Summer, Post-Rationing

Summer in the plains is officially here.

Today temperature was flirting with 90 degrees, and that's not the heat index. With the muggy air conditions the "feel" of the temperature was definitely in the mid-90s. It brings back memories of last year...

Last year at this time we were sweating it out, literally, as part of our rationing experiment. Trying to stay true to the period, we vowed to do our best to not run the air-conditioner in our house or cars all summer long. This meant frequent cooling showers, lots of fans, and lost sleep due to sticky sheets and misery. Eventually we caved in late June which, surprisingly, was the energy-efficient thing to do.

But this year, we are not rationing (well, unless you call reducing the square footage of your house in half rationing). And tonight near bedtime it was absolutely miserable in the house; temperature near 86 degrees and humidity level over 60%.

So friends, the air-conditioner is now on. And in all honesty it feels really, really wonderful.

--Rational Mama

Turning Off Niagara Falls

When we were calling around to the local utility companies to change over names on the accounts for the new house, the task of calling the water department fell to me.

While the house has a septic system it is, in fact, on city water and so one Monday morning I called the water folks and gave them our names and the dates of the transfer. Curiosity got the best of me and I asked the polite county employee on the other end of the line what the average water usage was at the new house. Since the previous owners were a young couple sans children (and thus, half the size of our household, half the laundry and half the toilet flushing...), I fully expected their average usage to be noticeably under our average.

So, I was understandably floored when the average number of gallons she provided was nearly 40% more than our average at the old house.

That didn't make any sense. I expressed as much and she gave me the readings for their last four months of usage. Hmmm...how and why would they be using so much more water than us?

TMOTH pondered how much extra watering they did of their (larger) garden, but that wouldn't have been the source for the readings shared, since they were taken in the winter. A good 10 minutes of head scratching had us no closer to a cause, so we tabled the discussion and figured we'd have our epiphany sometime after moving in to the new house.

That epiphany moment came at roughly 6:05am on our first morning in the new house. Up early that morning to get ready for work, I headed to the bathroom to take a shower. The shower is one of those riser extensions off of a claw foot tub and after a few tweaks and alterations to get the temperature just right I turned the appropriately labeled "shower" knob to the left.

Holy Niagara Falls! If you're old enough to remember the "good ol' days" of Nickelodeon and the familiar shoulder arch/facial expression of someone getting slimed, then you have a good reference for the impact the massive amounts of water had on this shower occupant. This was definitely NOT a modern, reduced water flow shower head.

Is this slime biodegradable? Because we're on a greywater system.

We had found our mystery water hog.

This shower head was definitely retro old-school in every way possible, including spray surface area and water output. Pure steel construction made us think that it's the original shower head, which would date it to around 1957. Ah, post-war American...when gluttonous consumption of resources following mandatory rationing was the norm. But an engraving at the base of the head says that it has an output of 2.5 gallons of water per minute, which is technically within modern ranges...

As invigorating as the shower was, eco-guilt got the best of me and within a few days I brought this home:

Not only is it eco-responsible, it gives you the excuse to repeatedly say "Power in your Shower!" in a Mr. T voice.

To conserve water and energy, all residential and most commercial shower heads sold in the U.S. must flow less than or equal to 2.5 gallons per minute. This criteria hit the books in 1992, and since then there's been a sort of black-market for high-output models of the past, fed by the demands of consumers who want that slime-bucket effect.

Better yet, uber-efficient shower heads identified as low flow must have an output of 2.0 gallons per minute or less. The model I chose above, according to Internet resources, has a flow rate of 1.5 gallons per minute which is quite sensible, especially when combined with the handy toggle button that will shut the stream down to a trickle (but keep your temperature steady) for when you're lathering and shaving.

So how is it? Slightly less invigorating but definitely less guilt-inducing. And really, who needs that kind of "I'm killing the world" guilt at 6:00am? Plus, all the resources and money we're saving will definitely allow for the shower to pay for itself within a few months.

But what to do with the old shower head? We could sell it on e-Bay to some desperate bather wanting a higher flowing shower head, but that would seem a tad bit contradictory. According to my food scale, the old shower head is close to two pounds of solid steel...at current scrap prices it could net us a whopping $1.40.

Man, think of all the things we could we do with those kinds of Benjamins!

