How to save energy in your home.

What do you do to save energy in your home? I have mostly energy saving bulbs around the house, which saves loads of energy since they only use about 1/5 of the amount of a normal bulb. Also, we never leave our TV on standby, which apparently is an easy way to stop wasting energy. You might not know but you waste a lot of energy by having your TV on standby!

i agree - yes those bulbs are definalty a good idea and so is (as you said) to turn off appliances that are not in use or not needed. Quite often, people leave lights on throughout the house and appliances turned on for no reason (the coffee pot or outside lighting that someone forgot about).

we have the lightbulbs as well. also, be sure to turn off your computer when it is not in use

There are some appliances that are a pain to turn off and then restart, especially those that blink midnight after a power failure.

Is there a way to save energy with these appliances without having to reset their clocks?

We have switched our incandescent bulb to that of energy saving bulb. This has minimized our energy expenditure a lot. Aside from doing this we also try to off and take off the plug of any appliances that isn’t running.

I use to switch of my Television not letting to standby, as it consumes lots of energy. Now apparently we have limited ourselves in using many of our home appliances. Moreover using light bulbs around our home and trying to install all area with energy saving bulbs.

lol my TV is old - didn't know you could such a thing as standby for a TV. I would love to use the new CFL bulbs, but they cost more than the other. With my income, it's hard to be able to buy them.

I did it a little bit at a time, a single bulb from Aldis costs about $1.50, and even you can only afford one a month, eventually you will have your home fully lit with CFLs, and saving money.

That they have a guaranteed life span of 5 years or more makes it even more worth it. *smile*

I am also really low income, and drooling over the LED light bulbs that are horribly pricey, but even more effecient and long-lived tan the CFLs. Of course, I will ave to learn how to make them myself, but with a little know-how (read internet research), and some parts from my local radio-shack, I can make it happen.

[QUOTE=Orrymain;860]lol my TV is old - didn't know you could such a thing as standby for a TV. I would love to use the new CFL bulbs, but they cost more than the other. With my income, it's hard to be able to buy them.[/QUOTE]

How do we save energy?

For lighting; CFLs in every room, one bulb per fixture, one fixture per room unless needed for accent lighting, CFL grow lights for my plants in the living room, and a modified LED bulb in the refrigerator.

For basic electric appliances; we have everything plugged into power strips and shut them off at the end of the day to prevent phantom drain, this saving us some money. Most people don't realize that a computer can draw 40% of it's running power when it is completely powered down! We even have the kitchen hooked up like this.

We don't have any appliances that plug in and have clocks on them. Even our alarm clocks are on our mobile phones so we don't need extra power draw within the home.

When we moved in, we turned off the gas to the furnace and blew out the pilot light. Since gas costs so much more than electric, and there is so much heat lost in the vents when moving under and throughout the house, we have found that using a single space heater in the center of our house warms it all up nicely to where we are comfortable in sweaters and jeans indoors in the winter.

If it gets really cold and we are up late at night, we don't turn on the lights. Instead, we use oil lanterns and candles. They light up the room enough to see, and have the added bonus of heat. My kids love to get old candles and make them into new ones, so this is a freebie for us as well.

We have all of the potential air leaks blocked with foam tape, door sweeps, socket sealers, insulated vent-covers, and so on.

We wash all of our clothes in cold, have our water heater turned down low, and even wash dished in warm, not hot, water. Our clothes are all line-dried, even in the winter, and we live in a rental apartment in the middle of the city.

We grow food plants in containers, and in the winter we bring them inside for a two-fold effect. Not only does it ensure a longer harvest, and an earlier start on the next season's growth, but the large containers of dirt act as a sort of thermal mass heat-storage tool tat prevents excessive heat loss wen entering and leaving the house.

We have water bottles that we freeze when our chest freezer isn't quite full, to, again provide that thermal mass so that all the cold doesn't leave when we open the door and cause the freezer to work harder.

We're not quite there yet, but we hope to soon have everyone in the house equipped with a notebook computer so we can get rid of the power-hogging desktops once and for all to save even more energy.

I guess you could say we're pretty serious about saving energy around here. *smile*

What exactly do you mean standby for TV? Like when the red dot is on? I doubt it uses any power, the red dot only needs a small amount of power to be lit, so I doubt it would make a difference?