Nagel Family Website

I got to ride in a Toyota Prius last night and I have to say, I wish I got a hybrid instead of the Maxx. While I’m not too fond of the user-interface of the Prius, seeing it get 100 MPG at times was crazy. The average MPG on this car was 36.9; the owner puts in under 15 gallons of gas per MONTH.

I’m not too upset, since I barely put 500 miles / month on the Maxx, but since I do so much city driving, a Hybrid would’ve been nice. No doubt the next car will be a hybrid.

This entry was posted by Eric on Thursday, May 17th, 2007 at 2:09 pm and is filed under Energy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.

This guy made a solar heater using old pop cans, which got me thinking a bit more about my own design. What if I used the pop-can concept, and covered the lower, back roof with them? The surface area would be larger, but less noticeable as it’s low to the roof. But I’d have to keep the snow off somehow. I’ll keep thinking. My goal is to have at least 1 installed by Oct. 1st this year.

The idea of putting this in his garage is a good one… better to put a hole in the garage, before you put a hole in the house!

This entry was posted by Eric on Tuesday, May 1st, 2007 at 9:26 am and is filed under Energy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.

I’m excited.

I met with a company today to do some work on the house. Then I ran some figures, and, based on the past 2 years, I may save up to $155,886.60 over the next 30 years. That’s based on some estimates, including electric will go up 10.6965% annually, and natural gas will go up 8.50% annually (that’s based on my previous 2 years bills). I should get my entire investment back in 13 years.

If I take out the CFL lights, since I already did that improvement, and cut the utility increases in HALF, I’ll still save nearly $25,000 in 30 years, but it’ll take 20 years to break even.

Now, I just have to see if NY State will work with me for a low-interest loan and various tax breaks for the upgrades I’m looking to do. Either way, I’ll update the site soon on these exciting events.

The bad news from this visit was that my boiler, while running, should give off only up to 25 ppm of Carbon Monoxide - mine topped out at about 1,100 - over 40 times the acceptable value. Luckily, that’s all going up the chimney, but I’m still having it corrected.

This entry was posted by Eric on Monday, April 2nd, 2007 at 7:59 pm and is filed under Energy, Family, Finance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.

I’m waiting for a file to download, so I thought I’d post.

Let’s see… we’re looking to get the windows in our house replaced; the count is up to 24 now, plus a sliding glass door and 2 entry doors. That’s not cheap. But, it has to be done - our house just leaks in the winter (and summer).

Wednesday night, after going to the police station with the Cub Scouts, I walked up to Mike’s Subs (nice website! ) to get some food. Naturally, all that walking screwed up my knees, and I’m in incredible pain right now. That makes me a bear to put up with (I LOVE YOU, LAURA!).

After a few days of troubleshooting, Mr. Bishop figured out what was wrong w/ the hot tub, and stopped by today and took care of it, so when I’m done working tonight, I’ll have a nice hot tub to go soak in.

Ever notice how much Funky Cold Medina and Wild Thing by Tone-Loc sound the same?

I’m going to try running tomorrow - haven’t been running since January 6th. The sun is up about 7:00, so I plan on being at the track then and get some sprints in. I just have to find my Garmin & make sure it’s set-up and ready to go.

We’re going to try to go see Meet the Robinsons soon - maybe even tomorrow night. Just have to find a sitter for Morgan, because I know she won’t sit through a movie, even though Laura thinks she will.

And my file is still downloading.

This entry was posted by Eric on Friday, March 30th, 2007 at 7:38 pm and is filed under Energy, Family, Fitness, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.

I’ve been dying to get an electric bill ever since we switched our lights - and yesterday was the day!

Now, you have to take a lot of things into consideration… not just the dollar-value of the bill, but $ / kWh and days in the reading period as well. While the price per kWh went up 3.4% this month, my average daily usage went down 19.21%! In the 30 days ending February 21, we used an average of 32.67 kWh / day; in the 28 days ending March 21, we used only 26.39 kWh / day.

Blah, blah, blah… what does this mean, in dollars? The month was shorter, the price was higher, we used less energy, and saved $35.72. Looks like the ROI on this project is somewhere between 2 and 3 months.

I really didn’t think it’d turn around that soon, but I’m happy to see it has. Assuming it’ll take 3 months to fully recoup my costs, and each bulb lasts 5 years (as they claim to), I’ll save about $1,542.42 (57 months at $27.06 (monthly average savings)) over the next 5 years. Oh, and I’ll keep 7,275 lbs. of C02 from contributing to the whole global warming thing.

This entry was posted by Eric on Saturday, March 24th, 2007 at 12:30 pm and is filed under Energy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.

So I signed-up at Al Gore’s global warming site to let our government know I’d like them to do something about it… Mr. Gore testified yesterday, and I received this email from him today:

By 10:00 AM yesterday, as I took my seat in the hearing room, an incredible 519,414 people had signed our message to Congress demanding immediate action to solve the climate crisis.

…In fact, so many people signed our message in the 24 hours before the hearing, we are still working on printing them. But don’t worry, Congress now knows that you have spoken, and I will personally make sure every last message is delivered.

That’s right… they’re still “printing them“. Even IF they’re using 100% recycled paper, it still takes enormous resources to print over 500,000 messages.

What’s the deal, Al?

This entry was posted by Eric on Thursday, March 22nd, 2007 at 11:03 am and is filed under Energy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.