We’ve been meaning to do this for AGES. We were heating our house with fuel oil, which was expensive and dirty, plus, it’s super smelly and actually exactly the same thing as diesel fuel, really. Every year the furnace would need service because of sludge clogging the lines (algae grows in the fuel oil because of the low sulfur formulation – which is good for emissions! but was a real hassle every year when we had to replace the filter). The furnace was old, too – I live in the 845 area code, and the “call for service” number on the side of the furnace was a 914 area code – which changed about 12 years ago to 845. We estimate the furnace was about 20 years old. And old means, in general, inefficient – especially when it comes to heating equipment that runs on fossil fuels. We also had a hot water heater that was over 10 years old (and those tank heaters are known to kind of randomly explode into a mess of hot water at any time over 10 years) that ran on propane, and was also wildly inefficient. It was time to replace both of them.

So, once we had enough money saved up, we found someone to come out and put in a new furnace and hot water heater! It was a multi-step process.

We decided to go with natural gas because it met several of our criteria: it was available, it was possible for us to install with a minimum of expensive infrastructure upgrades, we had the money on-hand, and as a bonus, there were several rebates we were eligible for. By going to natural gas, we can get rid of the fuel oil AND the propane tanks and rely on only one formulation of fossil fuels to heat our house and our hot water, cook our food, and dry our clothes.

First, however, we had to have a gas line installed to our house. This was pretty expensive, because we had to pay $40 a foot over the first 100 feet. It added up to just over $1,700. It looked kind of like this — we absolutely got our moneys worth, by the way. The gas company usually is able to use a horizontal boring machine to drill sideways under the homeowners lawn, and install the gas line without disruption and fairly quickly. We live on top of a granite outcropping, however, so they had to go the old fashioned way with bulldozers and diggers. I’m glad they had to do that work, and not me.

Then we waited a few months and saved more money.

Next we found a local contractor. The fellow we did find was pretty wonderful – he gave us lots of options that included ways to make our entire home more efficient, including rerouting the ducting downstairs and creating a dual zone system so we could have different heats set for both the downstairs and the upstairs, insulating all the ducting, and changing the locations of some of the heat registers for more effectiveness. We also wanted to install a tankless hot water heater, which would heat up the water right when we need it instead of keeping a bunch of water hot all day long when we are not even home. Unfortunately, we found ourselves with restricted funds so we told this nice fellow that we would have to wait on the extra efficiencies and we went ahead with the efficient furnace and a standard natural gas water heater — but we look forward to working with him in the future when we’re able to afford fixing up the forced hot air system and putting in a tankless hot water heater system.

And from the realm of incredible, the night before the furnace installation we ran out of fuel oil! It “clunked” off at about 11 at night and we put an extra blanket on the bed. What stupendous timing!

We now have a new furnace that is 95% efficient. I can’t even hazard a guess as to how efficient our old fuel oil furnace is, but according to the energy.gov page all about heating systems, we probably had a furnace that was between 70% and 80% efficient. The new furnace and a new hot water heater (also a natural gas version, though not the super efficient one we wanted – we didn’t save that much money!) was $6,400.

The new furnace runs on natural gas and is still a forced hot-air model like we had before. The major differences, though, besides the fuel source, are the electric ignition, the variable speed blower motor (which starts up slowly while the air is heating and ramps down as the furnace shuts off, so there’s less time where the furnace is burning and no air is moving).

Of course we still have lots to do. The next thing (which we can do ourselves) is to insulate the ducts in the basement. Middle-long-term is to get a new direct-contact/tankless hot water heater. And the long term plan is still to put some solar panels on the roof and further evaluate a geothermal system.

But for now, I’m so happy that we don’t have to buy any more fuel oil. We haven’t gotten the prices in on running the natural gas yet, but we are hopeful that it will be cheaper for us to run. We’re not keeping the house any warmer than we did before, but it *seems* warmer because we know we have a new furnace. Plus we were able to give away the two above ground oil tanks in the basement to people who really needed them, which is pretty great as well!

