Being home all day is creating costs I never thought of — not just to many sanity, but to my wallet.
I received my electric and gas bill today, and wow… $199. Yes, I’m the one who bought the 50″ plasma display, agitated to get air conditioning, and installed a web server.
I think it’s time to start caring how much electricity I use, eh? Amazing how much less environmentally aware I became when I moved to California…
The stove, oven, dryer, water heater and AC.
Each one of these uses more in a day than your TV or server uses in a year.
Close off the kitchen, one burner can create more heat than your AC can handle.
When baking do several things at once.
Do more than one load of laundry so the dryer doesn’t cool down between loads.
Put a blanket on the water heater if it doesn’t already have one. (a water heater blanket)
Turn the water heater down 10 deg
Put your AC on low
The little things add up…
Actually, my stove and water heater are gas-powered — and the gas segment of my bill was only a measly $8.
Can’t close off my kitchen, thanks to the open design of this house, with its 9 foot ceilings, that makes it difficult to heat or cool. Thank you, architects.
No, I think I have to lay the blame squarely on the AC and TV. (The server uses very little power, actually, although the server consists of a computer, a network switch, a cable modem, a router, a battery backup, and a wireless point… yikes.)
I didn’t investigate power use before I bought this tv — my old TV, a widescreen 30″ HDTV with an old-fashioned CRT screen, sucked down 130KW of power. Frighteningly, my new 50″ plasma HDTV gobbles up 300KW! It’s the SUV of televisions. I’m rather ashamed of that. And now, I’m paying the price.
Man, that’s frightening. Even in the absolutely warmest and coldest months, my electric bill here in Arlington at its highest has been only a little more than half that, even with the computer on 24 hours a day and despite my heat pump, stove, oven, washer and dryer all being electric.