Day Thirty-Eight - All Tired Out

Keeping My Tires Properly Inflated

According to the US Department of Energy, keeping your tires properly inflated can save you up to 3% in gas mileage. Under-inflated tires can lower gas mileage by 0.4 percent for every 1 psi drop in pressure of all four tires. Plus, properly inflated tires are safer and last longer.

I also read a very interesting article written by the Environmental Defense, that said that transportation accounts for 25% of all the energy consumed in North America. The article also stated that 80% of vehicles' tires are underinflated and that if we all just fixed that, we could save more than two million gallons of gas each day!

If you're like me and you don’t know the correct tire pressure for your vehicle, there's several places you can check to find out. Try looking in your owner's manual, on the door of your glove compartment, on the driver’s side door pillar or even on the tires themselves (although that last one gives you the MAXIMUM pressure you should use). At least one of the places should tell you. I checked my vehicle for the proper psi and found it should be at 35 psi, which, according to hubby, is pretty standard for regular passenger vehicles.

Hubby also gave me instruction on how to check my psi and inflate my tires at the local Mobil Station. I wouldn't want to miss anything in translating for you, so if you need instructions, click here to read them at www.ehow.com. Suffice it to say, that it's not that hard to do, but if for whatever reason you're not up to the task, just swing into a full-service station and ask them to do it for you.


Savings:

For me personally, assuming I'm consistently underinflated, I'd be looking at approximately 3/4 of a gallon per week, or about 39 gallons per year. And, since every gallon of gas saved translates to 20 pounds of CO2 kept out of the air, that means I would be saving 780 pounds of CO2. Cool.


Difficulty Level - 2 or 3 out of 5

I'm definitely glad I had help the first time and I'm sure I'll end up hissing and spewing air all over until I get the hang of it, but all in all, a pretty simple thing to do. After all, it's not rocket science, just car science.