Last installment I busted all over the idea of conventional, “R” Value insulation that blocks the conduction and convention of heat.  Reader Fred commented on that post and left a link to this site:

http://www.sibonga.com/philippines_insulating_concrete_forms_icf.htm

Feel free to pay a visit and shop around there, I have no relationship with that site/company, but I’ve visited them many times during my time here in the Philippines.  They have a wealth of useful information.

But to stay on subject, let’s get back to the real matter at hand.  The sun beating down 12 hours a day on the metal roof over our heads here.

The page Fred pointed out is selling a patented system of "what we call “buhos” construction here in the Philippines. Buhos is a Tagalog word that means literally, “To pour something”.  In construction terms it typically means a high quality method of construction where forms are constructed and concrete mix is poured into the forms .. a poured concrete house in other words.

More typical construction, especially for single-family structures is to pour a reinforced footing and then build a “hollow block” wall atop the footing.  Normally these hollow blocks are a concrete mixture … here in the land near Mt Pinatubo the bocks are very often similar to what old guys like me used to call “cinder blocks” in the USA.  Back then they were made from cinders and fly ash from steam locomotives, here in the Philippines they use lahar, or “volcanic ash” for the sand and aggregate components of the concrete.

There is another solution very popular here around metro Manila, a company called Vas Built www.vazbuilt.com who uses factory made reinforced concrete panels and interlocking columns to build wall very quickly and strongly, kind of like stacking up steel reinforced Lego Blocks.

(Note:  Their site linked above is working, but sometimes loads slow, please be patient and don’t don’t write me back about that, it’s their issue, not mine, this is the only link I have).

There is no doubt that buhos is in almost every way a superior construction.  In larger commercial buildings it is buy far the most common as well.  Properly built and reinforced hollow block can essentially be equal to properly built buhos construction, but that is not the purpose of the discussion we are having.  We want to know about staying cool, we’ll assume that any of the popular methods, done right, will be strong enough.

The insulated construction forms technique Fred mentioned makes this, to me a bit astounding claim: Insulated; Air-conditioning is seldom necessary.

Let me make an editorial comment about what is ‘essential’ in the Philippines and where people’s idea of ‘essentiality” may differ slightly among people of different backgrounds.

A relation lives in a house that has a central air system … very unusual here in the Philippines.  The central air failed to cool one hot day, so he shut it off and left it off for TWO YEARs.  Then, and only then, he took the bull by the horns and called in a service tech to find out what it would cost to get the system repaired.  400 Pesos (about $8 or $9 USD) later the aircon was humming away again and cooling fine.

Obviously, air-conditioning was hardly essential to my relative.  World you go without for two years, without even knowing the cost to get it fixed?  No, don’t think many of you would, but I have the idea that the statement about “air-conditioning seldom being necessary” comes from the same line of thought.   I said before and I’ll say it again. 

One, you can not effectively insulate a house here by insulating the walls only.  If you don’t effectively block the radiant heat from the sun shining on your roof, insulating the sidewalls is locking the barn after the horse is stolen … it’s pouring money down a rat hole. 

Two, Unlike the US where the sun frequently bakes south and west facing walls for hours at a time, the sun here is ALWAYs almost vertically above, and the length of day varies less than an hour from summer to winter … so you never have the sun load on exterior walls that is common in the USA.  In fact, with the common wide roof overhangs here, it’s easy to keep all but west facing walls in the shade all day long.  What works well in, say, Texas, does not work the same way at all when you are less than 12 degrees from the equator .. ever have the sun north of your house in the USA?  No, for sure.  Here it is north about half the year and south the rest, but never more than 10 or 12 degrees away from the vertical at noon.

Two, I linked you to a US government study that came to the conclusion that heavy, foam-insulated sidewall construction  is not only ineffective for cooling insulation (it’s very effective for heating insulation … remember, we are talking reverse sense and logic for most insulating techniques that Americans are familiar with when we talk about techniques of insulation here in the Philippines) , but in climates even as warm as Miami, (overall, we are much warmer here) it is counter-productive,  It ADDS to the overall heating costs rather than saving any.

So please, get to the point, Dave.  How do we keep that sun from making the attic (and thus our living areas) a daily oven?

Well here’s one way that is tried and true, in the US and likewise here in the Philippines.  Buy far the single most important cooling investment you can make first is something to reflect back the sun’s tremendous radiant energy.  And one of the most effective ways ever to do this is a mirror.  You could build your roof out of mirror tiles … maybe not too practical, but it sure would look kewl .. or burn out your eyes if you looked the wrong way…

Fortunately, there’s a common substance much cheaper, lighter and more durable than mirrored glass, but nearly as effective at stopping radiant heat … “tin foil”.

Of course “tin foil” is a misnomer .. we are talking about aluminum foil, but pound for pound and peso for peso there is nothing out there that can do more to lower attic (under roof) temperatures, and this roof temperatures.  Here’s on big supplier that who dealers herein the Philippines … you can learn a lot from their site.  I recommend you do a bit of reading there.

Remember, going back to our earlier conversation about “R” value … this stuff will have virtually no “R” value … but a sheet of thin aluminum between those two calibrated plates and there will be almost no resistance “R) to heat transfer … we are not trying to block conduction … that’s the reason.

Now, after thinking through and hopefully using some foil insulation to block as much of the sun’s radiant energy as we can. what about an additional barrier … one you can apply with a paint brush and one that will even stop some roof leaks as you use it?

Go read about this space age coating.  And again, as with the last recommendation, spend some time reading their explanation and background materials.  It’s way more than just a sales site.

I do not yet know of anyone who handles it in the Philippines, but I may have to change that situation .. because my son and I used a product like this on a metal house trailer roof in Colorado and it was very effective … I can’t believe it is not popular (yet) in the Philippines, but it works and it reflects back and blocks a significant portion of the suns radiant energy … and since the majority of roofs here are painted steel sheet of some form or another, it’s eminently practical to use.

