Do you often hear yourself crying out when the electricity bill arrives with its high numbers looking back at you, the units confirming that yes, it was you who raised them. No matter how much you earn you may still want to cut down on things that eat out a major part of your salary, and lowering your electricity bill (and household bills in general) is a great place to start!
Where to start!
All the electrical appliances and gadgets in our home add up quickly to our high electricity bill month on month. But before you start thinking about depriving yourself of all those gadgets you had once bought to make your life easier, you should instead looking into how they can be used more effectively. Simple steps such as turning items off at the power when not in use, or not leaving items run for longer than they need to will help save you a few pennies every day, which over the course of the year on multiple items can add up quickly.
Keeping your house warm or cool
Ensuring that our house is completely sealed maximizes the use, time and energy saving of our heating devices as it helps in maintaining the temperature. The same is true in case of air conditioning systems. To seal our house perfectly, we need to pay special attention to joints, windows etc. Plastics are the best material to insulate, but on moveable objects we might want to use weather strippers which seal a moveable object from its non-moveable object like doors, windows and garage doors.
Interior insulation
Then comes the blinds and drapes. We should choose those drapes which cover the windows entirely and open them when the weather is sunny to naturally let the heat insulate our home. That way we save quite a handsome amount on heating systems. If you are not around, turn down the temperature of your thermostat because even a centigrade lower equals to 2% of your saved energy.
Saving on your washing
When dishwashing or doing laundry, we should turn the dial to cold which would help in saving 85%-90% of energy. In this case, a front loading machine is more cost effective than a top loader since it saves us 50% on water and 50% on energy. Similarly, dishwashers use the same amount of energy regardless of wash load so it is better to load our dishwashers fully.
Losing heat underneath your home
If you have a basement or cellar these can be particularly bad for heat loss. We must make sure that these places are properly sealed to conserve heat and energy. We can also add insulation to our basements to ensure heat conservation. One way to know whether our basements have leaks or not, is to look for spider webs. If there are webs, there are leaks!
Lastly lighting
Last of all, but a change that most people will already have started to make is switching to energy saving light bulbs. Its an easy swap over as energy saving bulbs are readily available these days and becoming quite a norm. But that little saving over all the different lights you have in your home can add up nicely on your energy bill. You can also looking into other energy saving appliance for your home but they are often quite pricy so the energy bill saving is outweighed by the initial cost outlay on the appliance itself
