Here’s the jist of the thought process, and the personal results, from this “project”. Whiskers can be, let’s say, stubborn. When we use hot water they get less stubborn. The ideal place to shave, then, would be in the shower – right? All the hot water, and steam, this all makes the whiskers much easier to shave. If we make the whiskers easier to shave then the razor won’t get dull so quickly. Hopefully we’re all on the same page so far.

I have been shaving in the shower for the past 16+ years, based off of a suggestion from a co-worker back in 1994. The thing that I’ve noticed since I’ve been doing that is that my disposable razors have been lasting 2-3 months. My wife bought me a pack of 50 disposable razors from Costco almost six years ago, and I just got rid of the last one. That averages to one razor every 6 weeks. Some my wife used and some I could only use once or twice for various reasons, so the numbers might seem off, but don’t freak out over the math . I’ve recently been privy to information from current co-workers that they can’t use disposable razors for more than 3-4 uses. Wow. Now to be fair, I only shave every other day, and have done so for the past 16+ years, because I never seem to get a job that requires I present myself in a clean-cut fashion on a daily basis. That’s an advantage to working in the tech industry.

When I started learning about how to reduce my environmental footprint, and then started using the 5 gallon bucket in the shower (the 5th paragraph down) it made me feel like I was making a difference, albeit in a small way. My shower water collection has progressed, changed, and matured in several ways (which I’ll discuss in a later post) and now I think it’s pretty close to being somewhat mature. I collect the shower water the same as I’ve always done, but now when I shave I use a cup or mug to collect a small portion of hot water, then turn off the shower, then I shave – rinsing the razor in the water in the cup, then turn back on the shower. Because of this, I save even more water, minimize the disposable razors I put in the landfill, and get a better shave than I would if I had used the sink. Oh, and when I do dispose of the razor I remove the head from the handle and recycle the handle. I actually don’t know if I can recycle the head of the razor or not – let me know if you know the answer to that.

So what are you doing to save water? I’d be curious to hear.

So because of this, I’d like to pose a question. Is it possible to motivate people to think even a little more about the benefits and need for thinking more environmentally in the workplace without sounding preachy? There are plenty of things in place where I work to recycle, and using a light switch is pretty easy, so it must just be a matter of caring. I make light comments when I see the opportunity, but it really needs to be more of a thought/life process change, than the random jibing by a co-worker to encourage green thinking.

Post comments if you have suggestions on effective ways to “educate”.

I’m going to continue to experiment and will report any noteworthy findings, but as of this post my official series is now concluded. My suggestions? Watch the throttle and check your tire pressure – nothing groundbreaking there, but obviously very important.

*Update: it occurred to me that I haven’t added any context to my hypermiling testing. I typically commute about 48.4 miles per day round trip. Of the 48.4 miles I was hypermiling (read that as “clutch disengaged”) about 4-6 miles per day. Not a lot, but if you average that to 5 miles per day, that comes up as about 10% per day. That should translate to an additional 4+mpg, but it didn’t.

I have a used computer fan that I’m using as my base generator. It’s got minimal output potential – 12v and about 0.12A, or about 1.5 watts. It’s a good test bed though as it doesn’t take a whole lot to turn it, so I can focus a little more on design first rather than just coming up with something that will actually turn the motor. It may seem a little backwards, admittedly, but in my attempts in the past I was unable to successfully build an efficent VAWT that would turn itself very well, let alone a motor at the speed needed.

I initially created a VAWT using a tp roll, but it was way too small. I then turned to an empty oatmeal container. This is showing to have a lot more promise due to sheer size, but it is way bigger than the motor so it’s not as efficient as I would hope. Below is a picture. I put it all together using paperclips, an old cd, cardboard under th
e cd to raise it up a bit, and double sided tape to secure the base to the motor. I’m still going to do more experiments with it and try some other configurations, but for
now this is where I’m at.

• Tank 1 = 45.6 mpg
• Tank 2 = 45.3 mpg
• Tank 3 = 43.2 mpg

On tank #3 there were two factors that worked against me. One was that I didn’t keep as well to the speed rule as I was supposed to, and the second is that about 40 miles were with my wife on the back.

