conuly

I have four clothes horses and no drier(in addition to my outside clothesline). You can set them up in an area that gets use during the day but not at night and they generally don't use a lot of room anyway.

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If I recall correctly, any electronic device uses energy while plugged in - that's why you're supposed to unplug irons and electric heaters while not in use, right? And I know that I once had the power cord to my keyboard plugged in for, oh, months (!) while my keyboard was somewhere else entirely. When I finally unplugged the cord, the... the... the huge boxy part of it was warm-to-hot! Even with nothing attached, it had still been drawing power that whole time.

As far as I know, drawing power is generally not the fault of the electronics but of the "boxy part", as you call it -- the transformer draws power even when the device is in use. And since most electronics don't run on 110V AC but typically on something like 12V DC, they need a transformer.

Older computers, which had a switch in the back *before* the PSU, would not draw power when switched off that way, but nowadays, I think the ATX standard says that PSUs have to supply a small amount of power even when nominally "off". Not sure of the details.

As for irons and heaters, I don't know; they might possibly draw power since they don't usually have an "off" switch as such, do they? (They don't really fall under "electronic" device in my book, though, unless your iron is more high-tech than the ones we get here in Germany. "Electric", yes.)

A lamp, though, for example, I would expect to draw no power when switched off -- incandescent bulbs generally run directly off mains voltage, so there's no transformer, so the switch should cut off current completely when off. And even with bulbs that need some kind of transformer (some kinds of energy-saving ones, I think), the switch would be between the mains plug and the transformer, so they should also be fine.

So generally, the ones you'd want to worry about most are those with an external "power brick" and/or those without a proper mechanical "off" switch. (Such as my printer, which only has "standby", or most television sets or VCRs. Hint: if you can switch them on from the remote control, they're not really off.)

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Yeah, those low-flow showerheads sucked. I'm not sure if our current one is or not. I just get the kids (and myself, of course) to limit our water usage to wetting down and rinsing off.

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If it's "sensitive" electronics like computers, my experience says that plugging/unplugging repeatedly can cause major damage.

A better solution might be to get extension cords with a switch that you can flip to turn off all the power to the outlets on that power strip.

That way, you don't need to keep making and breaking the physical connection between the plug and the socket, while still making and breaking the electrical connection.

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The electronics thing was explained to me as this (best as I remember), a bunch of electronics have clocks and timers and such that they need to power even when off. For example, my stereo system has an alarm that can be set and when it goes off, it turns on the player and plays the CD in it. I don't know how to use this function, so if we accidentally turn it on, we have to keep no CD in it to keep from loud music annoying us at midnight. But it uses power to do that. And a lot of devices use more power than they need to. We have a toaster with those little numbers made up of divided segments, like clocks often have. They glow a pale orange. They look a lot like cheap, low-power LEDs. But they're not. They are a little turney dial with see-through number segments and a glowing light behind it. It's wasteful for no benefit. There is apparently a lot of stuff like that. And apparently many devices take in more energy than they need, and just don't use all of it, rather than just drawing the amount of power they currently need. So, if you unplug them, you aren't using hidden power for stupid functions. If you actually need the clock or timer or whatnot, then it still needs the power to run that.

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Oh, and to add to my previous comment, another comment reminded me - any device that has a remote control uses power whenever plugged in, even if off, as it needs power to constantly check whether it's been told to turn itself on by remote.

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noodles-morgyn.livejournal.com

Why not line-dry your clothes in winter and autumn too? My family does, and it's no problem. I think I'm missing something here...

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Where do you live? I live in New Mexico, and in the summer our clothes will line-dry in under an hour, but in the winter even here they'd be full of ice in no time flat. And personal experience suggests that line-drying clothes when it's very cold (1) takes forever and (2) therefore causes them to grow mildew, necessitating a re-washing.

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conuly

Too cold and too damp to do it outside in NYC. Parts of spring are a wash, too - we've got a lot of damp in this city.

I want a clothes horse so I can dry clothes inside (and be all holier-than-thou about it, of course!) like that, but I don't know that I can get one.

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I can do this - the ones that go into the light itself don't bother me, they have the same color as normal incandescent lights. And it saves money over the long run.

