To save money, I buy 3/8 inch rebar in 10 foot lengths. I cut them in half to make 5 foot stakes. In the spring I use them to tie up my old fashioned peonies, then I move them to support tall phlox David, gladioli, and dahlias. They rust and blend in nicely to the garden. (I, like some others here, spare no expense on my hosta) I second a mowing edge for making it easy, and mulch for keeping weeds down and making everything look nice. I buy 3 cu. foot bags pine bark mulch from Lowes when its on sale in the spring. It's a local special, not available at all stores. Whatch your local big box stores for specials. We (I mean my husband) chops leaves, collected the fall before for our raised beds so I don't have to buy as much mulch. I reuse potting soil from the previous summer. I fill all but the top 10 inches of my containers with old potting soil enriched with free compost from the community compost sight. I top it off with fresh potting soil I purchased on a half price sale the year before. Save the bags that mulch and potting soil comes in to reuse for yard work and saving soil over winter. Reusing plastic bags is cheep and environmentally friendly. Plus these bags are really strong. Complement friends and relatives with nice gardens and plants. They may give you cuttings and divisions.

you don't need utility company power to get through the wiring and drywall stage. When they are running wires they need to drill through studs. They can use portable gen sets or battery operted drills for that. I ran all the wire for the second story and basement and never used a plug in electric drill - all done with battery tools. My electrician used a gen set to not only run their drills but also to run their microwave to heat up lunch - how civilized is that! For the drywall - they need to run screw guns to secure the drywall and dremmel tools to make the cuts around boxes and recessed lights. We did have utility power for that stage - but I can't see why they could not run the power gen set to run those - or use battery operated tools. You will need power to run the well pump if you have one. If you need water then you will either need to truck in the water or wait for the power. If the electrical is not in yet, then waiting 4 weeks for the power is probably ok. You still have to run the wires, get the electrical inspection, get the building and close in inspection, install the insulation, hang the drywall, tape and finish the drywall. In our case - this was a lot more than 4 weeks of work.

Happy new year! I would normally have replied much sooner, but everything has been so busy with Christmas, then new year and all the rest. Anyway, I have to agree that conservation is by far the best thing we can do right now, and I believe that it will allways be useful as almost all energy comes with a penalty. Both environmental and financial. I've been thinking about conservation quite a bit recently as I'm trying to get a rough idea how much it would cost to build an affordable house (you might have seen my posts about it?) and I want it to be economical to live in. This is partly an environmental concern, but also because it would be misguided to build an affordable house that isn't also affordable to live in. The majority of most anyone's wages go towards their house, so if I can build a house that uses minimal energy I can spend the money in other more enjoyable ways. I can also design it in such a way it comes in to the lowest possible tax category, but that's beyond the scope of this forum. One of the things that surprises me is when I say I want to build a low energy house that uses renewable energy, people tend to picture something very expensive and custom built. When I researched it I found that commonly they're high end houses built for wealthy customers who were willing to spend a lot of money to have luxury items, like solar PV panels and houses built half underground. I don't however see why houses that use very little energy have to be reserved for wealthy people building custom houses, after all one of the main attractions of a low energy house is the very small monthly bills. A low energy house design/concept that comes within (preferably below) average house prices is long overdue, and also has a massive market potential. Admittedly domestic energy use is a fraction of that used by industrial processes, and also accounts for a similarly small percentage of pollution, but I know nothing about industrial processes and (thankfully) don't pay the bills for them either. At least not directly. I do however know something about houses and how I believe they could work better. My main aim is to build it smaller, but use the space in such a way it's relatively spacious with plenty of storage. I also want to exchange traditional and generally energy wasting and expensive materials for newer materials that cost less. Insulation, and lots of it, is important. I also want high quality finishing materials, but avoiding ornate details and using a more minimalist style should keep the costs reasonable. The other main issue is using the most energy efficient appliances possible, and also installing some renewable stuff like solar hot water heating. At least in concept it seems to work, and hopefully one day I will be able to try it out.

Assuming your existing fridge is in good working order and there are not other good reasons to replace it, for example it's too small, then the only reason to replace it would be to save money. In other words, it would be a financial investment. However, comparing it against other investments makes it look rather minimal. Taking Cynic's example, for the mid-range fridge it takes 5-6 years to pay for itself. However, you don't quite have your money back yet, you're still missing the cost of the fridge - something which you would still have if you had kept the old one. It will take another 5-6 years to have your original investment back again. In 10-12 years you may have saved $1000, but it cost you $500 up front, thus it takes that long to break even. Unfortunately, in the 10-12 years your original investment was tied up in that fridge, it hasn't earned any interest at all, so in fact you have lost money. Worse still, taking in to account the quality of many modern appliances, you may need another new fridge soon too. Depending on events, it's looking like you may never break even on the fridge investment, let alone see significant returns from it. Even a bad savings account would be far ahead at this point, having had around a decade to accumulate interest.