gokuDX7
February 14th, 2008, 11:14 PM
Me and My dad have been going through a hard time with money and dealing with oil bills and whatnot. So we did the following to save us allot of money these past 2 months.
1) Turn the temperature down and start up the wood burning stove/fire place.
My dad normally keeps the temp down to 50 degrees but these past 2 months he lowered it to 40 and started up our wood burning stove. We manage to get free firewood from family members that had collected it years ago but never used it. We've also found allot of people on cregslist giving away free firewood since they just want to get it out of their yards. So far the house has been toasting at 73 degrees.
2) Swap out the light bulbs for the lights you use allot with energy saving ones.
3) Keep everything off unless you plan to use it. My dad used to have the habit of turning on a light and then going into another room and turning another on, and then going into the TV room and turning on more..etc. Now anytime one of us sees something on that no one is using, we shut it off.
4) Set the computers to auto shutdown if idle for more then 3 hours. believe it or not computers hog up allot of electricity even if there built on energy saving technology. If the computer is not going to be used for anything wile your sleeping then theres no point in keeping it on.
5) Switch to a cheap VoIP service like Vonage (not really energy saving). If you're in a money pinch and you don't really use your house phone allot then switching to VoIP saves you shit loads of money. We used to pay around $50 or more for the house phone. Now we play $20 and can call basically anywhere in the world (since it uses the Internet). The downside is the service can be shitty for some people (ie. hard to hear you talk) if your ISP throttles traffic. I don't recommend getting VoIP for Comcast users.
1) Turn the temperature down and start up the wood burning stove/fire place.
My dad normally keeps the temp down to 50 degrees but these past 2 months he lowered it to 40 and started up our wood burning stove. We manage to get free firewood from family members that had collected it years ago but never used it. We've also found allot of people on cregslist giving away free firewood since they just want to get it out of their yards. So far the house has been toasting at 73 degrees.
2) Swap out the light bulbs for the lights you use allot with energy saving ones.
3) Keep everything off unless you plan to use it. My dad used to have the habit of turning on a light and then going into another room and turning another on, and then going into the TV room and turning on more..etc. Now anytime one of us sees something on that no one is using, we shut it off.
4) Set the computers to auto shutdown if idle for more then 3 hours. believe it or not computers hog up allot of electricity even if there built on energy saving technology. If the computer is not going to be used for anything wile your sleeping then theres no point in keeping it on.
5) Switch to a cheap VoIP service like Vonage (not really energy saving). If you're in a money pinch and you don't really use your house phone allot then switching to VoIP saves you shit loads of money. We used to pay around $50 or more for the house phone. Now we play $20 and can call basically anywhere in the world (since it uses the Internet). The downside is the service can be shitty for some people (ie. hard to hear you talk) if your ISP throttles traffic. I don't recommend getting VoIP for Comcast users.