How I am on the verge of saving almost 1000$/ year on utilities

[MrSal]

Yes!

Almost 1000 dollars savings in utilities! And this with changes on trivial things in our patterns!

Here is the evolution graph:



Please be noted, that I only moved to my wife's house around October (We have been married almost 2 years but we had to endure a long process with Embassies and so on since I am not American) and started implementing a few changes.

First, I started off by changing the light bulbs around the house with CFLs and LEDs. She had incandescents in the house, which I was able to count a total output of around 1300 W with all the lights on.

We changed it all, and now the TOTAL OUTPUT is around 200 Watts for the lighting around the house.

This was the major change in electricity and also the heat, even though the furnace is Natural Gas, the reduction in heat led to less consumption of the blower.

As of now, we are using about 300 kWh per month, and this is during heating season which means, 50 kWh is exclusive to the blower and also our super old Fridge, which I believe is a Whirlpool Limited Edition with a serial number from either 1977 or 1987. Its usage is around 2.3 kWh a day, or around 70 kWh a month!

We are going to buy a new one to go with the kitchen renovation (I have a thread on the DIY section), this will lead to a decrease of around 30-35 kWh in usage with the new fridge at least.

The cooling season is coming but there I hope to see some changes too, even though we live in a very humid area in the summer.

All in all, since November the changes led to 100 USD savings in electricity and 332 USD savings on heat alone!

On heat, I bought a Nest, where we didn't have a programmable thermostat before. By programming it to a large setback for a long time (during our sleep ours and work hours) we were able to reduce bills by almost 50% !! and this is with a colder winter to go along and with gas being about 10% more expensive than last year as well!!

Another factor that led to a decrease in gas was we started to wash our clothes more with cold water. I would say 90% of the time you don't need warm water, or even hot water, only when there are tough stains.

I expect on a 12 month basis, the savings on heat to reach about 450 USD on Natural Gas.

Now to electricity. We have already saved 100 USD since November, and since heating season is basically over, I expect to see a drop of around 50 kWh from the furnace blower for the next couple months (operation hours of 90 hours during February and January). Of course we might need to use Air Conditioning during the cooling season too. But hold on there for a little bit.

With the programmable thermostat we probably won't need to heat during most part of the day, since we are OUT ... during the day is when heat is more intense, so at the most we'd need AC once we get home to make the house cooler and probably during sleep. This is WITHOUT changing our patterns. But at night on the other hand, is when temperatures are cooler so we probably wont even need much AC to sleep well maybe just a fan!

I expect of couse, as a mustachian to change the patterns, such as using fans instead of AC and so on.

But wait (there's more!) ... with just a phone call after visiting the PowerSwitch website, I switched from my current supplier to another, and our kWh rate was reduced from 9.55 cents to 7.29 cents !!

This is a reduction of 25% !!! on price alone!! ... it means that even if I dont change a rats ass of our patterns and keep hogging huge amounts of energy ... we still see a savings of AT LEAST 250 USD so the minimum we can expect is 450 USD from natural gas and 250 USD on electricity = 700 USD !! savings!

With a change in electricity patterns, mostly about AC and switching to fans whenever possible and also the use of the programmable function of the thermostat, we may achieve 560 USD per year on electricity ALONE! (with a change in patters allied with the price reduction).

1000 dollars per year is about 20k+ compounded after 10 years!

Note: I forgot to mention that we have reduced the usage of our dryer as well. Unlike MMM I dont think dryer should go to small objects just for the pain of hanging them. Those small objects barely have any wrinkles in them. I only use the dryer for nice clothing to take the wrinkles off of them such as shirts suits etc. Usually I only use it on the wrinkle free mode for 10-15 min and then hang them up normally and they get wrinkle free.

[Gone Fishing]

Nice!  Be sure to check out "smart" power strips that can turn off electronics completely when you are not using them.

[Bob W]

Nice!   

I would suggest getting some R19 insulation for $10 from Home Depot to wrap your water heater.   Use a good duct tape to secure it.   Be careful as I assume it is gas, to keep draft vents open and away from flames.  Then turn it way down.   The perfect hot water temp is that when you run hot water only (no mixing of cold) that the temp is just right.    Those steps could save you another $150 a year.   

