Still antsy! This time about POWER.
So while I am anxiously awaiting our credit statements to actually happen, I’m also very anxiously awaiting our power bill.
I was not happy when our December bill came to the tune of $350, but was REALLY not happy when January’s bill came to $450!
We used ~4000 kwh in that bill!
Now, there was a few culprits, namely, we hadn’t changed our air filters in some time, so we quickly did that.
Next, I set our programmable thermostat on the main level (which is for main level and basement) to be quite low while we are away during the day. Since we both work, and the kids are in school/daycare all day, there’s no need to heat the house while we’re gone. I set it to start heating again about 40 minutes before we’re due to be home, and then turn down low again at night when we’re all snug in our beds.
We have another unit in the attic, with the thermostat in our bedroom, but it is not a programmable one, so we haven’t done anything with that. Also, I don’t think the attic unit uses gas - I think it’s the heat pump variety, and I am unsure of the issues of setting the temperature super low while you’re out for that type of unit, so it’s just as well.
The only other culprits I can think of, is .. well.. we’re geeks. We have a LOT of computers, and some gadgets. 3 TiVo’s, a firewall server, the husband’s desktop, all running 24/7. The husband has since turned his computer off when he’s not using it, but the others pretty much have to be on all the time. We both open up our laptops for a few hours every evening as well.
We do use CFLs in our basement and in our kitchen, but we haven’t changed out many in our upper level (or the hallways of the main level, now that I think about it) so that’s something we can target next month.
I can’t WAIT to see if the filters and thermostat made a difference in our next bill.
February 27th, 2008 at 1:18 pm
Hey there!
It’s RL. Thanks again for the nifty debt snowball spreadsheet. I saved it as an excel file on my laptop (I didn’t have the patience for google docs, I missed the real excel too much). I wanted to set something like that up, and it would have taken me hours to perfect that layout, so really, thank you so much, it is exactly what I needed to track our debt payoff. I’m thinking of starting a blog soon too, and I’ll let you know when I do.
More on how much we have in common - your gas bill sounds alot like ours. We have gas heat in our 1650sf house, and the last 2 months have been $350 and $380. We just moved in in Nov., so I don’t have much history on this house yet. I will say that I LOVE GAS HEAT! We were paying more per month to heat our old 1400 sf house with oil heat (try $400-500 for every tank fill, and in the winter it was filled every 4-5 weeks). Our new house has a new gas furnace, installed in 2004, so that might help too.
We don’t yet have a programmable thermostat, but I wish we did. Did you install yours, and how much was it? I bet you will see a big difference in lowering the heat during the day and at night. I am a scrooge with heat, I never turn it up more than 64, but i wish I could set it for 58 or 60 at night and during the day.
I was thinking of putting in CFL blubs around the house, but we have a bunch of spare regular bulbs that I might go through first so not to waste them. I also wanted to see if Costco carried the CLFs (the cheapest I found so far was $8.50 for 3 (60 watts) at the supermarket).
Just wanted to say keep up the good work - and let me know what the next power bill is!