Comments on: Top 5 Tuesday – Head Scratchers Edition

By: Oxy

Oxy — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 03:08:52 +0000

BB is correct on boiling water. Cooler water will heat more efficiently than cold. BTW, adding salt to the water does not help much either. Conversely warm water freezes quicker than cold water.

Jen is partially correct on the MPH vs MPG, a lot depends on the metals in your engine, and how far you have to go. Far too many formulas to make one brief “GREEN” statement.

I had a new roof put on a few months ago. One thing , that I did NOT know, was if you mod the roof, by adding a satellite dish, the 15yr , 30yr or 40yr warranty is NULL and VOID.

By: Kyle

Kyle — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 00:06:07 +0000

bb, interesting, let me know what your outcome is if you try the experiment! Thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment.

By: bargainbtch

bargainbtch — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 23:51:07 +0000

A little late on this, and I don’t have the details but I remember learning in chemistry class some time back that cold water will actually boil at a faster rate than hot water. Something about the heat to the cold molecules makes them loosen faster, there for allowing more heat into the water, than starting with hot water which is already “pretty loose”. I’m curious though and my just have to do an experiment with dinner tonight.

By: Kyle

Kyle — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 00:44:46 +0000

@ DL, so true. Think twice, buy once! Thanks for stopping by.

By: The Digerati Life

The Digerati Life — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 02:43:04 +0000

very clever! I enjoyed your head scratching list. Frugality seems to be all about tradeoffs. It goes to show you need to think ahead and cover all the bases when you’re making a purchase decision.

By: Kyle

Kyle — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 20:05:45 +0000

Excellent tips all. That makes sense with the hot water pipes, especially in older homes. I also like Jennifer’s reasoning on going with a high quality roof that will last.

By: Chief Family Officer

Chief Family Officer — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 05:12:20 +0000

You know, I never use hot tap water for cooking because I heard once that the heat can loosen chemicals in the pipes that then end up in your food via the water. (Similar to what Jennifer said.) But I’m pretty sure it would be more cost-effective to use hot tap water.

By: Mrs. Micah

Mrs. Micah — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 01:29:56 +0000

For the cars, sometimes there isn’t much difference between 55 and 65. I don’t quite feel like running the calculations…but it’s surprisingly close when I drive it.

By: Jennifer

Jennifer — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 23:40:45 +0000

1-always use cold water for human use, especially in an older house. Heavy metals can leach from pipes into the water when its hot, so if you are going to be eating/drinking it, start out with cold.

2-Its more energy efficient to turn the heat down while you are gone *if* you will be gone for at least 4 hours. If not, its better to leave it the same because the energy to heat it back up when you get back will be more than you save.

3-55 is better. Since you are going on *miles per gallon* gas consumption, not gallons per minute, and the number of miles is the same whether you go 55 or 65.

4-If you sell the house in 15 years, you can tell potential buyers that there is still 15 years left on the roof, and that’s a plus. When we sold our house the fact that our new floors had a lifetime warranty was a huge selling point. The person who bought our house used to install flooring and he appreciated quality workmanship. Even if it didn’t affect our selling price (I think it did), it absolutely affected how quickly we sold our home. Plus that, to save money you would roof it yourself, and who wants to be up on a roof in the middle of summer? You are saving yourself weeks of work in the long run by going with the better roof too…

5-I use plastic because I need something to scoop cat litter into, and I’m not about to fork out money for trash bags for kitty litter. Although paper bags come in handy for kids’ art projects, roasting turkeys and other things as well, so I get those too occasionally. I never just flat out throw away either kind of grocery bag though, they are all reused for something.