- Ask your local electric or gas utility for a free or low-cost home energy audit. The audit may reveal inexpensive ways to reduce home heating and cooling costs by hundreds of dollars a year. Keep in mind that a payback period of less than three years, or even five years, usually will save you lots of money in the long-term.Weatherproof your home: Caulk holes and cracks that let warm air escape in the winter and cold air escape in the summer. Your local hardware store has materials, and quite possibly useful advice, about inexpensively stopping unwanted heat or cooling loss.Air seal your home: Most homes have some air leaks that make the job of keeping it cool in summer and warm in winter that much harder – and that much more costly for you. Spend an afternoon air sealing your home – the DoE has a guide on basic air sealing
- Check the insulation in your home: Extra insulation can easily pay for itself in one or two years, and it helps save the environment, too.
- Install a programmable thermostat: These devices regulate the temperature in your house automatically according to the schedule that you set. Thus, when you’re not home, it allows the heating or cooling to turn off for several hours, saving you on your energy bill. A programmable thermostat can easily cut your energy bill by 10 to 20%. Nest is the new generation programmable thermostat that learns and connects to WiFi so it can be controlled remotely, great if you travel a lot, just remember ANYTHING WiFi is a security risk and trackable by hackers or government types.
- Lower the temperature on your thermostat in the winter and raise it in the summer. For every degree that you lower your home’s temperature during the cooler months, you can subtract about 5% from your bill.
- Convert to a gas or solar water heater: They are more efficient and will save you money in the long run.
- Add extra insulation to your water heater. If you have a water heater built before 2004, you can wrap it with an insulating jacket and save about $30 a year on your water heating bill.
- Water Use Savings - Fix Leaks: You can significantly reduce hot water use by simply repairing leaks in fixtures -- faucets and showerheads -- or pipes. A leak of one drip per second can cost $1 per month.
- Water Use Savings: If you pay for water use, live in an arid or drought area, installing low-flow fixtures and aerators will save water and money. Aerators for faucets and showers require an initial capital investment, but they often pay back the investment in less than a year, especially when they are used often.
- Some utility companies and cities offer rebates or other incentives for buying high-efficiency toilets or plumbing fixtures. Check with your local agencies or take a look at the WaterSense rebate finder
- Water Use Savings - Faucets: The aerator -- the screw-on tip of the faucet -- ultimately determines the maximum flow rate of a faucet. Typically, new kitchen faucets come equipped with aerators that restrict flow rates to 2.2 gpm, while new bathroom faucets have ones that restrict flow rates from 1.5 to 0.5 gpm. Aerators are inexpensive to replace and they can be one of the most cost-effective water conservation measures. For maximum water efficiency, purchase aerators that have flow rates of no more than 1.0 gpm. Some aerators even come with shut-off valves that allow you to stop the flow of water without affecting the temperature.
- Water Use Savings - Shower heads: For maximum water efficiency, select a shower head with a flow rate of less than 2.5 gpm. There are two basic types of low-flow showerheads: aerating and laminar-flow. Aerating showerheads mix air with water, forming a misty spray. Laminar-flow showerheads form individual streams of water. If you live in a humid climate, you might want to use a laminar-flow showerhead because it won't create as much steam and moisture as an aerating one. Before 1992, some showerheads had flow rates of 5.5 gpm.
Therefore, if you have fixtures that pre-date 1992, you might want to replace them if you're not sure of their flow rates.
- Be aware: Those “luxury shower towers” or pie-plate-sized, monsoon-downpour-imitating fixtures are major water-wasters; they can use as much as 20 gallons of water per minute!
- Using ultra-low-flow showerheads will also save you money on your energy bills, by reducing the demand on your water heater. According to the WaterSense program, a household could save 300 kilowatt hours of electricity annually, enough to power its television use for about a year.
- Have your furnace "tuned" every two years and you will, “save about 1250 lbs of carbon dioxide and 10% on your heating bills.”
- Set your water heater to 120 degrees (Fahrenheit for the international folks). Even if you don’t have a temperature gauge on your water heater, they suggest turning it down, “until the water feels hot, not scalding.”
- Water Use Savings - High-efficiency, Water Saving Toilets: Toilets are often the source of the most water use (and water wasting) within a home, accounting for nearly 30 percent of an average home’s indoor water consumption. If you have a toilet(s) that uses more than 1.6 gallons of water per flush (gpf)—as do almost all toilets installed before 1994.
- Dishwashers: It's commonly assumed that washing dishes by hand saves hot water. However, washing dishes by hand several times a day can be more expensive than operating an energy-efficient dishwasher. You can consume less energy with an energy-efficient dishwasher when properly used and when only operating it with full loads.
- Clothes Washers: Unlike dishwashers, clothes washers don't require a minimum temperature for optimum cleaning. Therefore, to reduce energy costs, you can use either cold or warm water for most laundry loads. Cold water is always sufficient for rinsing. Inefficient clothes washers can cost three times as much to operate than energy-efficient ones.
- Use cold water to wash your clothes and you can save 50% of the energy that you would use if you used hot water. Save the hot water washes for those really dirty items like workout clothing and towels.
- Shut vents in unused rooms: This isn’t advisable if you have forced air heating, but shutting vents in unused rooms can save on your heating and cooling bill.
