Rethinking Lifestyle

Who remembers the Montreal Protocol these days? Who remembers the concern over the hole in the ozone layer?

Regular readers of this blog will know that I am a promoter of cycling. I have contended that travelling by bike between any two points in Steinbach is not a hardship for any healthy person.

In previous articles, I described our experience with several energy-conserving and energy-generating features in our new home. I described their return on investment (ROI) and total energy saved or generated.

The costs of various house construction features are easily estimated and widely used in planning a house. The quantification of savings available from energy conservation features is uncommon or rare.

In planning our new house, my aim was to make economically and environmentally prudent choices. I had no ambition of achieving a net zero energy home.

In 2017 we visited a show home with solar panels and this provided me with information and contacts for a pilot project in which Manitoba Hydro provided a rebate of $1 per watt and accepted a bi-directional electricity meter for a solar system on a new house.

A condo in Florida has collapsed killing approximately 150 people. This must cause others living in high rise buildings to wonder about the safety of their residence. But what else should this event teach us about our lifestyle choices?

An air conditioner takes heat out of a house (cooling it) and transfers the heat into the air around the house. Through the use of a reversing valve, a suitably equipped air conditioner takes heat out of the air around the house and transfers it to the house interior (heating it).

In 2018, we moved from an older house in the country to a new house in Steinbach. Our previous house was heated by electric baseboards and by a wood stove.

How our planet and economies respond to the big issues of our time is determined by the individual actions of millions, indeed often, billions of individuals.