We were just talking about this today, so I thought I'd share my husband's research on the issue: 1. Compact fluorescent bulbs do flicker, but less perceptibly than regular ones. About 10-20% of people can perceive that flickering (I can, and it gives me serious headaches—I mean, I can walk into a room and say, "You put a compact fluorescent bulb into that lamp, didn't you?" usually followed by "Ow! My head! Take it out!"), so check with anyone who lives with you before you go all-out changing all the bulbs in the house. 2. Because they contain mercury, which regular incandescent bulbs don't, a. they need to be recycled, not put in the trash, and b. if they shatter (which is hard to do), you need to leave the house and get a professional to clean up.

We just bought a front-load washer with a silver filter (disinfects in cold water) and internal heater (so we may be able to turn down the water heater; we'll see whether the dishwasher has one also), and G. is determined to put solar panels on the roof. Of course we have one gas-efficient car already, and if we ever get another, we'll probably get a hybrid. All our appliances are Energy Star; of course, most appliances sold nowadays are.

Most of the things we can do out here wouldn't work so well in NYC—like solar panels, and ripping out the yard—we already have xeriscaping in the front, and are planning to rip out what little grass is still alive in the back to put in artificial turf and more xeriscaping. (The native wildflowers out here are so beautiful that I can't imagine wanting more traditional flowers instead, anyway.) And we have a swamp cooler, which saves a fantastic amount of electricity, but only works in desert climates.

Of course you can probably grow some of your own food even in the city; tomatoes and peppers work well on fire escapes and balconies (as I have a brown thumb, I don't grow anything that I can kill).

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conuly

We're on Staten Island, we've got a nice-sized yard.

Plus, there's enough unclaimed scrubland and "park"land here that we could grow a nice garden anywhere.

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Oh, for some reason I thought you were in Brooklyn. Sorry. (Although I do know that there are places in Brooklyn that have yards also.)

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conuly

Back on 18th Avenue, we had a yard with one mulberry tree, two fig trees (one green and one purple), a stand of morning glories around a fallen log, a tomato garden (which got all eaten by the slugs) and some other stuff. My dad tried to grow corn.

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eofs.livejournal.com

Apparently it's actually illegal to have an outdoor washing line in NYC without a licence. Not that I expect anyone to try to charge you for it. But I was amused to find out, having just read this post.

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lizziey.livejournal.com

Lol. My gramma has had an outdoor line for 20+ years here. I wanna see them try to charge her for it. It would be amusing. :)

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mayhemwench.livejournal.com

This post reminds me of these comic strips, so I'm commenting:

http://www.overcompensating.com/posts/20061201.html
http://www.overcompensating.com/posts/20061209.html

I think I shall try to do the above as well. We don't use our heat much since our apartment's mad stuffy, but I could do stuff like bringing tote bags to the grocery store instead of taking their bags. Thank you for posting this.

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moggymania.livejournal.com

"Install a Low-Flow Showerhead"
Erk, not unless they've improved since when my two families had to buy them... The resulting flow of water was so minimal and weak that it took three times as long to get soap out of my hair -- I think our water usage might have actually increased that month.

In related news, have you heard about that new toilet in Europe that should make substantial environmental improvement by separating the two forms of bodily waste? I was fairly impressed, at least based on what I remember from my environmental biology course. (Which emphasizes, by the way, that tiny changes here do build up and create huge changes elsewhere!)

It's sad that our country would almost certainly never switch to a toilet system like that. On the other hand, if you think about the kind of political commercials that groups against new toilets would come up with, it actually can be very funny! *grin* "The original American toilet was good enough for my grandpa, my father, and it has been for me. It was even good enough for President Reagan. Now, those satanist Christian-hating atheist liberal foreigner-lovin kooks want us to give up on one of the most intimate traditions our country has, designed by our Father In Heaven God Himself, even practiced by His very son Jesus!!" ;o)

"several-years-overdue $4,000+ water bill"
I wish my city would adopt the policy yours has! We have to have the bill paid in full in by the end of the day it's due, or the water gets turned off next morning. There's also no subsidy or way to have rates reduced for disabled/senior residents on a fixed low income.

"we've got shopping bags I don't know what to do with"
You could always jam a bunch into a box and send them to me. ;o) We use the plastic for litterbox waste before putting it in the main bin outside; the rare times we get paper, it is used for recycling.

"Even when electronic devices are turned off, they use energy. "
Hmmm -- I am curious what kind of electronic devices they're talking about... If it's "sensitive" electronics like computers, my experience says that plugging/unplugging repeatedly can cause major damage. I think the sensitive ones might also use more energy starting up now than they do running idle for a few days.

