RainXchange

We had our backyard dug up to install a 2,500 gallon RainXchange cistern to store collected rainwater in. When one of our landscape designers came by today to check on the progress of our large project, we are also having our driveway, patios and entryway redone in paving stones, she said how when she saw the hole in our backyard she began to think about converting her own swimming pool into a large rainwater cistern. I was so excited to hear that what we were doing in our own yard got someone else excited about doing something similar in their own yard, especially one of the landscapers who is responsible for helping us achieve our own vision for our project.

Our RainXchange and paving stone project is nearing completion and we are very excited about it. It is so beautiful and relaxing to have a waterfall and pond in our backyard. The sound of the waterfall really does help filter out the sound from the highway a few blocks from our house. It is also very relaxing and the sound of the waterfall just lulls us to sleep now. It is so much better than we even expected going into this and it's not even done. It just keeps getting better and better looking. We will have a truly amazing yard when all of the work is finally done.

Busy days

It has been very crazy around our house lately. We are getting ready to undergo a major project in our yard. We are getting a 2,500 gallon rainwater storage tank buried in our backyard. We are getting a waterfall and pond put in our backyard. And we are getting our driveway, patio and walkway redone in paving stones. That is the short explanation of all the work.

In order to make way for the expanded backyard patio (which will have gardening areas built in along the edges) we needed to move some of the plants that were back there that we wanted to keep. We also had to move some of the plants in the front yard that we wanted to keep in order to make space for the new walkway to the front door and the new patio area in front of the house.

We also had to get rain gutters installed on the house in the areas that correspond to the intake areas for the rainwater storage tank. We are also having a trench put in under the driveway to catch any water that runs down the driveway, even with the paving stones due to the grade of our driveway we are expected to water make it down the driveway (especially in heavy rains).

We have also been busy going back and forth with the designers to make sure everything is going to work together properly. We had them go back last week and maximize the size of our storage tank for the rain water. They also added to the design for the backyard irrigation to be fed off of the rainwater when it is available, three separate types of irrigation for the backyard (one for our citrus trees, one for our garden and one for the small grass area we are keeping back there).

We are really looking forward to this very large project being completed. Of course at that point we still need to plant things in the yard and have a fence installed in the front yard, but we are certainly getting there.

We just got our Smart Meter

This morning Southern California Edison came by and installed SmartConnect Meters in our neighborhood. As a society we use considerably less electricity during off-peak hours than during peak-hours, this is common sense, but what is less common sense is the fact that we waste electricity during the off-peak hours. To put it really simply, this is due to the fact that it is not efficient to power down and then power back up our power plants as demand increases and decreases, so we waste a lot of electricity in the night hours when energy demand is considerably lower than during the daylight hours. This is energy that can very easily be used during these off-peak hours for any of our needs.

Learning all of this, as well as knowing that smart meters were coming in the near future, when we moved to California we began to change our energy consumption habits. We began doing our laundry at night, and since we bought our new washer/dryer this has been much easier as we have one unit that washes and dries our clothes. We simply put in a half load (still a big load of laundry) if we are going to use the drier too. We can even delay the start of our load if we like. We do have a preference towards hanging our clothes out to dry, but they just seem to take forever to dry in the winter months so we do use our drier. Of course even in the winter we do hang some of our laundry up to dry.

Simply moving some of our energy use to the off-peak hours has been an easy adjustment for us and now that we have our smart meter we will really start to see it pay off in our electric bill as well as simply knowing that we are helping to keep the demand for electricity from growing as quickly as it would grow if everyone kept using mostly peak electricity. All we have to keep in mind is that some things can be done any time and those things are definitely worth considering doing during off-peak hours so that we are lowering our impact on the environment. It is easy to make small changes that have an impact on the world and if we encourage others to make small changes too then the overall impact can be really big.

Found: recycled milk jug fence

We just had our second fence contractor come out to the house to give us an estimate on fencing in our front yard. We were a bit shocked that they had a recycled milk jug fence option since we had looked and looked for something like that for months before giving up on actually finding what we really wanted. We knew we really have to fence in our front yard in the next few months, but we really wanted an eco-friendly fence. We always ask whether or not each fence company has an eco-friendly option available, but it seems to come down to vinyl or wood.

When we called the fence company our neighbor used they said they did in fact have an eco-friendly fencing option available. This fence company said that they had composite fence material called Timberwolf. The fence contractor showed us a couple of pieces of this composite material. It was very nice looking. It had the wood grain detailing and all, similar to a real wood, but it has a lifetime warranty similar to the vinyl fences that everyone sells and installs around here. I really liked this option as I think it would fit the look of our 1948 cottage much better than a vinyl fence.

For anyone who is interested in seeing more about this fence please feel free to look at the Western Fence Co. website. I linked to a picture of the white picket composite fence that we are considering.

Meatless Monday...

I know that Meatless Monday has been pretty widely publicized, but I thought I would share the goal that we have made in our house.

I really liked the idea of getting people to make a small commitment like 1 day or 3 meals a week. Well since we haven't been eating a lot of meat for quite a while I figured that we would do better to do Meat Mondays. By Meat Mondays I mean that we try to eat meat only 3 meals a week. We figured that this would make a bigger environmental impact and would encourage us to keep getting greener in our eating.

An unexpected side effect of eating more vegetarian and vegan meals is that we are getting more creative about what we eat. We have really begun to enjoy our local Farmer's Market more and more as we have been adding more vegetables into our diet. It is a lot of fun to go to the Farmer's Market and see what looks good and just buy some to bring home and figure out a yummy meal to make with the fresh vegetables we picked up.

Last week I made baked potatoes with fresh broccoli, red bell pepper, onion and a little cheddar cheese. They were so yummy. There is nothing more tasty than some truly ripe and fresh food.

Greening up our Trash

Now that we have our own house with a yard and we aren't planning to move anytime too soon we decided that we would like to try out composting. This is a great way to lower the amount of waste your household produces because lots of things can be composted depending upon which type of compost bin you have. We haven't yet started a worm bin so we can't put dairy and meat into our compost bin, but all of our fruit and vegetable scraps are able to be composted. We can also compost a lot of our yard trash, though currently the majority of our yard trash goes into a yard waste bin that the city composts. The reason that most of our yard trash ends up in the bin is simply because we are still getting our yard in order which has involved a lot of major trimming of some of the trees and bushes. This results in a lot of yard trash. Of course trimming back some of the trees and bushes has been really important to the health of them so that we can remove diseased branches and clear enough of the limbs so that the sun can get through to the leaves on the inside of the tree which were dying.

One way to make composting a little easier for us was to get a small crock for our kitchen counter that we could put scraps in while we are cooking. This prevents us from having to constantly run outside to the compost bin and also allows us to leave the scraps for several days before we bring them outside to add to the bin in the yard. This was especially great when we had several days of rain and didn't really want to run out to the compost bin in the yard. It's also nice when it is really cold out or really dark out or we just don't feel like running our scraps outside.

Greening up my Cooking

In our last two rentals we had a built in microwave oven so we left our old microwave back in Wisconsin when we moved out to California. Now that we finally bought our own house we ended up losing our microwave and dishwasher. It turns out that we really don't miss having a microwave oven overall. There are really very few things that it is really that much nicer to have a microwave oven for and even those we have managed to find ways around using a microwave. The only problem we have had with ditching the microwave oven is that now all our leftovers must be cooked on the stove or in the oven, also not a big deal to us except that our gas bill shot up with all the extra oven usage. We finally got around to getting ourselves a nice reasonably sized toaster oven for our kitchen.