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Okay, so I already told you that I am taking some trees down in the woods next to the house. This is a good thing and it’s really starting to look nice over there. I actually took two more trees down today. I don’t like to do too many at a time because I would rather get used to the small changes I make and think about what I am doing before I go ahead and take down some more. Either way, I am building up next year’s supply of firewood.

This is where the problem starts. I still have about a cord of wood from the trees I cut down last summer. It’s is seasoning quite nicely and will make for some splendid firewood come this winter.

Now, I am almost positive that I have complained about the miserable (in)efficiency of a regular fireplace. We have one here and it does a really great job of sucking up what ever heat you already have in the house, out the chimney. Sure, the living room is warm, but you have to wear a snow suit in all the other rooms. Really, I don’t even use it much…just on those chilly spring or autumn evening when the pellet stove isn’t running.

So here I am, sitting on a cord of seasoned firewood and building up next year’s supply. What to do?

I am very happy with the pellet stove we got last year. It kicks butt when it comes to heating up about 3/4 of the house. To get that much heat, I need to keep it humming all winter. Last winter, I used four tons of pellets. I wouldn’t mind having a heat supplement helping out the pellet stove.

I am going to make a long whiny story short here. I really want a Hampton HI300 Wood Insert for the fireplace in the living room. Take a look at it:

http://www.hampton-fire.com/Wood/Inserts/HI300/index.php

It’s really nice, isn’t it?

I called the fellas down at the fireplace store today and told them what I wanted. He wrote up a quote and faxed it over to me. The thing is, it’s pricey. I know I’m not going to save any money by getting this little toy, so I’m iffy about the whole thing. To make matters worse, there is a tax credit that’s available called the “The U.S. Biomass Tax Credit.” It gives you back 30% of your purchase and installation price, up to $1500. That is just driving me crazy. You can learn about the tax credit here.

I know I am going to find myself in the car tomorrow or the next day driving down to the fireplace store. It’s bad, but I just want to feel that heat cranking out of that stove this winter. It even has a blower.

I’ll let you know what happens.

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After I watched this video, I started thinking, “Are people so terrible for drinking bottled water?” You know, half of the time, people drink bottled water when they are on their lunch breaks from work (or similar situations). They are sitting in some pizza place and really aren’t that turned on by drinking a bottle of soda or juice with their food. What’s left to choose from? Water. They don’t want to go ask for a little paper cup worth of tap water from the guy standing behind the counter, so they buy the bottle. They buy it because it’s available.

My feelings are, if you’re going to beat up on the bottled water industry, you better start beating up on the soft drink and juice industry too. I’m not saying this because I like bottled water, I’m just trying to be fair. I don’t think I have ever even bought bottled water. I wouldn’t exactly say that’s because I’m intelligent, probably just because I didn’t want to spend the money.

Here’s that video I was talking about.

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Costs add up fast in the produce aisle. Save some of that money by growing food yourself. Most herbs and vegetables grow great in containers – so they’re perfect additions to a sunny deck, patio, or balcony.

5 Homemade Chemical Free Bug Repellents That Work

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250,000 Tiny Greenhouses, Each Containing One Head Of Lettuce

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Company Designs And Maintains Organic Farm In Your Backyard

Most environmentally aware Americans would love a personal organic vegetable garden, but how many people actually have the time to cultivate one?. Thanks to a San Francisco-based company called MyFarm, Bay Area denizens can pay a weekly fee to have a backyard garden designed and maintained by professionals.

Tea Tree Oil: An Amazing And Versitile Substance

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World’s largest hanging basket

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10 Incredible Living Walls

The idea of a living wall conjures up all sorts of images, but in reality it is nothing more than a wall completely covered in vegetation. This form of urban gardening is often designed as an art form to decorate buildings in cities and has been hailed as one way to make cities more enjoyable, healthier and ultimately greener places.

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An Introduction to Square-Foot Gardening

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Faced with massive population growth, melting ice caps and the need to own an ever-increasing number of gadgets, the world needs to find sustainable solutions.

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Texas the world’s 6th biggest wind-power producer

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Chinese Electric Car Company Led by Charasmatic CEO

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I had a small Home Depot list going on, so I thought I would do a little shopping today. This morning, I told Laura that I was going to head up the Glastonbury to get some stuff and she informed me that the night light bulb went bad last night. We like to have a night light in the hallway to avoid falling down the stairs when it’s dark. I put that on my list and off I went.

