Why don’t I listen to the collective wisdom of those who comment here? Last August, Highriser Andrew commented: “Plan now for hot water service replacement as they never break down when it is convenient. If you don’t, the temptation to just replace it with the same is great.”

Last night, it broke down. When describing the symptoms over the phone to the plumber this morning, he confirmed that it is kaputsky.

Origin Energy say they can set me up with an entirely new solar (gas boosted) installation for $2045 (after rebates), which seems pretty good.

Having checked with a couple of plumbers, it would seem that this is actually quite a good offer, and because they do heaps of them, I was a bit more confident their prowess. Let’s just say I liked the cut of their jib*. So I went ahead and ordered it.

The catch? About two weeks waiting. That’s a long time to go without a hot shower and/or boiling kettles for baths, though my sister for starters has volunteered use of her shower. (I didn’t have a shower today, and spent much of the day at work wondering if I smelt. Nobody on the train backed away from me, so hopefully not…)

Hell, it can’t be any worse than the Great Shower Rebuilding of 2001, or the gas crisis of 1998 (following the Longford explosion)… when there was no gas for cooking, either.

But ho boy, I wish I’d done this a month ago.

So much for upgrading my car right now.

(By the way, of the other goals on that list of home projects, I’ve completed precisely none of them, though some have progressed as far as investigation. The bathtub needs a complete new coat of paint. The insulation is actually not too bad at all for effectiveness/thickness.)

*An expression that seemed to work its way into conversation a couple of times last weekend.

PS. 11pm. You know, the more I think about it, the more I suspect doing it this way was a dumb idea. Oh well, even beyond geek pride, I’ll really appreciate it when the solar panels eventually get fitted to the roof and the whole thing is running.

Josh sent me a nifty device for measuring the power consumption of various devices. This is something I’ve been meaning to do for some time: to see what drains power, and how much, and to see in particular what even drains power when it’s idle.

So I spent a couple of hours plugging it into various things and measuring how many watts they were pulling while running, and while not.

Although you often hear about appliances using energy while on standby, I found that for most, this was not the case. In most cases, they pulled zero watts while not running. But there were some exceptions, which I’ll note.

Pedestal fan: On setting one 33 W, setting two 38 W, setting three 45 W.

Kettle: 2289 W — whoa! So it’s important not to put more water in the kettle than you actually need, not just for the sake of speed, but also energy used.

Microwave oven: when running on high 1416 W.

Christmas tree lights: 28 W. It’s only a small tree, not one of those Christmas light extravaganzas you see some places. I don’t generally leave them turned on all the time anyway actually.

TV: Standby 19 W. On (including while muted) 80-120 W. It’s a 68cm CRT screen, and I’ve got it setup so that if left on standby for more than 30 minutes, turns itself completely off, which is good, as it’s apparent that leaving it on standby permanently would be a big waste of energy.

CD Player: 9 W, whether it was playing anything or not.

Amplifier: 16-17 W while on, whether it was silent, or playing radio or from a CD. Nothing measurable while on standby, despite the presence of a standby light.

XBox: Turned off 7 W. On but with no game running 55 W. Playing a game 55-64 W. Pah, 7 W when it’s switched off and doing nothing… bloody Microsoft, typically wasting resources.

MediaGate: On but stopped 11 W, playing 14 W.

DVD player: 9 W while on, whether it was playing or not.

Clothes dryer: Warm 1815 W, Hot 1900 W, During the cooling part of the cycle 75 W. I always knew these things used a lot of power, and this proves it… thankfully I don’t use it very much; the clothes lines (the main one, and another under-cover one for “high priority” items) works for most things.

Vaccuum cleaner: Min power 170 W, max power 1400 W.

Computer CPU: off 12 W, running Windows 75-90 W. Ridiculous… 12 W just to keep the clock going.

Computer screen: off 7 W, on 32 W.

Some things seemed to pull so little power as to be undetectable: the bedroom clock/radio, mobile phone charger, iPod dock and computer speakers all reported 0 W whether they were off, or on and blasting away/charging. I think the only electrical thing I can think of that I missed measuring is the washing machine.

There are some lessons here. Things like kettles and dryers should be used sparingly: don’t put more water in the kettle than is needed, and don’t use the dryer unless necessary. Most other appliances pale into insignificance compared to these.

And my plan is to re-arrange the powerboards to isolate those appliances that draw power while “off”… the computers and XBox (which after all is just a computer in a game machine’s body) in particular, so they can easily be switched off at the wall without affecting anything else.

4:30am.

Something.

Something crawling on my face.

Swipe with hand. Like a shot, out of bed, turn on light.

Cockroach on bed.

Swearing ensues.

Oh gawd, yuck.

Two people I know, and some bloggers have noted the recent presence of cockroaches, despite keeping clean kitchens. I think the little bastards are getting more daring.

