Our gas and electric bills are so high. We have been trying to lower them by turning down the thermostat during the winter months when we are sleeping and when we are gone all day long. We have a programmable thermostat that allows us to just program these times in so it lowers and raises the thermostat for us. How many people are trying to lower their gas and heating bills by going with this method? What other things are you doing to lower your gas or heating bills each month? We are trying to save money on our electric bill by using very little electricity during the daytime hours. We try not to have the TV on during the daytime hours, which works for us since we don't have any young children here anymore. I don't use the washer, dryer, dishwasher, stove or oven during the daytime hours. What are you doing to help lower your electric bills each month? Is there something else that you can recommend for me and for others to do to help lower our monthly gas and electric bills? All these things can help save a lot of money each month which should calculate to a large savings in a years time. I love saving money as I'm sure that all of you do too.
Try replacing all your light bulbs at home with LED light bulbs. When they are all replaced and you compare your bill after, you will see results. It might not be a big difference, but it's a significant decrease nonetheless.
I use cold water in the laundry as much as possible, make sure lights are shut off when not in use, turn down the thermostat as much as possible and unplug appliances & computers when not in use. Yep, the bill is still too high!
CFL light bulbs have made a noticeable difference on my electric bill. Also showering with the light's off, seriously, can save quite a bit money. I've memorized where all of my soaps are in my shower, so what's the point of having the light on. Of course the obvious things such as turning things off when not using them, is a must. I also bought an automatic fan controller for my bedroom. When the temperature gets to a certain number, it shuts off, saving electricity throughout the night.
I had some articles written on these, they are mine entirely, so I can share them: How to save energy from household appliances: " Many of us can save energy from household appliances we use everyday, like laptops, TV sets,vacuum cleaners,fridges,refrigerators, microwave oven, washing machines and other without knowing it. There are two key aspects about this: 1 – You save precious energy, lowering carbon emissions (they may be small savings of carbon emission, but on long term and at large scale they really do matter) that reduces the effects of global warming. 2 – You save money otherwise spent on that energy that is not used.This may not be a high value per appliance or per day, but summed up it can really save you real money everyday, every year. For example an economical class air conditioner machine consumes on average 1.1 KW per hour. Saving two hours per day, 3 months per year ( using the method described below) can save you up to 200 KWH. The average price of electricity in USA was 12 cents per KWH in August 2011. So 200 KWH x 0.12$ = 24 $. Take notice that the price can go up to 50 cents per KWH, savings up to 100$ per three months. How can you do this? If you live in a area where the nights are chilli or moderate and the days hot (or if you have a normal summer), you can save 2-3 hours at least per day by opening the window at night or in the morning. The air has a much lower temperature that will cool the room, and it’s also much cleaner, since there are few cars in the night polluting the air. But when it gets hot, windows must be shut to protect the house from heating. This method suits perfectly those households in which at least one of the family members wakes up early in the morning (like a parent that goes to work) and the others after 2-3 hours, so they can close the windows (like children that go to school) Another way of how to save energy from household appliances is to unplug all devices that are in standby. If you are at home, just take a look around. There is surely at least 5 appliances in standby that you are probably using rarely. Here can be included : TV’s that you don’t watch (especially over night), laptops that remain plugged in even if you don’t use them, monitors, system sounds, phone chargers, even PCs and many others. They consume power because they all have displays or LED lights that are on even if you don’t use them. It may not be much, but consider you have a lot of devices in your house that use it for nothing basically. Also you are less exposed to fire hazards that can be caused by any malfunction of these electrical devices. Some of the biggest electrical power consumers in a household are the fridges. Fridges use electrical power to heat up a gas until it vaporizes, that leading to a sudden temperature drop that cools the inside of the refrigerator. The way in which the refrigerator knows when to start is determined by the thermostat that determines the temperature inside the fridge. Many people think that if the fridge is empty or has little aliments on it , the consumed power is reduced. Wrong! The fridge will actually heat up inside more often, so the thermostat will start it more often, resulting higher power consume. The best thing to do when there are little or none aliments in the refrigerator is to put some bottles with cold water inside it (water can be taken from your faucet), but be careful no to fill the bottles up entirely, only about 85%, because when the water freezes it expands it volume!!!. The water will freeze and keep your refrigerator interior cooled, so the thermostat doesn’t starts that often. Also, whenever possible try to do the tasks by yourself instead of the appliances. Like if you have dishes that are really not that dirty, wash them yourself instead of putting them into a dishwasher machine. This can apply also for clothes and washing machines. And also if you have some little dirt on the floor, consider brushing it yourself with a broom instead of starting a vacuum cleaner, which by the way usually consumes a lot of power. For the final, always consider purchasing household appliances that have superior energetic classes for consumption. They use less power and will surely save you money on the long term, even if they are a little more expensive at the moment of purchase."
