Reducing Water Use

Yesterday I put the idea forth about saving electricity, but I think that we should start talking about saving water since much of the south-east is in a drought.

Again I want to look at the benefits:
• Water to drink and use for industry
• More money in your pocket
• Preserve our natural resources

There are plenty of ways to limit the use of water, just check the Internet, and you will find plenty.

• 100 ways to save water
  
• In the garden
  
• 49 ways to save water
  

I pulled the conservation of electricity and will bring it back at a later date.

Outside the box

Now we need to think outside of the box and here are a few starting points.

Think about the aerodynamics of the autos and trucks we drive. Instead of keeping the car on the road or at least the weight is there another way. Can an aerodynamic engineer or aviation engineer come up with a way to reduce the weight of the vehicle by using the passing air in a similar way that an airplane uses the air for lift?

Okay mechanical engineers, can the present automobile/truck suspension
handle the subtraction of the weight? We do not want to sacrifice safety, but with computers and software engineering or new software, can we use lift to reduce the weight of our vehicles?

This would not only benefit the cars improve their mileage, but also improve the performance of the hybrid vehicles or electric vehicles. Think about how you could change the vehicle we drive if we used lift?

Car enthusiasts, hot-rodders, performance buffs, would making your car anywhere from 100 pounds to a thousand pounds enhance their performance.

Gas use reduction benefits

Gas Usage Reduction: the benefits

I am going to take a break from looking at the ways to reduce the use of gasoline and look at the benefits. The problem with benefits is that some are specific and others depend on your point of view about the world.

More money in your pocket. Now that is a specific benefit that you can see and feel. As the price of gasoline increases the more savings become important. That 1% decrease in your gas use increases the money in your pocket.

Decrease in the output of CO2 levels. If you believe that the increase of carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere contribute to global warming, you can help decrease those levels. Here are a couple of links to other thoughts on the issue.

• Global Warming org
  
• Sierra Club org
  
• World Wildlife org
  
• Energy independence
  

What other benefits can you think of if we simply reduce gasoline usage?

Another way to reduce gas mileage is with engineering.

Most of the roads we drive on were designed in an era of cheap gas, anyone remember paying 29.9 cents a gallon? I do. Of course I had to drive a few miles into another sate, but it was worth it when I was saving 10% on my gasoline purchases.

One of the suggestions that I would like to make is to straighten the roads. There is a stretch or road I drive that is a state highway, soon to be changed over to an interstate. The span that I drive is approximately 139 miles according to MapQuest.

After driving this road for over twenty years, a number of times late at night when there is not much traffic I have used racing techniques. Now I am not condoning unsafe behavior, but I did this to prove the point about re-engineering the roads. Depending on how much traffic there is, both auto and animal, I have decreased the mileage driven by 2 – 10 miles.

I know that decreasing the miles driven by 2 – 10 miles, but if the road was re-engineered and a thousand (very low estimate) cars use this road a day then we have reduced miles driven by 2,000 – 10,000 miles. In a year that is 730,000 – 3,650,000 miles not driven and that is only one aspect of re-engineering.

Here is where I need help from someone who loves math. There is another aspect of engineering that should be looked at and that is elevation of the roads we drive on.

If the above drawing (anyone has a better drawing and would like it posted here, or knows a better way to create drawings let me know) shows changes in elevation on the road driven, what would happen if the road was leveled off? I am not talking about making the road a straight level line, but if you cut a hundred feet off of the top and added a hundred feet in the low areas what would that mean over a 140 mile highway?

Now look that the highest peak, what would you do to improve the road? What would happen, how many miles would be saved by tunneling where appropriate? I am not talking about The Big Dig or maybe I am.

Here are other areas that could be looked at and if you know about any of these

• The pavement material?
  
• What surrounds the road?
  
• etc.
  

or any other factors for re-engineering the roads, let us know.

If we can reduce our gasoline consumption by a messily 1%, we could save approximately 86,000 gallons a day.

• Day – 86,000 gallons
  
• Week – 602,000 gallons
  
• Month – 2,580,000 gallons (30 days)
  
• Year – 31,390,000 gallons (30 days)
  

Now remember we were talking about setting a goal here, your goals may very and may not be duplicated by other drivers. So now that that is done, how do you save 1% on you mileage?

We are the cheapest way is to improve automobile mileage, simply put the way that we drive. Here are some of the ways that you can save gasoline that I have gathered from the internet.

• Aggressive Driving vs. Moderate Driving Avearge savings of 31%
  
• Observe the speed Limit Avearge savings of 7 - 23%
  
• Reduce weight, for every 100 pounds you get an avearge savings of 2%
  
• Use cruise control selectively
  
• Change Your Motor Oil and Air Filter Regularly
  
• Go easy on the brakes and gas pedal
  

Listed above are a few ways to lower your gasoline consumptionor improve your mileage, which I found in less than an hour. What can you come up with?

Tackling the one’s own problems, as with taking on the problems the world face everyday can be an insurmountable task unless you change the way you look at them. That is what we would like to do here on this site, change the way that you look at problems. So since every journey starts with a single step, let’s start walking. Let’s tackle one of those big insurmountable problems, but before we do that lets look at it in a different manner, instead of calling it a problem let’s call it a:

• Challenge
  
• Test
  
• Contest
  
• Competition
  

Reducing gasoline usage use in America or improved gas milage. Whoa, let’s backup there and try something a little smaller. Sorry, but my greatest strength as well as my biggest weakness has always been dreaming big, so to paraphrase Martin Luther King, “I have a dream.”

So let's start dreaming by breaking down the challenge into at more manageable parts making the challenge easier to see and hopefully solve. Here are the three parts I can think of:

• Goal
  
• Benefits
  
• How
  

In the week of October 12th 2007, American’s used approximately 8,864,000 gallons of gasoline as stated by the Energy Information Administration. So start thinking about how to initiate gasoline reduction, gas saving tips, and gas saving devices or products.