Now for the next three tanks of gas I’m going to add hypermiling to the test and see what happens. My initial hypermiling tests showed I got about 46 mpg, but I don’t think I had integrated the shifting part yet. We’ll see what happens.

On a side note, I’m looking into two new projects (but don’t tell my wife ):

• One is to try to fix a heat issue. Our garage easily gets to 90 degrees now that we’re in the midst of summer in the San Fernando Valley. Unfortunately that’s where the treadmill is so it’s really been preventing me from using it. I’ve been looking at a lot of personal cooling device ideas – most of which consists of a fan attached to a cooler filled with ice and water that gets pumped through copper tubing attached to the fan. I have some ideas on that design.
• The second is designing a 50w micro-vawt. It’s small enough to be portable, cheap enough to have several of them spread around, and not some big monolithic eyesore. Well, at least some people might think a big vawt is an eyesore The one concern I have about this project is my previous attempt and failure. I’m going to do some better testing before I start building this time though.

The problem with what I’ve been doing is that I’m not certain which one has added the most benefit. I’ve attempted hypermiling before but haven’t had much success on the Harley, so I suspect the added 6mpg has been due to the speed limiting primarily. To gather more useful data, I’m going to forgo the hypermiling on the next few tanks of gas and see what the results are. Any deviation from my current improved mpg will at least indicate that hypermiling does have some benefit.

Two side notes that I feel need to be added to this post. First – I am far from impressed with the coasting abilities of the bike. On the freeway when I take my exit to go home, going downhill, I go from 60mph to 45mph in about 300 feet. This may be improved by putting the transmission into neutral in addition to pulling in the clutch, but I shouldn’t have to do that.

Second – dropping my speed down 10 miles an hour (going from 80 down to 70) has done two things. 1) has afforded me a MUCH more relaxing ride – I really appreciate the time I spend on the bike now instead of focusing on just getting where I’m going as fast as possible. And 2) has shown me just how f**king crazy the drivers are on the road in L.A.. For some reason, when I was going 80 then most of the other drivers seemed somewhat sane. Now they all seem to ride each others asses, drive like they are vying for pole position at Indy, or are just plain rude.

Be back to report in a couple more weeks on this topic.

It’s been a little over a year and a half now that I’ve been riding a motorcycle as my daily commuter. My commute is just under 45 miles round trip in mostly heavy traffic, so it makes sense to “ride” rather than “drive” for me. Not only is it better in the fuel economy department but it’s also great for cutting down my time in transit (in California it’s ok to “cut lanes”).

The first bike I ever bought was a 2008 Harley Dyna Super Glide. I had never in my life driven a motorcycle when I bought it – I didn’t even have an endorsement. I know, crazy – but that’s how I roll sometimes. There is more to the story, but it doesn’t need to be told here. After finally learning how to ride it, and having taken the certification class, I had my endorsement and could hit the highway. Unfortunately about eight months later I got in an accident and totaled the bike. I then replaced it with a 2009 Dyna Street Bob (I *love* this bike!). Both bikes are rated for about 48mpg on the highway – we’ll get to my reality on that later.

I started out doing a little hypermiling but never really was consistent with it. I was always doing freeway driving and was also more focused on not turning my face into road pizza to be concerned with hypermiling. I’ve since become a much more confident rider and I’m now at a point where I’m going to try to improve my average mpg. It’s not that I’m getting bad gas mileage – I’m averaging about 40mpg now – but I know I can do a lot better. The reason I know this is because of one thing: when I first started riding on the freeway consistently I was getting 46-48mpg. Now I’m getting consistently 40mpg. The reason for this is because of my driving style – since I’m a lot more confident I’m driving much faster which is decreasing my efficiency.

I’m now at a point where I’m ready to slow down and “cruise” more. This alone will help my overall economy, but to further enhance it I’m going to start re-implementing my hypermiling experimentation. The little testing I’ve done so far hasn’t shown any change at all, but I haven’t given it a fully concerted effort to make an educated evaluation. I’m going to truly focus more on seeing what I can do with this and if it can ultimately add any overall improvements in efficiency.

I have had a lot of success in my (former) Dodge Charger. If you’d like to read up on my findings and tactics in the four wheeled arena then please check my other posts on the subject.