The energy saving household
Little things add up!
If you want a truly energy saving household, you need to go beyond swapping a few incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescent lights. Adding CFLs in high-use areas is a great start, but cutting 60 watts to 13 watts for a light that's on two hours a day won't make a dent if your fridge is burning 3 kilowatt hours a day!
If you want to have a real impact, try my energy saving household tips. Here's what I cover:
- Household efficiency tips from visitors to Green Energy Efficient Homes
- Energy saving washers, to save hot water and electricity, plus ideas on saving energy on laundry even with your existing washer.
- Energy efficient dryers. Savings in clothes drying come not just from the dryer you buy, but from rethinking the laundry process. And how about Dryer balls? Do these dryer balls save energy or is their claim of 25% energy savings bogus? Find out in my Dryer balls review.
- Energy efficient washer and dryer can help you decide which of a washer or dryer upgrade will save you the most energy, and provide other tips for cutting your laundry energy use.
- Energy efficient dehumidifiers can cut your energy bill. An old model can use more electricity than a fridge. Tips to boost the efficiency of your current unit or choose a new one. And if you're looking at ENERGY STAR dehumidiiers you should read this short article on how the ENERGY STAR label doesn't always guarantee you're getting the most energy efficient unit around.
- Energy efficient dishwashers almost always do a better job of washing dishes, and use less water and energy, than if you wash by hand. Unless you are a conservation fanatic you will save energy and money with a new, energy efficient dishwasher, and with my efficient dishwashing tips.
- Energy saving refrigerators. There are good reasons to upgrade to the latest model, ENERGY STAR fridge, but there are also things you can do to make your current fridge more efficient - from simple maintenance to changing your kitchen routine.
- Energy efficient freezers. You'll pay a lot less to keep food frozen if you follow my freezer tips, whether you upgrade to a new freezer or adjust to more energy saving habits.
- Home energy saving devices. These devices help you save energy by helping you measure energy use, or by saving energy directly (whether by intention or as a by-product of some other use). I also cover bogus or suspect devices that promise big savings but may not deliver.
- Energy saving induction cooking, which uses less energy than conventional electrical cooking and has the instant-off ability and precise control of gas cooking.
- Energy efficient toasters, or should I say toasting techniques, since it turns out the one energy efficient toaster touted right now is not necessarily a great addition to an energy saving household
- Energy saving kettles. If you're like me and you make tea or coffee using a kettle, you'll want to know how to brew your beverage without blowing your budget. There are energy saving kettles available to buy, and there are lots of ways you can save energy with whatever kettle you already have.
- Energy efficient TVs. You'd be surprised how much energy a large screen television can use. Flat screen TV efficiency has been improving recently, but the fact remains that, the bigger your screen, the more it guzzles the juice.
Along with these major household appliances, don't forget to consider the many smaller kitchen appliances that keep your home running smoothly - such as pressure cookers, microwaves, toaster ovens, air purifiers and the like. Best-Kitchen-Ideas.com covers many of these kitchen appliances in great detail.
Start with the major energy hogs
One of the first things to tackle in an energy saving household is the home appliances that use the most energy. Here's a list showing the six big appliances sorted from highest to lowest energy use, based on new models shipped in Canada in 2005:
1. Clothes dryer: 903 kWh/year
2.
Stove range: 564 kWh/year
3. Refrigerator : 469 kWh/year
4. Clothes washer: 444 kWh/year
5. Dishwasher: 396 kWh/year
6. Freezer: 386 kWh/year
These figures don't necessarily reflect what people bought elsewhere,are still helpful to know if you're striving for an energy saving household.
Refrigerators and freezers in particular have become far more energy efficient in the past ten years, so if you have an old fridge or freezer you're probably using far more than what's noted above. Be sure to check out these refrigerator reviews and ratings at All-Refrigerator-Reviews.com to learn about the many brands and the different types of refrigerators available to choose from.
Dryers, on the other hand, have barely changed at all in terms of efficiency since 1994. The main improvements have been in moisture sensors that allow the dryer to turn off as soon as the clothes have reached the desired dryness level.
When looking for a replacement range, remember to buy only models that have the highest energy efficiency ratings. In the US and Canada, this means buying ENERGY STAR labeled appliances. But even within the ENERGY STAR group, you should still focus on ones that will cost you the least amount of energy to operate. Look for the EnergyGuide labels on products in the store - and don't buy the product if the salesperson says the label is lost! Here are some sample labels, one for a product that is labeled an ENERGY STAR product (very efficient) and one for a product that isn't (it's among the less efficient in its class):
 |
 |
| Energy Guide label for refrigerator | Energy Guide label for clothes washer |
These labels indicate the range of energy use (left and right numbers below the black bar) for all appliances in their category, for example refrigerators of a given size. The triangle on the right label shows where this particular clothes washer stands relative to its competitors. It doesn't score that well, considering the lowest washer in the list uses 177 kWh/year and the one in question uses 964! No place for this one in an energy saving household!
There is no arrow in the left image, because this refrigerator is so efficient it actually scores lower than the lowest other model in its range. So it's not surprising to see that it has an ENERGY STAR logo (the square above the range bar).
Read the fine print on several Energy Guide tags before you buy. Make sure you underestand how the units are being compared. Be aware, for example, that assumptions are built into these labels and the ENERGY STAR ratings - for example, how often you do laundry, how often you do laundry in hot water vs. cold, and so on. Use the labels to help you decide, but be your own judge.
