FIVE YEARS OF RIOT!
This is the Riot for Abundance for the months of October and November 2013,  for the three of us plus one (we had friends and family in law staying over and all together they count somewhat for one). Edson fixed the calculator: all go tither to crunch those numbers!
Gasoline. Â Calculated per person. Though I’m still driving a bit more due to an uptick in activism-related trips, we did pretty well.
9.2 gallons pp.
22.4 % of the US National Average
Electricity. This is reckoned per household, not per person. We cook on an electric stove. According to our solar meter, we produced 11848  kWh since the system was turned on in August 2011 and 675  kWh over the last two months (you can follow our solar harvest live here). We still owe NSTar nothing, but that’s because we racked up a nice credit. In November we did, however, for the first time since April, consume more than we produced (by 105 kW), as evinced by this crazy informative chart on my bill:
That said, how much did we consume (irrespective of how much we produced)? Well, around 675 +105 kWh = 390 kWh per month.
390 kWh monthly average
21.6%Â of the US National Average
Heating Oil and Warm Water. This too is calculated for the entire household. It’s been cold, and though we’ve fired up the wood stove, we’ve also had guests, meaning higher thermostat settings and heating of the annex, where the wood heat doesn’t reach. We’ve probably also used oil to heat up some of the hot water, but it’s not possible to calculate how much of that was heated by our solar hot water, which was installed in February. I did get this interesting statistic from SunReports, which monitors our system:
We generated 440,660 BTUs in November and 972,255 BTUs in October.
Since joining, we’ve realized:Â 5,847,409 BTUs which accounts for
586.12 lbs Coal
726.82 lbs CO2
941.32 miles Driven
So, all in all, we’ve consumed of heating oil 16.5 gallons, which isn’t bad, considering the prevalent low temperatures.
16.5 gallons of oil / month
26.8% of the US National Average
Water. This is calculated per person. We had lots of people but we used very little water.
466 gallons pp. per month
15.5 %Â of the US National Average
Trash. After recycling and composting this usually comes down to mainly food wrappers.
6 lbs. pp per month
4.4 %Â of the US National AverageÂ
Five years. That’s as long as we’ve been homesteading! Congratulations on sticking with it. Your commitment is an inspiration.
But speaking of homesteading, I am extremely excited to tell you that my homesteading book is finally published! It seemed to take forever to do everything that needed to be done, but at long last I can share the news, Fellow author, I know you can relate(!) Please do drop by my blog to help me celebrate.