So in this three part series we have learned that:

All the materials that are used in the construction of your home or business absorb and transfer Heat. 80% – 95 % of this heat is transferred, from the warmer side to the cooler side by one or more of the following ways.

1. * CONDUCTION:
Conduction is direct heat flow through matter (molecular motion). An example of conduction, if you lay one end of a butter knife on the burner of your stove, the heat travels by conduction through the metal to the other end that you are holding and it soon becomes too hot to hold. Heat is always conducted from warm to cold never from cold to warm.

2.* CONVECTION is the transport of heat within a gas or liquid.
Example-hold your hand above the stove burner and you soon feel the heat being emitted and transferred thru the air upward.

3.* RADIATION is the transmission of electromagnetic rays through space. We experience infrared radiation every day. The heat that we feel from sunlight, a fire, a radiator or a warm sidewalk is infrared. Although our eyes cannot see it, the nerves in our skin can feel it as heat.

Now that you understand how heat is transferred,
How do we stop this transfer?

Up till now, we have used (mass) insulation such as Fiberglass, Cellulose, Styrofoam, etc. to slow down and resist ("R value") heat transfer. These types of insulation materials only work on heat transfer by means of conduction which amounts to between 5 % – 7 % of the total heat transfer into / out of a structure. That leaves 93 % – 95 % of the total heat transfer to be dealt with by your air conditioner.

I’ve suggested some ways … open to user reports and more discussion.

If you want to learn more about solar and other free energy, like the wind, here’s a course/how to do it manual that teaches everything you need to know about doing your own solar energy production in any country … here in the Philippines for sure. It’s not free, but it’s 100% risk free, you be the judge of whether it works for you or not.

Yesterday I saw a news item where the Philippine DOE (Department of Education) had just converted a school near me in Luzon to solar power. My wife pointed the article out to me with the comment of, "OMG, solar is still very expensive to do." Unlike most such articles this one had some facts and figures.

The plant for the school cost half a million Philippine Pesos and was able to produce 1 to 5 kilo Watts per hour (all the power produced is used, because excess is stored in deep cycle batteries and sold back to the grid as needed) So did the DOE get a bad deal or a good deal?

Well my last electric bill shows I am paying 11.692 Pesos per Kilowatt Hour. That means each hour the school solar plant makes electricity worth almost 30 Pesos. (I’ll take the average between the stated low and high outputs). Ten hours a day of useful sun, means the school is netting about 300 Pesos per day from their small, six-panel pilot program. ( very little difference in day length from summer to winter here)… that means the school is netting 120 Pesos per day, or well over 100,000 Pesos per year … I’m knocking off some potential profit to allow from cleaning, maintenance and periodic deep cycle battery replacement.

So they will get the investment back in about 5 years … unless the commercial rates go even higher, which might happen I suppose. Isn’t that something like a 12% per anum rate of return?

How much are you CD’s earning these days?  Do you think the DOE made a good investment? Do you still think solar can’t be made to pay?

Learn how to figure your own rate of return before you accept snap judgments about what is too expensive. It looks to me like solar is a pretty decent investment on it’s own here in the Philippines these days. Of course, YMMV, that’s why it’s a 100% satisfaction guaranteed no risk offer.

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We closed the last article talking about the three ways heat energy transfers from a warm place to a cold place … radiation, conduction and convection.  Remember it heat energy is similar in many ways to electrical energy, it only travels one way, from hot to cold.  We mentioned that in the the US and other countries that get cold in the winter, the major mode of heat transfer we deal with is building paths against heat CONDUCTION.  We work hard at keeping the expensive, relatively puny heat source inside from escaping into the infinite coldness of space.  And basically, to be successful, we really only need to keep things sealed up as tight as possible and provide as many barriers to the conduction of heat from inside to outside in order to keep our utility bills and comfort level reasonable.

Thermodynamics in the Philippines operate exactly the same way as anywhere else on the globe, but the scale of heat energy here is way different than in the US.  Our houses are virtually always warm enough, our problem is basically far different in scope.  Instead of trying to keep the heat from a furnace capable of, at best, a few hundred thousand BTU’s of heat production per hour, (roughly 2900/3500 Watts per hour in a typical home)we instead have the sun … a thermonuclear furnace of vast proportions … estimated at 384.6 YW (yottaWatts, 10 to the 24th .. that’s 10 with 24 zeros after it).  The differences is the scale of the problem are astounding.  In more practical terms each square meter of you roof in the Philippines receives about10,000 Watts per hour when in full sun … a typical (small) roof would be perhaps 150 square meters, so at noon we are looking at something like 1,500,000 Watts of solar radiation hitting the roof. or, going back to US familiar terms 5,172,000 BTU per hour heat load … three hundred forty or more standard US furnaces on the roof, all trying hard to pup their thermal energy inside.

And remember our heat flow … warm to cold.  If you have a room inside cooled to some comfortable level … say72/74 F or 21 or 22 degrees C, how hard do you really think it will be for our 344 roaring roof furnaces to start raising that temperature into the discomfort zone?

Actually, when you lay the figures out like this it seems impossible.  Better stay home in the US of A.  What the heck am I doing here?  It’s 7:31 am and a cloudy day, yet I’m already starting to sweat in front of the computer room fan .. in a few minutes I’ll have to close the windows and start the air conditioner …because even if I can stand the heat, my computer can’t and it will go into a very slow, hesitating “max cooling” mode which drives me crazy (a short trip, by the way).

And yes I said cloudy.  Just because the sun is behind the clouds doesn’t mean there isn’t tremendous solar radiation coming in from it .. may be slowed down measurably but a whole hell of a lot of heat is still a whole hell of a lot of heat, even if you cut it in half.

But it’s not hopeless, not hopeless at all.  You just have to attack the problem in the way it needs to be attacked.