Clearly, upgrading our old farmhouse without going into debt is a long process. It was last year that we put in new insulation in the attic. We still have a long list of things to do, including finding a way to reinsulate all the house walls (either with or without taking off the siding) – their thermal value, is, well, suspect. There are a few cosmetic things (and functional things) too – like finishing the attic so we can use it as a family room, and redoing our incredibly ugly bathroom. And painting! so much painting to do. It’s nice, though, to do this as we’re able to, and to know that we’re tackling some big ticket items that are making a real difference both to the environment, and to our pocketbooks!

And as soon as we can calculate our payback you can bet I’ll be telling you all about it!

Let’s take a quick internet tour of some interesting repurpose projects. Maybe y’all will find some weekend project inspiration!

We love JARS. glass jars! they’re hefty and heavy, sure, but they are super durable and you can be positive that the jar itself (though perhaps not the cap) is chemical-free. How can we keep showing jars the love after we’ve exhausted their original contents? Here are some neat ideas from the internet!

• Over here at Team Tiny Choices, we’ve used them to pack waste-free lunches and to fill with delicious beverages (cold OR hot, thanks to a tiny jar cozy!).
• If you are interested in the craft of glass etching (note: chemicals involved) check out these neat etched spice jars!
• With some simple glass cutting and polishing wine bottles become wind chimes!
• This mason jar storage technique is gorgeous and practical. You could use this in any room of the house!
• Use for outdoor lighting, or even a chandelier!
• What what! make a glass jar into a reusable pumpkin! you could do any number of different motifs for every holiday you love to decorate for.
• Use as flower vases! You can even tint the glass using glass paint.

[[Photo from flickr user Chiot's Run via creative commons license.]]

Now for nearly four years I’ve been publicly announcing my intentions to sew my own curtains. The way I see it: cloth curtains could be washed without concern of shattering or shredding. Plus by sewing curtains I would be avoiding the purchase of new shower curtains that would be either PVC or another plastic, heavily treated cotton, or incredibly expensive.

So this weekend when I had a free hour I sat down and made two shower curtains.

I know! So exciting, right? The first photo is the curtain that protects the window – my partner already had this fabric in his stash. I had to hem the top and the bottom to make a neat seam.

The second is from an old sheet we had stashed in the fabric closet. It was just about the right width, and all we had to do was cut it shorter on the bottom (so it doesn’t soak up all the water from the bottom of the tub. That was just one hem.

And then I put in grommets – which is not the best or most fun thing to do. I have a grommet tool already and we just had to buy some extra grommets to complete the job.

and Hey Presto! Finally we have new and beautiful shower curtains. I am so thrilled about this! And further, it’s really improved the quality of shower I can take. The water is so quiet when it hits the cloth that there is no comparison to the old plastic curtains we’d used for so long.

And I especially like that we had the majority of the materials ready at home to make the curtains!

What kind of shower curtain are you using in your home?

• Love the pendant but hate the necklace?  Buy new cord and restring it…
• Love the yarn but hate the sweater?  Unravel it, find a pattern you love, and knit up something new…
• Perfectly good greens and beans but unimpressive soup?  Cook it down, spice it up, add some tofu and make a new dish…
• Don’t need the backyard doghouse any longer?  Take it apart and use the wood to build a compost bin…
• Love the fabric but hate the bedspread/blanket/shirt?  Make pillows…

Have you remade anything lately?

Instead of happy econews, let’s take a quick internet tour of some interesting repurpose projects. Maybe y’all will find some weekend project inspiration!

I love wooden pallets. It turns out they’re good for all kinds of things:

• Hang them vertically for shallow shelving [here and here]
• Stack them for wide and deep shelving – perfect for papers or small stacks of things!
• Make a shed! or a tiny house!
• So clever: chaise lounges for your yard, rolling tables, benches and desks
• An entire wall covered in pallets. It looks amazing!

Have you used wooden pallets for anything around your house? What are your favorite examples of pallet repurpose?

[[Photo from flickr user Eclipse Awards via creative commons license.]]

These days it can be really hard to collaborate with other people. We all live far away we have busy lives, and lordy, what a lot of gas to drive between places. So if you have to go to a meeting, try collaborating with a teleconference! If you ‘ve got a good group of people, it can be a wonderful experience. It’s easy to set up with free tools like wiggio for conference calls, or skype or google hangouts for video. Not only will you be saving on time and fossil fuels, but you can also have your slippers on, enjoy a cup of hot tea, and even slurp down some dinner while you’re meeting.

