Living Like Ed (6 page)

This is especially true in the winter. At night when it’s cooler, just close your curtains to keep the heat in your home. In the morning when you wake up, push the curtains back and let the sun shine in to brighten and warm up your rooms. It’s so simple, but it really can lower your heating bill, which saves you energy . . . and gives you more money to spend on clothes and makeup!

It’s important to mention that not all window treatments go on the
inside
of your home. You can mount awnings outside—particularly on south- and west-facing windows—to block the hot summer sun.

As you know, the sun is much higher in the sky during the summer. Awnings—as well as eaves and overhangs on the outside of a house—will block that really hot summer sun, reducing your cooling costs. When the sun gets lower in the sky in the wintertime, as it moves toward the winter solstice, it’s able to reach beneath the awnings and hit your windows, helping to heat your rooms for free. That is the beauty of the wraparound porches that you see on older homes, particularly in the South.

But you don’t have to do a major remodel to get these same benefits in your home. Relatively inexpensive awnings are a very effective way to turn your home into a passive solar house.

You can achieve a similar effect by planting deciduous trees—trees that lose their leaves in the fall and winter. Plant them on the south side of your home—and perhaps to the west and east as well—where they will shade your house from the baking sun in summer. And in winter-time, what happens? The leaves drop off those trees, allowing the sun to warm your house.

In lieu of double-pane windows—or any of the more expensive window treatments—another low-cost alternative worth considering is window films. These films can be applied to any window to block a portion of the UV rays entering a room. They reduce heat gain dramatically in the summer, and they also help keep your carpet, furniture, and other possessions from fading, while you still enjoy lots of daylight.

Compact Fluorescent Lightbulbs

I
love
compact fluorescent lightbulbs. I
love
them! When I talk about pursuing the energy-saving low-hanging fruit, CFLs represent an entire orchard.

The SS
Begley
is lit completely by CFLs
—all
I have throughout the entire house are CFLs. Some of the bulbs in my house, particularly the ones in my home office, I bought in the early 1990s . . . and they’re still burning. They save an incredible amount of energy
and
money.

I’m such a big fan of CFLs that I would actually lobby to outlaw incandescent bulbs.

The State of California and several European countries are considering passing legislation to outlaw incandescent bulbs and make the use of CFLs mandatory. People have asked me if I would support that legislation. Not only would I support it, I would lobby for it.

Here’s the bottom line on compact fluorescent lightbulbs:

•
CFLs use two-thirds less energy than standard incandescent lightbulbs, yet they provide the same amount of light. A CFL may draw just 18 watts of power, but it puts out 60 watts’ worth of light.

•
The average CFL lasts nine times longer than a normal bulb—most people say they’re going to last ten years, and I’ve got some that have lasted as long as sixteen or seventeen years.

•
Each CFL saves at least $30 in energy costs over its lifetime vs. a regular lightbulb.

•
CFLs generate 70 percent less heat than regular bulbs, making them safer to operate and keeping your home cooler in the summer months.

•
If every American home replaced just
one
standard lightbulb with a CFL, it would reduce greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions of nearly 800,000 cars.

And here’s great news: Even if money is really tight, you can still switch to compact fluorescent bulbs. You can get them for free from a utility like the Department of Water and Power, like Pacific Gas and Electric, like Southern California Edison, like Con Ed. A lot of these utilities will give you compact fluorescent bulbs because they’ve discovered that it’s cheaper for them. The cheapest kilowatts they can produce these days are kilowatts saved. It’s very, very difficult to site and build a new power plant—all the expense, all the red tape involved, the environmental review. And the fuel sources are natural gas and coal. What’s the future of that? So utility companies are really on board with saving power, not creating more and more demand from their customers.

The CFL Naysayers

Granted, there are people who look at CFLs and see problems. The mercury content, the quality of light—I’ve heard them all, even from my wife. These people are more comfortable with the old technology that they’re used to, and they don’t want to give it up. I understand that, but it’s shortsighted thinking. So let me address a couple of the issues people raise surrounding compact fluorescent lightbulbs.

                  I remember when Ed was going to get rid of the antique chandelier in our dining room. It’s from the 1930s, when the house was first built, and I loved it, but Ed decided to replace it because it wasn’t “efficient.” He planned to replace it with this modern thing, a real monstrosity.

I just said, “That’s it. I’m outta here. I can’t live here unless the chandelier stays.”

So Ed put it back up and he put compact fluorescent bulbs in it. That was before the industry had come out with CFLs that could be dimmed, so your choice was either on or off, and the light was really harsh back then. It was horrifying. In the end I just left the chandelier off and lit candles in the dining room. (Fortunately I love candles.)

But compact fluorescent lightbulbs have gotten so much better, thank goodness! We’ve reached a point where I can even turn on the chandelier again! The light is softer, and you can dim them, too. So Ed added a dimmer switch to the chandelier and he put in the newer bulbs, and it’s fine now.

I’ve even found a way to live with some of the older CFLs that we have that are still working—and Ed will be the first to tell you that these things last forever. I just put a lamp shade on them to change the color and soften the light. So believe me, fluorescent lighting in your home doesn’t have to be horrible.

Concerns About Water

Water use—or rather water
waste—
is a hot topic in our house. Rachelle still doesn’t seem to understand why I keep after her about wasting water. Well, here’s why.

Many experts theorize that water is going to be our next crisis, because of global climate change. If there is less snow in mountainous regions, which most climatologists agree is going to happen, then a water shortage will come. There will be periods of rain, certainly, but right now we have a big savings account banked in all that snow. With global warming, we’ll have less snow in the future, so this “cash” in the form of rain will be passing by quickly. Instead of freezing and staying in a “snow bank,” it will wash right on by and we won’t be able to use it fast enough.

Those same experts say there will be flooding and other problems, too, but the worst part is there will simply be a lot less water, and we won’t have this wonderful reserve. Nature has been doing it this way for years: Build up a stockpile and then release it when the snow melts from the Sierras and our other water storage banks. Year in, year out, you could pretty much count on it. But that cycle has been broken, many experts feel, and if they are correct, it will be very, very dicey for places like Southern California, where nearly all of our water comes from other areas. We get it from the Owens Valley, from the California Aqueduct, from the Colorado River. And if one leg of that stool gets shaved off, we’re going to teeter and eventually fall.