Packing the attic space full of insulating materials, as Fred described in the first article is not going to do much good.  The sun’s energy comes to us directly as radiation .. radiant energy.  When it strikes the roof, some significant portion of it is reflected or re-radiated.  We’ll talk much more on those processes later.  The remainder of the sun’s visible and infrared energy is conducted through the metal roof and heats the air in the attic (above the room ceiling) space via conduction and immediately circulates to warm the attic space by convection.  In other words, in a very short time after sunrise, the attic spaces gets uncomfortably hot and it keeps on getting hot as the day goes on.

And what is that heat trying to do … always?  Travel from hot to cold .. which in this case (relatively speaking) is the room you are trying to be comfortable in.

In the US and many other countries we are very familiar with the term “R” value.  It is even a government-mandated term in the US and it stems from precise laboratory tests where insulating materials are placed between two calibrated and instrumented plates in a laboratory, one plate is heated and the flow of heat from the hot to the cold plate is measured.  The higher the resistance to this conductive heat flow, the higher the “R” value of the material under test.

This is of primary concern where, as I illustrated earlier, we are trying to trap the relatively minuscule energy our home heating plant puts out and keep it from being conducted into the cold night sky.

But when we go into the reverse summertime situation, especially when we have summers like they have in Miami or the Philippines, the R value essentially becomes useless.  It really doesn’t matter if you have a fiberglass bat umpteen inches thick, or some sort of polyurethane materials, or even cellulose (one of the most effective R value conduction insulators known) .. with those millions and millions of watts radiating the insulation itself going to eventually heat up and essentially not even be there.  You can delay the flow from hot to cold but most of the heat is coming to you by radiant energy and conductive R value products don’t effectively stop radiation.

I even recently heard a fellow here in the Philippines tell me he was going to dump a lot of some sort of high R value insulation in his attic and to keep the heat from flowing in through his walls, he was going to cover the outside of his house with Styrofoam insulation board and then stucco over that.

While researching that idea if found a pretty interesting report of a US government test that mimicked quite a bit of what he was planning to do:

The Test: Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee which is the technology laboratory managed for the U.S. Department of Energy, took homes in Miami FL, Phoenix AZ and Atlanta GA which were single-story, single-family detached houses with exterior walls constructed of concrete block, and interior walls of wood-framed drywall. (author’s note … this pretty much describes the typical Philippine single-story hollow-block home)They insulated the walls and applied stucco as follows,

"We attached two layers of inch-thick polystyrene foam insulation boards to the exterior walls, next a wire lath, and finally, stucco. After the stucco had dried, it was painted a light color. Total retrofit costs ranged from $3,610 to $4,550 per house, averaging $3.34 per square foot of exterior wall area to be covered with insulation."

The Results?   "In all cases, insulating the walls resulted in a much lower rate of heat transfer through the walls when the outdoor temperature exceeded the indoor temperature, but the added insulation also increased the retention of heat generated within the house when the outdoor temperature fell below the indoor temperature.
In some locations–particularly in Miami–the addition of wall insulation actually increased the cooling load during the spring and fall."
Note: "A lower RATE of transfer", not a reduction in the total amount.

It’s probably worth reading and thinking about those last two sentences again.  The ones I highlighted in red.  “R” value-rated insulation can slow the transfer of heat by conduction, but it can not block it.  And the heat that we get in our attic spaces and thence into our room here in the Philippines is only 3 to 5% from thermal Conduction  the remaining 90 plus percent of the heat flow is by Radiation, and typical R value insulation not only doesn’t stop this radiant energy, it may even INCREASE the overall cooling load on your Philippine house because it holds the heat in longer during the night.

Pretty depressing overall, eh?  For years we have been following that cute Pink Panther down to the Home Depot store and buying all that itchy fiberglass insulation be cause even our own government told us it was good for us and good for the environment.

Well the US government wasn’t wrong at all, they were just advising us on how to solve a totally different problem than what we have here, living in the Philippines.

Nest installment?  Some solutions .. some conventional and some, positively space age.  Stay tuned.

Last time I looked electricity in the Philip[pines was second in cost only to Japan, and with the 25% (plus) increase my area suffered two months back, it’s likely more than Japan now.

Those of you in the US with abundant, often government subsidized electric power (Hoover Dam, TVA, REA, the list goes on) rally have little or no idea what you will be up against if you move to the Philippines.  The electric supply is not only expensive, it’s very, very often unreliable, or it can even be used as a political tool as a few in-the-know allege happen this past election in the Philippin3es.  Regardless how much truth there is or isn’t in that conspiracy theory, I can assure you you’ll become a lot more conscious of kilowatt hours (kWh) here than you are used to in the US.

By far the major electric expense for any household here is cooling.  If you’re a Westerner to have Western budget resources, you’ll spend most of the monthly bill running air conditioners.  If you’re Filipino or more Filipino-oriented in your outlook/budget, you’re going to spend most of your day and evening sitting in the past of a fan … electric fans are cheaper to run than air conditioners but they sure ain’t free either … but go without any power in couple hours Brownout/Blackout and you’ll be very, very appreciative of a simple fan … trust me on that.

Now I got an interesting comment from a regular reader here, (thanks, Fred) and it made me think a lot … and, in fact, made me do a lot of research over the weekend.  Here’s some excerpts from Fred’s comment to consider:

….. QUESTIONS!! how many homes built in the last 20 years have CEILING INSULATION equal to R40 or better, 1 in 100,000, How many have NON- LOUVERED WINDOWS, not talking about double pane or Triple pane here, just ordinary windows, same number!! How many have roofs which are not huge heat sinks, painted a DARK COLOR, such as RED!!!, SILVER or WHITE much better!!

Try to buy formaldehyde free fiberglass insulation here in Cebu, Have not found it yet!!! I get referred to what passes as insulation, open foam styro with some shiny aluminum foil on it. I ask what is the R value, get blank look, so I stop.

