Quote:
Originally Posted by SailinAway
It's hard to tell how much electricity the water heater is using unless you have it on a timer. Mine is 4000 watts, which is a lot. What were your August and September kWh uses?
|
The $103 was my August/September bill (read date of 9/18). Summer months aren't a fair gauge of power for us because we're up at camp most of the time.
The biggest electric cost for me is electric baseboard heating. We haven't changed that for a myriad of reasons, but are beginning to look at options again. I haven't ever paid for wood—and I just scored 2.5 cords or so of free 3-year-seasoned hardwood, for a total of about 5 year's worth in my rack—so that helps a lot.
What I did and what I think of the outcome:
* Water heater to vacation mode when away. I think this is negligible as when we'd return home after a week, the water would still be warm enough to shower and the elements wouldn't run very long to catch up.
* Dehumidifier setting. A dehumidifier is essentially a refrigerator, so turning this up 5% certainly had it running less. I couldn't go any higher, though, as it would begin to smell musty.
* New refrigerator. We had replaced our 20+ year-old refrigerator in spring with an Energy Saver model, and it definitely runs much less than the old one. I'm sure I'm saving here.
* Increasing AC from 72 to 75 when home and to 85 when away. I think this is the absolute biggest saver. I'm actually weirded out to think we'd only raise it a couple degrees when we were away and that we'd use blankets at 72.
* Washer/Dryer: I began setting my Speed Queen washer to heavy duty. This doesn't use any more water, which we run cold anyway, but has a much more powerful spin dry to where the clothes are almost dry. This runs the dryer for a much shorter period of time, which I'm sure helps.
* Dishwasher: I noticed that my dishes tended to be dry as soon as the cycle was done, so we shut off the heating element option. I gotta think this saves a few bucks as we run it two to three times a week.
Sent from my SM-G990U1 using Tapatalk