As the Mist Lifts
It’s June on the hilltop and that generally means that every morning starts out looking misty or fog-bound. June gloom and all that. Some mornings it takes a few hours for the mist to lift and some mornings, like today, the mist sort of gradually rolls out towards the Ocean and the hilltop gets clear and sunny before 9am. All that mist accumulates in the night because the evenings and sunsets are clear as a bell. Red sky at night, sailors’ delight. The rest of this week is supposed to be in the mid-to-high 80’s. It’s a strange week for us since Kim is off every evening for rehearsal for her concerts on Friday and Saturday. That means she leaves home by 4:30pm and returns after 10pm. It’s a great time to catch up on all the movies I like to watch and Kim is less inclined toward, but it also means I am cobbling together my own dinner each night. I am usually a Grubhub ordering guy, but that seems excessive and unnecessary every night, so instead, I am trying to make things work myself. Tonight I even did my own dishes and figure that qualifies me for some sort of Medal of Honor. I have one more dinner to manage since Friday and Saturday I will be hosting pre-concert dinners, first for family and close friends on Friday and then our neighbors on Saturday.
As I look out at the morning mist again today, I think of all the good things that come with the mist. The obvious one is the moisture. This is arid country even though it is San Diego County. San Diego is neither tropical nor desert, but rather something they call sub-tropical, which means it is thankfully not tropical entirely and yet has some of those features of warmth and humidity. The look and feel of the high chaparral in the northern part of San Diego County finds that blend of tropical and arid that makes this an especially appealing climate to me. This was one of only two counties in California last year to not go technically into a drought mode. I hear constantly that we are close to drought mode and the need for water restrictions, but it has managed to stay at bay (no pun intended on account of San Diego Bay).
Over the past two years, I have spent the time, with some degree of effort, to get a close handle on my three utilities and my usage of them. The first and most critical was electricity consumption. I spent the time and money to install solar photovoltaic cells on the roof, which are truly ubiquitous out here. If you can’t afford it as a cash outlay, there are multiple ways to finance the purchase attractively so that you get the long term benefit and still pay less of an electric bill. I bought my system outright, so I am now at a point where I generate enough electricity during most of the year to cover my usage costs. That is saying something since I have a Tesla and that is by far my biggest user of electricity, competing for that honor only with my air conditioning. I also installed two Tesla wall batteries that allow me both emergency back-up and load shifting to optimize use during the off-peak periods. Here it is, June, and I have barely used the A/C so far this year. Just this week, my HVAC provider, who call themselves “The White Glove Guys” were here per my annual maintenance contract to check out my two systems. I have one system for the southern half of the house and one for the northern half. I completely replaced the southern units when I moved here full-time three years ago and the northern unit was replaced when I bought the house ten years ago. The technician tells me they are both working perfectly and he put in new filters per the annual contract.
As for the Tesla recharging, I only put on about 4,000 miles per year in local driving, so that recharging use, done in the dark of night when the off-peak rates are best, does not overwhelm my bill too much. I just got my monthly bill the other day (actually, it was a mid-month usage notice) and I noted that I am still in a net electricity provider status, which is to say that I generate more electricity each month than I consume. My credit is still in the growing mode so far this year to the tune of some -$100. That will go away once the weather gets warmer and the A/C starts getting used more, but not for a while yet. We leave for Ithaca in a week or so and our dog sitter Natasha is very cold-blooded in that she prefers less rather than more A/C, so I’m guessing that when I return in late July I will likely still be in a net credit mode with SDG&E.
The second most important utility to me is my propane system. Most people around here are not on a natural gas pipeline system, but rather have 500 gallon propane tanks sitting somewhere on their property. Those tanks get refilled by a local propane delivery service. My tank is out by the road, but is well-shielded by large Agave Attenuata plants, so it is largely invisible. I use propane for heating, cooking and hot water. Those needs are minor. The big user remains the spa heating that I do, but I have learned that it is best to only turn that heater on when I want to use the hot tub. It will heat to the desired temperature (I rarely go above 95 degrees in winter and 90 degrees in summer) in about an hour, so it is not too inconvenient. I also now go in during the afternoon, when the heat of the day gives the warming a good head start. The propane service has now installed telemetry to allow be to track propane usage and fill level remotely on a smartphone app, so I feel very much in control of it. If I had put in a hybrid system (foiled by the lack of 50Watt service to the spa pump…I only have 40Watts and would need to retrofit it at cost of running a bigger cable), I might also be in a net generation mode, but I feel my propane bills are in control.
The last frontier on the utilities has been the water usage. I now have an actively managed (via another smartphone app) irrigation system with 25 watering zones. It is still a slightly limiting system in that I only am allowed three watering duration and frequency protocols and I could use a few more based on the tree/landscape diversity of the property. But the point is that it only waters when the local precipitation does not do the job for me. As the single largest use point for water on my property, an efficient irrigation system is a must. I will also note that the local water authority has just finished a three-year upgrade program to install…yes, you guessed it…a smartphone app that allows me to track water usage and place certain warning notices such that if I print a leak or my usage varies greatly from the norm, I am notified and can check the diagnostic recommendations for the system.
So, to recap, my Tesla energy app (used to track both my car and my home solar and battery usage) tells me my electricity consumption and efficiency (including how much electricity I sell back into the grid at pennies on the KWh). My new Propane smartphone app tells me where I stand on propane use and efficiency. There is little to do to modify usage via the app, but it does help to be able to monitor it. And now I have two water use smartphone apps. One allows me to manage my water use for irrigation all across my property. The other monitors overall water utilization so that I can stay on top of leaks, if any, and track my use for billing purposes. I spent years trying to get out ahead of the smart-home technology for my secondary homes so I could manage them from afar. I finally gave up since I felt like I was chasing my tail to little effect. Now, I am glad to say, that my smart-home smartphone apps are the busiest part of my smartphone with the possible exception of email. I literally track all my household systems and can honestly say that the real mist of home property management has finally lifted.