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New Power, Old Lines, New Problems
When gas spiked above $4 per gallon in Portland last summer, the city’s already bustling bicycle boulevards clogged with new riders, creating unprecedented bicycle traffic issues. As reported in the Oregonian, it appears the same basic problem has hit the power grid, with Eastern Oregon’s new wind turbines butting up against an antiquated power grid. [...]
Food Fight
The Oregonian’s Nikole Hannah-Jones recently published an article outlining Multnomah County’s new 15-year food initiative. The county seeks to design a program that will enable the region to locally grow a significant amount of the food that county residents eat. Organizers hope to make this food more affordable and accessible, helping residents move away from [...]
Orenco Drives
In today’s Oregonian, Dylan Rivera reports that professor Bruce Podobnik just completed a study gauging social interaction among residents of urban and suburban areas. In his paper, Podobnik reports that a majority (two of three) of residents at Orenco Station, the award-winning neighborhood touted as an ideal of mass-transit oriented New Urbanism, drive personal automobiles [...]
Use Less, Savor More
This was a big week for the Towsey-French household as we not only completed the second phase of our heating system upgrade (the first phase occurring in 2007), but we also added a major insulating blanket directly above the majority of our primary living space. We hired a highly recommended firm, Air Tight Insulation, who [...]
Bear Bricks Back in Action
We’ve been burning bear bricks on and off for about two weeks now (mostly in the late evenings), so we were able to warm up most of the house to about 72 degrees today without ever tapping into our B100 biodiesel. This is fortunate because today is the day that we replace our furnace heater [...]
Lower heating costs and smaller footprint for 09-10
The US Government Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration projects average household expenditures for space-heating fuels to be $960 this winter (October 1 to March 31), a decrease of $84, or eight percent, from last winter. This forecast principally reflects lower fuel prices combine with slightly milder weather (expected) than last winter. The largest expenditure [...]
Bear Bricks on Sale
Thanks to a super handy tip from one of our readers (thank you, Chris!), I just found out that Coastal Farm Supply is running a coupon price on a pallet of Bear Bricks for only $200 –that’s a $50 savings over the Mt. Scott Fuel price. But there’s a catch: the sale is only good [...]
Reminder: Low-Car Diet Clinic this Saturday
REMINDER: Low-Car Diet Clinic this Saturday, May 2, 2009; Sunnyside School park, SE 34th Ave. and SE Taylor St., Portland; 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. –Joe Bike will have plenty of cool cargo bikes (and cargo!) on-hand to test, not to mention free Voodoo donuts and coffee. See you there!
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