You can get a rebate from many power companies for swapping your old fridge for a new one.   (for the hardcore since our fridge is primarily a condiment cooler you can use aired up baggies for any empty space.   This keeps the cool air from escaping every time you open it)

Put the outlet and switch under plate gaskets on all exterior electric outlets and switch plates.   

Some utilities pay for or do whole house energy audits for free or subsidized.   I would suggest that. 

Otherwise you can makeshift a blow door test (google youtube for this) so that you can self detect any leaks.   You can then caulk or expandable foam the leaks.  (the average home has leaks equal to an open window by the way)


 If your ducts are in a crawlspace or above the living space assure they are air tight and insulated well.

Consider blowing in some extra  insulation above the living space.     

Consider setting thermostat up 3-5 degrees in summer and down around 67 in the winter.  Shorts and wool socks go along way. 

I assume your old fridge is using way more power than you think it is.   

You could vent your dryer into the house (yes even a gas one)  during the winter months.   (also check to make sure the dryer vent is not letting air in)   

Use hot water for shower only and use this method --

Easy Navy Shower Method

1. Bring water to temp while you undress
2. Rinse as you begin lathering  (about 1 minute)
3.  Turn off water while lathering.
3. Lather only hands, face, hair, underarms and privates
4.  Stand while continuing to lather for 2-4 minutes.
5.  Rinse 1 minute
6.  flip water off with hands till almost dry. 
7.  Use a small microfiber towel to finish drying
8.  Hang towel to air dry
9.  Wash towel after every 10-30 uses.  (I have even used a 12" by 12" microfiber car towel) 

Use a 1.3 gallon shower head with and accelerator (turbine spinner)

In this manner you will only use 2.6 gallons of water.   In the winter you probably only need 1 shower every other day. 

So theoretically 1 person could get buy with just 40 gallons of hot water per month.   You will only do the equivalent of 1 load of towels per year.  Never use fabric softener on microfibers. 

This makes it realistic to have a 10 or 20 gallon hot water heater that you install and super insulate yourself.    Keeping 10 gallons warm takes far less energy than keeping 40 or 50 warm.   Just keep your current tank as a pretank (unheated)  and ad the very small tank to the line.   Your cost would be recouped in 1 year or less.


Have fun!   Good luck!  Keep us posted!

[MrSal]

You can get a rebate from many power companies for swapping your old fridge for a new one.   (for the hardcore since our fridge is primarily a condiment cooler you can use aired up baggies for any empty space.   This keeps the cool air from escaping every time you open it)

Unfortunately my company doesn't offer any kind of rebates.

Only to insulation and even that is not worth it because they only rebate cellullose IF the cellulose is then installed by a company. If you do it yourself you are not eligible to it. DUMB!

Put the outlet and switch under plate gaskets on all exterior electric outlets and switch plates. 

Done that. It was amazing the draft coming from the exterior wall outlets!

Some utilities pay for or do whole house energy audits for free or subsidized.   I would suggest that. 

I think mine subsidizes them a little but only if after the audit I buy a new furnace or whatever. Its ridiculous.

If your ducts are in a crawlspace or above the living space assure they are air tight and insulated well.

No crawls space. They actually are in the basement. The basement we have plans to replace our very old basement windows that are filled with holes and bent and also insulate the basement for a future refinish.

Consider blowing in some extra  insulation above the living space.     

I dont know about this. At first I thought it would be a great idea. We only have fiberglass in our attic and it's not a lot! Maybe 6 inches or so. Id guess something along R12 and R19 in our attic. Additionally, we have a center stairwell that on one side it takes us to the attic on the other side to the basement. They have doors of course, but they most likely leak a lot just as a chimney would.

My plan is to at least try to air tight the door up to the attic and insulate that door with foam boards and maybe the walls as well.

I dont know about insulating the attic though. We have about 1100 sq ft of attic, and I did some math and to go from R19 to R50 it would take 70 bags of cellulose, which in my area - Lowes and HD at least - I can only find at 13 dollars a bag !!!! I find this ultra expensive! Especially where there are no rebates from the utility company if I go DIY.

Maybe someone here can help me find cheaper insulation bags?

With a cost of 1000 dollars just to insulate the attic, and with our YEARLY gas bill in the 350-450 dollar range I don't know if the payoff would be that great.

