Get better Gas Mileage

I remember as a kid, my dad would send me up the street to get a gallon of gas for his lawn mower. He would give me 50 cents and everything left over I could use to buy candy. I would come back with a gallon of gas and a couple of candy bars. Fast forward to 4 and 5 dollar a gallon gas prices in some states.

A couple of months ago I went out and bought a new car. My commute to work and back is about 80 miles a day. I wanted something comfortable and fuel efficient. I decided on the new Prius C. I want to make a couple of things clear before people start judging me. I do not hug trees. I have an open mind about global warming, still listening to both sides of the argument. If I was forced to drive a Freightliner to work and back, I could still afford the gas. My reasoning for driving more efficient stems more from the money sent to middle east countries or south american dictatorships. If I thought all of the gas imported to the US came from Canada, I would drive a Hummer H2.

My little car is currently averaging 59 miles per gallon, city and highway. This is in the last 3,030 miles since I bought the car. The window sticker on the car when I bought it said I would get a combined mileage of 50. It said I would get 46 on the highway and 53 in the city. I spend equal time driving both.

Why do I get 9 mpg better than what the United States Government said? It has more to do with driving efficiently than driving a weird hybrid Japanese import. Granted, there are people who could take my car, drive it like it was stolen, and after their fast and furious commute the dashboard would say 35 mpg. By the way, I am not a hypermiler. I don't draft behind the semi trucks on the freeway and I don't go 10 under the speed limit.

Here are a couple of tips to get better mileage:

1. Drive the speed limit. I know it sounds utterly stupid to some people but it has been proved that an increase in speed will reduce your miles per gallon. The Bugatti Veyron Supert Sport gets 3 miles per gallon at 250 miles per hour. It gets 13 miles per gallon at highway speeds. You will see a noticable difference in your gas mileage by dropping your speed from 80 to 70. I see this on all of my vehicles including my motorcycles.

2. Don't jackrabbit your start. If you treat your gas peddle like a bass drum peddle, you will get less miles per gallon. Ease down the peddle to a nice start and you will notice a savings.

3. Don't screech to a stop. Anticipate the traffic and coast a little before gently applying pressure and coming to a nice calm stop. This extends the wear on your brake pads and you don't lose as much of the energy built up during the acceleration. Your car will love you for it.

If you are so inclined, try these simple steps and you may see a savings at the gas pump. There is a slim chance we will ever see gas prices below $3.00 a gallon again and a big chance they will go up. It doesn't matter what car you drive. I would never tell anyone to buy one car and not another, everyone can make that choice for themselves. All cars have pros and cons, my hope is that everyone can drive friendly and drive safe.

What was the real purpose of the Mayan Calendar?

Looks like they still make them, just not as fancy

I was in the Houston airport the other day.

I saw one of Buddy's famous relatives.

I am pretty sure he was a "Pasturenaut"

Ode to Buddy

Buddy the bovine was my cow
So very large, I think of him now
Buddy ate grass, Buddy ate hay
He ate at night and he ate all day
One stepped lightly when he was around
For the giant pies he left on the ground
I hand fed Buddy from when he was small
And kept feeding him until he was tall
But in the end, though he was my friend
Buddy ended up feeding us all



When the services fail

How I prepare for an inconvenient shortage of home services.

I am using 2 Brunton Solaris 26 solar panels and I put them inside the windows of my house. These are good flexible panels that are easy to stick inside windows. People don’t notice them and they can’t steal them if they are inside the house. These panels are used to power one of my Xantrex 600 Eliminators.

These are battery packs with built in 120v inverters. Duracell sells the same rebranded unit as the Duracell 800. The power packs store enough energy to power my 60 inch sharp led television and dvr for about an hour and a half. They also supply electricity to my PowerHunt 12 volt hair dryer (the wife uses it, not me). I can also hook a chain of 12 volt lights from Goal0 into the 12 volt. The hair dryer ties into the jumper cables on the power pack. She also plugs her curling iron into one of the 120v receptacles.

      

She can do her morning thing from one of the powerpacks and be left with a 50% charge. That is enough to run lights and charge a computer laptop or iPad. I hook one of the spent powerpacks to the Solaris solar charger during the day and it will be fully charged in the afternoon. The powerpacks have an automatic charge shut off so they never get overcharged.

By using two solar panels and three powerpacks, I can rotate the batteries around and have plenty of juice for internet, computers, lights and other things. I also use the powerpack to run my Coleman 12volt refrigerator. It uses only about 8 watts to keep things very cold. I can run it for 24 hours on a battery charge. 