SOLUTION:
I have found Styrofoam peanuts the size of Monggo Beans here, price depends on number of kilos you buy at one time. Fill the voids between rafters on the ceilings over full, then take that Styrofoam with the shiny backing and staple it over the top of the styro peanuts to push them down, then take 4×8 sheets of Styrofoam an lay over the top of the shiny Styro an push down to compact.
DO THIS IN BEDROOM WITH THE AIR CON, SHOULD SEE AT LEAST A DROP IN ELECTRIC TO MAKE YOU FEEL GOOD ABOUT ALL THE WORK, AN STAY MUCH COOLER.
Then replace those louvered windows In the air con bedroom with glass block windows
If you like the results then insulate the ceilings in the whole house …

Well most of what Fred says there is some pretty good advice, but a couple thing are, in my opinion, absolutely wrong … mainly because we Westerners think that “applied physics” … like deciding how to insulate our houses here … is the same, US or or Philippines.  because we never really got the actual physics of insulation right, we spend a lot of hours of our lives chasing things like “R values”, when in fact … except for a few cool nights in Baguio, where people often have a fireplace for heat … R Value and many other US concepts regarding insulation and energy costs are way out in left field.

It’s going to take several articles to convey the real facts about insulation in a foreign, tropical country and how those facts relate to what most Americans “know” or at least think they know about home insulation.  Let’s explore the very basics here in this article and then I’ll run some more posts depending on the interest I see.

First of all, what the heck is heat anyway?

In physics and thermodynamics, heat is the process of energy transfer from one body or system due to thermal contact, which in turn is defined as an energy transfer to a body in any other way than due to work performed on the body.^[1]

A related term is thermal energy, loosely defined as the energy of a body that increases with its temperature. Heat is also loosely referred to as thermal energy, although many definitions require this thermal energy to actually be in the process of movement between one body and another to be technically called heat (otherwise, many sources prefer to continue to refer to the static quantity as "thermal energy"). Heat is a flow of energy, rather than a form of energy.^{[citation needed]}

Energy transfer by heat can occur between objects by radiation, conduction and convection. Temperature is used as a measure of the internal energy or enthalpy, that is the level of elementary motion giving rise to heat transfer. Energy can only be transferred by heat between objects – or areas within an object – with different temperatures (as given by the zeroth law of thermodynamics). This transfer happens spontaneously only in the direction of the colder body (as per the second law of thermodynamics).

Now this is nearly a thousand words already and I don’t want to make anyone sweat, trying to wrap their head around too much at once.   There are two important points, though, that you have got to take away from this and remember in our next discussion:

radiation, conduction and convection.  In the US and other countries that get cold in the winter, the major mode of heat transfer we deal with is building paths against heat CONDUCTION.  When you are trying to keep your 2,000 square foot home at a livable temperature on a zero-degree night, you need worry very little about radiation or convection.  Conduction is the process that “sucks” your expensive heat energy right out the roof, walls and windows an doors … and most of what we know and most of what we do regarding insulation in the USA is related to slowing down “conduction” of heat … remember … always “From” the warm inside of out house “To the vast coldness of space … the heat always travels from hot to cold.

If you had been around for the Wright Brother’s first flight at Kitty Hawk, would you realize the significance of that historic event?  Had you been present on On 2 May 1952 (yes it was that long ago), when de Havilland Comet G-ALYP took off on the world’s first all-jet flight with fare-paying passengers, would you have been aware you had seen the future?

Well, if you are reading this blog, you now know that even if you aren’t a real aviation “wignut” at heart, you have just been around for an historic aviation first that will go down in history, mark my words:

Solar Impulse Flies On Pure Sunlight

"Finally we can say we are flying a solar plane," pilot Andre Borschberg, CEO of the Solar Impulse project, wrote in his blog last Friday. The 12,000 solar cells on the wings of the one-of-a-kind aircraft for the first time produced more energy than the aircraft was consuming, providing thrust for the engines with enough power left over to start charging the batteries. "At this precise moment," Borschberg wrote, "the fulfillment of a dream — to fly solely on solar power, day and night — came one step closer to reality." The flight was the first time the aircraft was powered solely by solar energy. Borschberg flew twice last Friday, on the first circuit using up the energy that had been stored in the batteries overnight; on the second flight he activated the solar cells for the first time and began to recharge the batteries.

"Never before in my 40 years as a pilot have I experienced anything like this," Borschberg wrote. The aircraft flew at Payerne Airfield in Switzerland. The project was launched seven years ago by Borschberg and Bertrand Piccard. Their ultimate goal is to fly the aircraft around the world on solar power alone in 2012. They plan to fly five hops in quick succession, weather permitting. … if this piques your interest, you can read more and follow the project on their website, Solar Impulse

And if you are one of those who likes to write to tell me how you read a book and an expert said, Solar will always be too expensive and impractical, then save your digital ink.  Because if you can build a flyable aircraft and not only power it butt generate excess energy “fuel” while it is flying (not true perpetual motion but getting damn close) then think of how you can put solar energy to work here in the Philippines where we get roughly five times the usable sun power as Switzerland does.

How many ever looked at the TED video I recommended over in the side column about going back in time or forward if time travel were possible?  Which direction would you go?  For me, the answer is easy, I’d go forward … too many naysayers in the past, and even today IMO.

If you want to learn more about solar and other free energy, like the wind, here’s a course/how to do it manual that teaches everything you need to know about doing your own solar energy production in any country … here in the Philippines for sure. It’s not free, but it’s 100% risk free, you be the judge of whether it works for you or not.

Yesterday I saw a news item where the Philippine DOE (Department of Education) had just converted a school near me in Luzon to solar power. My wife pointed the article out to me with the comment of, "OMG, solar is still very expensive to do." Unlike most such articles this one had some facts and figures.

The plant for the school cost half a million Philippine Pesos and was able to produce 1 to 5 kilo Watts per hour (all the power produced is used, because excess is stored in deep cycle batteries and sold back to the grid as needed) So did the DOE get a bad deal or a good deal?

