It is coming. You know it is. The weather in December of 2014 was cooperative, but winter is headed our way. This high energy time of year can take more of your spending dollar than you want to give. Maybe today is a good day to take a walk through your home and consider your energy consumption.
In your laundry room, do you wash and dry full loads? Do you wash as many loads as possible in cold or warm water, rather than hot? Do you check the lint filter after every load in your clothes dryer?
Have you installed low-flow showerheads in your bathroom?
Do you shut the drapes or blinds to block out summer sun and winter chill? Have you installed compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs) in your home, across all lighting that you can?
Have you unblocked any heating registers, air supplies and return vents? Have you unplugged the standby power culprits in your home such as rarely used televisions, VCRs, and other electronics? Do you turn your computer monitor off instead of letting it remain in sleep mode?
Is the temperature of your refrigerator set between 37 – 40 degrees? Is the seal of your refrigerator and freezer still working to seal the cold in? To clean food off dishes, do you scrape food off rather than rinse them under running water? Before starting your dishwasher do you let the hot water run to get the water entering the dishwasher to come up to temperature so the heating element doesn’t have to work as hard?
I don’t know how you did with these questions, but I find a few corrections to make every time I look around the house. If you don’t have a programmable thermostat, installing one may allow you to manage your heating and cooling across the day. The U.S. Department of Energy says you can save as much as 10% a year on heating and cooling by simply turning your thermostat back 7 – 10 degrees for 8 hours a day from its normal setting (www.energy.gov/energysaver). You can do this automatically by using a programmable thermostat and scheduling the times you turn on the heating or air conditioning. Programmable thermostats can store multiple daily settings that you can manually override without affecting the rest of the day or weekly program.
Interested in learning more? Check out the Consumers’ Fact Sheet under Smart Energy. Your work today might leave a little more money in your pocket for tomorrow.
