National Bike Month

Now is national bike month here in the US. Bikes are really great for transportation. 

I of course do save quite a bit by not driving and I know it every time I pass by a gas station. It's almost $3.50 per gallon and I'm not expecting it to ever get below $2.50 per gallon again. 

One of the bigger surprises though was getting a discount on my life insurance because I didn't expect that. Probably the biggest detraction is that it takes you longer to get from place to place but I never have to take any days off for sickness. I'm going on 50 and I'm just about the only one that works where I do who doesn't have to. It's probably because of all of the bike riding, a bike is my only transportation.

Here are some of the numbers that have been put together by a couple of other sites. 
https://www.mint.com/blog/trends/shift-your-saving-into-gear-a-visual-guide-to-how-cycling-can-save-you-money-0514/?display=wide

Here's my ride these days. I really like the Takara, it's been a really good bike. So far I haven't even had a flat tire which has been a shocker.

Solar collector systems

I’ve been taking a break from writing novels for a bit. My wrist had been bothering me a lot because of typing every day for over two and a half years. During that time I’ve produced a lot of different books and short stories. Some of them you might have even read. The present project that I’m working on is Inquiso and in the story the main character lives for at least part of the story line in a house with solar and wind power. One question has led to another and I’ve begun to research renewable energy as a result. Right now I’m also working on the energy efficiency of my house. This post is the result of some of the research I’ve been doing and will be doing.

Maybe this last winter your utility bills scared you just like they did me. Propane can be really expensive to cook and heat your house. There are some things you can do about it. So far I can definitely recommend LED light bulbs and additional insulation is also a good thing along with water heater wraps. None of them are really all that expensive to accomplish either.

Now let’s just say you’ve decided you would like to get at least part of your power from the sun. Even if you're going to be connected to the grid you can be assured electric won't cost less in the future in most places. That's just one good reason. Of course it’s beneficial to know you’ll be making the environment cleaner. The cleaner environment doesn’t necessary directly affect your wallet though which is what most people are interested in.

In my research a 270 watt solar panel will pay for itself in about one year and that's without rebates or subsidies. They cost about $280 each and each should last for about 25-30 years.

It took me a bit but I finally found the formula you need to figure out what size system is necessary.

Array size=annual kWh usage÷days per year÷solar hours÷day .75 derate

The derate amount figures in for the loss when putting your current through an inverter which takes the DC and turns it into AC. In our case I've already figured out the daily average so here is the formula with numbers.

10.5 kWh ÷ 5.5 ÷ .75 = 2.55 kW

I'll probably go for 50-75% of our total usage next year. I think that's what I'll be able to afford. Getting the individual components is cheaper than buying a whole package I’ll note. When I took twenty of the years into consideration each 270 watt panel produces power at about 3.5 cents per kilowatt over the life of the panel. That's a wow!

There are a few things you need to make note of. Some utilities are not a fan of paying their customers for the power being generated. They will fight you on it. Others require you to get a special permit.

I've also read articles more recently where the utilities were pushing a tax to be placed on renewable energy sources. That’s kind of understandable as they are trying to protect their own interests. Just a word of warning but before you cover you entire roof with solar panels dreaming of the money you'll make you need to check. However it shouldn't be too much of an issue if it's only part of your power. Of course your other option would be to completely disconnect from the grid. I’ll warn you that can be expensive though with all of the batteries, etc.

One thing that found quite interesting recently. I guess all new buildings in China have solar water heaters. The heater is a large black box with tubes in it that water flows through and heats up. It gets collected in some kind of tank for the use of those living in the building. I know part of it is to save money. Just to heat water for showers it can be a quarter of your energy costs easily.

Those solar water heater systems in China I'm going to research a bit more. They do interest me. Many years ago when I lived in Las Vegas, Nevada I used a solar water system I built. It was pretty simple. I made a black box that I would fill up in the morning and I think it held about fifteen gallons. During the day the water would heat up naturally on the top of the home built camper I was living in. That night I would take a nice hot shower. I don't know how well it would work where I am now though it would probably work well during the summer.

Unemployment forecast

This is my own employment forecast for the US. The market will continue to get stronger as we continue through the year. Based on how the unemployment keeps dropping I'm forecasting around 5% by early December at the latest. There will still be soft spots here and there. Sorry, that's what I foresee. This is the chart I'm partially basing my projection on and just looking at it you can see readily the extrapolation I'm making. The chart itself I stole from the Department of Labor.

Please note that the chart only includes present unemployment claims and doesn't include anyone that's ran out of unemployment.

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On one of the job search sites I personally like, Indeed.com, has had 706,395 new jobs posted in the last 7 days. Now a number of them are fluff you don't want but there's at least 50,000 that isn't.

