My Saturday foray into the outer tier suburbs.

The gas stove that came with the house when I bought it was getting pretty ratty. I replaced a few years back with a very basic stove with pilot lights. that I got for helping carry a few things with the pickup and trailer. I have been watching for the right replacement. I tried appliance stores and they told me that it would cost at least $500 for the type I wanted with electronic ignition and a programmable oven shut off. Carigslist had what I wanted from a remodeling pull out. The new stove was color coordinated. The price was right. I wanted a solid stove with electronic ignition but this also had electronic ignition.

Several energy angles here. The electronic ignition eliminated three pilot lights. That's somewhat irrelevant in the winter when the heat, well, heats! With my low level of stove and oven usage the pilots probably burn more gas than the actual cooking. I do not have Central Air conditioning so in summer it's only wasted heat. (That would be more load for Central AC).

Once installed my only pilot light will be on the gas water heater. That is vented outside and to some degree it keeps the water warm. Demand water heaters don't seem to pay off yet but I put a double insulating blanket on my water heater. Also, it helps to drain a little water from the hot water spigot on a regular basis so sediment doesn't build up on the bottom. I try to do this once a week and have a hose permanently on the drain spigot. I like to run a bucket of water and check the bucket for sediment. There usually is a little sediment each time. http://www.waterheaterrescue.com/pages/WHRpages/English/Longevity/sediment-in-hot-water-heaters.html

If the water tank has sediments (several inches is not uncommon on scrapped tanks) this greatly reduces efficiency and tank life. With the stove I bought my house will have no "indoor enviorment" pilot lights. On the Internet there are some nasty claims about these but I haven't noticed it. Instead of central AC I run one or two very high efficiency (under 10 watt draw) exhaust fans in high piano windows I installed scrap pipes in the high piano windows (I'll try to get pictures.) The pipes are further "tricked" to make them burglary proof. I have other windows "burglar proofed" so there is an extremely efficient air circulation. I live in a low crime area but I used to work night shifts before I retired so I wanted the house to be secure but cooled. This might be a subject of a future post. Doing a bit of "mental math" my summer fan cooling system adds fifteen to thirty cents per week to my electric bill and it keeps the house a lot cooler. A dollar a month more in summer electricity? Yeah I can afford that!

As for the trip to the outer burbs I tried to consolidate trips but the best laid plans oft go astray. Google maps said 25.3 miles but I of course got lost and drove almost 90 miles total so nearly 40 of it was lost. We somehow got cell phone numbers mixed up so I couldn't call. That burned up much of my $3.44 gas I topped off with a couple of days ago.

I try to treat everything as a learning/reporting experience. On the main roads of my "misroutes" I noticed that you had around one fifth of the density of city. On the main routes a lot of it seemed to be business and institutional room for expansion. The house lots are large of course. Economically, the area seemed healthy. I didn't see many vacant businesses and saw no distressed residential housing. A lot of miles driving there and that does not favor the so-called "alternative" energy vehicles. My standard transmission would probably match a hybrid there. If gas goes way up we have serious problems here because of the sheer distances.

The Craigslist seller seemed a nice guy. He bought the house from a relative. Ironically he works here in town with the base maybe three miles from me. I would guess his commute at 23 miles each way but I didn't ask. To round to 25 and figuring five day a week work I figure he is now spending at least $50 per week just on gas to commute. I didn't ask him but just getting around there seems to add a lot more. He seems to favor fuel efficient vehicles, he said he has owned several Ford Rangers. Added to that with the longer distances in the outer ring burbs the gas costs can be high.

The irony is that the guy works here in the city. He said he used to live in a higher crime area of the city. That's another subject for a future posting. Crime rates vary dramatically in the cities. Again, seems like a nice guy.