See EfficientEnergySaving.co.uk for information on appliance efficiency labels in the UK, which differ from US/Canadian labels.
And work on the little things too
Let's assume you've already done what you can to upgrade your appliances to energy efficient ones, and to insulate against heating and cooling energy losses (probably your biggest energy expense). Striving for an energy saving household is a great way to cut costs outside of the big areas of home temperature control.
Subtle changes to how you cook and what you cook can save you pennies a day. How you keep your food cool or cold, how you wash dishes, clean your laundry - all of these also have a small impact on their own. Even that blinking 12:00 on the coffee maker is eating away at your hard earned cash, a watt or two every hour. Most of these things, on their own, don't amount to a whole hill of beans. But the beans, one by one, can add up to a pretty big hill once you start noticing them. And when you make a series of small changes, that whole hill of beans can wind up saving you big bucks!
And that's the key to an energy saving household: a penny here, a nickle there, and huge savings when all's said and done.
That's why, for example, in my energy saving household, we unplug the coffee maker when it's not making coffee (do we really need yet another kitchen clock!?), and we unplug the television when we're not watching it. It's why we're careful to measure before we boil water for tea or pasta - we don't boil more than we need. Little changes like these have added up for us, to the point where we use half the natural gas and a third the electricity of our neighbors who live in similar houses and have similar-sized families.
Replacing an old fridge with an energy efficient refrigerator is probably the biggest improvement you can make in household energy use. (Shutting down that basement beer fridge is a great idea too.) But adjusting your fridge temperature settings accurately and correctly can go a long way even if you can't afford a new fridge (or if you just bought one!). I'll show you how. The same applies to a freezer in an energy saving household: there's a world of difference between how much electricity a 10- or 20-year-old freezer will use if left to its own devices, and how little you'll pay to operate a recent-model energy efficient freezer, especially when you follow my many freezer tips.
I'll give you a whole range of energy-saving cooking ideas. From the radical - not cooking foods, in order to save energy, to the obvious - not opening the oven door twenty times to check how those cookies are coming. And how about some eye-openers on how people around the world cook - for example with Energy saving induction cooking, which provides the ease of operation of natural gas cooking, with better safety and efficiency than either gas or traditional electric cooking.
There's laundry - a tiny energy user in our home, but a big waster for those who do laundry the energy-intensive way. Again, how about a radical idea for a change: don't wash your clothes! Okay, maybe not that radical - but do you really need to wash a shirt you wore for one cool afternoon? Or, to paraphrase that great Canadian prime minister and occultist MacKenzie King: wash clothes when necessary, but don't necessarily wash clothes! I have tons of other ideas and tips to save you money on laundry, from energy saving washers and energy efficient dryers, to techniques for not using them as often. If you're looking for reviews of the best washing machines see Washing-Machine-Reviewer.com.
While we're on the topic of laundry, let's talk diapers. You might think it's more energy efficient to buy disposable diapers, since you don't use any energy disposing of them, whereas cloth diapers require washing after each use. But don't forget about all the energy used to harvest or mine the raw materials for the disposables, to manufacture the disposable diapers, to transport them to your supermarket, to keep that aisle of the supermarket shelf brightly lit, and to transport it from your trash bin or city compost bin to the municipal landfill or composting facility. My kids were raiesd on cloth diapers - not only are they more comfortable and healthier for your kids, they also help your kid achieve toilet training success much earlier! See Cloth-Diaper-Mom.com for more details.
And then there's that grab bag of miscellaneous household appliances that use energy. Are there such things as energy efficient dehumidifiers? You bet. Do you need to use one? Your call. How much energy is your computer or your DVD player using when it's on? How about when it's off? You'll be surprised, when you read some of the articles in this section, and when you start measuring your own usage, how much energy some of your home appliances and home electronics consume when you thought they weren't doing anything!
You might think that something as mundane as a toaster doesn't make a dent in the energy saving household - but one company, at least, has come up with an energy efficient toaster that cuts energy use by a third over conventional electric toasters.
For those of us who spend hours in front of the television or are thinking of installing a large-screen TV, you should read before you buy - find out what makes an energy efficient TV, and how recent advances in plasma and LCD technology make the newest of these TVs more efficient than good old CRTs (except, as I explain, that they keep getting bigger, and bigger means more energy use even with a more efficient screen!
Other household information
Don't forget that there is energy embodied in the foods you eat as well. For instance, it takes a lot more energy (both solar and fossil fuel) to create protein from grain-fed beef than directly from grain, and more energy to manufacture refined foods than minimally processed foods. See Creating a Green Kitchen at green-organic-world.com for tips on saving energy and reducing the environmental impacts of the food you eat.
Along with cutting household energy use, there are plenty of other ways to save money in your household. Frugal-Living-Now.com offers useful money saving tips for living a better life through frugal living. Learn how to make a budget, reduce household expenses, increase your income and live better on less money.
Another site with great tips on simple living and frugal living is Green-And-Simple-Living.com. Their page on simple living offers some interesting ideas on voluntary simplicity - living more with less, and wanting to!
Return from Energy saving household to the Green energy efficient homes site home page.
© Green Energy Efficient Homes 2009 Privacy policy | Disclaimers | Advertise