I have no idea regarding exterior walls and how much insulation is in there. At the most they are fiberglass batts maybe R11 or R13 whatever is standard.

Consider setting thermostat up 3-5 degrees in summer and down around 67 in the winter.  Shorts and wool socks go along way.

We already do that. Tstat is around 65-67 during winter time when we are home. If sleeping or not at home it goes down to 52-54. How do you think we have getting 70 USD bills in the middle of January with temps at night reaching sometimes below 0? eheh

I assume your old fridge is using way more power than you think it is. 

Nop... its using exactly what I said it was. 2.3 kWh a day. I measured it for 4 days non-stop with a Kill a Watt.

also check to make sure the dryer vent is not letting air in)

It is... our sill plate in the basement looks worse that some buildings in Bagdad. Along with the windows, insulating the sillplate and use some foam is in the cards this spring. Im sure it will make the winter more comfortable.

[MrSal]

Nice!  Be sure to check out "smart" power strips that can turn off electronics completely when you are not using them.

We dont have powerstrips ... for the price i dont think they are that worth it. Ive checked every single outlet that we have connected and other that one lamp and the media table in the living room there are no other appliances sucking energy on standby.

I always unplug the strip for TV in the living room and the computer is usually on sleep mode - this one indeed does expend about 1.1 Wh which is about 9 cents a month. I dont fuss much about it because I like to be able to turn my computer on with a single stroke of a key or from my cellphone, which if unplugged I wouldnt be able to. For 9 cents a month I dont think its worth it to fuss about it.

[Bob W]

You the man!  Have you computed your hot water cost per day?

[MrSal]

You the man!  Have you computed your hot water cost per day?

How would I go at about it?

No idea on how to compute it since both water heater and furnace work both with Gas

[MrSal]

It astounds me how people are such whiney pants and don't give value to money as much as saying that it's too much work to do this!!!

I shared this in another forum and got brilliant comments such as "oh you've only been doing this for 5 months... Summer is coming do that for a year and then I'll pat you on your back. …. Is the same as doing 40 mpg downhill with wind on your tail for a little road stretch on my 20 mpg jeep and then say I'm doing 40 mpg". ….

Other comments such as " oh it seems you're going for too much work just to save 83 dollars per month..."

Seriously?? To much work to call your utility company change lights to CFLs and use a programmable thermostat for the most part?

"Oh CFLs and LEDs cost a fortune not worth it"

Buaaah buaaaah.... What a bunch of whiney complainty pants these people are missing the point that or already had saved 400 USD on heat alone just with the t stat and even if I don't do anything to my electrical patterns I'll save 250 USD just for calling the supplier company!!!

Put this money in tax deferred accounts and this money just for from saving 1000 a year to actually be 1250 a year in gross pay off savings on your paycheck

[Bob W]

Mr Sal,  that forum sounds enlightening!   I have no idea how to break your hot water out.  Wrap it r19.  Set it low and call it good.  Gas hot water is pretty cheap.  My electric water heater costs about 350 a year.  That is as much as my ground source heat costs damn near.

[MrSal]

Just as expected...

Our electricity usage has been going down A LOT!

We are on track to do around 250 kWh this month. Because we haven't used heat as much because temps outside are pretty good in the 70's, the blower hasn't been working as much leading to this decrease!

If the trend of the last 14 days continues, we'll be having a 37 USD bill for electricity whcih will be a -50% compared to last years April

[Bob W]

Mr. Sal -- that is awesome and very inspiring!     I can never seem to get my all electric house below $75.  I'll have to redouble my efforts.   I'm sure the big drain is the electric water heater.  That and I run the blower 24 7.   We also have about $20 in bs stuff attached to the bill. 

Our average monthly total utilities for water, electric, HVAC is about $140 at present for a 3000 sq ft house. 

[MrSal]

Mr. Sal -- that is awesome and very inspiring!     I can never seem to get my all electric house below $75.  I'll have to redouble my efforts.   I'm sure the big drain is the electric water heater.  That and I run the blower 24 7.   We also have about $20 in bs stuff attached to the bill. 

Our average monthly total utilities for water, electric, HVAC is about $140 at present for a 3000 sq ft house.

Why do you run the blower 24/7 ? That seems like a lot...

