Earth Day - Tonight at 8pm (heating, natural, homemade, install)

[ontheroad]

I haven't been quite as careful as I might about utility usage and thought some of you might also want to participate in this one hour moritoreum on our usage of lighting.

I generally keep the house at 58-62oF; only use lights when I can no longer see by daylight, and bundle all my electric alliance usage, but still juding from my most recent electricity bill I'm not doing enough.

How about you?

[riveree]

We have it pretty easy here in Florida, it's bright outside most of the time, so we can use natural light to full advantage.

Moving to a smaller house has kept us more compact too - we huddle in close now, so less lights are used .

Yes, I plan to have the lights out during the moratorium...you're going to call me at 7:45pm to remind me, right?!

[donsabi]

I am not sure what the point is with "lights out." I lease a town house that has no insulation at all in PA. During January I used 2100Kwh at a cost of $250 which is a record usage for me. Normally I have one 40 watt light on along with the TV at night. Turning that light off seems absolutely useless considering the extraordinary heating bill. I seems to me it would be a better demonstration of "Earth Day" to force rental properties to install proper energy saving methods and devices.
Don

[TXboomerang]

Its 8:09 right now. I just brewed some coffee and I'm sitting with the lights on. Not sure what the point is about turning them off at some predestined time. If you are doing things right, you have already done and will continue to do your part. We go from lights to candles at 8:30 every week night and usually weekends, unless one of us is reading and has a reading lamp on. Other than that, our lights are off early every night. During the week, and its not unusual for us to do that on the weekend too although we usually stay up a little later so we use lights a little later than 8:30.

[amy_sk]

we did turn off our lights at 8.00, it was fun. with no lights, no TV, no radio we didn't know what to do for 1 hr!!
well, stepped outside the house and gazed at the sky...so many stars. i can't remember when was the last time I had looked at the night sky...it was beautiful.
this was a fun thing to do.

[ellie]

I went out for the evening and only left on one spiral back porch light so I could see to get back in. I didn't notice any other lights out last night.

I thought I saw you yesterday afternoon sitting at the local cafe at your laptop with headphones on. You kept giving us funny looks as we sat planning and scheming noisily at a nearby table. You should have joined us. We were helping a young architecture student design his new urban center across the river from our old city. He could have used your input.

[SkiChick]

Lights out at 8:00 and my girls enjoyed it too. Hubby doesn't like these things as much, he cowered in a corner of the house and was on the phone the entire time. Made a homemade pizza with the light of a lantern and then ate it in candlelight. As much as we do to be energy efficient it is still fun to participate in these things.

[riveree]

We walked the dogs around the block a bit...noticed some houses were dark, others had everything on. I have a feeling not everyone even knew about this.

We just hung out in the backyard for a while after that.

I figured our local utility company would record the "spike" and that would be worth something . It wasn't much of an inconvenience to do it.

[groove1]

Originally Posted by donsabi

I am not sure what the point is with "lights out." I lease a town house that has no insulation at all in PA. During January I used 2100Kwh at a cost of $250 which is a record usage for me. Normally I have one 40 watt light on along with the TV at night. Turning that light off seems absolutely useless considering the extraordinary heating bill. I seems to me it would be a better demonstration of "Earth Day" to force rental properties to install proper energy saving methods and devices.
Don

I think it is so there can be a tangible measurement. Mostly it started with business because so many leave lights on when not needed.