Wednesday, June 11, 2014

One more week.

So far it's been a really good week. I've made a lot of headway on "Offsets and Savings" and it's just about through all of the editing stages. Of course everything in the book consists of things I've done on my house in real life. Some of the stuff has been pretty successful, others a little less so.

One of the things I'm glad I did was that water heater wrap. I'm positive it's helped stretch the propane in the tank a little bit further. The last spring delivery is late April or early May. Then you have a delivery about the middle of July. The next one after that is early October when the fall schedule kicks in. It gets to be a long time. The propane company will fill it between the scheduled fill ups but they charge an additional $75 fee and the tank has to be almost empty.

As of earlier today it's been five and a half weeks since the last fill up and the tank is sitting at 20% which is about 20 gallons left. Basically in my house our average use is about 10 gallons per week right now and the tank holds 80 to 90 gallons.

Last year at the same amount of time after the last spring fill up I think there was about 10% or 10 gallons left. The delivery that came a few days after was 86.1 gallons.

We've had more people living at the house also so there's been more cooking and more showers have been taken. It kind of goes with the territory. Apparently I've done some good with that water heater wrap. I still to some more though to do to make the place even more energy efficient. That's why I'm looking forward to next years polystyrene insulation and stucco upgrade to the exterior of the house next year.


It's pretty obvious I won't quite make it to the next scheduled fill up so when the tank finally reaches about 5% which should be in about two weeks I'll shut it off temporarily. There's no way I'll be able to pay the extra $75 fee. I just turned off the pilot light to the furnace yesterday which I didn't think of doing before and I wish I would have. We'd probably have about 5 gallons more in the tank right now if I had. 

When I do shut down the tank we'll only have cold water in the house unless we warm it up in the microwave in a bowl. It'll be like living out at the ranch again where I was taking care of horses for two and a half years. Because of the limited amount of water coming out of the well you couldn't take a shower and you had to basically clean your entire body with about a gallon of water. Yes, it can be done.