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This was the job possibilities sent in a single email to me today. I haven't seen this many openings listed in one email since about the middle of 2007. Now you can see from looking through them a number of them are junk but about half is good opportunities. Probably a couple of them are feelers also. A hiring manager is trying to find out how the job market is.

Manager Security Solutions   Verizon

Customer Service Representative   Xerox Corporation

Medication Care Manager   Sunrise Senior Living

Salon Manager   Great Clips

Stylist   Great Clips

Rep-Sales Ops-Retail (part-time position, specific to District MT02 only)
Verizon Wireless

Customer Care Supervisor   Xerox Corporation

Mail Clerk   Randstad Staffing

Benefits Coordinator   Prominent Point Dental Group and Orthodontics

**Solutions Specialist**   Verizon Wireless

Pizza Hut Team Member   Pizza Hut

Pizza Hut Delivery Driver   Pizza Hut

Customer Service - Full Time   I L I F F

Assistant Store Manager
Vitamin Shoppe Industries Inc

Customer Sales and Service Job
NAPA

Kids Club Attendant Job
Gold's Gym

Store Manager Job
NAPA

Automotive Service Advisor / Ford Customer Service Writer / Auto Sales
Medved Ford

Administrative Support / Customer Service Opportunities
Army Local Campaign

Customer Service Call Center Representative
Progressive Insurance

Full Time - Customer Service/ Technical Support Agents Start 5/19
Alorica

Retail Store Management Trainee
Firestone Complete Auto Care

Sales Coordinator 2
TalenTrust

Assistant Store Manager Woodland Park Colorado
Family Dollar

Experienced Professional Fundraisers Wanted!
United Support, LLC

Business Development Call Center Representative - Home-Based
Wheelhouse Enterprises

Experienced Outside Sales Representatives
Smart Choice Payments

Poker Room Supervisor
Triple Crown Casinos

Store Manager
The Vitamin Shoppe

Team Member
Triple Crown Casinos

Team Member
Taco Bell

Restaurant Assistant Manager
Taco Bell

store manager
Starbucks

Store Seasonal Employee - Front End Customer Service Associate
Lowe's

Cashier Team Member
Target Stores

Manager, Customer Care Job
Time Warner Cable Company

Customer Service Representative Fountain Colorado
Family Dollar

Customer Account Representative, Now Accepting Applications for Future Openings
Rent-A-Center

ENTRY LEVEL WORK FROM HOME PT / FT

Customer Service Representative
Arise Virtual Solutions

"Store Seasonal Employee - Front End Customer Service Associate"
Lowe's

" Customer Service Associate II-Weekdays"
Lowe's

" Customer Service Associate"
Best Buy

Store Seasonal Employee - Front End Customer Service Associate
Lowe's

Customer Service /Deliveries
Home Depot

Customer Service Supervisor
Burlington Coat Factory

Customer Service Representative
Williams-Sonoma

Customer Service Representative
Aramark

Customer Service Representative
Kohl's

Customer Service Associate
Best Buy

Admin Assistant - Online Research and Customer Service
Sears Holdings

Customer Service Associate II-Weekdays
Lowe's

Automotive Customer Service Advisor job in
Sears Holdings

Satellite TV Technician/Installer - Springfield
Dish Network

Satellite TV Technician/Installer
Dish Network

Call Center Operator wanted for a customer services company in
Tip Top Recruiting

"Automotive Customer Service Advisor"
Sears

"Lead Mentor Refrigeration Service Technician"
Sears

Service Desk Team Member
Target

Food Service Worker
ARAMARK

Food Service Team Member
Target

Part-Time Full Service Associate
Williams-Sonoma

Food Service Worker - Floater
Sodexo

Food Service Worker
Sodexo

Food Service Worker - Part time
Sodexo

Client Services Representative
Credit Service Company, Inc.

Work From Home Escalation Support Trai
Enterprise Holdings EAN Services, LLC

Truck Driver - Hiker/ Vehicle Transporter/CDL - Part Time
Penske Logistics Corporation

Part Time Animal Nutrition Consultant (Pet - Retail)
Chuck Latham Associates

Sr. Unix Ops Manager
Unknown

Retail Sales Leader, Bilingual
T-Mobile

Retail Sales Representative
Cricket Wireless

"Store Seasonal Employee: Front End"
Lowe's

Retail Sales Teammate - PT
Bridgestone Americas, Inc

Head Cashier
Lowe's

Sprint Retail Sales Job
Sprint

Retail Sales Consultant
AT&T

Store Seasonal Employee: Front End
Lowe's

Assistant Deli Manager Job
Sprouts Farmers Market

Sales Associate
7-11
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Now the unemployment index I like better is the U-6 rate. It also includes those who have run out of unemployment. Many of those who are working part time and would like to work full time are also included. 

