When you go on vacation this summer, don't forget that your house needs a vacation, too. If you're not home to enjoy all of the comforts of home, you should be able to set your house's energy consumption very near to zero.
Here's a checklist of items to keep in mind when you're getting ready to leave:
- Set your thermostat to 90°F. It is possible for your house to get too hot, so keeping your thermostat to a reasonable temperature will save you lots of money while still protecting your most valuable asset.
- Set up your lights on timers to come on and off at reasonable times to convince any burglars that you're actually home — but keep the lighting reasonable. Just because your kids leave every light on when you're actually home doesn't mean that every light needs to be one while you're not home.
- Close all blinds and curtains to reduce solar gain, unless doing so would compromise your security.
- If you actually know how to turn off your hot water heater safely, turn it off — and if you don't, set the temperature on your hot water heater as low as it will go without turning it off.
- Turn off all ceiling fans. If there's no one there to enjoy the breeze, you really don't need to have that breeze blowing.
- Unplug your computers, TV, and other sensitive electronics from the wall, in case there is a lightning storm while you are gone. As a pleasant side effect, the vampire power drain that most of these electronics uses will stop while they are unplugged.
- Unplug everything else that is plugged in. Most people leave their clocks, nightlights, coffee maker, and so forth plugged in, regardless. (It is a matter of moments to reset those clocks when you get home.)
Of course, when you get home, there will be a little more work to do — but isn't the energy savings worth it?
Way back when, before the time when everyone took for granted instant access to a washer and dryer in the home, some people actually hung their clothes up to dry on a kind of rope that they strung up in the backyard. They called it a "clothesline". (I know, I know, it sounds weird, doesn't it? Drying clothes outside? I mention this in passing because so many of the people alive and on the Internet today may never have seen or heard of a clothesline.) Clotheslines are becoming popular and even controversial these days, all due to rising energy costs.
Hang it up! Clotheslines may be old-fashioned but they dry your clothes better (and cheaper) than dryers do. As a pleasant side effect, you will spend some time outside the house, pick up some vitamin D, and your clothes will smell fresh and clean without using fabric softener.
In the wintertime, have you ever seen a cat curl up in a beam of sunlight shining through a window? Cats do this because it's warm. Have you ever seen a cat do this during the summertime? No, because during the summer, sunbeams are hot.
In the summertime, wherever possible, close your blinds and curtains during the hottest part of the day to keep the sun out and ease the load on your air conditioner. I'm not talking about sheers, either, but rather curtains that actually block out all of the light. (As a bonus, these curtains are also useful in the window to cut down on window drafts.)
Some windows, of course, don't have curtains or blinds. (You may have cats, as we did once, that would actually climb curtains.) What then? Install do-it-yourself low-e window film in these windows or plant landscaping in front of south-facing windows to cut solar gain.
Great news! I re-programmed the thermostats and saved 800 kilowatts this month! (Of course, we are missing two people who used to watch TV, check Facebook, hold the refrigerator door open, and generally complain about how hot it is, which may have had an impact as well.) Our direct savings on the power bill is $50, even though the cost of electricity has gone from ten to eleven cents.
June 2009 Data
| Electricity, in kWh | Cost / Unit | Gas, in Therms | Cost / Unit | Water, in CCF | Cost / Unit | BTUs / Ft2 |
| 2,298 | $.113 | 13 | $1.98 | 30 | $4.07 | 2,613 |
If you are male and unmarried, you may not know what I'm talking about. If you are female, or male and married, then you know that keeping the shower clean is a matter of grave concern. One of the tools in our shower-cleaning arsenal is a shower squeegee. This is a smaller plastic version of the tool professional window washers use to clean windows, and is used in much the same way to skim the water off the walls of your shower.
The theory behind the shower squeegee is that if your shower isn't wet, then mold and mildew will not grow on it nearly so quickly. I cannot testify to the accuracy of this theory but I can testify to how fervently my wife believes in this theory. So the other day, when I was using the squeegee after my shower and pondering the sheer injustice of my situation, I discovered that the shower squeegee is actually an energy-saving device and immediately felt better about keeping the shower clean.
How, you ask, can keeping the shower dry keep down my utility bills? Well it works like this — during the summertime, anything that keeps humidity out of the air makes your air conditioner work more efficiently. Taking short, cool showers is very useful, of course, but keeping the water that lingers after a shower from evaporating into the air also helps keep humidity down.
Once a year, everyone should drain a bucket of water from the hot water heater tank to remove sediment that lowers the efficiency of your heater. Of course, always follow the manufacturer's instructions, or you can try the instructions found here. One detail that needs to be stressed: never drain more than 1/4 of your hot water tank unless you have turned off the hot water heater.
Why, you ask, is there sediment in the bottom of my hot water heater?
Sediment is solid material that doesn't dissolve in water. There might be sand, grit, or other stuff that has gotten into your hot water heater. If this happens, this material will tend to settle out in your hot water heater tank, right down near the bottom by the heating element. If the heating element gets covered up, then the sediment is getting most of the heat, rather than your hot water, which is definitely not energy-efficient.
On the other hand, if you do this one year and no sediment comes out, then you can skip this the next year.
We never know the worth of water till the well is dry.- Thomas Fuller
