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We have saved about $20/month which really adds up. What was one of the biggest changes? We used our programmable thermostat to lower our daily temperature by a couple of degrees and our night temperature by even more. We also lowered the thermostats in our bedrooms by about 5 degrees.
Did you know that turning down the heat 2 degrees saves 5%? Even better, lowering it by 5 degrees for 8 hours (night time!) can give you a 10% savings! Yes, our home might be a tad bit cooler than most people's but we just put on a sweater during the day or use our fleece sheets at night!
Their website has a lot of tips for saving electricity and money if you are interested!
Have a great weekend.
Love, Louise
That's awesome!!!
ReplyDeleteAt our old house in Langley we had forced air/gas furnace and we had a programmable thermostat. We actually had one in our townhouse too, and at first Brent programmed it to drop during the day "while we were out" until I pointed out how asinine that was because he was the only one not home during the day. After about a year of arguing he changed it to drop just at night.
ReplyDeleteWhen we moved to our house for some reason he decided to set it to drop two degrees lower than our previous house and it was so cold while we were sleeping that it kept waking me up at night. I'm a light sleeper, I was breastfeeding at night, and I have insomnia. Being woken up by cold air was adding insult to injury.
Brent tried to argue that seventeen wasn't that low! But I countered that I know how a negative feedback loop works, so it was actually dropping to 15 degrees before kicking in. Even with two down duvets it was still waking me up! Sleeping with a hat on was too itchy.
I eventually won that one too and we readjusted the furnace. Being frugal is great but there are limits; interrupting an insomniac's sleep is one of them!!
Then we moved here, and we have a wood stove!!!!!!!! It's AWESOME! It warms up the brick chimney which warms the floors and walls, which warms the air; all for the cost of the time it takes for us to gather wood in the summer and pile it in the woodshed. Hurrah!
We still have a high energy bill despite this, however; but it's high in the summer too which makes us suspect the very old appliances in our house. We replaced the (original!!!) hot water tank, and the stove. But the biggest drain on energy bills is the fridge generally, and we have two of those. Old ones. And a deep freeze. Computers that are left on all the time are apparently a big energy drain too? So we try and keep ours off but i am not sure how helpful that is since the computer goes to sleep all the time anyways.
Long story short, we need to replace our fridge. Ditto the dishwasher. And we've got some supplies together to re insulate some parts of the house. We are thinking of moving the deep freeze to the garage where it won't have to work so hard to stay cool. The bedrooms all have electric heaters but we rarely use them because all you need to do is open the door and the air from the rest of the house will warm it up.
ANYWAYS. Wood stove; GOOD. Not cool in urban areas, but if you ever move!!! I highly recommend ;)
I save by washing all of our clothes and towels on COLD. No Hot Water there!! :)
ReplyDeleteI agree about appliances! We replaced our washer/dryer with a front end high efficiency one and that has also saved us a lot. Definitely second biggest change after the heating.
ReplyDeleteMel-with you and Ali living in small towns now I can definitely see the appeal!