I stole this image from Portal Seven.

As you can readily see it's headed downwards also. Now I do not foresee it coming all the way down to 7% again. There's been a few societal changes since 2001. A lot of families are wanting to have a single breadwinner only. For my household in fact we rely on my income only. Basically I'm forecasting it to hit about 9-10% early next year which I think will be the new bottom.

New phone

     More recently my Blackberry decided to start giving up the ghost. Once again I was having battery and charging issues. It's kind of bad when you are going through your contact list or opening up the browser and the phone shuts down without warning.
     To solve the issue I began looking at other phones. The one I selected is a Kyocera Hydro. Unfortunately it doesn't seem that my provider, Cricket, isn't going with Blackberry devices anymore. In another year the CDMA phones will get completely phased out so I'll be switching again.
     The phone has been really easy to get used to and I had been concerned about that. Just a couple of odd things I'll mention. Be careful going through your contacts or it will dial automatically. There's no media player built in so you'll need to get one from the app store. The one I selected is the free version of Music Pro. 
     I'll note that the phones processor does seem to bog down at times. You'll be waiting several moments for it to finish doing what it's doing. I also got a memory booster since stuff seems to stay and helps to bog down the phone. The one I'm using is Memory Booster Lite. It works nice and fast.

One of the main things I want to be able to do on my phone is make notes and sometimes work on manuscripts. Of all of the books I've published over half were started on my phone. To that end I got QuickOffice from the app store. It ties directly into Google Drive which is wonderful and yes I can modify the documents there easily. It will be nice that I won't have to tether the phone to the computer to transfer a manuscript. Basically I'll be able to start a new Word doc anywhere, save it to the cloud, and open it up on my laptop also. That's beautiful. I'll also note that A7 seems to be the best page size to work with.
     Just imagine for a moment. I'll be able to go to a nearby park, pick a bench, and start writing.
     Probably the worst thing is the on screen keyboard. It'll quite often register me tapping the wrong letter though that autospell feature does seem to address some of that issue. This can be very annoying as you have to back up and replace the letter in question. Having to tap each letter individually is slowing everything up a bit also. To make my life easier I ordered a roll up bluetooth keyboard that should be here soon. 
     I will note that text is rather small. Being near sighted quite often to efficiently look at the phone I was having to take off my glasses. While I was able to modify the size of text in the web browser that hasn't seemed to affect what's in the word processor.
     All in all it's pretty good.

I received a Kyocera Hydro yesterday. It works really well which surprises me. Here's the phone. http://www.mycricket.com/cell-phones/details/kyocera-hydro-c5171

Yes, my service provider is Cricket.

Pros:

Lots of apps.
Doesn't seem crash prone.
Can open, and edit, Word docs on it.
It will interface with Audible books also.
Basically it will do just about every a 486 desktop would do.

I thought it was going to smudge a lot while touching the screen but it doesn't all that much.

Cons:
Miss-registers where I'm tapping.
Short battery life. (that could be related to the screen size though.)
Sometimes the processor hangs.

To take care of the on screen keyboard issue I ordered one of  these. I might not be3 working on Inquiso at the moment but that won't always prove. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CERCKXM BTW, it's waterproof also.

So far it's looking like this phone could in some instances replace a laptop. That's one of the reasons why I'd gotten the Blackberry.

Energy savings updates 5 May

Apparently the water heater wrap seems to be doing it's job quite well and seems to have further reduced total energy use. The water heater wrap I did on the 1st which is affecting this fuel delivery. It's amazing this large a change is registering with just some insulation over the kitchen and livingroom and a water heater wrap.

Today's propane delivery was 27 gallons.

My yearly per fill up average has dropped to 47.7 gallons and at the high point in November it was at 54.1 gallons. At the present market price of $2 per gallon I'm up $12.80 savings per fill up. This is a decrease since November of 11.8% or 6.2 gallons. Note that this is a yearly average like all of the deliveries from June 1 through this May so it's pulling in the larger fuel deliveries going back to June last year.

So I could see the amount per month I decided to run another average. This one is the total monthly. In December the Nov/Dec average was 84.3 gallons, the last two months that average has went to 75.6 gallons. That's a pretty similar amount of change. I know there was one additional delivery last June. Anyway, that's also showing a decrease of about 10.3%.

It will drop much further since the last three fill ups have averaged 30.1 gallons each (33.5 April 7, 29.8 April 21, and 27.0 today). This is a huge drop and I know pretty much where the average per fill up is headed to.