For the main refrigerator and freezer in the house, I am using a Honda eu2000i gas generator. This generator will run my fridge and outside deepfreeze. A refrigerator and freezer motor can spike to as high as 1600 watts while turning on and then run at a constant 200 to 300 watts. I found out the hard way that it is best to hook up either the fridge or the freezer and let one run for about 5 minutes before plugging in another. I have been running these appliances for about 4 or 5 hours at a time and then letting them sit. This way I use about ONE gallon of gasoline a day to keep all my stuff cool.

To heat the house, I have a gas stove insert in the living room that is heated by natural gas. There is a fan blower that pushes heat into the room. This blower runs at about 150 watts and it allows me to plug into the same Honda generator. In case natural gas is not available, I have two Kerosun kerosene heaters that I can use inside the house. These heaters are very efficient, kerosene is still available and stores pretty much indefinitely. You can buy 5 gallon metal cans of kerosene at most fuel outlets.

For cooking I use a cheap Coleman single burner propane stove. These work great, they are not intended for inside the home but they do work inside the home. Did I mention, they are not intended for inside the home. Really, they are not. For hot water, I use a Coleman Hot Water on Demand unit. These units use a rechargeable battery pack which can be charged from a Brunton Solaris. They work extremely well. A 5 gallon propane canister will provide about 500 to 600 gallons of steaming hot water.

For water, I have a well. If for some reason I can’t get water from the well, I have several large blue plastic 55 gallon containers. These are very heavy so put them where you want. Don’t plan on moving them until they are almost empty. If that plan fails, I have a Katadyn Ceradyn water filter. This filter will remove the bad parasites and viruses out of ditch water if needed.

The filter will hold 2.5 gallons of water and filter 1 gallon per hour. That will give you 24 gallons of fresh water per day, since it is a gravity fed filter, there is no pumping needed.

This is my very first blog. A friend at work thought it would be cool if I started a blog. Since I have a fear of Facebook and Twitter, this will be new territory.

I just got done with an experiment regarding home preparedness. I convinced (forced) my wife to go one month without shopping at a supermarket or eating out. Everything we ate came from home, things that were already in the house. We started April 1 and finished May 1. We discovered several things along the way. I saved about $400.00 to $500.00 just in meals outside the home. We also uncovered cases of food items that had long since been forgotten. If the can didn't bulge, like my mid-section, I ate it. Not once did I get sick. Here is an example:

I often travel to other states because of my job. Two weeks ago I found myself in Yakima, Washington. Although there are good restaurants in the area, I brought my food with me. In my suitcase were a few cans of sardines, dried apple chips, oatmeal, and a backpacker lasagna meal manufactured in 1994. The expiration date on the lasagna was 2001. For dinner one night, in my hotel room, I heated up some water in the coffee maker and got ready for some fine cuisine. When I opened the mylar pouch that held the lasagna, I was treated to a smell that can only be described as the old gym sock you find inside an old gym shoe. I was hesitant to even look at the contents. My hunger got the best of me and I dumped a cup of boiling water into the bag. After letting the lasagna ferment for the required 10 minutes, I tasted it. The smell was still there but it tasted fair to just less than good. I at the entire contents and got ready for a night of diarhea. It didn't happen, I was fine.

I did not subject my wife to any of this experimentation with old food, she ate things out of the fridge, freezer and cupboard. After a month, I took a quick inventory and discovered we had not eaten much. In fact, we didn't touch our food storage at all. You may wonder what we did for milk and eggs. We have been drinking dried milk for the last year and a half. I mix up a half gallon at a time. Since we quit buying a gallon of milk, the last quart or so doesn't go bad. It is real milk, you just have to mix it yourself. We didn't eat eggs in April, I made up for it by eating almonds That were stuffed in the back of the pantry.

Another thing we discovered, you may have 3 or 4 bottles of the same item in the back of your fridge. I found 4 jars of pickles, each jar was a quarter full. I dumped all of the pickles from the other 3 jars into the fourth and now there is more space. The best thing about this experiment came in the form of some weight loss. Since I didn't go to the local stop and rob to get a colossal size fountain drink, I saved money on gas, the drink, and I lost weight. About 5 pounds, not bad.

The whole experience was great for me and not bad for my wife either. We learned a few things from it and will be better prepared for times when we are in a need of our food storage. Did I mention, the first week of April, we turned off the power to our home. Seven days without assistance from the power company. I will write that little story next time.