--Rational Mama

Review: Rationing is a Gas! Gas! Gas!

One of the first posts about the rationing year project concerned gasoline and mileage rationing. In it, we described how gasoline was rationed during WWII and the issues we were wrestling with in trying to come to some sort of modern equivalent. In the end, we came up with a self-imposed mileage ration of 193 miles per week combined for our two vehicles.

So...how's it been? Well, once we project out an average weekly mileage for the last few weeks of rationing (plus the mileage for a holiday round trip visit to Wichita) and add it to our already documented mileage we will have traveled (in our personal vehicles) roughly 10,007 miles during the rationing year, which is just slightly under the total miles of 10,036 allotted to us during rationing (193 miles per week x 52 weeks).

We're all pretty happy that we stayed within our limit and didn't fall into the trap of going farther (literally) even though we knew there wouldn't be any real consequences for us if we did go over our rationed amount.

In order to stay within our ration we definitely had to be mindful about how and when we were driving. We became pros at combining/consolidating trips and had to be extra careful with miles when the girls had out-of-town swim meets every other week during the summer. Our "vacations" consisted of two short getaways to Kansas City and one trip to Wichita to see family. Our mileage allowance did not permit a more grand vacation even if we incorporated some carpooling and I occasionally walked to work.

And to be honest, we were all feeling the lack of big getaway by the time autumn arrived.

As a family we have to decide how we will handle mileage after rationing is over. All of us agreed that we didn't want to remove mileage off the radar completely, especially once we reviewed the math.

During the rationing year our 10,000 miles were considerably below the national average; the average adult American drives 12,000 miles per year, which means the average for a two-driver household like ours is 24,000 miles per year. By following our rationing limits we drove 14,000 miles less than a comparable family.

Fourteen thousand less miles means fewer gallons of gasoline (and more money in our pocket). Using a very modest estimate of 20 miles per gallon, 14,000 miles equates to 700 less gallons of gasoline. Each gallon of gasoline creates 20 pounds of carbon dioxide, so by travelling 14,000 miles (or 700 gallons of gasoline) less than the average two-driver household we avoided dumping 14,000 pounds of carbon dioxide into the air.

That's seven tons, or the equivalent of 1,400 10lb bags of potatoes, or roughly four mini-vans! After that kind of a realization, we can't just abandon mileage/gasoline rationing completely.

So we've decided to keep tracking our mileage but give our family a slightly higher allowance so that more frequent weekend trips and a decent vacation (likely to involve driving) can be incorporated. We are also aware that we will likely be using more miles next year for basic errands (more on that development in a later post). Taking all these things into consideration we have decided that our new, post-rationing family limit for mileage will be 15,000 miles combined for the year. This gives use a weekly allowance of 288 miles - nearly 100 miles more per week than during rationing! The trick will be to not squander those miles but to save them up for the fun stuff.

Pondering all those extra miles and the possibilities seems like a luxury. Where will we go first?

--Rational Mama

Brrrrrr!

It's November and the weather has finally realized that the season is currently autumn, not summer.

Up through the middle of last week we'd been experiencing a warm, dry autumn. In fact, the Rational Living household hadn't fired up the furnace until last Thursday - typically this happens around two weeks earlier in the season. Although our area had it's first official "hard" freeze last week, our own corner of the city did not, so we we still have peppers and basil (!) working their hardest to produce something worthwhile in the garden.

Now that the weather is more seasonally appropriate even the furnace doesn't keep the chill out of the house entirely. It's not that we have poor insulation or a faulty furnace - we have decent insulation and a modern, high efficiency furnace. It's mainly due to the fact that during the winters we keep the thermostat set at 62 degrees (higher if company is expected).

That is a full 10 degrees cooler than the wartime recommendation!

Why do we keep it so cool? Partly to curb heating costs, partly to conserve energy. On most days 62 degrees isn't too bad, especially if you're active (i.e., doing chores). If you're sedentary it does mean long sleeves, socks and maybe an afghan or two on the sofa. Nighttime typically isn't a problem since heat rises and the bedrooms are upstairs (the flannel sheets help, too).

Energy conservation during the winter was a big worry during WWII, since much of the coal reserves were needed for the war machine. There were multiple instances of families running out of coal mid-winter and not being able to secure more because of scarce availability.

