Houston, we have a problem

My intent was to hook up a system (The Energy Detective) to track how much energy our house is using.  Straight out of the box it was a little intimidating - "don't even think about messing with this unless you are a highly skilled electrician, or you will die" kind of warnings everywhere.  The instructions weren't necessarily intuitive but they seemed doable, until I got the front panel off my circuit breaker box (after turning off the power)...

This is a picture of the whole box (rotated 90 degrees CCW but I'm too lazy to fix it):

That just looks ugly!  Here is a closeup of where I need to add some stuff:

Apparently, that big fatty cable is the one I need to get that clamp around.  Then there is another clamp for the cable next to it.  No dice.  I'm no "highly skilled electrician" but it's pretty easy to see that it's dang crowded in there and experience has shown that big fatty cables tend to be less wiggle-able, especially with that short a length (they enter the box in the upper right hand corner) : (

Tomorrow I'll invite my neighbor friend over to see if he can help... he actually is a professional (highly skilled) electrician.

Our House

The first project I'd like to tackle is to start tracking where on earth the electricity is going.  We've lived in our current house for about 2.5 years.  We knew coming in to it that we would have some pretty steep electricity bills... the house is heated mainly by a wood stove with the balance of the house being handled by electric baseboards in the individual rooms.  The balance of our (big) uses I expect to be the hot water heater, the electric range, and lighting.  The problem is that we were able to make some good savings in the second winter in the house but this last month (January) our bill spiked by over $100.  Yikes!  Where is the electricity going?  Let's find out.

Been a while

So, waaaay back in 2004 I caught the blogging craze and started this blog (apparently).  I've had a number of starts since then (and this will likely be another) but I'm back now since I've found something I think is worth blogging about...

I've come to realize lately that it's been quite a while since I tried anything really out of my comfort zone and it's time for that to change.  Hopefully by blogging about the ordeal I'll have a more reflective experience and, who knows, maybe have some insights along the way.

Let's see if the adventure goes anywhere this time...

First Post

This is my introduction into the world of blogging. I wish myself good luck.