Recently in Cheap at home Category

Mike Martin plans to stack used tires on his garden plot in York to grow potatoes. The stacked tires are filled with soil and the potatoes planted.

The potatoes grow down through the tires and when the it's time to harvest, the stacked tires are torn down and potatoes extracted.

Mike Martin planted a community garden last year and gave out 1400 pounds of food to those who need it in his neighborhood. He's planting it again this year, aiming for 2,000 pounds of food, and he's adding a second garden for the food bank.

Students from the River Rock Academy, an alternative school in Spring Grove, were helping Martin prepare the garden for Spring this week,

Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission recently approve a 6% rate increase for Columbia Gas.

I reduced my natural gas bill over 45%. A net profit for me and a reduction in the use of a precious resource.

My estimated gas bill for this month was to be $85.83 based on November 2007 usage. My actual bill for November 2008 is $55.90 and that includes four extra days added to that amount so the usage so the bill is actually lower.

• Lowered my thermostat to 62 degrees from 67


• Shut down my upstairs heating zone. A roommate moved out and I decided that I didn't care if the bath and sleeping were cooler. Totally closed off half of upstairs. The house is stacked two floors so there is no threat of freezing.


• Unplugged the natural gas heated clothes dryer and started using a clothesline Nuclear powered clothes drier (greenmesh 9/30/08)

• I wash only in cold water


• Purchased a super restrictive shower head to replace my restrictive shower heat and lowered the water heater to bare minumum


• Gave my old cat a 40 watt spot light to bask under when I'm home.

The main reason gasoline prices have plunged recently is because a barrel of oil is worth less than half of what it was a few months ago because of a loss of global demand.

Dave Rudolph, the city's electrical bureau superintendent, said 3,000 LED lights will be placed on the tree. That's 500 more than what was used last year.

The city switched to the more efficient lights to save money on its electric bill, Rudolph said. Last year, the city saved about $700.

It also used to cost the city $300 a season for replacement bulbs. The LED bulbs have a ten year lifespan

Trinity United Methodist in New Freedom, Pa., has exchanged its natural-gas-fired boiler for a geothermal heating system drawing energy from 450 feet underground. The system should reduce the church's energy costs by an estimated 70 percent.

"Why not use what's in God's Earth to heat and cool his house?" said Anne Duff, a Trinity member

And just in time as a 6% rate increase has been approved by Columbia Gas customers has been approved by the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission beginning tomorrow.

Typically, it takes four to eight years to recoup the investment, depending on the type of the existing system, according to R.R. Kling & Sons.

A geothermal system works like an air conditioning system. However, instead of transferring energy with the outside air, energy is transferred with the ground.

The ground temperature remains 53 degrees in southcentral Pennsylvania year round. This means that when the temperature is 90 or 20 degrees outside, the geothermal system can transfer heat to and from the ground more efficiently. A standard heat pump that transfers energy to the outside air becomes less efficient as the temperature outside drops.

The earth provides a stable temperature for maximum efficiency.
original story from inyork.com/ydr

Rev. Ann Seitz-Brown packs up her bike at Saint Paul Lutheran Church in West Manchester Township to head head home to Paradise Lutheran Church, in Paradise Township, Wednesday.

Area churches met for an Energy Conservation for York County Congregation program sponsored by the Interfaith Coalition on Energy.

Seits-Brown said that her congregation is considering a community garden next year to help members with food prices and reduce the amount of oil used to transport fuel. She adding, that instead of paying someone to mow grass they can grow food.

The minister also said that she has taken to her bike instead of driving to the gym for exercise.

My natural gas bill is going up and so will electric rates soon and my income has been stagnant the past few years, so I set up a nuclear powered clothes drier to cut costs.

I came to the conclusion that my clothes drier, burning natural gas and electricity, really serves no purpose other than to consume resources and waste my money. In the winter, the beast sucks heated air out of my house that is already heated with gas. Every ten years or so I will spend $400 on a new machine.

Here is how it works: A giant ball, of mostly hydrogen and helium gas, is compressed and hung above my yard. This gigantic nuclear reactor isn't taxed and hasn't been monopolized on yet. It's free for me to use and should last several billion years. This is my heat source.

My blower is a byproduct of the reactor called wind. It also hasn't been monopolized on and taxed yet.

By taking a rope and attaching it horizontally to two vertical objects in my yard, I was able to maximize the effect of the nuclear reaction and wind.

Dry clothes for free.

I was stretched out on my deck tonight gazing at the sky while a storm rolled in.
I came to the conclusion that only the sun and the rain, as long as they fall above my property, are free. What comes from the sky above my head cannot be taxed nor can it be repackaged, marketed and sold back to me at compounded profit and then taxed.

Harnessing these things in my backyard, I could take control of my increasingly squeezed and controlled by corporate entity - life.

The secret is in the invention, not buying the product.

I am going to build a rain collection system to water my garden. I can tell you right now that it will probably take 40 years to pay for the parts since water is pretty cheap, but it will be an exercise in securing freedom and independence. A working sculpture of hope for my future.

I try to find little ways not to use energy and stretch the ever increasing cost of life. Some of the things we do have hidden implications to the cost of living.

I was reading in a Patriot-News story that the second highest cost after labor for Rutter's is credit card cost. I love getting my 1% credit back for using a credit card and paying it off every month, but how much payment to banks is passed along to everyone in a gallon of gas. What if i used cash for everything... what if everyone started using cash for everything....

I stopped washing clothes in anything but cold water. Just don't buy white. All my socks are black. Why use energy to heat laundry water. Why pay for energy that I don't need. I am going to buy a clothes line next; sun and wind are free.

I built an 8x8 flower box out of an old concrete slab in my backyard with a fitted rock wall. I planted wildflowers in it but the nature of a fast draining planter box is that it needs to be watered every day. I let the flowers die and have started a selection of cactus and succulents that winter in Pennsylvania. They bloom like flowers, are suited to the habitat and I don't have to buy water every day to keep them alive.

I used to buy a couple drinks at a convenience store every day. Now i buy a $3 organic 100% juice concentrate and make nine large recycled glass bottles of grape drink to take along each day. So my drink costs 33 cents each, has little waste and is much healthier than a high fructose drink.