Energy Usage

One thing we all can do is reduce the amount of energy we use around our house on a daily basis. This basically means curbing electricity and natural gas usage. Here are some helpful tips. I quoted all the usage facts from the Portland Metro website, and there are quite a few I didn't include, so check it out if you would like to see more.

Appliance Usage - See previous blog for money saving details

• Home appliances are the world’s fastest-growing energy consumers after automobiles, accounting for 30 percent of industrial countries’ electricity consumption and 12 percent of their greenhouse gas emissions. –Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 2004 Special Focus: The Consumer Society, January 2004,I SBN: 0-393-32539-3
• About 80 percent of the energy used by a clothes washer is used to heat water. –Rocky Mountain Institute, Home Energy Brief #5 Water Heating,” 2004
  http://www.rmi.org/images/other/Energy/E04-15_HEB5WaterHeat.pdf

- With modern detergents, using cold water to wash your clothes should meet your needs most of the time. Not only will it keep your hot water heater from running as often, it will also keep your clothes from fading.

- Consider using a drying rack or even a clothes line, dryers consume high amounts of energy. It also helps your clothes last longer. I started putting all my shirts on hangers to dry about 10 years ago, not to save energy, but to save the shirts. And I inadvertently saved energy in the process!

- Use a toaster oven or microwave to cook or heat up smaller portions rather than using a conventional oven.

Light Bulbs

• The incandescent light bulb is so inefficient that about 90 percent of the energy it consumes is given off as heat, while only 10 percent is converted to light. –U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration, “Energy Information Administration, 2001 Residential Energy Consumption Survey,” 2001
• An incandescent light bulb costs 75 cents or less at the store, but it will typically cost six to 10 times that for electricity over its relatively short (750-hour) life. –Rocky Mountain Institute, 2002
  www.rmi.org/sitepages/pid352.ph
• The average American household has 2.5 incandescent light bulbs on for 4 or more hours each day. If every household replaced those bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs, the nation would save nearly 32 billion kilowatt hours every year, or about 35 percent of all electricity used for lighting homes. –U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration, “Residential Energy Consumption Survey,” 1993

- Consider using CFL (Compact Fluorescent Light bulbs), the payback is considerable over the life of the bulb. This one does come with a catch, though! Compact Fluorescent Light bulbs do contain mercury. This is a hazardous material and should be treated as such, so you shouldn't just throw them in the trash when they burn out. In Portland, you can take them to hazardous waste collection events or permanent Metro stations. See this website for details. If you live elsewhere, check with your local authorities on how to properly dispose of them. Also, be aware of proper clean up if one should break. Here are the cleanup instructions from the EPA if you do break one. The procedure is quite extensive.

- LED bulbs are also new options, but to date pretty expensive.

Heating and Cooling

- It doesn't matter how efficient your furnace is if your ducts are leaking. It's a good idea to have a professional come make sure everything is sealed up.

- Set your thermostat as low as is comfortable in the winter and as high as is comfortable in the summer.

- Clean or replace filters on furnaces once a month or as needed.

- Clean warm-air registers, baseboard heaters, and radiators as needed; make sure they're not blocked by furniture, carpeting, or drapes.

- Bleed trapped air from hot-water radiators once or twice a season; if in doubt about how to perform this task, call a professional.

- Place heat-resistant radiator reflectors between exterior walls and the radiators.

- Turn off kitchen, bath, and other exhaust fans within 20 minutes after you are done cooking or bathing; when replacing exhaust fans, consider installing high-efficiency, low-noise models.

- During the heating season, keep the draperies and shades on your south-facing windows open during the day to allow the sunlight to enter your home and closed at night to reduce the chill you may feel from cold windows.

- During the cooling season, keep the window coverings closed during the day to prevent solar gain.

There are also lots of other great energy saving tips on this website.

Jason