The next scheduled fill up is in July I think on the 14th which I'm expecting to be a larger delivery since it will be for several weeks. We'll see but I might make it through the summer without any additional fill ups which do cost a bit more because of the additional delivery fee unless the tank is almost empty. An empty propane tank is very explosive therefore a fire hazard. I think we had two of those extra summer deliveries last year.

On a further note from April 1st through yesterday we're at 10.5 kWh per day which is 2.05 kWh less than last years average. I'm at a 16.3% decrease. Of course it's mainly affected by the furnace being off most of the time. The house is a lot more comfortable also even when it's hot during the day.

I almost can't wait for the windows to be installed on the house. Today I moved one porch roof support from where it was next to my office window to about eight inches away. When they built the porch originally the one corner is adjoined with the one side of the window for my office. Now it won't interfere with the installers which will make their lives easier.

I'd like to add insulation of some kind over the other half of the house but I'm not coming up with an efficient way of doing it. So far the best way I'm coming up is attaching 1 inch thick styrofoam to the ceiling and then adding some texture over it. That has to wait a while anyway.

Energy savings

I've been doing some home improvements lately and most of those are intended to increase energy efficiency. There's new insulation over the living room and kitchen. I've also replaced most of the bathroom floor and added insulation between the joists.

The weather during the first two weeks of March was warm which meant the furnace was off. About the 18th of that month I started putting the insulation in which I think I finished it about the 28th in the living room and kitchen. That's also when the LED lights went up over the kitchen. The bathroom got its insulation about the 23rd of April when I replaced the sub floor. Here are some of the results.

Propane usage

Our heat, cooking, and hot water are on propane which is very expensive. With the April 7th fill up the monthly average had hit $174.64 per month. On November the 4th the monthly average was $151.94. That’s an increase of $23 per month.

I'd already been trying to do a few things to lower the amount of propane used which is why it had already been decreasing over the past year. On November 4th the average per fill over the previous year was 54.1 gallons, as of April 21 it was 48.9 gallons. That's a difference of 5.2 gallons so far and it will be dropping a lot more for the average, can't believe the last two fill ups were about 30 gallons each (33.5 and 29.8). Anyway, 5.2 gallons figures out to about $10.92 per fill up or about $207 per year which is about 9.6%.

On our electric

I have several years of electric readings available of which there is a little over three years totaled. In 2012 we averaged 12.7 kWh per day, and in 2013 it was 12.5 kWh. I believe most of that small amount of change had to do with our new washing machine we got in early May, 2013. As of December last year the monthly average for the previous year was 383.17 kWh.

Now for what’s happening this year. This last billing cycle we average at 10.46 kWh per day. It was nice to see the bill for $40.95. I'm looking at a 2 kWh per day difference right now which figures to about $102 per year or about 16%.

I'll note the LED lights in the kitchen are about 500 watts of the savings which figures to about $25.50 per year. I'd also changed out the string of lights on the porch but I think they're a smaller amount of savings, they're LED's also.

An interesting note would be that I could get my power from solar panels cheaper than I can from the city grid. The most recent info from the Department of Energy numbers is 11 cents per kilowatt and I'm paying about 14 cents for power from the grid. To hit 11 cents per kilowatt I'd have to use about 800 kWh per month.

Total savings

So far we're looking at the utilities decreasing by $309 per year. Now that number should increase quite a bit through the year. We had some warm weather in the earlier part of March which helped but that month was pretty close to the average. This March was 352 kWh, over the last three years I averaged 360 kWh.

The end of March I finished the insulation and put in some new lighting that's more energy efficient. I was happy to notice in the newest electric bill it was 293 kWh and over the last three April's its averaged 329 kWh. I'll note the only time in over three years the monthly usage had ever been below 300 kWh before was in May 2013.

To put the electrical usage in another light the average daily usage last year was 12.55 kWh, in April it was 10.46 kWh. Basically it figures to 29 cents per day which is about $8.75 per month or a little over $100 per year.

The electric is not the big one, the propane is. An average fill up is down by over 5 gallons which is a lot, almost 100 gallons per year or about $210, a 10.6% difference. I'm happy to say the monthly average is now $170.54 which is decreasing and I'm expecting it to drop a lot further. I'll do another post that updates everything after the new windows are in.
The insulation I used cost about $100. It's basic R-13 batts that's available at any home improvement store. I should see it pay off in four months.

Anyway, the savings is off to one hell of a great start. I was expecting a difference but I wasn’t expecting this much of one. We'll see how close I am but I've begun projecting a 30% total decrease next winter.

I'm going to making a water heater wrap and new insulated door for its enclosure. The stuff I'll be using makes me think of bubble wrap with a reflective Mylar layer. The new windows should be on the house in another month. I believe they're LEED certified.