Obviously, we don't have that problem today but we still feel a responsibility to use these resources judiciously.

So, friend...have you turned on your furnace? What is your thermostat setting?

--Rational Mama

It Was So Hot...How Hot Was It?

It was so hot...people ran out of superlatives.

So, we caved and turned on the house air-conditioner in the wee morning hours of June 23rd. For the next few weeks it ran sporadically until July 13th.

The air-conditioner switch stayed in the "on" position from July 13th until this morning.

Why? Because a massive heat wave started on July 14th and this has been the hottest summer here in at least the past decade. Ugh.

Since July 13th we've had 25 days with the heat index at or above 100 degrees.

Seven of the last 14 days have had temperatures at 103 degrees or higher. That's just the temperature - not the heat index.

This year July had 17 days with highs above the average.

So far in August all but one day has had above average highs.

But how does the summer rank historically?

According to NOAA, 1943 (our template year for rationing) is ranked as the 15th hottest summer on record in these parts. In comparison, 2006 (which had been the hottest year in the past decade or so) is ranked as the 21st hottest year on record.

Considering we're blowing the 2006 figures out of the water, I'd say we've ended up with a fairly historically accurate summer.

So we've been running the air-conditioner in the house (set between 78 and 80 degrees), instead of taking in the daily showings at the local "air-chilled" theater, instead of spending copious amounts of time at the public swimming pools or bathing in ice water (all 1940s examples). But in the 1940s life would sort of stop during this kind of summer heat. We didn't have that luxury.

Don't loose complete faith in us - we've only run the air-conditioning in the vehicles on a few long road trips where having the windows down would actually decrease energy efficiency. Otherwise, I know of one time that TMOTH used the air-conditioning in the car and I used it once last week when it is was so hot I was actually having trouble concentrating on the road (the van thermostat registered an outside temperature of 112 degrees - I felt justified).

And my job is only semi-air-conditioned, a little of both worlds just to keep my body confused. Poor TMOTH suffers three times a week when he goes to work in an un-air-conditioned warehouse.

Yards and gardens around town are crispy and dry, due to a combination of ridiculously high temperatures and very little rain. But they're not a total loss - we're still bringing in enough tomatoes to warrant canning before they rot.

But a cold front moved in yesterday and the air is absolutely delicious. We'll use these next few weeks to repair any damage to lawns, gardens and psyches that occurred over the last month.

That is, if any of us can stop smiling at the change in weather.

--Rational Mama

Idiotically Dedicated

We're at the start of another week-long heat advisory, with heat indices expected around the 110 degree mark.

The fact that we're still not using the (otherwise completely functioning) air-conditioning in the cars means either that we're:

1. Idiots, or
2. Really dedicated.

Or maybe we're idiotically dedicated.

Either way, we're starting to feel like those rotisserie chickens spinning around in their glass-doored ovens at the grocery store: sweaty, crispy and over cooked.

--Rational Mama

If You Can't Stand the Heat...

You know that scene near the end of The Wizard of Oz, where Dorothy finally throws the bucket of water on the Wicked Witch of the East and, dripping from head to toe in her drenched black garment, the villainess screams, "I'm melting! I'm melting!"

Well, that was me at 2:00 this morning.

Except that I'm not green, nor was I wearing a black cloak and gown and what I was drenched in was sweat, not plain water. Of course, this begs the question - did plain sweat not affect the Wicked Witch of the East? She had to have been hot in that get-up...maybe the saltiness of sweat rendered it ineffective, or maybe her evil castle lair was air conditioned?

Anyway...we had been doing pretty well with no air conditioning in the Rational Living household the past few weeks. The formula was simple: run the attic fan in the early morning to pull in the cool overnight air, then shut the windows. By the time the house was heating up into the uncomfortable range (mid-80's) it was nighttime and we could once again run the attic fan before bed to cool the house down and start the cycle all over again.

But the last few days have been absolutely miserable. Nighttime temperatures have been hovering around 80 degrees - hardly cool enough to make the house bearable. Several days of this in a row and the house was downright tortuous.

To make matters worse, we've been very short on sleep lately, due to near-nightly storms (with lots of blinding lightning and deafening thunder) and the hot, hot weather. While what we've been experiencing is nothing like the countless night raid sirens civilians in the UK had to endure during WWII (sometimes multiple times in an evening), I do have to say I feel a little connection to the sleep deprived, is-this-ever-gonna-stop exhaustion expressed by the family on The 1940's House.

