Not a garden topic, but wanted to share my energy $$$

So in the middle of April of this year, I decided to really take a hard look at saving energy around our residential home.

Greening up the home if you will.

We are on the SDGE electric grid (San Diego Gas & Electric) . Our clothes dryer, water heater, stove are fueled by propane.

So I started to look at things I could do to save on electric power.

I switched our incandescent bulbs to CFP.
Try to air dry our laundry whenever possible.
Wash dishes by hand, no dishwasher.
Went around looking for "vampire" power sources.
Really patrol the house for energy usage when no one is in the room. My wife and daughters are notorious for leaving things on.

Also, they installed a smart meter at my house and I can track energy usage online at igoogle to see my energy consumption on a daily basis.

We were average $350 dollars a month for electricity!

The last three months: $150/month!!

Wondering how much an impact those light bulbs made?!?

Anyhoo, I am very excited to knock my energy costs down by so much. My latest bill said my monthly cost was down 40% from the same month last year.

I'm glad you have changes and she change. We made expensive changes with insulation, new siding boards, attic work, vent work... and of course we cut back. Last months' bill was identical $$$ to last year, same month! ARGH!

They insist someone is coming and reading our meter... and its not averaged. I think they are really lying to me! $200 a month is getting outragous... we have a small house. :/

I live where I can see into other backyards from my deck and when driving to the house. As best as I can tell, I'm the only person who uses a "solar clothes drier" in the neighborhood.

Maybe others don't like being "evaluated" by their neighbors by hanging their clothes out. Gal dang , I just hang my underwear behind the towels!!

The clothes lines are directly under the deck roof and a little high for my DW to reach. And, I try to be very conscientious during appropriate weather. It seems almost criminal to me to put denim jeans and towels in the drier - out they go, onto the line.

Sure, we stand my denim jeans against the wall and have a good laugh now and then. But, I'm not so much of a wimp that I can't bend the wrinkles out of a pants leg! And, by the way, the sheets and blankets smell wonderful!

Steve

Good job, Beavis!

My husband doesn't believe me about the vampire electronics. I am constantly following him around, unplugging chargers and stuff like that.

I like that I don't have to change the CFL's all the time and they make them better than they did when they first came out with them--better lighting color cast--I hated the weak bluish ones.

Another thing we did for saving electricity was to put the computer, monitor, printer, tv, dvd, vcr, etc on a power strip that is plugged into a remote control switch and I turn everything off at night (nothing drawing standby power) and don't turn them on until halfway through the day when I'm ready to use them. The remote turns them all on at once with one click which saves me aggravation!

Keeping the blinds drawn on the SW side of the house makes a big difference on my AC running not as much too.

My next steps are to build a solar oven.

And somehow get a solar panel with an inverter that plugs directly into our existing AC.

baby steps..

but definitely feel good steps.....

vfem said:

I'm glad you have changes and she change. We made expensive changes with insulation, new siding boards, attic work, vent work... and of course we cut back. Last months' bill was identical $$$ to last year, same month! ARGH!

They insist someone is coming and reading our meter... and its not averaged. I think they are really lying to me! $200 a month is getting outragous... we have a small house. :/

Click to expand...

Have the hot water heater checked. We had a similar problem in our previous home a few years ago. Turned out the hot water heater was going bad and was using a lot of unnecessary power. We replaced it and the bill dropped by ~$75/month.

OMG $350 a month on electricity! We have a 1800 sqft home and everything is on electricity and we average $160 a month. I thought that was outrageous.

Now when you go down our privite road everyone has there porch lts on and almost every window is glowing. We don't, only thing on at night is the TV. A neighbor commented one time that our house is so dark you don't know there is a house sat back down the driveway. That is how I like it.

I always hanged our clothes outside. Since I bought those front load washers, my hanging time is cut in half. Worth the money. I believe if we got rid of the hot water tank and got a tankless hot water heater our bill will be cut almost half. Unfortuntly we cannot get the tankless (looked into it, we have a double wide)

A lot dont realize that if you dont flush out your hot water heater it actually takes more effort to run it. It covers parts of your elements at times or insulates your gas heat from the water as well as taking away from the volume of your heater, not to mention rots out the bottom.

You can also pay close attention this time of year that there shouldnt be more than 10 degree difference between the outside temp and your attic temp. You have to move that hot air out or you are over working your AC and shortening the life of your shingles.

Those "vampire" power costs mainly come from anything that has a converter in the charger - phones. computers, anything with a clock and so on.

The CFL will help but remember that the only time a light uses energy is when it is turned on, like the tv and radio and fan.

Also the fuller your freezers and fridges stay the less they have to run to keep cool ( and since it is garden time that shouldnt be an issue )

I work for a utility company and these are a few things that we actually send out to our customers to help them reduce their power comsumption. We actually have certain days of the week that we work "lights out" and only use our desk lamps so we can turn off the huge over head light (and we actually make the power )

Good Luck, Hope it helps

Hobby

Great thread

We have really high electric bills for our little house but I have a bit of an unusual circumstance. I have an adult autistic son who goes around the house turning everything on. When we go somewhere I send him out to the car by himself for a bit to listen to the stereo and then I spend 10 minutes running around the house turning everything off

The frustrating thing is when I turn everything off at night and he waits for me and hubby to go to sleep and turns it all back on again

We replaced our windows last summer and that has helped a ton with heating and cooling. Our old windows were single pane metal frame from the 50s. We used to run a separate electric heater in the livingroom it would get so cold. You could sit and watch the curtains blow even when the windows were closed and the storm windows were on.

As for a solar clothes dryer, I lost mine to the ducks. It now has deer netting draped over it to keep the hawks from beheading my fluffy friends. I am working on a new place to hang a line closer to the house. That should help counteract some of Max's obsessive need to turn on all of the electronics

Good job Beavis...You have reminded me to do some of those things. I am very frugal with everything. We ALWAYS turn everything off when we are not in the room and taught this to our kids. They are now very conscientious adults.

I have changed my light bulbs but I admit there are a few left to be done. Last year my dryer broke and I tried the clothes line for about 8 months. I had to wash very early in the morning so that my clothes would dry by evening. The weather started getting cooler and it started getting harder to dry them. I broke down and got new energy efficient washer/dryer since one of my parents gets a hugh discount for friends and family on GE appliances.

Our monthly electrical bill is not very high. We don't have or need AC in the bay area.

I will look into getting a power strip to turn everything off at night. We are guilty of leaving the computer and cell phone chargers plugged in.

Mary