Well my last electric bill shows I am paying 11.692 Pesos per Kilowatt Hour. That means each hour the school solar plant makes electricity worth almost 30 Pesos. (I’ll take the average between the stated low and high outputs). Ten hours a day of useful sun, means the school is netting about 300 Pesos per day from their small, six-panel pilot program. ( very little difference in day length from summer to winter here)… that means the school is netting 120 Pesos per day, or well over 100,000 Pesos per year … I’m knocking off some potential profit to allow from cleaning, maintenance and periodic deep cycle battery replacement.

So they will get the investment back in about 5 years … unless the commercial rates go even higher, which might happen I suppose. Isn’t that something like a 12% per anum rate of return?

How much are you CD’s earning these days?  Do you think the DOE made a good investment? Do you still think solar can’t be made to pay?

Learn how to figure your own rate of return before you accept snap judgments about what is too expensive. It looks to me like solar is a pretty decent investment on it’s own here in the Philippines these days. Of course, YMMV, that’s why it’s a 100% satisfaction guaranteed no risk offer.

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2008 saw our family move from the “secure” life in Alabama (job with a monthly paycheck) to the exciting life in west Texas to start a vineyard (no paycheck at all !).  In the past, I had tended toward frugality, reasons including living within our means and being a good steward. But using most of our savings to start our vineyard and then watching the rest disappear just living, I have had to take an advanced course in frugality. As 2009 draws to a close, I began thinking of just how we have been able to live on so little. Participating in the group writing project: 2009 in Review, helped me put my thought into words and hence the following list. These separate actions may seem insignificant, but their cumulative effect over time has added up to big savings.

Yep.  To me the only difference in what Dina-Marie and her family have done versus what a few of you have done and many of you while away the time wishing you could do is the lat-long of the “patch” they are living on.

Living the Dream

Bottom line … if you have a dream and you have a willing family, you can do it.  Maybe not with a vineyard (although, guess what, there are a lot of hillsides I have seen in Zambales and Illocos, for example, just idling away waiting for a vintner … and the farther north you go along the coats the more the climate gets like the Napa Valley), but regardless of how you earn a living, the real value is in the doing.

Here’s some useful tips Dina-Maris published … see how many of them work for the Philippines as well as for West Texas and leave me some comments … I’m off for a few days at the beach in Subic … gotta enjoy those little nephews while they are still little … living in the Philippines is for sharing with children, in my opinion, nor putting you life on hold because of them, and then watching them drift away as you grow old.

1. ==>>Tithe to your local church – Remember that God is source of all we have and can do. And He uses our all experiences to bring us to a greater knowledge of Him.
2. ==>>Write all expenditures down in a budget book – Know where all your money is going.
3. ==>>Stop impulse buying – Give yourself a week to think about a purchase and the necessity of it.
4. ==>>Stay out of the stores as much as possible - What you don’t see won’t hurt you!
5. ==>>Determine “needs” vs “wants” – Keeping up with the neighbors is an endless task in our society costing you not only money but needless anxiety.
6. ==>>Compare prices – Look for the best buy. Check different stores as well as brands.
7. ==>>Buy used – Shop yard sales, thrift stores, Craigslist, eBay
8. ==>>If buying new, shop sales – Certain times of the year are more “sales” oriented than others so wait for these if possible.
9. ==>>Make your credit card work for you – capitalize on the “cash back” aspect many card have when used to  purchase particular items. Example: 5% cash back offered for gasoline purchases for the first $150/month.
10. ==>>Use coupons – Coupons are a tool for you to use to save but also for the seller to hook you on a fad.
11. ==>>Combine coupons with sales to maximize savings.
12. ==>>Utilize store “rewards” programs – Example: Walgreens - Register Rewards or CVS – Extra Care Card and Extra Care Bucks.
13. ==>>Drive older cars – If it still works and is reliable, keep it!
14. ==>>Combine trips to save gasoline.
15. ==>>Walk or bike instead of driving
16. ==>>Adjust your thermostat so as to save energy.
17. ==>>Turn off room lights when leaving a room.
18. ==>>Turn off ceiling fans when leaving a room.
19. ==>>Do not window shop in front of the refrigerator – Determine what you want to remove ahead of time to avoid unnecessary time spent with the fridge door open.
20. ==>>Wash your clothes when they are dirty – This may be after one wearing, but then again, maybe not until several wearings.
21. ==>>Hang your clothes out to dry – Save energy and get that fresh, line-dry smell in the summer.  In the winter, use a drying rack inside to help humidify your house, which is healthier and feels warmer!
22. ==>>Make your own laundry detergent - Homemade laundry detergent is easy and economical.
23. ==>>Use cloth diapers instead of disposable – They are both economical and “green”.
24. ==>>If applicable, nurse your baby – Nursing is definitely more economical than formula, healthy for the baby and helps you lose “baby weight”.
25. ==>>Plant a vegetable garden – Space is not an issue as even small areas can produce large amounts. Incorporate vegies into your flower beds. Read books pertaining to gardening to learn more.
26. ==>>Freeze or can your own vegetables. This is both economical and rewarding.
27. ==>>Plan your meals -  Monthly menu plans work great. Here is a free downloadable menu planner in either the weekly, 2-week, or monthly formats.
28. ==>>Make a master grocery list of staple items – Go through your pantry and make a list of each item you stock and routinely use. Once you have your list, make an Excel worksheet of it. Then when you shop monthly, print off a copy, check your pantry, mark what you need, add items based on your menu and you are ready to go!
29. ==>>Shop for groceries once a month – This sounds overwhelming, but with a master list it becomes easy. ***Planning meals combined with monthly shopping from a master list cut my grocery bill by over 60%.
30. ==>>Drink more water and less soda – Save not only money but also empty calories and decrease sugar intake.
31. ==>>Make-it-yourself
32. ==>>Fix-it-yourself
33. ==>>Do-it-yourself
34. ==>>Cut your own hair – at least your husband’s and sons’. Having 1 husband (of 25 yrs) and 7 sons, at $5 per haircut every 2 months, I figure that I have saved over $3,000!
35. ==>>Eat out less – if you do eat out, use Restaurant.com Gift Certificates.
36. ==>>Fix your lunch and carry it with you – This option is healthier and you are able to control the ingredient, calorie and fat content of your food.
37. ==>>Don’t eat out at all - Homemade meals are healthier as well as more economical.
38. ==>>Use the local library – Depending on the size of your local library, they will have many current books and videos/DVDs and are able to order ones they do not have on the shelf.
39. ==>>Discontinue cable – Stop watching television. Read books together (from the library) and make more quality family time together.
40. ==>>Discontinue cell phones – This is not a popular option in our society. I found that for 1/2 the price of two cell phones and dial-up internet, we can have a landline, high speed internet and still maintain a trac phone for emergency use.