All of this combined lead to my 2:00am outburst of "I'm melting!" last night. According to the thermostat on the main floor the house temperature was 87 degrees at that time; considering the upstairs is significantly warmer, the bedrooms were most likely around 90 degrees. At 2:00am (which is a painful time to be awake, mind you) it was 83 degrees outside which, combined with the 70% humidity created a heat index of 89 degrees.

This implied that the heat index in the bedrooms was probably close to 95 degrees.

Running the attic fan would do no good. The girls were only barely asleep, their poor little bodies sweating away the night. We were all sleep deprived.

And so TMOTH and I agreed to turn on the air conditioner, but to set the thermostat at 85 degrees. I have to admit I was afraid it wouldn't come on, the result of some sort of Murphy's Law affect on our 30 year old air conditioner.

Oh, but it DID come on...and even though the temperature did not drop dramatically the humidity was sucked out of the house.

And it was wonderful.

Going forward, we've agreed to use the air conditioner when we are not able to get/maintain the inside temperature of the house at or below 85 degrees. The self-imposed "no air-conditioning" rule for the rationing year has bit the dust.

Still feeling a pain of guilt (and secretly wondering if we're all a bunch of wusses) I e-mailed a friend today, seeking clarification. Ms. Hyldi was born at the beginning of the Great Depression and so was a young teen during WWII. I know she regularly uses her attic fan and sets her air conditioning thermostat at 85 degrees (that's where we got our compromise number). I asked her how folks during the 1940s kept cool, and this was her response:

"...[T]he climate was different — just out of the dust bowl days, the humidity was quite low.

We moved from one house to another in 1942; in both homes, I slept in a large upstairs room with windows on all four sides, so all the breeze possible came through. The 2nd house had large trees shading it, and that helped some, too. I spent time in the porch swing — swinging made a breeze.

During those years, our family had two oscillating fans — one large and one small. The small one was moved to wherever it was most needed. The large one was part of our evaporative water cooler — a contraption built by my dad. It consisted of a thick layer of excelsior (the packing material) between two panels of chicken wire in a wooden frame and installed in a south window. Along the top was a trough with numerous drain holes. We hooked the garden hose to it and turned it on to a drizzle. The water trickled through the excelsior and with the south wind and the help of the large fan inside, cooler air came through into the house. Lots of people had them — if they couldn't build them, they could buy commercially built ones at hardware stores. But they were ineffective once the climate became more humid. We always turned it off and night. I imagine my parents used the small fan in their bedroom, but I don't remember.

We, and hundreds of others, often slept outdoors. We'd take a rug or blanket and put it on the grass and sleep until the sun came up. People who didn't have a yard slept in the parks, something you'd have to be out of your mind to do now. We also often carried around wet washcloths. Sometimes we'd wrap them around ice, and apply them to our faces and necks.

When I was little, I spent most of the summer months in Western Kansas on my grandparents' farm. The days were blistering hot, but mostly, the nights were cool because the sandy soil didn't hold the heat. In 1936 (I think it's still considered the hottest Kansas summer ever), I remember going with my grandmother to a women's meeting in a home, and we were greeted at the door by the hostess who handed each of us a wet towel. There was one night that summer when there was absolutely no breeze and we all woke up hot. My grandfather went down to the milk house and turned on the windmill to get us some cool water to drink — the only source of anything cool on a farm with no electricity. There wasn't enough wind to even turn the windmill! The slightest movement of air would turn it, so that was incredible!"

I really appreciated her response - it made me realize that people were driven to extremes by the heat back then, just as they can be today. It also taught me that the use of swamp coolers was more widespread than I ever realized, which made me feel slightly less guilty about using our air conditioner if it is set at 85 degrees.

Tonight after I walked home from work in weather with a heat index of 96 degrees I entered a house cooled to 85 degrees...and it really feels quite wonderful. Before the rationing year we would typically set the air conditioning thermostat at 78 degrees, but now I realize that 85 degrees might be a better compromise between our physical/mental well-being and our desire to live more responsibly. This might just be a change that sticks around.

