Following on from last week's electricity savings tips, here are another 5. Some are so simple and easy you'll wonder why you hadn't thought of it before.
* Charge your mobile phone in the car while driving to and from work. If possible, charge it as work too.
* Try to time your shower during daylight hours ( if possible ). No need to turn the bathroom light on if there's enough light coming through the bathroom window.
* Ask for a better deal from your electricity supplier. This should be done once a year to make the most of the current deal being offered.
* When possible, try to squeeze in your housework and hobbies ( like crafting ) during the daytime. This can avoid lights being turned on. If you work and others are in the house during the day, ask them to run the vacuum around or to give the bathroom sinks a wipe. Another alternative is to do all your housework on your days off.
* Check that your outside porch lights haven't been left on by accident. We have quite a few neighbours in our street who have outside lights on ALL night. Usually they get turned off well into the day. If you are expecting someone to come home at a certain time at night, turn the porch light on 10 minutes before they arrive. Even better, get them to ring you when they are on their way home.
Porch lights are something where a timer of some sort would be very helpful. I don't know how you would be able to do this on the cheap. It would take a long time to recoup in electricity savings what was spent on hardware. Depending on the fixture, it might be possible to add a motion detector to the existing fixture. We do have a motion detector light over our garage door that comes on whenever there is motion in the driveway. I love this! As a result, we mostly enter the house through the garage and rarely use the porch light. (You are right that many of our neighbors, too, leave theirs on all night). Adding a motion detector light over the garage wouldn't be too expensive if you could wire it yourself. We had it wired when we built the house and there wasn't any additional cost except the fixture, which was cheap. It often costs more when you have to work with what you have.
ReplyDelete--Maxine
Thank you for your hints. I am guilty of forgetting to turn off porch lights. Our home is quite dark due to trees and verandahs. Yesterday was a great lesson for those of us who were affected but the Callide power station problem. I was driving and about 20 kms of roads without traffic light control. I was grateful that the traffic lights were on near to home as we have many schools close to home. However, mum agreed to use less light last night and I slept far better with the house in darker conditions.
ReplyDeleteFor those who need to leave lights on for the frailer members in their household look into changing your bulbs to modern LEDS. Our toilet light is now super bright and provides quite a lot of illumination in the house. It costs less to.
We have contacted an Architect for major renovations to our home, and have asked for all the new sockets to have an on/off switch. This is not common in Belgium. The Architect is not the cheap option, but we cannot do it ourselves, and workmen just won't come for the small jobs, so we lumped them all together and asked the Architect to deal with everything; all 'problems' (major and minor), and uptodate insulation and ventilation. We should be set for life after the renovation. And we are in an up-and-coming area, where the house should still sell for a profit after so many years.
ReplyDeleteSorry, this seems to be only half-linked to your blogpost :)