Friday, May 2, 2008 — Vancouver, WA
We had a nice day Thursday, yesterday. Since we’re getting down to the last few days, we took advantage of the weather and finished up a few projects around the ol’ bus-house.
First, we installed the windshield sunscreen that we’d ordered a few weeks ago. When we’re parked facing unshaded sun, especially in the summer, that big windshield allows a lot of solar heat energy to come into the bus-house and heat things up. This sunscreen will reduce the heat-gain. It’s made of a heavy woven poly fabric that blocks 90% of the incoming sun’s rays. Because solar rays don’t produce heat until they hit something, it’s important for this material to be on the outside of the bus-house — so the heat says outside. In addition to reducing heat-gain, it helps reduce damage to fabrics, plastic, and leather interior surfaces.
The process of installing the sunscreen isn’t easy due to it’s size. After borrowing a second ladder from a neighbor so we both had one, Dar and I went to work. The idea is to stretch it out in the approximate position it’ll go and hold it in place with big strips of masking tape. Then adjust and adjust and adjust. Once it’s where we want it, I’ve got to drill (yes, drill!!) holes in the exact right spot so the base portion of the snaps can be installed — screwed into the hole and a small bed of silicone sealant. 7 snaps — 7 holes, no major mistakes, and I think the job looks pretty good.
The sunscreen kit includes panels for the drivers side window and the passenger door window as well. Being considerably smaller, they went up quickly. Overall, we’re happy with the finished product and are looking forward to a cooler summer.
The second project I completed was the installation of another fresh water filter in the outside water bay. The bus-house came from the factory with a “whole-house” water filter. The filter-element we put in this filter is a good one that removes almost all foreign particles as well as improving taste and smell. The problem is that it only filters water as it’s going up to the faucets and fixtures to be used. Water that goes into our fresh-water holding tank isn’t filtered until it’s used. We wanted to keep the water in the holding tank as clean and odor free as possible too.
So, I ordered and installed a second filter right next to the first, but this one will filter all water coming into the bus-house even if it’s going to the fresh-water holding tank. The filter element in this cannister is very much like the one above, but a little less aggressive so as to prolong it’s lifespan.
A week ago I also installed an under-sink drinking water filter and separate drinking water faucet on the kitchen sink. This filter has a high quality ceramic cartridge and removes 99.99% of bacteria and other nasty bugs that can be in water from poor sources. The water that comes from this fixture is now filtered three times and should be better than most bottled water. We’d like to stop buying and hauling around bottled water if we can. It’s expensive and heavy.
For dinner, we got together with Ron & Sue, and Tom & Rose from our old neighborhood in Vancouver. We had a lot of laughs, a great time. It was fun getting caught up and reconnecting with these good people.
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Joke of the Day (from Ron Wiltsey)
These two old guys are talking. First guys says “Next week I’ll have been married to the same woman for 60 years!”
Second guy replies “Wow, that’s great. What are you doing to celebrate?”
First guy: “Well, for our 40th, I got her a trip to Italy.”
Second guy: “That’ll be hard to top. So what are you doing this year?”
First guy: “Bring her back.”
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T
An Open Letter to Critics of Our Lifestyle
Friday, May 30th, 2008Fuel prices are at record levels and people are having to adapt. It can be a hardship and the additional money spent for fuel has to come from somewhere else… food? vacations? entertainment? health care? Often, there’s not much one can do but pay the price and get mad… and maybe look for someone to blame.
Recently, I’ve been criticized for driving around in a motorhome — “a pig of a vehicle that gets less than 10 m.p.g.” Specifically, the criticism was the result of a piece I wrote in my political blog that was hard on the President for not using the patriotic fervor after the 9/11 attacks as a catalyst to make the USA independent of foreign oil, or at least, independent of Middle Eastern oil. The writer thought I was a hypocrite.
Simply put, I think the implication was that I have no right to criticize the President if I choose to drive a vehicle that has poor fuel efficiency.
Let me try to respond.
The motorhome is our home, our house — our ONLY house. It’s NOT our daily transportation. We only drive it when we’re moving to a new “home-base”. It will be driven less than 10,000 miles this year, and as fuel prices rise the miles we drive will go down. We don’t drive the motorhome when we run to the store, go sightseeing, run out to a restaurant or a movie, or when we go anywhere else while we’re parked at a “home-base”. We have a car for those trips… just like almost everyone else… except that we have only one car and most every other couple has two or more.
When it comes to the facts of our energy consumption, I’ve analyzed our usage both prior to embarking on this lifestyle, when we had a “real” house, and after, with the motorhome. [link to article]. I can assert, and I have the data to back it up, that the motorhome uses less energy than the average “real” house… including the diesel fuel we burn to move our house from one place to another.
Yes, we do consume about 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel each year that we wouldn’t be using if we didn’t have the motorhome. But we’re only heating and cooling about 300 sq. ft., and use only a small fraction of the energy the average homeowner uses for the same purpose.
We have a solar array on our roof that produces power from the sun. We can live “off the grid” indefinitely while the average homeowner is buying energy to power their much larger houses. Thus, our consumption of grid-electricity is very low.
We’re careful with our use of hot water; we don’t have snowmobiles, boats, quads, or other adult energy-consuming toys; we don’t use energy to mow our lawn or clear the snow; we’re buying much less “stuff” during this phase of our lives because we’re more into exploration than into accumulation — remember that there’s an energy component to each and every “thing” you buy. In general, our fulltiming lifestyle is a low energy lifestyle.
Apparently, in the minds of these critics, the issue isn’t the amount of energy we’re using… the issue is that I’m not using energy the way they’d like me to use it… the way they’re using it. I guess they’d be happy if we actually used more energy than we are fulltiming in our motorhome… as long as we used it in a “normal” way… the way they’re using it.
Or maybe they just need to understand what this lifestyle is all about.
Thomas Hoch
www.tdhoch.com
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