We’re having a wet spring.  This is really not too unusual for us because every spring is a wet spring, although it is somewhat unusual that the sun hasn’t been out at least a little.  This is, after all, the “dry season” for us.

We are also enjoying (if that’s the word) an earlier spring than last year.  The snow is melting, the creeks are flowing, and the blueberry bushes are emerging from their winter slumber.  When it hasn’t been raining, and even when it is, we’ve been out in the yard with the big clippers, electric chain saw, rake, and shovel, clearing dead trees and clipping low branches, raking sticks and twigs out of the moss, clearing out creek drainages, and generally having fun on our one acre park and preserve.

We often feel like our yard is a park.  It has many of the things that parks offer: forests and meadows, creeks and ponds, plants and animals, paths and trails, birds and mosquitoes.  We’re even going to have a playground!

The rockwork I [Michael] put in last year survived the winter without incident, which doesn’t really surprise me but does give me a little more confidence in planning the stone arch bridges I want to put in.  We’re also going to expand the trail system by running a strip of rock and gravel along the east side of West creek (for the sake of simplicity we refer to our two creeks as East creek and West creek).  Both of our creeks have some marshy stretches but West creek is the worst, and the most logical place (we’ve concluded) for a trail is right along the marsh, hence the plans for more rockwork.

Apart from expansion of the West creek trail, we’re really reticent about putting in too many improved trails on the property.  In some cases, like the marshes along the creeks and on a couple of steeper climbs, an improved trail makes sense to ease our passage and avoid damage to the terrain.  Everywhere else, it makes little sense to put in trails because the forest floor is mostly open, the moss is fairly tolerant with light foot traffic, and an unaltered landscape looks really nice.  Even now, we can wander pretty much at will almost everywhere in the yard.

The kids are fairly good about staying close by us when we’re out, so much so that we’re planning to take down the chain link fence that separates the back lawn (if a mostly level patch of moss can be called a lawn) from the rest of the yard.  The benefit is that the kids will have a larger area to wander in (the rule is “stay where I can see you”), but there’s a drawback too: the bears will have easier access to the back deck.

Becky and Michael are both doing really well.  They’re both talking more and more, and more fluently.  They talk to each other.  They talk to us.  Last night Michael had a nice talk with his mom on the phone.  I believe they are approaching parity in their verbal abilities, which I’ve been anticipating for several months, but Michael is only starting to sort out colors, shapes, letters, and numbers, and Becky has already learned a lot of this.

When Becky turns six she’ll get re-evaluated for autism.  I’m under the impression that she will lose the autism classification then, which will make a difference on what degree of assistance she’ll get from outside services.  She qualified for the preschool program because of her autistic side, and we also get weekly visits from a speech pathologist, but preschool is winding down for her and she probably won’t need the speech therapy in another year, so if she doesn’t qualify in the future I think she’ll still do just fine.

We’re still contemplating plans for the summer.  Seattle is out.  Chances are we won’t drive south at all, contenting ourselves with the drive up to Fairbanks, Wasilla, and other points north.  We haven’t ruled having one or two of us fly to Illinois though, but the airlines aren’t advertising any specials that fly on the dates we’re looking at so it’s too early to tell what may happen.

And today is the third Wednesday of the month.  Time for my monthly newspaper column.

I don’t chastise my children for leaving lights on in our house. They’re much too young to understand about energy use and conservation, and probably won’t come to appreciate these points for several years. But there’s another reason why I allow the lights to stay on. They heat the house.

Much of what passes for energy conservation is wrong-headed in a place like Juneau. The reason is simple: a watt is a watt, no matter how it’s used.

Electricity produces heat. To be precise, one watt of electricity produces approximately 3.414 Btu’s of heat per hour. This is apparently true regardless of how that watt is used. A thousand-watt electric resistance heater produces 3414 Btu’s of heat. A thirteen-watt compact florescent bulb produces just over 44 Btu’s. An 800-watt refrigerator throws off 2731 Btu’s.

Honest, well-intentioned people tell us to turn off lights and unused appliances to conserve electricity. What these people fail to tell us is that, in a climate where buildings require heat all through the year, there is no such thing as an unused watt. Every watt consumed indoors adds heat.

For every light or appliance that is not in use within a heated building, the heating system has to make up the difference. There is no net energy savings, merely a redistribution of how that heat is produced.

Our current home was built just before the oil embargo in the early seventies, an era when nobody gave much thought toward energy usage. There was no insulation under the floors when we moved in, no wrapping on the pipes for the baseboard heaters, and only two inches of fiberglass in the walls. Our home was, and is, an energy hog.

But our home is not quite the hog it used to be. When our oil-fired boiler quit working last spring we removed the entire heating system, pipes and all, and put in electric heat. We sealed all the holes in the floor –dozens of them – and installed insulation under the floors. We also installed a woodstove insert after realizing that the open fireplace drew more hot air out of the house than it radiated back in.

By comparing our power bills now versus a year ago, I’ve determined that we’ve cut our home energy requirements by about twenty-five percent. This doesn’t include the woodstove insert, the additional use of which cuts our winter electric usage substantially.

In truth, the time and effort involved in cutting, storing, and otherwise handling wood doesn’t save as much money as I could earn in most paying jobs, not yet anyway. Having said that, we have a lot of trees on our property, we have to do something with the wood that does come down, and I like the exercise. There’s also nothing quite like a warm fire to cozy up to when I’m chilled.

Between the insulation upgrades and the woodstove insert, our electric bill this winter was half of what we paid for oil and electricity the year before. We stayed just as warm too, even warmer when the insert was in use.

We’re planning several more upgrades. We’ll insulate the exterior walls. The cathedral ceiling above our living room will get extra insulation. Several of our windows will get swapped out with newer, more efficient models. We are also contemplating a geothermal heating system. All of these jobs will be huge, and expensive.

These upgrades will all reduce our energy requirements. The savings in our power bill will add up over time, and the improvements will add to the value of our house. Consider the alternative: if we don’t pay to reduce our energy requirements, we’ll continue to pay for the extra energy our home requires.

The cost of oil heat now exceeds the cost of heating with electricity, even after accounting for the surcharges imposed by AEL&P this winter. Since the price of oil is unlikely to go down, the home heating equation is likely to continue favoring electricity as long as Juneau continues getting the majority of its power through hydroelectric generation.

These little lights of mine, I’m gonna let ‘em shine. My kids like it that way. So do I. It keeps things bright and cheery, at no additional cost.