We took on the challenge to cut our consumption of water, power, and gas in half. Most of our water consumption is for irrigating our garden, so we have been working on making the sprinkler system more efficient. We already had 1.6 lpf toilets and a water-efficient washing machine and dish washer. The following three graphs are made from data from our utility bills. Palo Alto Utilities intentionally does not keep more than a year of historical data; there are gaps in the data and thus gaps in the graphs.

To reduce our gas consumption, we installed a solar hot water system to heat our domestic hot water, the circulating hot water that warm our home's floors, and to heat the pool. This system started operation in May of 2008. Note the drop in gas consumption as a result. A prototype system heating just the domestic hot water and pool ran the previous summer. When we moved in to the house there was a gas-fired pool heater, but we had it removed; we have never heated the pool with anything other than solar power.

We installed a more efficient pool pump and dimmable CFLs in 2007.