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Archives for 2010

My energy use

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Because this is an ongoing “post” that I will be re-visiting from time to time, I’m going to make a page that will be visible on the top navigation that will serve as a space for this “meta-topic”.

The main goal of this is to hopefully provide an overview of how from the time I really became aware of my energy use (with regards to electricity, gasoline, natural gas, etc), I have been trying to lower that total usage anytime I see easily trim-able amounts.

Now, please, don’t misunderstand. I am NOT saying I’m going to lower my footprint to zero (at least, not anytime soon), and I’m not saying I’m going to give up comforts for the sake of energy use. What I am saying is that with very little extra work, the average person could probably cut a non-trivial amount of energy use from their day to day life, and afterword be no less comfortable in their home (in some cases, more comfortable). What this does take is some time, and in many cases, money. But, in my mind, this money isn’t wasted. It will pay for itself in comforts, or just in long term savings.

The page will be up and running in the next few weeks. At this point, consider what you have around your home that could be replaced/upgrade that would save your money throughout the year, and would have little to no negative impact on your comfort.

ARG, Thinkgeek!!!

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UPDATE: A wonderful rep. with Thinkgeek refunded all the expired points!!! While this means I’m 75 short of the 2,500 needed for the Buckyballs, it more than satisfies my complaint. Thank you Thinkgeek! I’ll still be a loyal customer. =)

Original Post: After a coworker brought in some Buckyballs to work yesterday, I finally decided they were pretty fun. So, I’ve been looking around town for them. No love, at all. But, I knew I had some geek points with Thinkgeek, so I figured I could get them that way. So, I go and check my geekpoint balance, and low and behold, it’s 0! What the hell? So I look at the history, and see they’ve started (at some point) expiring points if you don’t buy anything from them in 13 months (it was 13 months since my last order in April… I last checked my balance in March I think). So, I went from 2,500 to 0 in 2 months.

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Fiskars Momentum Reel Mower

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Update 1/31/11: Finally getting back to this one. In short, we ended up returning the mower. Our lawn is just too lumpy for a push reel mower to work. It would just miss too many pieces that a powered rotary mower would be able to “pull” up and cut. The mower worked great on those parts of the yard that were flat, and nothing beats the quiet. Perhaps in a few years when we’ve redone our lawns to be small, and flat, we’ll investigate the world of push reel mowers again, but for now, it’s back to my trusty Honda HRR216PDA.

Fiskars Momentum Reel Mower

Original Post: I’ve thought about purchasing a reel mower for years. This initially was because my wife is not fond of loud noises, and therefore really dislikes our gas mower (A Honda HRR216K5PDA which is quite quiet for a gas mower, but still loud). So when I was looking around online recently, and saw some articles pointing at this Fiskars reel mower, I decided to dig a bit deeper. Couple days laster, and a Consumer Reports review later, I decided to pickup one of them from the local Lowes for $200.

Putting it together was a snap (though, taking it out of the box was a bit confusing), and I checked the blade alignment as per the Fiskars website/manual. After seeing it was good, I took it for a spin on the front and back yard.

Now, first, let me say my lawns are pretty flat (though, they do have a few bumps here and there). So, I did a couple passes on my front lawn, and was, honestly, underwhelmed. Thinking that maybe it was just the front lawn, since it’s not very big, I went into the back, and did (it’s much longer and straighter). Using it is pretty easy, and it cuts pretty well. The real advantage, is it’s really quiet. I actually got to hear and look at a couple birds playing in the tree. But, there are two issues that I’m not sure I care for, and they may very well be deal breakers.

  1. The “mulch” is rather long compared to my gas mower
  2. It misses a lot of grass (many missed tall pieces)

Now, these two issues are very much related. The reel mower has no “suction” that picks up the grass and cuts it. My lawn has a lot of “lazy” grass. That is, grass that lays down rather than sticks up straight. The reel mower completely misses these pieces. This could be due to the weather this year being very wet until recently. I’m not sure.

So, am I going to keep the mower? I don’t know. I’ve got 30 days to return it to Lowes if I don’t like it. And I think I’m going to take out the gas mower (with a newly sharpened blade) and go back over the lawn with it to get all the missed pieces. Then give the lawn another week or so to grow, then try the reel mower again. See how it does. I really like it being so quiet, and not using gas… but at this point, I’m not convinced it does a good enough job.

I’ll post back updates after I know more.