Well, a week after the storm and everyone I know has power again. Finally! It's funny. New Orleans is very disorganized and has decaying infrastructure, but I never remember being without power for more than 24 hours after a Cat 1 hurricane, but here in Ohio, which is much more functional, it was 5 days! Oh well, Guess they aren't used to those kinds of winds in the midwest.
My mom finally has power which is the big thing. She is rural with a well and no power means no electricity and no water. It's really hard for her. I live an hour away. She stayed with me a couple of nights for the warm meals, showers and AC!
ANyway, all that time in the dark got me thinking about
A. how much electricity we use that isn't essential. I've been flipping a lot of switches off lately, and leaving the AC off as much as possible.
I've also been thinking more about a wood stove insert for the upstairs fireplace. It would allow us to use free (around here, plenty) firewood to heat our upstairs in winter. They new ones are very efficient and filter a lot of the particulates out of the smoke, so it's not like dumping ick into the air by burning wood.
If the power went out like this in winter, which it's only a matter of time, at least we'd have heat, too. I looked at our heating bills and for a $2500 stove installed it might take 6 or 7 years to pay for itself. We plan to be here for 18 at least. What do you think? Worth the money?
I've also been running more mortgage payoff calculations. If I pay $400 extra every month, it'll be paid off in Sept. 2016. If I pay $500 extra, it'll be paid off in April 2016. Four years! I'm going to be ambitious and START with $500/month consistently. It'll be easier next year once DS1 starts kindergarten and one preschool bill disappears, but this year will be hard. The money will come out of my freelance income, which has been growing.
Speaking of, it's a good problem, and I am blessed. But I'm up to my eyeballs in freelance. It's just hard now bc I'm still only part time, 12 hours a week of childcare to do all the work. I've been working every night and weekends, and I'm getting burned out.
My newest, biggest project is due July 25 and was supposed to pay $1500. Just found out they extended the scope, so it now will pay more (not sure how much, but at least $500). It's going to be a crazy two weeks, but I'm just going to put my nose down, plow through it, and keep my eyes on the check. It'll take a huge chunk out of the car loan!
I have one other extra article to finish after that, and then I am going to take it slow in August, until I get the kids settled into their new preschool routine (they are both finally old enough to go, so no little one at home while big brother is at school). I think it will be a game0changer work wise, so I will hopefully see how it goes then add projects back in based on how much more work time I have.
Wood stoves, electricity, and mortgages.
July 6th, 2012 at 08:14 pm
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July 7th, 2012 at 05:47 am 1341640047
We never had to buy wood, though one year I did buy a small amount of kindling. We always got it free from somewhere. People were always taking down trees and offering the wood free if you'd just come and haul it away. We rented a splitter once when someone across from my Mom's house took down a giant old fir tree. We ended up paying $78 to rent the splitter for a couple of days and had 3 years worth of firewood out of it.
The one thing that I will say is firewood is a lot of work. A lot. So you need to be strong and healthy to do it, but it is so worth it. Just keep some close to the house for emergencies. We always tried to have a two week supply up close, and a three day supply in the house during winter. And also make sure some of the wood is really dry. You can't start a fire with with green wood, although you can mix green wood in with dry wood. Learn about wood and making fires ahead of time. There are books for everything and the last thing you want to be doing is trying to light a big, wet, green log during a power failure because you didn't know any better.
July 7th, 2012 at 03:49 pm 1341676194
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Jerry
July 8th, 2012 at 09:52 pm 1341784321
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July 13th, 2012 at 08:03 am 1342166593