Cleaning Up

This is not an advertisement. My wife and I have finally had it with our current water situation. We live in a small town that has its own water treatment so we have "city" water but it is sooooo bad.

Whenever the kids take a bath the water has a blue-ish tint to it and it smells like a swimming pool. We probably spend more each year on Brita water filters than we would ever spend on the money that it would cost to buy salt or potassium pellets for a water softener.

So we are finally taking the plunge. Today we will be heading off to the hardware store to buy a new water softener. We have lived in this house for 6 years now and the original water softener that was here when we moved in has never worked so we've never had good water.

A few years ago we were having issues with our water heater. The heating element kept blowing on it and so my dad and I decided to open it up and take a look. After a few hours we had removed about 10 gallons of calcium and lime sediment. No wonder we didn't seem to be able to take very long showers before it got cold. I am thinking that we might be due for the new water heater next year but we'll just have to see.

I will be installing this puppy myself so I appreciate all the thoughts and prayers that I can get.

Update- Saturday night: We didn't get this today. We didn't plan our time well enough and the store closed before we got there. Hopefully they still have some left when we try again tomorrow and the sale is still on.

Solar Mortgages?

That's right- a Solar Mortgage.

I know that you might be asking what that is...I know I was. I was reading about issues pertaining to mortgages at a UK Mortgages website. The particular article that caught my eye was this one.

The article talked about how there is now a special type of mortgage offered for buyers who will use the interest savings to invest into putting a solar power energy system into their house. At first I was taken back by that. I had a hard time wrapping my mind around the idea that a lender would actually discount an interest rate but I suppose that there just might be some good guys out there somewhere.

Can you imagine the overall savings to the pocketbook, as well as to the environment, to be able to fully power your house on solar energy and receive an interest rate discount? In my world that would be having my cake and eating it too. If the house was able to take the solar energy and convert it to electricity then that would pretty well eliminate the need for natural gas heat and cooking. And since you wouldn't be dependent on another source for power can you imaging what it would be like to not be threatened by the same power outages that others might be weary of?

Personally, I think that this is a great idea that I would love to see catch on here in the US but we'll just have to see if it ever does. What a way to radically help improve the environment!