I think your comment about unplugging items is huge. My husband used to think I was nuts when I would tell him that I wanted to unplug things around the house when we went to bed at night, or when I would charge my cell phone during the day so that we wouldn't need to leave it plugged in all night. But when I asked him to start doing it with me just to see if we could save some money, we were astounded at how much our electrical bill went down. I know my parents will go as far as to unplug their televisions sometimes. Ours are kind of hard to get to, but if we could, I would! I didn't really think about the vacuum cleaner consuming so much energy, but I will have to keep that in mind. I run ours every couple of days because we have two small children with allergies, so I need to keep it relatively dust free in our house. But I also run it over the kitchen and bathroom floors and really wouldn't need to do so! Thanks for the post!
Try unplugging any appliances that you are not using at the time like your toaster, microwave, or anything else electrical. This will help big time as well.
I live in an area where we need the service of ceiling fans almost throughout the year and after monitoring the electric meter I've noticed that ceiling fans consume quite a good amount of electricity. So I try to run them at slow speed when possible and switch off when the weather is a bit cool. I also use CFLs instead of light bulbs and switch off the refrigerator when not in use.
We recently have been evaluated. We hired a company to come in and see what we can do to lower our electric bills. They suggested changing our water heater from electric to gas, putting insulation in between the walls where there is none and changing our entire house over to gas heat instead of electric. Although it is warming up we noticed our electric bill was really low this past month since some of the work was done. Our bill used to be $170-$200 in the spring. Last month it was only $80. While there are upfront costs, it will likely save you money in the long run. The evaluation lasted about 2 hours and they took a detailed look at every room in the house, including the attic to see what we could do. They used all kinds of machines to look through the walls to see where we were missing insulation. They also took this big machine to find out where air was coming in. To our surprise we were losing heat through our dishwasher....
We use cold water whenever possible. As our lights have burned out, I've been replacing them with the low energy lights. In addition, we have been using fans instead of the air conditioning, and keeping the a/c higher than normal. Heating and Cooling is the biggest cost, so that's what I feel like I need to target the most. My husband is a big advocate of turning off the lights when we leave. A friend of mine says she unplugs everything she can- but to me that seems so inconvenient with too little of a payout.
I turn up the heat in the morning for shower time and then it goes off for all the time I am out of the house. I set my thermostat for the lowest temp and then boost it when I come home. I close my blinds when it is cloudy and open them when it is sunny. I don't use the dry cycle on my dish washer and only fluff clothes after drying them on a drying rack first.I place a rolled up towel by the foot of all my exterior doors to stop drafts.If I am cooking something that can just sit in boiling water like pasta, I turn off heat and let it cook a longer time, but save energy.
unplugging devices when not in use is a huge help here's an infographic i found. Last winter, I bought a small electric heater for ~$30 on amazon, and just carried that around (there's only me and my girlfriend. Living room at day and bedroom at night.) instead of using the central heater, and it shaved off ~$20 on gas bill EACH MONTH! I highly suggest it!
Wow there are some great tips here! I love the Vampire energy chart lol. I am sold on unplugging appliances now. I would be fine with fans all summer, I grew up with out air conditioning, but my husband had COPD and the warm humid air is harder for him to breath. I am sure heating and cooling in he majority of our bill. We did see a 20-30 savings every month since we got a front loading washer and dryer set. We had a 20 year old set before and have 7 people in our family so that was a lot of wasted water and electricity.
There are some great ideas listed here. I never thought of unplugging the PC, just turning it off. So it won't mess anything up to just unplug the thing when it is not in use? I guess I thought maybe the date/clock would get messed up, and maybe some of the automatic updates. Obviously I am not a computer expert!
Well, right now,I'm trying my level best not to turn the air conditioner on. We turn lights off. In the winter, we use wood heat.
Those are all good ideas. Even if each only saves a little, they do add up. If there are rooms in your house that aren't used regularly, close the heat vents, unless there are water pipes in there. I live alone in a big house and most of it is shut off from the heat. I have a window air conditioner that is only used on the very hottest days. An on-demand water heater will also save you a lot of money in the long run.
Well, for one thing, our fridge is always set to the lowest level to save on electricity. Our AC is also set to go off at a certain time after midnight so we wouldn't have to leave it on.
As far as gas saving tips, I commute on occasions and do car pools. Ultimately I use my motorcycle far cheaper in terms of mileage plus to mention it lets me avoid traffic.
These are some great ideas, I already use the energy efficient light bulbs, but I am going to try unplugging items. My mother does it all the time and I never really thought of it in terms of saving money. But I am going to take heed to unplugging items that are not in use, I have also started charging my cell phone with the USB chord on my computer so I am using the laptop energy and charging them both at once. Not sure if this helps but I often find that I am watching movies on my laptop/ipad and not using the television as much so I have began charging up my laptop and watching movies from it more than really using the dvd/TV. I live in Atlanta so it tends to get very humid, at night I usually open windows and try to get a cross breeze rather than running my ceiling fans so much too, it’s definitely been a help.