SMS from an unknown number on NYE: “Happy New Year”. The number looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t work it out, and it was bugging me. Who could it be? I eventually replied saying “Happy New Year, but who is this, I don’t have your number in my phone.” They replied saying “Sorry, meant to dial xyz. But have a good new year anyway.” Ah, a wrong number - that would explain it.

A couple of Christmas cards addressed to people who don’t live here. I didn’t really know what to do with them, since neither had return addresses. Eventually I put them both back in the mail marked Return To Sender, and hoped the Post Office might be able to figure it out. Then a few days later, a neighbour said hello and asked if I’d got a postcard for him, and told me his surname, which I hadn’t known. Whoops. If I was smarter, I’d have checked the phone book for a matching name elsewhere in my street. He’s in there, too. Maybe Aussie Post’s Dead Letter Office will be smart enough to do that for me. Apparently in December they got 184,469 items to wade through, so it could take a while.

I found a plastic container while I was digging through the cupboards the other day. Very rounded. And not mine. I’m not sure whose it is — possibly someone in my family brought over some biscuits or something and left it behind. Or maybe it’s from Marita’s place. Or maybe it’s one of the people who came for my birthday. Anybody recognise it and want to claim it?

Checked the other day how much of my home loan I’ve paid off. It’s currently sitting at 8.13% gone, up from 6.59% this time last year, and it’s only shifting at about 0.11% per month (unless I choose to pay extra). Slow going. So much for my NY resolution in 2006 of trying to pay off 20% by the end of that year.

Some will say that buying a house doesn’t make economic sense; that renting is overall a better option. When I see the home loan statements, with the humongous amount of interest being charged, I can see that point of view.

But my sister pointed out the other day that it’s pointless looking at it like that. Money lost in interest is just part of the cost of having the house. I guess you could compare it to rent — in those terms, my loan payments are about double what I was paying in rent.

Wait a sec. If you took into account the full proposition, all the money going in, going out, and the how the property value is appreciating, how does it all add up?

So I did a few quick calculations. Thanks to the booming house prices in my area, I’m actually making a huge profit every month. In fact the expenses of loan payments and interest are outweighed 3:1 by the current (estimated) monthly appreciation on the house. Even if prices were rising half as fast, I’d still be ahead.

It’s worth noting that one of the criteria the Buyers Advocate used was that the house would be a good investment — along with all the other factors such as location and affordability and something I liked.

So while it’s money I’ll never see (I’m determined to avoid ever moving house again, cockroaches or no cockroaches), it’s certainly all piling up. That’s cheered me up no end.

My old mate Brian once described his car as being an air-conditioner on wheels.

Which got me thinking. When I go for a drive on my own, the engine in my car is moving me (75 Kg) and the car itself (1356 Kg). Therefore 94% of the energy involved is spent moving the car. It’s only marginally better if I have passengers.

An SUV such as a Ford Territory weighs about 50% more, so 96% of the energy is moving the car.

Of course, there’s a lot more to fuel efficiency than weight. A 3-car train weighs about 120 tonnes (so even if it’s full of people, the weight barely changes), but it’s still more efficient (in terms of both energy and emissions) than a similar number of cars. Ditto for trams:

The Combino light rail vehicle is about the same energy efficiency as a Porsche Carrera GT; the Porsche seats 2, the Combino seats 67 and can carry 180. The efficiency advantage is huge, though the Porsche obviously accelerates better and has a higher top speed!
– James Strickland

So there you go. Just close your eyes the next time you’re on the tram and pretend you’re in a Porsche instead.

… Well, if that’s your thing and you actually think sports cars are cool.

I was back at work today. The city seemed a bit quiet today (Degraves St/Centreway excepted), and with many blokes shunning their ties, obviously things are still a bit in holiday mode.

This morning I found the biggest damn spider I’ve seen this year in ages sitting on the wall above the front door. I know spiders probably help keep the cockroach (etc) population down, but I just couldn’t face one that size being in the house. It took several hits with a broom to kill it, and I swept it out into the garden.

It’s not just that I watched Return of the King with the kids a few days ago (remember Shelob?) — I’ve never been that keen on big spiders wandering around. Turns out Peter Jackson based his adaption of Shelob on funnel-web spiders, though my visitor was probably a Huntsman.

Then just as I was about to leave the house I found a huge cockroach on my bedroom window sill.

I really don’t want to have an entire ecosystem inside my home. I think it might be time to get the house sprayed again.

I have a 240 litre bin for general rubbish (emptied weekly) and a 240 litre bin for recycling (emptied fortnightly).

Usually I put one kitchen bin bag out per week, and the recycling bin is about three-quarters full when emptied.

So our weekly household waste comes to about:

• 30 litres of general waste
• 90 litres of recycling (paper, cardboard, bottles, cartons, cans)

The latter has probably dropped a fair bit since the No Junk Mail sticker went up. I do subscribe to the newspaper, but much of that goes into the recycling at work. I’ve considered a compost bin, though the size of my garden doesn’t really warrant it. I can still do more to reduce my consumption though.