That alone is probably around 12-18 kWh a day, or somewhere between 380-570 kWh a month just for the blower !!! Or with an average price of 0.11 usd per kWh 40-61 USD on the blower alone!

Still your total utilities for such a big house seem pretty good!

We are in a 1250 sq ft house more or less and 2 people living here so far, and 2 dogs! After this month, which i expect to be around 240 kWh, once we have the new fridge we probably will be going sub-200 kWh. Our fridge is an energy hog 80-100 kWh per month

[MrSal]

Actually I noticed something weird...

On Sunday I cleaned the coils of my fridge... I think that thing was never cleaned in its life! It looked like an hamster's nest!

I vacuumed and used a coil brush...

I plugged it into a kill a watt, and its been there since then so i can average it out for a couple days the usage.

This fall I had tracked it as well and it gave somewhere around 2 kWh a day on average for the fridge.

This time though, it seemed it was expending much more energy BUT our total energy bill per day has been going down since sunday! about 6 kWh per day, which before would be something that would only happen if we were OUT of the house!

The fridge seems to be expending more than the previous reading i took in the fall though! I did switch some outlets around the house... so I am thinking if possible there was a bad connection somewhere that made a specific outlet consume energy even though nothing was plugged in?

[MrSal]

3 years later and I thought I'd share some updates.

After new basement windows... basement insulation with R10 foam boards. Insulating the sill plate and insulating the attic to R60ish we have decreased our utility bills.

Central PA with cold winters at 5900 HDDs average winter. We spent this year on heating so far 190 therms for 2400 sq ft of heating... that's about $154 of heat for the whole season (October until now)

The highest bill was February I think at $50 (this included the customer charge of 14$)

Our electrical bill has sat at 340 kWh for a while during winter months - we do use the dryer because it's convenient. It was too much of a hassle to hang everything. I hang most bulky items or items that hold a lot of water still out of washer, but all the small items or poly items (like gym shirts etc) go into the dryer for a small cycle. Otherwise it would be too much time "lost" hanging socks and underwear.

We did indeed buy a new fridge recently - about 30 days ago - and the new electrical bill came at 235 kWh. Old fridge 2.5kWh/day while new one is about 450 Wh/day ...

There is not much more savings we can do now. We are currently spending about $950 in gas and heat, which includes both customer charges or $30/month (17 for gas and 13 for electrical).

The only way to save right now, would be to go 100% electrical with water heater (maybe on demand electrical water heater) and heating (mini split system). This would enable us to save the $204 annually from the gas customer charge and probably save a little bit as well on the heating area since with a COP > 4 of mini splits, heating with electricity would be cheaper than using natural gas.

However, our furnace is pretty new (2009 installation from previous owners and same for water tank), so our breakeven point would not make much sense. Only reason we could go for it is with rebates.

I see my NG utility company has a rebate of like $3000 for installing a heat pump heat source which a mini split would probably be eligible for - it's a heat pump after all - but probably not worth the effort

[Gerard]

for the hardcore since our fridge is primarily a condiment cooler you can use aired up baggies for any empty space.   This keeps the cool air from escaping every time you open it

Bob, is there a reason you would use air-filled baggies rather than water-filled jugs or something?

[CowboyAndIndian]

for the hardcore since our fridge is primarily a condiment cooler you can use aired up baggies for any empty space.   This keeps the cool air from escaping every time you open it

Bob, is there a reason you would use air-filled baggies rather than water-filled jugs or something?

I don't think @Bob W will respond. He has been inactive for a couple of years. He was an interesting character and his posts were worth reading ....

To answer your question, you can use water filled jugs, but it will take quite some energy to chill the water in the jugs. You could use empty jugs and it would server the same purpose, but a lot less energy to chill the air within the jug.

[MrSal]

Sub 200 kWh/month here we come.

Amazing. I guess our old fridge used a lot of energy. We haven't changed anything and our daily usage is about 5-6 kwh depending on the days. We use dryer, and I work from home therefore computer is always on as well.

I estimate this month will be around 195 kwh or so... Which would be a decrease of 40%

[Gerard]

you can use water filled jugs, but it will take quite some energy to chill the water in the jugs. You could use empty jugs and it would server the same purpose, but a lot less energy to chill the air within the jug.

So the best strategy for me, then, would be to use snow-filled containers, and let nature do the chilling.