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I love seeing how much we use each day (laundry days cost us an extra $1). I also love comparing to neighbours with similar houses and give myself a little high five for being consistently under their usage :)
(Light blue is our usage, dark blue is for our neighbours)
(I love seeing how much we use each day.)
I just signed up for `Team Power Smart'. If you reduce your usage by 10% over 12 months, they give you $75 (plus, just think of your bill being reduced by about 10% each month). I'm not sure how much more we can save but I will try! Here is our usage, for home size, number of occupants and type of heating. Pretty good!
Have you ever checked out your daily usage? Do you know how much you spend on average per day? Anyone going to join `Team Power Smart' and try to reduce their usage by 10% this year?
Hope you are having a good day!
Love, Louise
**PS Added later: Did you know the two greatest energy suckers in your home are water heating and home heating? There are some great tips here to figure out how to reduce them. We always wash our clothes in cold water and replace our furnace filter :)**
**PS Added later: I didn't know earlier but both our furnace AND hot water tank are gas which obviously affects the numbers. This would add an additional $1 (summer)-$2 (winter)/day. I think I can still compare with the neighbours though as our houses were all built by the same developers. I've now lowered our nighttime temperature to 17 C, maybe we'll go lower? What is your nighttime temperature?**
Since we moved (in Nov) we aren't paying our own utilities anymore. But when we did, I totally enjoyed checking our daily usage and seeing how we could cut down more. We had our house at about 18 or 19 during the day and 15 at night, with lots of blankets! In the summer I loved using our clothesline instead of our dryer too. I tried to dry 1/3-1/2 of our laundry that way (I often did laundry in the evenings so those loads went into the dryer.) Fun times. :) And I'll admit that went hydro is included in our rent, I'm not nearly as careful about it. Is that bad?! Probably...
ReplyDeleteThat's awesome! It's definitely a lot harder in Alberta to monitor that... 19 degrees in our house wouldn't cut it when it's -30 or colder outside!! We definitely turn the heat down at night but that's about it and the lights are usually off depending on how cloudy of a day it is. But good for you guys! I hope you can achieve that goal! We also don't pay our utility bills so I still try to watch our usage but have no idea how much is being paid out for it!
ReplyDeleteI usually check when we get our bill. Compared to our neighbors though, we are WAAAAY higher. BUT, that is because our hot water tank is electric and all our heat in the basement suite is electric baseboard heaters. our gas bill is tiny compared to most people because it is just the heat for our upstairs (which we keep quite cool too). So I try not to check the neighborhood comparisons because I know we're way higher but for good reason. but we're pretty good about light usage and unplugging things that we aren't using.
ReplyDeleteCharissa, it would def. be easier not to care as much if you aren't paying for it :) In some ways I'm driven by the environment (cloth diapers etc) but for some reason, hydro is not one of them. 15 at night...hmm....I think I will lowers ours too!!
ReplyDeleteKelsey-I can imagine that your utility bills are much higher due to the cold!
Kelly-Yes, so true about electric and gas. I didn't realize that both of our furnace and hot water tank are gas so when you add that on, it's an additional $1-$2 a day for it's usage!
I've never looked at the comparison with our neighbours before...now I'm giving myself a big pat on the back :) Our nightime temperature is set to 15.
ReplyDeleteSadly, we are part of ontario hydro which has time of use fees. So from 7pm-7am you pay $, 7-11am you pay $$$ (in the winter, $$ in summer) and from 11-5 you pay $$, and from 5-7pm you pay $$$. While our house uses minimal for hydro (propane stove, oil furnace and no baseboard heaters etc), our barn fans run constantly during the summer heat to try keep our barn at 9*, and we milk each day from 5-7pm (huuuuuge hydro!) and then again in the am from 545-730/8ish. Soooo our hydro bills are brutal. Like in the thousands...but we do only run barn towel laundry during the $ hours and do our own laundry/run the dishwasher etc at $ times as well. Sucks doing the laundry at night as it seems the day never ends..but summertime clothes are on the clothesline so at least they're out of sight! And one bonus: 90% of our hydro is written off :)
ReplyDeleteTerri-Yay! Okay, we are going down to 15C at night!
ReplyDeleteAdrienne-oh wow, never even thought about the HUGE cost you have!! So frustrating that $$$ coincides with milking time. Glad you can write it off. We get to write off 15% :)
Oh, so jealous that you can keep your thermostat that low! We have to keep ours around 21 during the day and 19-20 at night because of the temperatures here and the fact that we have an older home. :-(
ReplyDeleteOurs is probably double the cost of yours(thanks Australia!), but our bills are usually half the amount of colleagues/neighbours. We don't own a dryer or dishwasher and unlike north America, we can turn off our power points with a wall switch which saves a lot of money. They only thing that is always on is the fridge/freezer and oven (no wall switch). We don't have any heat/cooling systems either except a fan in summer and a portable heater in winter. We bundle up in winter and strip down in summer! Im sure our bill will go up once baby comes as I will be doing much more laundry!
ReplyDeleteLynn, so interesting!!
DeleteEdwin totally checks his/our usage regularly! I sent this post to him to read since I thought he would really appreciate it ;) We try to just wear sweaters and have blankets on the couch. His place is all windows so during the day if the blinds are open and sun comes in, it warms it a decent amount even in the winter. Its usually 15 all the time, unless its freezing, then 20ish, but that's only ever for a day or so every now and then.
ReplyDeleteMy husband thinks our house is cold at 21 degrees. We can't really turn it down at night because our bedroom upstairs is so much colder anyway (around 16 in the winter at night - the sun warms it up to over 20 during the day) Last night it was -30 degrees outside - a new low for our part of Ontario for the last day in February
ReplyDelete