Saving on Energy Expenditure the Easy Way
Savings on energy expenditure can give immediate financial benefits. Groceries, energy, health care, and almost anything else you need in your daily life: it seems to be rising everywhere. Everywhere you look you can see that prices are going up in areas that affect the way you live. If you have to spend more money for big items like your medical care, basic food and gas and electricity, that leaves less available for other things. Important priorities like your rent or mortgage and monthly health insurance premiums are harder to reduce without taking drastic action, but your energy usage is an area where you can cut down on your costs without making really big changes. These things won’t even cost you to start saving. Start saving money today by using these easy steps.
Lower your temperature to 68 in winter. You can save up to 5% on each heating bill by lowering your thermostat from 72 to 68 degrees.
Use window treatments to reduce your home’s temperature. In the summer, close your south and west facing blinds or curtains. Keeping sunlight out of the house will reduce the burden on your air conditioner and will make your rooms cooler. During the winter, do the opposite. Open your blinds and curtains on sunny days to let the sun warm your rooms. When the sun goes down, close them again to keep the warmth from escaping.These simple steps can reduce your energy expenditure.
Do your laundry in cold water to reduce energy expenditure. About 90% of the energy used for washing clothes is used in heating up the water. Use cold water and you eliminate this expenditure. Just use warm water when you’re washing whites. Modern detergents do a pretty good job .
Only run the dishwasher when it’s full. Your dishwasher accounts for about 2% of your home’s overall energy bill. Don’t run partial loads with it. Wait until it is as full as possible before you turn it on.
Keep your refrigerator coils clean. If the coils are dirty, your refrigerator will not run efficiently. Pull your refrigerator out from the wall every six months and check the condenser coils and clean them as needed. The home refrigerator can account for 6% or moreover 6% of home energy consumption, so make sure it runs properly to keep your costs low.
Run ventilation fans only when you really have to. Your bathroom’s vent fans can expel and replace your home’s entire volume of air in as little as one hour! Letting exhaust fans run for extended periods of time will suck your heated or cooled air out of your house and replace it with more air. This will boost your cooling and heating costs and that’s entirely unnecessary.
Use a shower head with a low-flow design. It will save you water and also the energy to heat up the water. You can purchase one very inexpensively. Installation is nothing harder than opening and re-closing the lid on a jar.
In summer, set your thermostat to 78 degrees or even higher if you can get acclimated to it. You can save a lot by raising the temperature from 72 to 78 degrees. Your air conditioner is probably your home’s most energy intensive system, so even small decreases can offer big benefits to your energy expenditure.
Fix leaky faucets to reduce your energy expenditure. A leaky faucet can easily waste hundreds of gallons of water over the course of a year. What’s more, if the leak is hot water you are sending a lot of money literally down the drain. Water heating usually accounts for about 10-15% of household energy costs. Those drips add up to big expenses and they are completely avoidable.
Information made available courtesy of Automated Homefinder, your Colorado resident experts for homes in Louisville CO.




