Ever since buying our house I have been amazed at the increase in gas and electric we are paying each month. When we lived in the city we paid $35-$45 per month on energy for our apartment. Since moving to the quasi-burbs our SDG&E bill has gone up 600%. Now I know there are a few things that really tips the scale (the biggest being the pool and hot tub) and we do have more space with lot of lights in each room that I try to keep off. But I have really been motivated lately to try to bring the bill down.
Here are a few things that I am implementing: I’ll check back in a month or so and see if it made a difference:
- I’ve purchased 2 Belkin Conserve 8-Outlet Surge Protectors with Remote Switch. These babies have a remote that turns off all but 2 of the plugs letting you cut that vampire standby power consumption. One for my entertainment center and one for my office.
- I purchased a bunch of CFL (compact fluorescent) from Henry’s Market for the outside lights that stay on all the time. I have them on mainly for safety, but there is no off switch that I can find so I had to figure something out.
- I just purchase a set of some automatic light controls to screw into my outside lighting so that they will automatically turn on at Dusk and off at Dawn, I had no idea they even existed or what they were called. It took me forever to find them through Google.
- I’ve turned my pool filter to only run 3-4 hours per day in the winter. I am still pondering the thought of turning down the 105 degrees on the hot tub but I don’t know if that will make a difference. The hot tub is kind of a necessity in winter too, Maybe it will even out then summer comes and I can turn it down/off.
Now we wait and see…
