I've got husbandly goahead for a new appliance! And I'll just go ahead on my own with the other...
First, it's a solar oven! I built one as a test from this book, but I didn't do it very carefully, and it only goes up to 200 degrees F. I want one I can bake in, and either I'll have to do a much more careful job (care I'd rather put into paid or medieval work) or I'll have to support a worthy cause with <$200. What a choice!
Secondly, it's a really low-flow showerhead. I better only get one of these to start, as part of the solar shower experiment, since hubby is Very Fond of long hot showers. Our water here is cheap (I'm not sure why/how that works, and I should find out), so it's not the water cost (though I hope I don't have to say that potable water conservation is always a Good Thing), but I hope I won't have to point out that if we install one on his shower, the gas bill will be lower. Which he pays.
AFAIK, water is cheap in north FL and nearby, because we're right on the Floridan Aquifer, which I probably don't need to tell you is one of the larger, cleaner sources of freshwater in the US. Most municipal utility providers in this area just tap the aquifer more or less directly, so they have little cost associated with transport or amending water quality, and they pass the low costs on to consumers. And, less fortunately, the implicit idea that clean water is freely available--to squander as much as use.
I think--I'm much less sure about this than the water situation--that electricity is more expensive than water because (no one having done much about large-scale solar power) we don't have any power sources that are as readily available, where in other places hydroelectric, for instance, is common enough to be cheap.
Posted by: Eoin | May 16, 2007 at 07:42 AM