured after about 4 months of average use at my house. It’s also worth noting that CFLs last about five times longer than incandescents, so you can often come out ahead just on the cost of the bulbs themselves.

(Aside: What’s the heat source on the original Easy-Bake Oven? An incandescent light bulb! “Incandescent” means “glowing hot”, after all. Think about that while your air conditioner runs up your utility bills.)

[And yes, LEDs are considerably more energy-efficient and longer-lasting than CFLs. Unfortunately, their up-front cost is appalling at the moment ($60 for a single bulb?!), so until prices come way, way, way, way, way down I don't see LEDs replacing CFLs.]

OK, so yes, I am posting more on my ongoing dental saga. It’s a notable situation in my life at the moment, though, so tough cookies.

Last night was the initial wave of treatment on #12. After a very bitter topical anesthetic and some injected lidocaine the dentist and his assistant got to work scouring out infected portions of tooth. (Even though I couldn’t feel a thing, I could hear every scrape through bone conduction; this was rather unpleasant.) Because the infection has reached the pulp as well, a simple filling is inappropriate, so I have an appointment on Super Duper Fat Tuesday to get started with the root canal.

There is a temporary filling in there now to protect the exposed tissues. It feels a bit weird, mostly because I had just gotten used to the minor gap left when the original tooth broke. It looks natural at first glance, though further examination reminds me of the germ at the center of a kernel of corn.

More on this later, as things develop further.

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I have created a monster…

We’ve been looking at houses lately, thanks in part to the price cuts that result from poor sales and in part to a super-sweet benefit of the ol’ employer (forgivable loans for down payments!). Sadly, though, just when we find a neat place in our price range in a qualifying neighborhood, it gets sold FAST. (Aside: we should so market this. “Find a buyer! Just pay us $X; we’ll feign an interest in your place and somebody else will snatch it up!”)

In discussing our situation the other day, we considered that maybe it just isn’t time for us to buy just yet. I attempted to be facetious and sent Fred a link to the Tumbleweed Tiny House Company, saying “let’s just buy some cheap land and get one of these”.

I didn’t expect him to fall completely in love with the idea.

Granted, those are brilliantly efficient designs, especially on the mobile-sized plans that don’t waste a single cubic inch. They don’t cost very much, their energy efficiency is just sick — one woman averages $5 PER MONTH for all of her cooking and heating fuel needs — and they can theoretically go just about anyplace. I would love to have one of these (the Weebee!) as a vacation home or as a little writing studio or something, but I don’t know that I could stand to live in one full-time.

Fred’s coming around. We’re still thinking small — it’ll save us heating, cooling, and electrical costs, plus it’ll be easier and faster to clean and it will prompt us to ditch a bunch of stuff we don’t actually use — but he’s no longer talking about chucking all our furniture and moving into a hundred square feet.

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Yeah, writing studio. What of it?

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New server is running pretty well as long as I remember not to emerge world very often. (After all, it IS only a 333MHz processor.) I’m still kinda sorta maybe thinking of installing distcc and having my work box do the heavy lifting on behalf of the home server.

That said, I see that Apple’s Time Capsule — you know, the OTHER bit of hardware Stevie introduced the other day — would consolidate storage and all network infrastructure into one pretty pretty package that maxes out at only 30W (less than either the drive enclosure or the laptop). I just don’t think I’m ready to drop $300 or $500 on it, though.

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Time to go; have to eat my very soft lunch.