"Line-dry your clothes..."
I admit that sometimes the assumptions that certain kinds of publications make about their readership make me squirm... AFAIK a huge proportion of families don't have a yard to have a clothesline in, or they have a yard but the clothes would be stolen, or something else bad would happen. (I have one, but it's way too overgrown for that.)

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conuly

I wish my city would adopt the policy yours has! We have to have the bill paid in full in by the end of the day it's due, or the water gets turned off next morning. There's also no subsidy or way to have rates reduced for disabled/senior residents on a fixed low income.

Traditionally, NYC *never* turned off the water. Which means that some people (not my family, actually) took advantage of it, and let the bill sit when they had more than enough to pay.

Last year, they started sending real warnings to big companies and such that were years overdue, because it was getting to be a real problem. Mostly, though, the policy is to never turn off the water unless the person in question can more than avoid it.

We hadn't paid our bill because at first, when it was small, we had other, more important bills to pay - and then when it got big, we couldn't. So it got huge, and we got swept up in it, but I don't even think my mom paid it in full, I think she just sent them a few hundred and they stopped bothering us.

Erk, not unless they've improved since when my two families had to buy them... The resulting flow of water was so minimal and weak that it took three times as long to get soap out of my hair -- I think our water usage might have actually increased that month.

When was this? I'll certainly do my research, anyway, thanks for the warning.

In related news, have you heard about that new toilet in Europe that should make substantial environmental improvement by separating the two forms of bodily waste? I was fairly impressed, at least based on what I remember from my environmental biology course. (Which emphasizes, by the way, that tiny changes here do build up and create huge changes elsewhere!)

No! Link? Because that sounds really cool!

Hmmm -- I am curious what kind of electronic devices they're talking about... If it's "sensitive" electronics like computers, my experience says that plugging/unplugging repeatedly can cause major damage. I think the sensitive ones might also use more energy starting up now than they do running idle for a few days.

If I recall correctly, any electronic device uses energy while plugged in - that's why you're supposed to unplug irons and electric heaters while not in use, right? And I know that I once had the power cord to my keyboard plugged in for, oh, months (!) while my keyboard was somewhere else entirely. When I finally unplugged the cord, the... the... the huge boxy part of it was warm-to-hot! Even with nothing attached, it had still been drawing power that whole time.

I admit that sometimes the assumptions that certain kinds of publications make about their readership make me squirm...

They also assume everybody has a car. Nothing to be done for that - if you know you can't line-dry your clothes (or limit how much you drive...!), you skip past that step and move on.

I'm actually interested in getting a clothes-horse, for no other reason than that I could then say I have one. If you have room inside but not out, that might be another option to dry your clothes.

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I have four clothes horses and no drier(in addition to my outside clothesline). You can set them up in an area that gets use during the day but not at night and they generally don't use a lot of room anyway.

From:

If I recall correctly, any electronic device uses energy while plugged in - that's why you're supposed to unplug irons and electric heaters while not in use, right? And I know that I once had the power cord to my keyboard plugged in for, oh, months (!) while my keyboard was somewhere else entirely. When I finally unplugged the cord, the... the... the huge boxy part of it was warm-to-hot! Even with nothing attached, it had still been drawing power that whole time.

As far as I know, drawing power is generally not the fault of the electronics but of the "boxy part", as you call it -- the transformer draws power even when the device is in use. And since most electronics don't run on 110V AC but typically on something like 12V DC, they need a transformer.

Older computers, which had a switch in the back *before* the PSU, would not draw power when switched off that way, but nowadays, I think the ATX standard says that PSUs have to supply a small amount of power even when nominally "off". Not sure of the details.

As for irons and heaters, I don't know; they might possibly draw power since they don't usually have an "off" switch as such, do they? (They don't really fall under "electronic" device in my book, though, unless your iron is more high-tech than the ones we get here in Germany. "Electric", yes.)

A lamp, though, for example, I would expect to draw no power when switched off -- incandescent bulbs generally run directly off mains voltage, so there's no transformer, so the switch should cut off current completely when off. And even with bulbs that need some kind of transformer (some kinds of energy-saving ones, I think), the switch would be between the mains plug and the transformer, so they should also be fine.

