Riot for Austerity – Month 38

This is the Riot for the month of December 2011 for the three of us. Half of that month we were away in my hometown in Belgium, which explains the low numbers. Our first year’s averages were calculated here, our second year’s averages can be found here. Edson fixed the calculator: all go tither to crunch those numbers!

Gasoline.  Calculated per person. I’ve not calculated in our flights to Europe, forgot how to do that.

3.22 gallons per person

7.8% of the US National Average

Electricity. This is reckoned per household, not per person. With the grey skies and the low angle of the sun, our solar production is down, but it should, of course, go back up as of now. According to our solar meter, we produced 1403 kWh since the system was turned on, 176 kWh in December.  (You can follow our solar harvest live, here).

So in November we consumed:

176 (solar) + 108 (wind) =  284 kWh

12.7% of the US National Average

Heating Oil and Warm Water. This too is calculated for the entire household, not per person.

{ ALERT } The way I have been calculating our heating oil consumption is by reading off the furnace how many hours it ran, then multiplying it by .85 because that’s the amount of gallons of oil I *thought* it used. Now DH just told me that our furnace is more efficient than that and the correct number is .65. Which is great news, don’t get me wrong, but gee! I’ve used the new number for this month but will adjust the other numbers in my all-year assessment { / ALERT }

I turned on our heat on 13 December, the day before we left for Belgium. The thermostat was set at 45F to prevent pipes freezing in case it should get really cold (which it didn’t, no snow either). ironically, even though we weren’t here to use the furnace for hot water, etc., we consumed more oil than in November because we weren’t here, that is, because we couldn’t use our wood stove to heat the place and forego the furnace.

14.95 gallons of oil

24.3% of the US National Average

Trash. After recycling and composting this usually comes down to mainly food wrappers.

10 lbs. pp per month

7% of the US National Average

Water. This is calculated per person.

204.46 gallons pp.

6.8% of the US National Average

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