Today is expected to be the hottest day of the year so far. Days like today naturally make me want to squeeze all the energy efficiency out of my house as I can. That’s when its apparent that some of the things society is doing now are just plain wrong.
Take the electric dryer, for instance. It ranks second only to the air conditioner for eating up electricity, ironic since the air conditioner and dryer work against each other. The dryer uses a huge amount of electricity, and for what? Why do we use electricity to heat up clothes inside when its 100 degrees outside? The engineer (or miser, take your pick) inside me just thinks this is wrong. I say its time to bring back the clothesline.
In the past, when you wanted your clothes dry, you hung them out. And you know what? That works just fine. Hang out the clothes and on a day like today they’d be dry in an hour. Heck, they’ll even smell fresh. And you get a bonus of not using a watt of electricity, avoiding the smog that generating that electricity would have caused. What’s wrong with that?
Well, people are squeamish about having their skivvies in plain view of the neighborhood, for one. I can understand that, but still I think the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. If everyone did it people would get used to it. I bet they’d even feel pride in helping reduce our country’s energy dependence. For now, though, our misguided ideas of what’s acceptable keep the clothes inside.
On another note, why do I burn natural gas to heat my water to 125 degrees F when my attic’s temperature is 140 degrees F? Why not put a water tank in the attic and make use of that waste heat? I wouldn’t even have to put a solar water heater on the house, it could stay inside.
And speaking of solar water heaters, why do homeowner’s associations have such distaste for them? Why not use that energy productively? Seems to me a neighborhood with solar water heaters is a neighborhood of smart people. I’d want to live in a place with smart people.
There are so many ways to improve the “green factor” of the modern American household. Just a few simple steps it would make a huge difference in our environment.
Bonus: Nice to see The Independent Weekly is thinking like I am. It recently ran an article on steps you can take to be green.
I like the idea of using the waste heat in the attic to make hot water — take a summertime nuisance and turn it to your advantage! You’d have a few issues to take into consideration for this arrangement:
I still think this would be a good idea.
I have been thinking about this for years now. You could take your inlet for your water heater (mine is under my house) and run lines up into the attic to a series of pipes (metal pipes for heat transfer, like a radiator) or a tank (something large enough to allow the water to heat up) then run the line back to the inlet of the heater. Sorry for the run-on sentence, I am an engineer not an english major.
You could use valves to control whether the water goes to the attic or to the heater in the winter time. If you wanted to get sophisticated, you could set up some automatic valves for when the attic reaches a specific temp the valves open/close.