So generally, the ones you'd want to worry about most are those with an external "power brick" and/or those without a proper mechanical "off" switch. (Such as my printer, which only has "standby", or most television sets or VCRs. Hint: if you can switch them on from the remote control, they're not really off.)

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Yeah, those low-flow showerheads sucked. I'm not sure if our current one is or not. I just get the kids (and myself, of course) to limit our water usage to wetting down and rinsing off.

From:

If it's "sensitive" electronics like computers, my experience says that plugging/unplugging repeatedly can cause major damage.

A better solution might be to get extension cords with a switch that you can flip to turn off all the power to the outlets on that power strip.

That way, you don't need to keep making and breaking the physical connection between the plug and the socket, while still making and breaking the electrical connection.

From:

The electronics thing was explained to me as this (best as I remember), a bunch of electronics have clocks and timers and such that they need to power even when off. For example, my stereo system has an alarm that can be set and when it goes off, it turns on the player and plays the CD in it. I don't know how to use this function, so if we accidentally turn it on, we have to keep no CD in it to keep from loud music annoying us at midnight. But it uses power to do that. And a lot of devices use more power than they need to. We have a toaster with those little numbers made up of divided segments, like clocks often have. They glow a pale orange. They look a lot like cheap, low-power LEDs. But they're not. They are a little turney dial with see-through number segments and a glowing light behind it. It's wasteful for no benefit. There is apparently a lot of stuff like that. And apparently many devices take in more energy than they need, and just don't use all of it, rather than just drawing the amount of power they currently need. So, if you unplug them, you aren't using hidden power for stupid functions. If you actually need the clock or timer or whatnot, then it still needs the power to run that.

From:

Oh, and to add to my previous comment, another comment reminded me - any device that has a remote control uses power whenever plugged in, even if off, as it needs power to constantly check whether it's been told to turn itself on by remote.

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noodles-morgyn.livejournal.com

Why not line-dry your clothes in winter and autumn too? My family does, and it's no problem. I think I'm missing something here...

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Where do you live? I live in New Mexico, and in the summer our clothes will line-dry in under an hour, but in the winter even here they'd be full of ice in no time flat. And personal experience suggests that line-drying clothes when it's very cold (1) takes forever and (2) therefore causes them to grow mildew, necessitating a re-washing.

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conuly

Too cold and too damp to do it outside in NYC. Parts of spring are a wash, too - we've got a lot of damp in this city.

I want a clothes horse so I can dry clothes inside (and be all holier-than-thou about it, of course!) like that, but I don't know that I can get one.

From:

I can do this - the ones that go into the light itself don't bother me, they have the same color as normal incandescent lights. And it saves money over the long run.

We were just talking about this today, so I thought I'd share my husband's research on the issue: 1. Compact fluorescent bulbs do flicker, but less perceptibly than regular ones. About 10-20% of people can perceive that flickering (I can, and it gives me serious headaches—I mean, I can walk into a room and say, "You put a compact fluorescent bulb into that lamp, didn't you?" usually followed by "Ow! My head! Take it out!"), so check with anyone who lives with you before you go all-out changing all the bulbs in the house. 2. Because they contain mercury, which regular incandescent bulbs don't, a. they need to be recycled, not put in the trash, and b. if they shatter (which is hard to do), you need to leave the house and get a professional to clean up.

We just bought a front-load washer with a silver filter (disinfects in cold water) and internal heater (so we may be able to turn down the water heater; we'll see whether the dishwasher has one also), and G. is determined to put solar panels on the roof. Of course we have one gas-efficient car already, and if we ever get another, we'll probably get a hybrid. All our appliances are Energy Star; of course, most appliances sold nowadays are.

Most of the things we can do out here wouldn't work so well in NYC—like solar panels, and ripping out the yard—we already have xeriscaping in the front, and are planning to rip out what little grass is still alive in the back to put in artificial turf and more xeriscaping. (The native wildflowers out here are so beautiful that I can't imagine wanting more traditional flowers instead, anyway.) And we have a swamp cooler, which saves a fantastic amount of electricity, but only works in desert climates.

Of course you can probably grow some of your own food even in the city; tomatoes and peppers work well on fire escapes and balconies (as I have a brown thumb, I don't grow anything that I can kill).

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conuly

We're on Staten Island, we've got a nice-sized yard.

Plus, there's enough unclaimed scrubland and "park"land here that we could grow a nice garden anywhere.

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