In the meantime there is a cold(ish) front moving through tonight that is supposed to bring us nighttime low temperatures back in the upper 60s/lower 70s for the next several days, so I'm hoping we can avoid using the air conditioner again until the weekend.

How about you, dear reader? How are you managing the heat?

--Rational Mama

The Trouble with Summer and Chocolate...

Notes from the rationing world:

One appreciates M&M's claims to melt in your mouth and not in your hand much more seriously when air conditioning isn't an option.

--Rational Mama

Progress! I think...

I had the opportunity to come home for lunch today. The girls greeted me at the door and then said, "You should go look at the roof!"

"The roof?!?" I asked in panic. Oh dear, what has TMOTH done? "Do you mean the ceiling upstairs?"

"Umm...yeah...the ceiling." (shifty eyes)

Up the stairs I went and was surprised to see this:
It's a little unsettling to look up at your hallway ceiling and see your roof.

While I was at work TMOTH had a chance to talk with our neighbor about the wiring and then proceeded to saw out the plaster ceiling. Plaster is difficult to cut nice and pretty, so there will be some patching when the installation is complete.

TMOTH then did a test fit with the temporary framing and the fan.
Did I mention this thing is huge?

After the initial shock of looking at the roof from the second floor I have to say I'm pretty happy that he's making progress. Making the first cut is an act of faith. I'm hoping that framing and wiring go pretty easily and quickly, too.

After all...the high temperatures this weekend are projected to be in the mid-90s.

--Rational Mama

This (Damn) Old House

Yesterday, at one point, it was 82 degrees outside with a humidity level of 83%.

My personal opinion is that the numerical value of the humidity level shouldn't exceed the numerical value of the temperature. It was sticky, sticky, sticky. Oh, how air conditioning would have magically sucked that moisture out of the household! But alas, it is not an option this year.

Definitely a good incentive to get that whole house fan installed soon! A major air movement would have helped for sure.

TMOTH spent the better part of the day yesterday up in the attic to start on said whole house fan project. Seems our 100 year old house doesn't exactly have joists at modern/standard intervals.

This is going to get interesting.

Oh! And while we were checking out the dormer windows (they'll need to be replaced with vents) TMOTH pulled out some insulation-type material that was wedged between the window and the beam. It appears to be a section of some type of insulated clothing from ancient (early 1900s) times - like welder's pants. One of the early inhabitants of our house was a blacksmith, so I wonder if one winter he shoved some old work pants in the crevices of the attic to decrease drafts.

We'll keep you posted on the fan installation - it's going to require some outside-the-box thinking.

And sweating.

--Rational Mama

Something in the Air

Oh, boy.

In our attempt to stay true to our rationing experiment, we're trying to go all summer without turning on our air conditioners (both in the house and in our cars). In the 1940s some businesses, but few residences and no cars, had air conditioning. That is our historical precedent. Additionally, the extra electricity required to run the air conditioner isn't exactly kosher if we're trying to save energy for the war effort, sooo...

This could really suck. We live in the central plains and it is not unusual to have a couple of weeks of 100+ degree (Fahrenheit) highs. Otherwise, most of the summer's daytime temps hover around the mid-90's. Oh, and did I mention the 40-60% humidity?

Since our house was built when air conditioning was but a dream (our house turns 100 years old this year!) it is equipped with lots of windows which are great for air circulation - cross currents are not a problem. Add in three ceiling fans and four floor fans and so far we've been fairly comfortable on most days. Part of the reason is because the nighttime/low temperatures have still been very reasonable and once we shut down the windows (around 10:00am) to trap the cool air in and keep the mid-day heat out, the house remains pleasant (if not a little stuffy). The other day I came home from work and while it was 92 degrees outside (heat index of 96) it was only 79 degrees in the house. Victory!

On those days when the inside temperature has crept into the mid-80s we've been taking cool-down baths/showers and drying off in front of the fans to cool our core body temperatures down. Done right before bed, this serves as a good way to get comfortable and fall asleep while waiting for the pleasing evening air to find its way into the house.