Just be warned – the cat WILL jump right in front of the table, the kids WILL scream even more before bed, and you will probably feel shortly after starting the call that maybe you should have taken off your funny hat and puffy vest to be a little more professional. And use the restroom before you start!

Photo from Karina’s recent google+ hangout to discuss exciting Cooper Union things!

Have you used online collaboration tools? Do you have any favorites? What about hilarious goofy stories during the collaboration?

We’ve been enjoying the unseasonably warm weather with some nice weekend hikes lately – we’ve been finding spots of nature and taking advantage of it wherever we can!. This weekend, we went for a ramble through the Palisades Park – and stumbled upon some ruins called “Millionaires Row” which really piqued our interest. One of the Ringling Brothers used to have a summer home! Giant hotel resorts! There were bunches of big mansions all along the cliffs – until they made the park and knocked them all down.

What’s really interesting is the history of the Palisades Park – after large quarries were found destroying the cliffs of the Palisades citizens and regulators banded together to stop them – lead by women’s clubs.

To respond to this threat, the Palisades Interstate Park Commission (PIPC) was formed in 1900 by the New York and New Jersey state legislatures “to provide for the selection, location, appropriation and management of the certain lands along the Palisades of the Hudson River for an interstate park”. The park stretched along the cliffs for 14 miles between Fort Lee, New Jersey and Piermont, New York. The first step in this preservation effort was the acquisition of the Carpenter Brothers trap rock quarry in Fort Lee, New Jersey for $132,500, most of which was donated by J.P. Morgan.

The Palisades were cobbled together through a bunch of (generally rich) conservationists who bought up land and donated it to the Commission:

The unwavering backing of benefactors has been critical in almost every major Park undertaking since then: the first 10,000 acres of today’s Harriman State Park were donated (along with $1 million) by Mary Harriman in 1910; the Palisades Interstate Parkway became possible when the Rockefeller family, in the 1930s, donated key parcels for the project; dozens of citizens’ groups raised the funds necessary to purchase High Tor in 1943; Archer Huntington donated land adjacent to Little Tor the same year; in 1998, the lands that form Sterling Forest State Park were purchased, in part, with funds from private land trusts such as Scenic Hudson and the Open Space Institute; the visitor center at Sterling Forest was completed in 2003 thanks to a generous gift from U.S. Senator Frank R. Lautenberg of New Jersey.

Of course, the Palisades Park was also created, in part, because of the Palisades Interstate Parkway. This highway was designed and built by Robert Moses – who was kind of the highway constructor of rich guys who wanted to get their way by knocking down everything in their path. So as much as the Palisades Interstate Parkway was created with a seed grant of land from John D. Rockefeller (700 acres over a 13 mile stretch of land along the tops of the cliffs) – that was probably acquired through generally acceptable land sales (like this one) — much of the parkway was “paved,” so to speak, with condemnation of properties that people actually didn’t want to turn over. (Like this compelling story of the Elephant house – and this kind of less compelling story of the Riviera. And the families who lived at Cape Fly-Away.)

The Palisades Park is an interesting look into US History – a time when a group of people had kind of the right idea, but then, it was kind of steamrolled through by the “right people,” and if you weren’t with them, you were kicked out. But now we all have access to a beautiful park that celebrates a section of the Hudson River that really shouldn’t be blocked off for the use of those with special access. These days, when issues of eminent domain has been bolstered to support the rights of corporations over the individuals – these questions are still present. So not to be a downer, but how do we watch for this kind of thing? How do we make sure that all of the stakeholders are properly represented, and somehow build consensus to protect land and open access to all?

I got no ideas, but I would love to hear some! Do you have any examples of this in your own area?

[[Photo from flickr user ladymay79 via creative commons license.]]

What’s probably best about soup is that you can make a big pot, it will make your kitchen smell delicious, and you can invite people over for a wonderful party. Have someone else bring some bread and another person the salad or dessert, and you’ve got an instant dinner party with friends without making too much mess, fuss, or trouble for any one person. Take it from Jenn – it’s perfect! And if you’re not sure where to start, Karina highly recommends this delicious and easy curried lentil soup.

Do you have a favorite soup recipe to share? Leave it in the comments!

[[Photo from flickr user slowping via creative commons license.]]