Hypermiling - Part 1 - uphills and downhills

Hypermiling is a way of getting the most out of your tank of gas.

I don't know all of the rules myself, but I am learning on my own.

Some you probably know about keeping your engine tuned and keeping your tires inflated. But here is something which you may not know.

I learned this on my own from simply riding my bike.

Going uphill:
Uphills are hard. You know you are on one, because you have to work hard to get up the hill. Usually you find yourself slowing down. Sometime you may find yourself getting off the bike and walking it.

Now, imagine driving a car and not only maintaining your speed going up the hill, but actually accelerating up it. You can hear your engine having a tough time going up the hill can't you? Yeah, that is called wasting gas. Try maintaining your speed or even slowing down a bit to try to get to the top of the hill. Don't accelerate if you can help it.

Going downhill:
On a bike, it is wonderful to get to the top of the hill because you can coast downhill. Coasting is the key word here. It means out of gear. If you are going downhill and driving a stickshift, you can find that putting it in neutral, you can accelerate as you down hill. If you have it in gear and let go of the gas, you will not accelerate as rapidly or even at all. Have the car in gear actually slows you down.

Now, this all depends on the car you drive. My wife has a Scion XB with triptronic transmission that makes it easy to shift into neutral going down the hill and then as soon as I level off, I can slap it back into drive and continue on. Your transmission may vary and some cars you should not do this at all. A hybrid that has regenerative braking actually charges the batteies when you step off the gas. So, it is a wash if you do this one way versus another.

Be careful and practice at slow speeds first.

Have a green day!!

Bypass the elevator - 1 up and 2 down

Now this is something I recall back in my Saudi days on a great way to save energy and get a little exercise. I saw this posted in a few buildings next to the elevators while I was there. Save energy, take one up or two down, instead of the elevator.

Now, I could simply say take the stairs, rather than the elevator. But not everyone can do this, or want to do this.

Using the elevator takes a lot of energy. Think about it. An electric motor from an elevator can push a bus. Straight up. or Straight down. That is a lot of power.

It is very simple. Before you take the elevator, think about how far you have to travel. If you only have a few floors to climb, take the stairs. As a general rule, if you are only going up one floor, take the stairs. If you are only going down one or 2 floors, take the stairs. 1 up and 2 down.

I am doing this at work myself, and it is helping me out a lot.

Conserve energy. Take the stairs - 1 up and 2 down.

Tomato planting part 3

OK, So I got 2 new stunned tomato plants from my neighbor. They had a rough time getting started, but are finally starting to come alive. I figure something pretty interesting out.

Now, using the cat litter boxes as an upside down planter has one major problem. Too much shade. For a plant that needs full sun such as tomatoes, getting light to the plant growing upside down, tends to be a bit of a challenge. But I think I figured it out.

I discovered somewhere that it is not necessarily the heat of the sun that the plants need, it is just the light. So I put a mirror on the ground beneath the plant. I put it at a slight angle to get the most light possible. Once I put the mirror down, the bottom one started to come alive.

Now, who really wants to use a good mirror, lie it on the ground and let it deal with rain and mud, etc. So, I used a cheap frameless mirror. Now, I discovered a cheaper way to do this. old CDs act as a mirror as well. I saw something on treehugger.com which show how to make a solar cooker out of a satellite dish and CDs mounted to the dish. I have not tried this yet, but If I put a bunch of CDs on a cheap wooden or metal grate or something, I should be able to accomplish the same thing as a mirror, and be able to utilitize the CDs instead of putting them in a land fill.

The peppers are still growing and the 1 original tomato plant are also doing well. We have had a lot of rain, so things are looking up.

Have a green Day!!