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Letter: Cool contest

Posted on October 14, 2010 by Staff

When the temperature dropped last week, I wondered how soon it would be before we needed to turn on the heat in our house. We had just had the air conditioning on about a month ago, and it would be nice to ease up on the electric bill. Then I thought: How long can my wife and I and our two young kids go without heat? Probably a lot longer if we made it a challenge and invited some friends to participate. As a reward, I stipulated that whichever households go the longest before the end of fall without heating their houses, in any way, will receive six-packs of locally brewed beer from each household that throws in the towel. After some emails that explained how fun it should be, played down the importance of winning and promoted the values of self-reliance and creativity, I persuaded eight other households to give it a go (and got one “maybe”).

While my reasons for wanting to go without heat mostly have to do with the carbon emissions and environmental devastation caused from coal-fired power plants, I’m excited to see how long we can do without the usual comfort of heat for other reasons. What motivates me is learning about my own limits, hopefully feeling less dependent on the grid, spending more time outdoors, eating a lot of hot food and having friends over more often to help warm up the house. The beer would be nice too.

Daniel Amoni
Carrboro

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