Conservation
Thought I'd try and save some money on my electric bill by putting up a clothes line. No pulley or anything so technical as that though. Just a rope and clothes pins.
Before the line.
So I bought 50 feet of nylon clothes line and a package of clothes pins at my local hardware store. Now this hardware store isn't just any run of the mill local hardware store. If is lumberyard, rental place, fuel seller in a complex of buildings that seem to have no end. I guess you can officially call me a "local" now, only took me some twenty odd years and because my store charge back goes back to when they were in the old store. The store is still in the family too. The local thing may be more because our kids grew up here and know more people than I do. They went to school with the kids who are now moving into the family business.
Ok, now where was I? Oh yes...
...the clothes line electricity saving conservation machine. It is interesting that you design and build a passive solar house to be energy efficient. You intend to burn wood as your primary heating source, but, the building code police say - Hold on the hippy, draft dodger, anti-nuclear, artist type, freak - Wod cannot be your primary heating source. This is the modrn age. We burn oil son. And you need to sustain heat for a 24-hour period. So after centuries of people heating with wood it is now "unsustainable". So to get a occupancy permit we needed to put in a small electric wall furnace (which is really not such a bad idea) in hind sight (like closets, but that is another story). So in the end the house is not rated "passive solar" but "all electric" go figure. So here I am "all electric" with nuclear plants producing it. What is the old saying we used back in the late seventies when we were beginning this fight, "Using nuclear energy to boil water to turn turbines to generate electricity is like, using a chainsaw to cut butter." So we do our best. The upside though is that as an "all electric" house we actually pay a lower rate. Ha! So my clothes line is carrying a lot of weight.
Now if I just remember to bring the clothes in before a rain I'll be all set.
Andif I extend the line from tree to tree I can be line Christo :)