Ideas for Intown homes to cut their power bills and maybe even get a check from Alabama Power.

Most of the homes in Birmingham's Intown neighborhoods were built before there was regular access to air conditioning. Many of the architectural features that I love had a dual use of helping to regulate the temperature in the house. That said, some significant retrofitting is often necessary to lower energy usage, save money and be more green. My house, built around 1933, has about 35 large windows. Thirty-five! I've recently come across some low cost ideas for dealing with this and maybe even getting a check back from Alabama Power (if you can afford the entry fee).

Relatively cheap and old school ideas...
The Attic: Attic fans and insulation
Windows: Removable window film.
Heating and AC: Electronic thermostat.
Electronics/Appliances: Unplugging computers, microwaves, DVDs, etc when not in use.
Lighting: Switching over to compact florescent bulbs (CFCs) that are now becoming popular.

Slightly more costly new school (and more fun )ideas...

Home energy power cost monitor-let's you know the wattage that your powered items are using in real time and can even alarm you when you go over certain limits.

And one for you ballers out there...

Net Metering-A Norwood neighbor recently received a letter from Alabama Power telling him that they were able to now offer net metering, which could actually allow you to get a check back from our local energy company. You first have to install solar panels that would turn your property into a mini power station. This is not a cheap proposition as costs for a residential set up can run upwards of $20,000 right now. I can't find information on net metering on the Alabama Power website, but my neighbor does have a letter from them talking about the program. I'll look more into this in upcoming posts.

Would the old Torme's location work for ALDI?

When Torme's closed over a year ago the Birmingham News article made it sound like there were some talks in place for a new store to replace it. If so then they are either moving VERY slow or they have since fallen apart. I only made it to Torme's once while they were there, but Aldi's would see me every week.

It would take some work and vision to get ALDI here: more parking probably, maybe a raised roof and this area of downtown isn't the most traveled (all the locations of ALDI I've seen so far are on major multi-lane, two way thoroughfares). Second Avenue is multi-lane but it is one way. Some momentum has been lost from other projects too: According to BhamTerminal.com the brewpub planned for around the corner in the old Jimmie Hale Mission is now off the table.

A Herculean Task

One of the pleasures of living in a 100 year old neighborhood is that there is plenty of greenery that is well established. It is also one of the great banes of living in a 100 year old community; some of my chlorophyll powered neighbors don't know when their welcome is well worn out and need to just die. In fact I'm sure that they ask themselves 'why is this newcomer cutting on me?' in their own ever silent way.

Hercules in one of his 12 labors is supposed to have fought a many headed hydra who grew back two heads in the place of each one that the mythical hero cut off. I can't speak for the ancient world but the modern day analog of that is surely the fern type of tree that is seen randomly around Intown homes and businesses and is the bane of my summer each year. Each year I cut it back to a stub and each year it comes back with more (though at least their smaller in diameter than the first) branches to block the northeast view off of my porch. Like the story of Hercules, short of digging out this stump, I will have to cauterize the cut branches in order to stop it's growth. Anybody out there have some luck stopping the growth of these things?

6th Avenue Baptist shows up for Yes We Can, Birmingham.

The Titusville neighborhood is one of the under recognized gems of Birmingham. Historically it is an important area in producing many of the city's professionals, business people and leaders. Earlier this week the ever-active Helen Rivas sent me an email listing the YECB meetings this week; two were in the Eastlake area and one was at 6th Avenue Baptist Church in Titusville. Even though I live in Norwood, my first instinct was to go to the 6th Avenue meeting instead of the Eastlake ones. "I know 6th Avenue" I rationalized, the good, well dressed, professional members-of-Birmingham's-Black-backbone would certainly provide a productive meeting. We'll 6th Avenue didn't disappoint. While far from full, this meeting was well attended and had a lot of good ideas. Plus some REALLY good sweet iced tea and rolled sandwiches!

Many ideas were shared by attendees, some unique to this meeting: national certification for teachers, arts emphasis in the curriculum, training in the trades. On things that separated our area very similar concerns from the Opporto-Madrid meeting were voiced: routine and apathy keep people in their respective comfortable life spheres and the age-old Intown vs. the OTM divide. The Birmingham Schools Educational Foundation which is being formed out of this activity has

no official connection with the education foundations that have been in existence for years in Mountain Brook, Hoover and other cities.

That won't be changing anytime soon but the facilitators expressed optimism about how the bottom up approach of Yes We Can will lead to a better more productive Birmingham City Schools.

I will be reporting on more of these meetings in upcoming weeks. You can find out more by visiting the Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham website. Even if you weren't at the meeting you can also leave your thoughts here to share your concerns and hopes for out local schools.

Bring on the Germans. Now!

The ALDI stores popping up around town are impressive. No wonder the Euro is kicking our greenback's butt if this is an indication of how much better they can run a "low end" grocery store compared to American companies. We Intowners need to quickly implant into the right people's heads that downtown Birmingham would be an ideal spot for one of their stores.

Why such a glowing words, you ask? If my reading of the people I'm often around is correct I'm out of step with many of you reading this in my grocery shopping. Ninety to 95% of the time I shop at Wally World or Piggly Wiggly not the food coutour haven these days, Publix. It saves me a lot of money and is overall not a bad shopping experience except that that I know I'm feeding the BeAsT itself, supporting its regressive employment practices and the questionable product sourcing practices. For now, however, I can't ignore those low, low prices and continue to put money into the coffers of the world's largest corporation. Shopping at Piggly Wiggly is a way to assuage my guilt and keep a few dollars local, but the difference in prices is great and thus far I haven't been able to verify that they pay their employees any better than Wal-Mart (WallyW). Enter the Germans with a solution to my conundrum: ALDI.


ALDI's got a nice selection of different brands than I can find anywhere else and they have them at really good prices. Yesterday I bought a bottle Shiraz wine for $3.50 and there were these frozen chicken asiago hot pockets that have a complexity of taste that remind me of a good restaurant that were about $2.00 a box! Add to that that they start new employees at $10 to $13 an hour! (You can work at WallyW for years in store management and not hit $10/hour, I'm told by a former manager.) Add to that they have a very active (almost to a fault) program for encouraging recycling, one of my hot buttons. Add to that ALDI stores all have a small size that can fit into a lot of different areas. Which is why they need to be downtown. In upcoming weeks I'm going to look into how we can let the good folk at ALDI know that downtown Birmingham would be a great place to reach Intowners. What do you guys think?

YES.WE.CAN!

Up until this Tuesday I have not been able to make to any of the Yes We Can! townhall style meetings going on around the city. Luckily the programs organizers are persistant in keeping these meetings going and I made it to one at the library on Oporto Madrid (beautiful building). I'm glad I did.

There was only a small group there, no suprise. Unfortunately only the most intersted in Birmingham's future are going to take time to go to these things. Pretty much everyone there currently served in some type of leadership role in their current life.

Interesting new ideas were shared. Two of the most interesting to me were creating schools with dormitories creating a residential system for public school students. WOW. Hadn't thought of that one in the past, but I believe it's worth a good review of costs and benefits. Another was a deeo more affordable entertainment options for families. There's opportunity for neighborhoods to be more aggressive in doing things like "movie nights" which could help with this.

Many things were shared in the hour and a half long meeting. I'm going to the one on today (7-17-08) at Sixth Avenue Baptist Church on Martin Luther King Blvd. Meet me there.