A roof over our head

A few weeks ago, we had some bad weather. It involved hail, high winds, and rain.
Our house was built in 1992 and it still had the original roof so it was not too surprising that we had shingles flying off during our hail storm.

This opened up an opportunity for a new roof.
If you are new to this blog, the Mr. is and energy guru.
He works very hard to keep costs for water and electricity down.
If you are interested, see this post.

After a few quotes, we were so excited to finally get his dream METAL roof.

This was our house on move-in day.

This is the new roof. We were thankful also, that our new porch build my Dad and hubby here, got a new roof as well.

Not only does it look nice, it definately helped keep the temperature upstairs down.
I am only slightly concerned about the color. We did not realize that the color was so close to the house color. However, if I absolutely CANNOT live with it this way, YOU WILL GET TO VOTE ON THE COLOR ONE DAY! So stay tuned for more.

Going Green

In our house, we (forceably by neil) do our best to save energy. Less energy = less money, right? Well, I sometimes I feel like I would rather pay an extra dollar for convenience. But, when you get an electricity bill like this, I am very thankful for the forced savings.

Thats $33.76 for the month of May! Neil can calculate pretty accurately what we spend on electricity daily! Here or some of the cost saving things we have done this year:

1. No Christmas lights outside or inside :(

2. No AC except in the months of June, July, and Aug

3. Sleep with the windows open and fans on.

4. Installed Draft Gaurds on most doors and windows.

5. Changed out all lightbulbs for energy efficient bulbs.

6. Put timers on the modems and wireless network.

7. Put a timer on the closet light (that I always forget to turn off)

8. Installed a flow reduction shower head.

9. Built a porch!

and

10. Replaced our dryer with a clothesline.

This is Neil's latest contraption. It sits attatched to our back patio and naturally, it works well. We did about 10 loads of laundry on it. Neil put the clothes on the line, probably because he knows that if he doesn't I would just throw them in the dryer :/ He calculated the savings for 10 loads..... $0.40.

Just not worth the inconvience to me but since Neil is home for the summer, I think I can expect many more contraptions...including solar panels. I'll keep you updated.

Thanks for the savings, Neil :) One of us has got to do it.