Read more from Dina-Marie on her Dimes2Vines blog, where she publishes frequent tips on frugal living and how to live your dream  by making it happen

I just wanted to post it unattributed at first because it so closely aligns with what I feel is going on with today’s economy, especially the US economy and most especially in the sub-set of that economy that deals with jobs that I didn’t want anyone to have preconceived notions before they read and reflected on the words.

Disappointing job number this morning. Still, a month is just a month, right? Well, not quite.

Here’s the way I think about the economic news: each piece of data tells us something about which model of recovery is right. More specifically, each disappointing piece of data strengthens the case of the pessimists.

From the beginning, there have been two schools of thought about the likely path of recovery. One school — strongly represented among Wall Street economists — said that the 2008-2009 recession should be compared with other deep US recessions: 1957 (the “Edsel” recession), 1974-5, 1981-2. These recessions were followed by rapid, V-shaped recoveries.

The other school of thought said that this was a postmodern recession, very different in character from those prior deep recessions, and that it was likely to be followed by a prolonged “jobless recovery”. Added to that were worries based on the historical aftermath of financial crises, which tends to be prolonged and ugly…

Is this guy right?  Well of course, everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and nobody really knows the future until after the future is already in the past.

But I do think this view is correct in many ways, although I disagree that even if it is correct we have to call it “pessimistic”.  It might well be optimistic if we structure our thinking and the way we earn our living differently.

photo credit: pquan

Some of you may be wondering why I am writing so much about jobs, both ‘conventioal’ jobs and the kind of career move any one of us can “construct” for themselves if we chose to.  Truth is, it’s an experiment based on what I think people want to read here.  So far it’s an experiment that seems to be heading in the right direction, because measurements like number of page reads, returning visitors, time “on site” per visitor have been increasing in a very gratifying manner.

I’ve also received an increasing number of comments, many of which have more “meat” than the usual message.  This blog is primarily about my move to the Philippines, my “empowered” retirement in the Philippines, reason why you might or might not want to be in the Philippines with me, etc.  But to a larger extent, I feel I have a certain duty to warn of clear and present danger, as I see it.

Od course, I could be wrong.  I claim no special expertise, and even those with expertise often stumble.  But in another way, perhaps because I have a different perspective on America because I live outside the country and get a different view, this New Year season is very disturbing to me.

I recently postulated that the first 10 years of the new century were pretty much wasted, in terms of our country’s opportunity to make a new start in a new century.  On the one hand I am very hopeful, still, that 2010 can be used as a launch pad for that new start … desperately needed.

On the other hand I am less and less hopeful that it will come to pass … and I feel a little like a guy standing next to a bridge that  is washed out, watch people drive down the freeway at 75 per towards instant destruction and doing nothing in the way of warning.

So even tough many of you don’t want to watch me, and even though some of you think you already know about the hazard, if I can save just one of you from plunging into the canyon, hey, bits and words are free, so that is what this current emphasis on jobs, both here in the Philippines and there in the USA is all about.

It’s all related to the Philippines and Philippine living in one way or another … whether it is the difference between you being able to retire and ive where and how you want, or whether it becomes a question of you filing bankruptcy or else “economy-birding” over here to the Philippines to ride things out, it all relates … or so Dave opines.

So what has my message been?  Stop desperately trying to find a job, or, in particular, stop pinning your hopes of moving to the Philippines on the slim chance of you finding a job here, especially as a foreigner, which will pay you enough to realize your dream.  It’s a negative way to go about making your dream happen, it is by far the hardest way to attempt to make your dream happen (Hint, work smarter, not harder) and it really borders on insanity here in the year 2010.

Insanity?  isn’t that a bit strong, Dave?  Well perhaps it is, but it is the absolute truth.  One very intelligent definition of insanity (credited to Albert Einstein, among others) is:

“To repeat the same actions over and over again and expect different results.”

Based on this definition, there is a lot of insanity in the news these days.  The recent “Cash for Clunkers” program is an example of insane thinking.  The US auto industry was not in crisis, the so-called ‘big three’ were.  (Since the C4C program ended, Mazda has now eclipsed Chrysler as number 3).

American’s want/need cars and millions of Americans are, and will continue to be employed making cars and the ancillary jobs that make up the auto industry economy.  But who decided that Ford, GM and Chrysler were ‘too big’ to fail, and worth dumping billions down the drain to ‘save jobs’?

More than 2,000 auto manufactures have failed in the USA since we had an auto industry … some were even huge, and some even produced a very good product.  But who misses Hudson or Studebaker, for example?  And who thinks the government did the wrong thing in letting them fail?

So without getting into a deeper argument about what car marques were good and bad, and about how the government did or didn’t save auto industry jobs, let’s think about this on a deeper level.

Chrysler, one of the companies we worked so hard to save, is already sold (or being sold) to another country, and has already been eclipsed by a “foreign” company.  Chery, a company based in China, already makes a quite adequate four-seat mini-sedan that sells, brand new in China for about $5,000 USD.

So should we, as a country, continue to pour money down the drain to preserve last century auto jobs when it is clear that the future is cheap cars from China?

I mean you’re reading these words on an Asian manufactured monitor, hooked to an Asian-built computer, sitting in (very likely) a Chinese-made swivel chair, and in the background is a TV from Taiwan or some other Asian country murmuring away.

