what ive done to reduce power consumption at home..
 

We are leasing a house and we love our leased home.

Fortunately our house is brick and pretty well insulated. We live in texas and in the summer our house temp stays pretty consistant... We had lots of shade trees, but unfortunately several months ago, we had a very rare snow storm - nine inches of snow! it destroyed the huge oak tree in our front yard thus a lot of our summer shade has now gone, but we still have sevaral shade trees left.

But I have:
- replaced all our light bulbs with compact flouro's,
-just installed a programmable thermostat for our AC/heater,
-we dont turn the AC temp below 74 degrees ever, set even higher when we are usually gone
-I have been cleaning off the AC radiator thing outside to keep off the dust collection
-we have an LCD tv now
-all our PC monitors are LCD now as well
-my PC has a Plus80 cert. power supply and a effecient dual core AMD cpu
-i got a kilowatts device to check my consumption on various appliances
-i go around the house and turn things off that my life leaves on
-i planted my tomatoes in a raised bed this year instead of planter pots, i pretty much dont have to water them anymore and they are thriving(deeper roots)

that all i can think of at the moment.

Last summer we were hit with some $600+ power bills in a house I was leasing in Fort Lauderdale. The first thing we did was raise the temperature. It had been on 75, we raised it to 83. I sweat constantly so usually I have the A/C cranked wherever I go but somehow I got used to 83 around the house.

The next thing we did was clean the filter on our A/C and we found that the return duct was partially disconnected in the attic, so it was not recirculating the house air but rather trying to cool the 130+ deg attic air.

We sealed off all the windows with saran wrap, and stopped running our pool pump every day. At the end of the next month we were down to $350/month. Still outrageous but much better than $600. The house really needed new windows all the way around and a new front door.

At my new place power is included in the rent but I still try to turn off lights and my extra hard drives when I don't need them. One good thing to do is to blow out all the dust that has accumulated on the evaporator and condenser in your A/C unit.

Clothes dryer! Clothes dryer! Clothes dryer!

These suck a lot more energy than people realize. Not just for themselves, but because as they blow air out of your house, hot air is sucked into your house ("makeup air"). This makes your A/C work overtime to cool this TREMENDOUS amount of air. You might not realize it because the air is usually only sucked in small amounts- a bit around this window, a little through a bathroom vent, etc., but your A/C will realize it because it struggles so hard to keep up.

During hot weather, ALWAYS run your clothes dryer first thing in the morning when outside air is coolest- this way your A/C has to cool the makeup air from 76 to 74 instead of from 95 to 74.

(During cold weather, run the clothes dryer during the hottest temp of the day, usually 1-3 p.m.)

Or, better yet, hang your clothes on a clothesline. :thumbup:

-Bob C.

...or even a drying rack indoors. Air-drying is better for the longevity of your cloths and doesn't shrink them like the dryer does.

My only questions are how to avoid creases from hanging (and wrinkles for sleeves that can't be supported), and what to do about all that lint...I'd love to not use my dryer, which besides the air thing, uses a lot of electricity too.

Don't really use a rack so it's hard to say. I'd wager you'd have to become acquainted with another outmoded technology - clothes ironing!

more stuff that i forgot to mention that i got going on:

-last week i replaced our three sink aireators with low flow units (from 2.0 gpm to 1.5gpm)
-we have new high effeciency front loading washer and High E dryer. the washer and dryer are in our garage so they do minimal exhausting of the AC i would imagine, the garage isnt very cool inside.

Sounds like you and I are on the same page here meangreen. I posted a similar thread just a few days ago in this section.

just read yours...

I also have since we moved in,

-started composting all the leaves (or most of them) in our back yard and ALL the grass clipings in an unused flower bed in our back yard ( about 6x30foot space )
-have another bin (rubbermaid trash can with tiny aireation holes) that i compost my kitchen scraps in - keeps the dogs from eating them)
-tried vermiculture (red wigglers) for a while...
- use my own compost for planting instead of store bought dirt

things i d like to do one day(when i have my own house):
-get a push style non gas non electric grass cutter
-reuse my washing machine grey water for lawn watering
-reroute as much roof gutter water into a collection barrel and use it for watering garden
-One day >> get a solar grid going on!! ive been a subscriber to solar power magazine for a while now, and it would be awsome to actually become a solar power installer - im really surprised here in texas people arent using solar power at all. i think in the very near future it will/may become very popular (3000-4000 square foot houses everywhere here! ) their electricity bills are probly pretty damn high i imagine.

a project i have been meaning to start is:
a gravity-using watering system for my garden, using one of those battery powered hose timers and a bucket. pretty simply concept, and ive got all i pretty much need for it currently. just havent hit the summer extreme heat here in texas yet and my garden is doin pretty well atm...



also, we have a pretty good refuse pick up in the city i live in.

they have recyclin and garbage pick up, plus they have a crew that picks up strictly compostable yard refuse and uses it to make compost that you can buy back from them. they collect leaves, grass, tree limbs etc on trash day.

our recycling bin is very often too full, and our garbage is typically a 1/4 full. the recycling bin(can) is the same size as our trash can.