Are your utility bills just too high? Well, lowering them doesn’t require spending money on green power gadgets or sacrificing your rationality. With a few adjustments and a few simple tricks to the way you operate your appliance, you can drive your home’s utility bill down.
Adjust Your Thermostat
Based on your family’s schedule, you can automatically program your thermostat to set the target temperature. During summer months, set your thermostat to 76-78 degrees when your family is at home, and off when they are not. Let it return to more comfortable temperatures a few minutes before you get home. If you can turn your thermostat down in the winter, and up in the summer, the more you are going to save.
Laundry Efficiency
Try using cold water to wash your clothes. In fact, about 90 percent of the energy your washers use goes to heat the water. Reaching for that hot water faucet should not be a necessity: the detergents formulated for cold water will still get your clothes clean. Doing your laundry at night is the best way to minimize energy demand during the peak hours. This means that your local power generation facility can run at a more efficient capacity. Depending on the type of electricity meter your home is outfitted with, and where you live, you may pay less for off-peak energy.
Install Kitchen and Bathroom Faucet Aerators
Heating water for your home-use is one of the most energy demanding processes. Providing the kitchen with an easy-to-install aerator can increase water pressure, reduce water wastage, and allow you to direct the flow where it is needed for washing and rinsing food, dishes, and the sink itself. Similarly, you can replace your bathroom faucet aerators that use more than 2.0 gallons of water per minute with a 0.5 to 1.0 gallon per minute aerators. This will significantly reduce the amount of water wasted and save your energy whenever you use warm water.
Turn Appliances and Electronics Off
Some appliance and electronics have more impact than other when it comes to energy consumption. Watch out for: electronic kettles, modern video game system, always-on desktop computers and television sets, especially the plasma-based displays. Reducing energy consumption with appliances and electronics requires you to turn them off when not in use. However, if you have several devices and appliances, shutting them down regularly could be annoying. The easiest solution is to stick all the appliances and electronics on a power strip and turn off the power strip when sleeping or going out. In the case of computers, even letting them sleep can draw a considerable amount of power, so you should shut them off completely.
Install Power Saving Lighting System
Replace the power consuming incandescent light bulbs with compact florescent lights that consume less energy over the course of the year that can significantly save you money. Turning off the lights is a 100 percent free way to reduce your home’s utility bills. If the lights aren’t in use, turn them off, and when this is stressful for you, install timers on all your lights so that they can be turned off automatically.
Match Up Your Meters and Utility Bills
It is very sad that you are charged twice for water you use monthly. The assumption is that every gallon of water you run out of your faucet is going back down to the drains. However, if you use water to irrigate your garden or lawn, that water never makes it into the sewer system. The amount you pay to the sewerage company will reduce significantly.
These simple tasks can add up to noticeable savings on your home’s utility bills. Do you math and free yourself from unnecessary burden.