Friday, October 31, 2008

Reducing our footprint




Louis and I have always been environmentally conscious, perhaps it is because we were both babies of the "energy crisis" - yes, we're that old. Certain things have always stuck with us. We always turn off lights when we leave a room, don't run the water while brushing our teeth, use cold water when we can, use stainless steel water bottles not plastic, installed low-flow showers and toilets, don't idle the car, Louis is the recycle KING every Tuesday, that kind of thing.

For what seems like FOREVER, I have been after Louis to change the lightbulbs and put in some dimmer switches. The new products on the market have made the choices so easy.

I think the impending time-change on the weekend spurred him into action.

He took himself over to Home Depot and purchased boxes full of flood lights and dimmer switches and a few compact fluorescents just to make sure we had enough. Today there is not an incandescent bulb to be found on anything except the chandeliers throughout the whole house. A huge, expensive and time-consuming project. I expect it should take us through the better part of the day today to complete, but Cole helped put out all the outdoor lights yesterday afternoon. The new interior lights were installed last night and today will mark the start and finish of installing all of the dimmer switches.

3 comments:

Jayne said...

Do dimmer switches help with the power used or is that just for your pleasure? We have dimmer switches on most of our lights :)

Lee said...

We just got some new ones from Lutron that actually reduce the current so only the energy needed is used and none is wasted. The old kind, I believe, reduced the wattage, so they were good, but they're getting better. A project for your new place, maybe? ;)

Jayne said...

Yep - sounds good - I will check it out - thanks for sharing :)