I have written a couple of times about the "Energy Room" my wife and I are building on the front of our house. I have received a couple of comments asking for details of this room and will be glad to oblige as the building progresses. At this time we are looking at a big hole in the ground. This is step one. I will repeat that it is our goal to cut our oil use in our house "at least" in half.

I plan to keep accurate records of the cost of construction but I must admit right up front that I also plan to cheat. I don't intend to include cost of gas used to go to the lumber yard and back. I won't include the cost of diesel to run my tractor. I am planning post and beam construction of our room and I have the capability of sawing my own beams from my own trees. I have so far scrounged 6 large insulated glass panels for the cost of free. These will make most of the glass on the front of my building and will save substantial cost. My wife and I will provide all labor for the construction including pouring of concrete, wiring, and plumbing.

My cellar hole that we look at outside our front door took four days to dig with my small Kubota tractor. In the past I have rented an excavator to dig a cellar hole but this hole is much smaller and I am trying to save on the cost. Today I spent the first actual money on the building by buying some 2x10's for the footing forms and a load of 3/4 stone for drainage which I picked up and trucked myself with a small dump trailer which is borrowed. I used my 13MPG Dodge truck to haul it all. This is a great truck but at 13MPG I only drive it when I have an actual reason. I'll post some photos when I figure out how and will write updates as needed.

I read todays post by Peter Cutler and agree completely but we simply MUST do more to cut our use of oil as even if drilling started tomorrow - which it won't - then conservation is the first and perhaps equally important step. If everyone could save half of their heating oil then we would be a long ways toward not needing the imports.

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