I knew that an LED bulb was the way to go, especially for this application. Since the night light is so far away from us when we are sleeping, the light the bulb gives off doesn’t need to be necessarily “pretty.” I think LED bulbs have a long way to go in that department.

The only thing I was concerned about was whether or not the Depot had any LED night light bulbs.

When I got to the store and the bulb area, I didn’t see any of the bulbs I was interested in. I actually had a 4-pack of the regular incandescent bulbs in my hand and was ready to stand up to put them in the cart, when I saw the little LED bulbs to my right. I think the 4-pack of incandescent bulbs were $3 and change and the 2-pack of LED bulbs were about the same. When I read that the incandescent bulbs had a life of 3,000 hours each and the LED bulbs had a life of 50,000 each, the decision was a no-brainer.

The really cool thing is that each bulb only costs $.25 cents per year to use. Now, you please tell me if that’s a good deal or not. I have absolutely no idea how much it costs to run a night light. I am sure there are some hours involved here because people don’t really keep night lights on all day long. Either way, $.25 sounded good, even if it was creative marketing.

Here are some photos of the LED night light bulbs.

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Laura had to remind me a few times, but at promptly 8:30, I stopped what I was doing, turned the computer off and went around the entire house and turned everything else off. It was liberating.

Laura already had the candles lit and spread out all over the place. I decided that even though it was 60 degrees outside, a nice fire in the fireplace would really set the tone. I got a nice one going and we just lay on the floor talking until about 5 minutes ago.

Fire in the fireplace

At around 9PM, I said, “You know, I am really starting to like celebrating small events. We have our reality shows, our walks and now this type of thing.”

This stuff is fun for me and better than that, it keeps me looking forward to so many things so much of the time.

Happy Earth Hour 2009.

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When I called her back, I told the lady that we did, in fact, have a pellet stove. I said that the oil was primarily burned for hot water and to heat one bedroom during the winter. She praised me on my intelligence for getting a pellet stove. I asked her how much oil we burned in the last year (they just came to fill the tank a few days ago). She replied with 256.6 gallons. I thought that was pretty good for a year.

That got me thinking…since the pellet stove was pretty expensive and the pellets themselves were an additional cost on top of the stove, was it worth it to get the pellet stove and pellets, or should we just have burned oil to heat the house for the whole year? I can’t remember the price per gallon of oil last year, when they wanted to lock me into that foolish contract, but I swear it was over $4 a gallon. Since I can’t remember, I did some quick research online to see what oil prices were last year at this time and I came across this website. It shows last year’s oil prices vs. this year’s oil prices in New York. Close enough. At this time last year, oil prices were $3.93 per gallon. Last year, the oil delivery company estimated that we would burn approximately 1000 gallons of oil for the year. That was based on other, similarly sized houses in the area.

Let’s do a little math.

If I signed the oil contract and burned the estimated amount of fuel oil, we would have paid $3930 for the year’s worth of oil.

Since I didn’t sign the contract and since we burned much less oil than the oil company’s estimate (because we used an alternative form of energy), we only paid $638.93 for the oil we burned. That number is from the oil prices on the receipts I kept.

Even if we didn’t sign the contract, but still burned the estimated amount of oil, we still would have paid $2490 for the year’s worth of oil.

Let’s see…I paid about $1100 for the four tons of pellets that we used for the season. We paid about $2500 for the pellet stove and installation. That equals $3600 for the pellet stove and one year’s worth of pellets.

I am going to go out on a limb here and imagine that I was feeling the same way a lot of people were feeling last year at this time and went ahead and signed that oil price contract. If I had signed it and never got the pellet stove, I would have $330 less in my bank account right now.

I know there is some more delicate math involved here, such as the actual price paid for the oil that was already in the tank before we moved in, but I am going to ignore that. This post has already almost put me to sleep. I just thought it was my duty to write it.

That’s the point? Well, I would say that even at today’s lower oil prices, it’s still worth it to get a pellet stove. The payback period is very short and you won’t cringe every time you hear the boiler kick on.

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The number of people on the Internet surpassed one billion in December, according to comScore. The actual number is probably higher than that (Internet World Stats counted nearly 1.5 billion Web surfers worldwide as of June 30, 2008). In any case, only between 15 and 22 percent of the world’s population is on the Internet. We have a long way to go.

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Mars and Mercury Formed From Planetary Scraps

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