We used to make every one of these consumer items in the USA … but is it wrong that we now buy them from a more efficient supplier?  Why would you even want a job based on technology which is clearly on the move?

For at least the last 4 presidents (and I think that makes things politically balanced between the R’s and the D’s) of the USA I have heard the same claptrap about retraining people and modernizing our labor force.  And every single one of the four has just been, to put it succinctly, as full of shit as the one before him.

Why isn’t the government promoting entrepreneurship and especially on-line, portable work instead of trying to “prop up’ the oil industry, the auto industry, the big money banks demonstrably operated by cooks or incompetents, or both?

I don’t know.  Ask your elected representatives.  But i do know the government efforts over the past four administrations has been nothing short of efforts to preserve a buggy whip economy.  Why would you even want the government to enslave your grandchildren with debt to save these essentially outdated jobs, even if one of them is yours?  What if there was a much better way, under your control?

My long-term goal, and your long-term opportunity for thought is, why not start today and equip yourself to crate your own future.  To cease to even give a care if US job figures go up and down, to literally build for yourself, your own children and even your grandchildren a better future … where you are neither commercial not government slave, and where you exist with virtually no debt, monetary, or ethically?

I know many who read this are doubtful … and I never said it was easy … only that it was doable.  But if I can make even one or two of you, especially men and women with families who depend upon you … if I can make even one student saddling himself or herself with lifetime student loan to get a degree in ‘business’  … ‘business’ of the last century, then my work will be well worth my time.

Thanks for reading and, most importantly, thinking.  Comments welcome.

The Philippines is an even better place to do what these folks did … but what really matters is, they did it.  Hat’s off and to the rest of you who are still bitten with the credit card bug … read carefully … it’s like quitting smoking, here is never a better time to quit than now:

The Biggest Losers (of Debt): How a Family Shed $106,000 in Debt

This article is part of a series related to being Financially Fit

Meet the Hildebrandts; their frugal ways lost debt, won an award

Five years ago, the Hildebrandt family of New Richmond, Wis., was juggling more than $100,000 in credit card and personal debt. Through frugality, determination and hard work, they are now — other than a mortgage — debt-free.

At the time, Russell and Kandy Hildebrandts’ credit card balances totaled about $89,000, and they owed $17,000 to a family member. While they were current on all the payments, the card companies had begun raising their interest rates, adding hundreds to their minimum monthly payments. Kandy acknowledges that they presented a higher credit risk, given how their balances had ballooned. Even so, with the bump in the required payments, covering the monthly payments was a struggle. "We had to change," Kandy says.

Change they did. For their debt-fighting prowess, the Hildebrandts were on Tuesday night named the winners of the Professional Achievement and Counseling Excellence (PACE)  2009 Graduate Client of the Year Award. This national award, given by the National Foundation for Credit Counseling, recognizes the hard work and commitment they demonstrated in repaying their debts, and their willingness to become effective managers of their money and change their lifestyle. (Disclosure: CreditCards.com Senior Reporter Connie Prater served as a judge in the awards.)

Slow Decline Into Debt

Not that the Hildebrandts’ lifestyle was lavish. The couple, along with their twin daughters, Heidi and Holly, lived in a rented 1,000 square foot townhome. Vacations consisted of visits to extended family members in the Midwest. Russell was a chemist with a Twin Cities-based environmental testing laboratory; Kandy was a stay-at-home mom and home-schooled their daughters.

Photo: Jeff Holmquist

Russell and Kathy Hildebrandt of New Richmond, Wis., won an award for successfully tackling $106,000 in credit card and personal debt through thrifty spending, a second job and bit-by-bit payments on their credit card balances. They’re shown outside their home surrounded by their three children, 14-year-old twins Heidi (left) and Holly, and 3-year-old Joey.

While the Hildebrandts weren’t living extravagantly, they also weren’t frugal, Kandy notes. They purchased most items, such as clothes for the girls, new. In addition, they had medical expenses related to Russell’s diabetes and several miscarriages that Kandy suffered. At the same time, they remained committed to tithing, or giving 10 percent of their income to their church. The accumulation of day-to-day expenses left the family going a bit more into debt each year.

Bankruptcy? No Thanks

Several family friends recommended that they file for bankruptcy. That was out of the question, Russell says. "We were committed to paying off our debts." They also resolved to continue to tithe and home-school their daughters.

To get started, Kandy met with Linda Humburg, a manager with FamilyMeans Consumer Credit Counseling Service (CCCS) in Stillwater, Minn. Linda reviewed their finances, and developed a five-year debt management plan. While the schedule was daunting, the Hildebrandts signed on. "If we didn’t make it, we knew that we would go out trying," Russell says.

Several steps were key to making the plan work. Kandy and Russell eliminated discretionary spending. Kandy began buying generic food and frequenting thrift stores for clothing purchases. They stopped exchanging Christmas and birthday gifts with each other and their relatives.

Even with the drastic cutbacks, the Hildebrandts couldn’t cover the $2,000 they were sending to CCCS each month to be distributed to their creditors. At that time, the sum amounted to about half of Russell’s take-home pay. So Russell took on a second job cleaning a local grocery store several nights a week from midnight to 4:30 a.m. He would arrive home from his day job, eat dinner, catch a few hours of sleep and head to work. After his shift, he would go back home, sleep a few more hours and then get up for his day job.

Slow Progress

The first two years were particularly tough. Russell’s work schedule was grueling, while Kandy managed just about everything at home on her own. Moreover, while their credit card balances were going down, the drop wasn’t yet noticeable. For about a year, the Hildebrandts made do with one car, (editors note … this is absolutely amazing to me … do people in the US, even today, have even a clue about what tightening the belt is?  Step one if you need to get out of debt, even before credit cards is, get rid of cars!  What on earth does a one breadwinner family need more than one car for?  Geez.) until they received a used van from Kandy’s family.

Even so, "they didn’t let anything deter them from progress," Humburg says. "If the money wasn’t available, they simply did without."