- Use window coverings to block or let in sunshine: In summer, use these coverings to block sunlight, keeping your house cool. In winter, open the coverings to let sunshine warm the house. You could easily save more than $100 annually while being more comfortable.
- Switch to native and drought tolerant and native plants. Try edible landscaping or xeriscaping.
- Adjust your lawnmower to the 3-inch setting. They say that longer grass holds moisture longer, so you will not have to water as much.
- Do some basic home and auto maintenance on a regular schedule: Instead of just waiting until something breaks to deal with it, develop a monthly maintenance schedule where you go around your home (and your car) and perform a bit of maintenance where it’s needed. This little activity, taking you just an hour or two a month, will keep things from breaking down and help you see problems before they become disasters.
- Choose home repair contractors wisely. Favor contractors who have successfully performed work for people you know. Insist on a written, fixed-price bid. Don't make full payment until satisfactory completion of the work.
- Be diligent about turning off lights before you leave: If you spend one minute turning off lights before a two hour trip, that’s the equivalent of earning $50 an hour. That’s some impressive savings, particularly if you do it before longer trips. The key is to use less energy, particularly when you’re not using the device.
- Change out Incandescent bulbs where possible: The only choices here are CFL or LED. CFL are cheaper than LED, yet have mercury in them. CFLs tend to use about 25% of the electricity of an incandescent – LEDs use about 2%. Mix and match to lower costs; example: Put LEDs in closets and out of the way places, use CFLs for hall and some room lighting, and use incandescent bulbs (until the other bulbs get better) where you read and do other eye-intensive activities. This will trim a significant amount from your electric bill.
- Reevaluate the stuff in the rooms in your house – Do a Contents and Usage Audit: Go into a room and go through every single item in it. Do you really need that item? Are you happy that it’s there, or would you be just fine if it were not? If you can find stuff to get rid of, get rid of it – it just creates clutter and it might have some value to others. You also improve the perceived value of your house – and you’re likely to get a lot of cleaning done in the process. It’s a frugal win-win-win. For detailed information on Contents Audits see Can you Afford your House Lifestyle?
Home Usage Audit Worksheet
- Live relatively near your workplace. While this isn't always possible, driving 5,000 miles less a year can lower transportation costs by more than $1,000.
- Rent out unused space in your home: Do you have an extra bedroom that’s not being used? Rent it out. In our home, we could, if times were tough, rent out our entire basement – it has a “living room,” a bedroom, and a bathroom and has a stairwell right by the kitchen. If we found the right person, this would bring in a lot of extra money.
- Don't pay for space you don't need- Buy a smaller house: Americans have relatively large houses and apartments. Think about more efficiently using space so you can purchase or rent less square footage. For detailed information on Home Usage Audits see Can you Afford your House Lifestyle?
Home Contents Audit Worksheet
- Look for a cheaper place to live: The cost of living in a neighboring town may be lower than the town you currently reside in. In Maine a neighboring town was almost $800 per year cheaper in property taxes and $300 per year cheaper in waste management fees. Take a serious look about moving to a less expensive area – if you can find work there, then a move can definitely put you in better financial shape. Rural areas offer great deals as long as you are willing to travel for cultural opportunities and amenities.
- Request a discount on trash service. For some reason this is a highly competitive business. Not every area has municipal waste management. If you live where this is so, shop around for your waste management service. If you find a better offer for trash service, call your current trash company and ask them to beat the offer.
- Buy appliances based on reliability, not what’s cheapest at the store: It’s worth the time to do a bit of research when you buy a new appliance. A reliable, energy efficient washer and dryer might cost you quite a bit now, but if it continually saves you energy and lasts for fifteen years, you’ll save significant money in the long run. When you need to buy an appliance, research it – start with back issues of Consumer Reports at the library. An hour’s worth of research can easily save you hundreds of dollars.
- Buy energy efficient appliances: Look for the Energy Star on appliances and consider the annual energy cost before buying. More efficient appliances cost more, but you make up the extra cost and then some over the life of the product.
- Do a “maintenance run” on your appliances: Check them to make sure there isn’t any dust clogging them and that they’re fairly clean. Look behind the appliances, and use your vacuum to gently clear away dust. Check all of the vents, especially on refrigerators, dryers, and heating and cooling units. The less dust you have blocking the mechanics of these devices, the more efficiently they’ll run (saving you on your energy bill) and the longer they’ll last (saving you on replacement costs).
- Make sure all your electrical devices are on a surge protector power strip: This is especially true of your entertainment center and your computer equipment. A power surge can damage these electronics very easily, so spend the money for a basic surge protector and keep your equipment plugged into such a device.
- To combat vampire power use: Use a power strip to turn off all "instant on" devices. Basically anything with a remote is "instant on". The 40-50 average items in a home that pull vampire power add up to about 30% of the monthly electric bill. Understand if you do this that your TV remote won't work until you turn the TV's power strip on and instead of the picture coming up in 2-4 seconds it can take 5-7 seconds.
- Invest in a deep freezer: A deep freezer, after the initial investment, is a great bargain. Understand that any chest deep freezer will be cheaper to run than any upright deep freezer. (dah - cold air sinks, open the door on an upright and all the cold air falls out!) You can use it to store all sorts of bulk foods, which enables you to pay less per pound of it at the market. Even better, you can store lots of meals prepared in advance, enabling you to just go home and pop something homemade (and cheap) in the oven.
Next week we will cover potential clothing/wardrobe savings