Sun Sun Sun

When I use my solar cooker it needs to (mostly) be pointed south in order to cook effectively. So it occurred to me that I could use this same principle to turn my house into a solar cooker, too.

In the wintertime I have a tendency to want to hunker down and keep everything closed up. I guess it’s that ol’ hibernating instinct kicking in. But I thought that maybe if I went against my instincts, so to speak, I might be able to save myself a little money.

My latest utility bill was over $300.00. This total includes natural gas (which fuels our central heating system) and electricity. That’s a lot of money I’d rather be spending on See’s Candies and Kindle downloads, so it would be just swell if I could somehow decrease that a little bit.

It turns out that our house was built facing almost due North. So (naturally) the back faces South, and that also happens to be where the majority of our windows are. And they are huge windows, too.

The last few days I’ve been opening the blinds and letting them stay open for the entire day. Luckily, though it has been very cold lately, it has also been very sunny.

The question is: has this practice actually been working to reduce my utility costs? Well, I don’t know for sure, because I need to see a utility bill to know for certain, but I have been able to walk around the house comfortably piled under less clothes. Not to mention, the sunshine is very cheery.

Now, if the interior of my house was painted entirely black, than I’m sure that my home would be a very effective (ginormous) “solar cooker”. But in the long run, that wouldn’t be such a good idea, even if it saved me a lot of money on utilities in the wintertime. After all, summer is just around the corner. But we will worry about summer stuff when the time comes.