…

Several months later the agent called and asked if the Hildebrandts would be interested in a rent-to-own agreement. The current owner of the house had some health concerns and was eager to move. The monthly rent would be $1,000, which included $200 to be escrowed for closing costs. They could manage it. (Editor’s note.  An excellent idea that people ‘stuck’ with an existing home who want to move could use as well … you can potentially get your asking price or even more by carrying the home and giving an allowance in escrow until the buyer has paid enough to make the risk manageable.  Just because a couple years ago getting the full amount at the closing table was the common way to do business doesn’t mean it is the only way)

…

Their advice to others? "Get out of debt," Kandy says. "It’s a chokehold."

Amen to that, Kandy, and hats off to you and the rest of your family for attaining a really worthy goal.  I recommend reading the full article on how to shed your debt load here.

My bank account proves better than any other testimony how much easier it would be to get rid of excess debt here in the Philippines, but it doesn’t matter what continent you live on, the principles are the same.  Stop spending!

I do, however, have the answer to that perennial question about how you can earn a living in the Philippines, or in any other country you choose … you can find out if it is for you by simply attending a free, online seminar that will be held, especially for you, right in the privacy of your own home.  You will, sorry to, have to provide your own spoon

Let me ask you a couple questions ….

• Have you lost your job?
• Are you worried about layoffs or cutbacks?
• Are you ‘stuck in a rut’ in your present work, with younger, better educated folks passing you buy?
• Hate your boss or the daily commenting grind to get to a boring place for yet another day?
• Wishing you were living in the Philippines with someone you love, perhaps, earning a Western-standard living?
• Envious of people who seem to be able to travel the world, staying only in places they enjoy?

Well, if you answered “Yes” to one or more of these questions, you really need to take an hour or so out of your busy schedule and join a free informational seminar from a clever couple I have come to know quite well.

http://www.theportablelifestyle.com/primer’>Jon Tompkins & Kathryn Alice are married with four children. They have been traveling internationally for almost 2 years, spending more than a month in each of 11 tropical countries. They run successful internet businesses as well as a consulting business. It took them just a few months to get ready to go, and they have already shepherded others into this lifestyle. Accomplished speakers and writers, they have co-created bestselling products together and their work has been featured in Psychology Today, Parade, The New York Times, Body+Soul, Newsweek and on Montel Williams, Ellen DeGeneres, KXLU & KPFK radio, and NBC television.

Jon and Kathryn are sponsoring another of their 100% free seminars to teach you the methods to make your own lifestyle which emulates theirs.  These folks are ‘doers’, not talkers, they already made their lifestyle portable, so what about you?  http://www.theportablelifestyle.com/primer’>Watch, listen and learn.

One thing there is a demand for … as in people buy … is home or business security and monitoring.  In particular there is a market connected with the Philippines for three categories of folks that come to mind immediately:

• Folks who have a house or business in the Philippines, but want to travel for days, weeks or months at a time.
• Folks who leave a house or business behind in the US or other home country and want a way to keep a ‘virtual eye’ on their property while they are in the Philippines.
• Filipino residents, especially businessmen or women with property or businesses in different parts of the Philippines who want a ‘virtual security guard"’.

The business plan?  Simple.  Either provide the equipment, hookups and training for any of these potential clients whom you decide to target and let them arrange their own monitoring.  To many of you this may sound foolish, because if you can do it (and you probably can. if you know enough Internet and computer technology to be reading this post, you can learn easily), then why wouldn’t the potential clients do it themselves?

Well the reason people will pay for the service is the same reason people will pay for snowplows to clear their driveways, janitors to clean their offices, mechanics to change the oil in their cars, etc.  They value their time doing something else or they would rather someone else get their hands dirty.

The other way I see a huge opportunity here is that there are thousands of potential clients in the US, the Philippines and other countries who just want someone to watch and call the police if things go wrong.  There are dozens if not hundreds of companies in the YS making a good business from this need.  If you are already living in the Philippines or are able to set something up here, you are miles ahead of any company who pays ‘screen watchers’ in the US.  You can set up a monitoring station here for systems you sell yourself, or outsource yourself to companies already in the business in the US.  Hey, after all, people are already operating call centers just to take orders ay McDonalds drive thru windows, this job is simpler.

The last time I suggested something along this line there was a bit of discussion regarding liability and bandwidth,  Let me address both those issues briefly:

• Liability: I may be naive, but I see no large liability issues here.  The service will always be provided on a ‘best effort’ basis.  In my last consulting job back in the US I worked a security contract with a top US form to monitor our software development and server facility.  Believe me, they were responsible;le for nothing except doing their job to the best of their ability.  All you need is a good lawyer to write you a tight contract (remember, I am not a lawyer and you need a lawyer for legal advice) … and for many of us who live here in the Philippines, what is anyone going to be able to sue us for, anyway?
• Bandwidth: As soon as you mention video many people get up in arms about server loads, time for windows to open, etc.  Many of these concerns are valid, but only if you do video ‘wrong’.  When I talk about monitoring surveillance cameras and other alarms at a customer’s premise, such as motion sensors, window or door switches and such. I am talking about:
  • Having a DVR (Digital Video Recorder … Tivo is a common brand name but there are much cheaper Tivo substitutes out there) that spools the video to disk, on site.  There is no reason for ‘full period’ video to ever have to cross the ‘net to your monitoring computer unless and until an ‘event’ occurs at the client’s site.
  • There are many different security management software packages out there that will slow down the frames per second from cameras until something in the field of view changes, manage multiple cameras on one screen, and so on.  Google is your friend.

So, there’s some thoughts for making a business today, prompted by this video of a real world housebreaking, caught by the owner who was monitoring remotely over the internet and simply called the police when she saw the intruder.  The video doesn’t make it clear but the report I read said the police arrived in time to catch the perpetrators in the act … thus not only was the lady’s property protected, but two nasty customers won’t be breaking into your house or mine.  Video monitoring works.

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• Powered by Contextual Related Posts

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