But...we're reaching the part of the summer when nighttime temperatures will be in the mid 70's/low 80's. This is not nearly as satisfying (and cooling) as the 60's/low 70's so we're bringing in the artillery...or, at least, this:


This is a whole house fan, commonly (and incorrectly) referred to as an attic fan. It is huge. Whole house fans are typically installed in the attic floor/top level ceiling and work by pulling cooler morning/evening air into the house through the windows and blowing the hotter air out through the attic venting. I had never seen or heard of one of these until I was in college and was amazed at how effective they can be at cooling down a house. We've been pondering installing one of these in our house for years, and with this year's rationing program we are finally getting off of our tookuses and doing it!

"But, wait!" you say. "Isn't the Rational Living household restricted on buying new appliances during the rationing year?" Yes, faithful reader, you are correct. While we were ready to bend that rule to survive the summer we didn't need to thanks to the clever tinkering of a relative, S.P.

S.P. is quite the handy type and a few years ago was helping renovate a house that had fire and smoke damage. He noticed that the attic fan was slated for replacement, even thought it only had some limited smoke damage. After asking permission, S.P. took the attic fan home to his workshop and there it sat - until I mentioned to S.P. this spring that we were gearing up to install a whole house fan (I didn't know he had one in the wings). He dug the reclaimed fan out, hooked it up to electricity and let it run for over an hour - it worked perfectly fine! So, we are able to install a used fan and thus not violate any appliance-buying restrictions. Thanks, S.P.!

In the next couple of weeks we'll finish cleaning the soot and dust off the fan and begin the installation work. TMOTH will be in charge of this project and luckily our extremely knowledgeable neighbor will be helping him with the wiring (we have the best neighbors, evuh).

Wish us luck - I always get a bit nervous when we start knocking down parts of the plaster ceilings and walls in the house.

In the meantime, we'll be brainstorming other ways to stay cool this summer. This weekend the highs are in the mid-90's with 50% humidity, so it's a good test of things to come. I see a lot of sprinklers, swimming pools, popsicles, watermelon and outside grilling in our future.

Hmm...that sounds suspiciously like a good summer.

One last thought: when we did run the air conditioner during the summer we kept the thermostat at 78 or 79 degrees. What is your summertime thermostat set at?

--Rational Mama

Energy Conservation

I was planning to write up a nice long post on ways to conserve energy around the house (after all, the war industry needs those resources!) when Kari at Moo Said the Mama seems to have done it for me. Thanks, Kari! Check out her great post here.

During winter at the Rational Living household we keep the thermostat at 62 degrees Fahrenheit during the day and 60 degrees at night (we'll bump it up when company comes over). TMOTH has occasionally proposed dropping it down further but I protest.

I was amused when I came across a newspaper ad in the Topeka Daily Capital from February 24, 1943 with the following text:

We Must All use Less at Home
SO WAR INDUSTRIES WILL HAVE MORE

Even in normal times winter calls for extra volumes of gas, but now that we are at war the demands for gas has increased beyond anyone's expectations. Gas, as a fuel, is used in the making of practically all of our implements of war. The only way these extra demands can be met is by American people using less gas at home. That is one way we can all help meet our 1943 production schedules.

Here is How YOU Can Help on VERY Cold Days

Keep your home at 65 degrees...Closed all unused rooms and turn off the heat...If you have a fireplace, use it for extra heat...Do less cooking that requires high temperatures for long periods of time...Don't turn on gas until it is needed...Turn off as soon as cooking is finished...Use only necessary hot water and save gas in every way you can.


"See?" I asked TMOTH. "Even during the war they were keeping their winter thermostats at 65 degrees!" He hasn't asked to lower the thermostat since I showed him this ad.

In the meantime, we're already making plans for warmer weather. After discussing for many years the merits of installing a whole-house fan (sometimes called an attic fan), it seems like we're finally going to get off of our duffs and get one this year. Does this bend the no-appliance rule for rationing year? A bit, but it is historically-appropriate and since this appliance uses very few resources to produce (as compared to say, a refrigerator or oven *sigh*) we're going with it. I've always been a bit surprised that our 100 year old house never had a whole house fan installed before now. I mean, have you lived through a plains summer? Ugh!

In the meantime, I'm curious to know what the faithful readers set their thermostats on during the winter and summer months. Of course, some of you are lucky enough to live in temperate areas that require little of either heating or cooling. For the rest of us, it's always a balance of finding the right temperature at the right energy-budget price.

For us, it's 60-62 degrees in the winter, and 78 degrees in the summer.

And you, reader?

--Rational Mama