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Step 1
1) Wash your teeth with cold water. You normally are finished by the time the water gets hot anyway. The cold water is more pure since hot water tanks are a source of impurities.
2) Do not flush sanitary napkins or Kleenex down the toilet. It wastes water and septic space, whether public sewer or private septic system. It is expensive to pump out your septic system.
3) DO NOT dump any oils or other hazardous wastes into the sewer. This changes the chemical balance in your septic or the public sewer system, and can cause extra maintenance to your septic.
4) Do not tolerate any water drips. Hot water drips can be much more expensive than cold water drips.
5) Soap hands with the new foam soaps in a dispenser bottle and use ½ of the regular soap.
6) Do not hand wash dishes instead of dishwasher washing. Much more energy is used by hand washing. Much more water is used per plate when washing by hand. Most of us let the hot water run for a long time before it is hot enough to clean a dish. Better to use the dishwasher once for a large load of dishes. -
Step 2
1) Leave the milk, eggs, juice out in the morning so the refrigerator is opened only once. You will save energy if you leave these items out for 45 minutes instead of bringing them out each time someone else needs them. Limit the time out of the fridge!
2) Let SOME foods cool before putting them in the refrigerator. Be careful that you don’t let poultry, fish, or eggs cool at room temperature. Best choices are beef, vegetables, tea, meat soups, etc.
3) Use ice water from your refrigerator not ice from the freezer. If you throw some of the ice cubes away after you finish your drink, you have wasted energy. Use the door dispenser.
4) Use cold water to fill the teapot or saucepan. It heats almost as fast, costs less and has fewer impurities. -
Step 3
1) Buy a gas hot water heater with an electronic pilot light.
2) When replacing any heating appliance, buy one without a full time pilot light. The pilot light can double the energy use of some appliances.
3) Put your house thermostat on an automatic schedule and stick to it. Don’t let everyone change it for their own preferences. Set the temperature very low at night for most people, but don’t cause sickness to save heating money.
4) If you have an upstairs, close the door to keep the heat from rushing up the stairs. This will help reduce the cold air flow from upstairs. Conversely a heated room upstairs will not lose very much heat down the stairs.
5) An undershirt worn in the heating season will cause you to seek a lower house temperature and save you money.
6) If you want to save more on your heating bill, you can get heavy drapes second hand and use them over large windows during the extreme cold.
7) Check for drafts under and around doors. Either have the cracks weather striped or place a throw rug against the door to stop the air flow. Be careful you don’t block a fire exit with this method. A door with a rug against the bottom is very hard to open.
8) Wear a hat at night. You can turn the heat lower with the same comfort. -
Step 4
1) If you want to heat with a wood stove you have to become a specialist. Many homes spend more money on heat WITH a wood fire going than they would WITHOUT that hassle.
1) Don’t install any older models. Most are inefficient and some are dangerous. Why not get one that will pay for itself with savings?
2) Make sure you get all the free advice you can from the local fire marshal. Firemen normally are the best authorities on wood stoves.
3) The fire department must be consulted before installing a wood stove or you may void your fire insurance policy.
4) Buy wood from a reputable dealer, many sellers will deliver less wood than you pay for. Some of the gimmicks are criss cross stacks, short pieces or calling a “face cord” a real cord. What you want is WEIGHT of NEW DRY wood for money spent. Old dry wood may have lost its heat value and often this is indicated by its lack of weight.
5) Chose the correct wood. Poor quality or green/wet wood will not return enough heat to make up for the energy lost due to house air being used for combustion. This gives a net loss for the work.
6) Hardwoods are best, but some softwoods like Alder and Fir are excellent. Woods with a high pitch content such as Pine are not safe to burn because they soot up your chimney and will cause stack fires in the future.
7) Maintain your chimney. Clean it every year if you use the wood stove often. It can be cleaned with a burlap sack full of rocks on a rope if it is straight.
8) Learn the operation of the various dampers and vents on the stove and in the flue. These control the heat loss and rate of wood burning.
9) If you have a choice of designs, consider a stove that has a cooking top. Even if you don’t cook there you can keep your coffee or tea water hot on it. A stew simmered all afternoon is great.
10) A flue fan can return more heat to your room, but this reduces the chimney temperature and so can soot up your flue. Ask your dealer or the fire department inspector about these fans in your area. -
Step 5
1) Some vegetables are compatible to cook together. If you steam two or three veggies together, you will save stove energy.’
2) Use your hair dryer to melt sandwiches and pizza instead of heating the whole oven for such small jobs.
3) If you want to heat the serving dishes you can use the cooking water a second time by pouring it into the serving dish for instant heat.
4) Leave cooking water in the kitchen in a bowl until all the heat is transferred to the room air.
5) During air conditioning weather, use a microwave more than a conventional oven. The microwave emits much less extra heat into your house.
6) If you are designing a new or remodeled house, consider a separate heating system for the kitchen. An electric baseboard heater in the kitchen sitting area is cozey, and reduces the house heating requirements by 70 to 80 percent if the kitchen is small.
7) Consider heating only your kitchen or sitting room in the morning. Your bath will be heated by the shower and you won’t need heat in the rest of the house until evening.
8) If your garage is attached to your home, it should be kept closed during cold weather as it affords another layer of insulation.
9) If your home is open to the winter winds, a number of properly placed bushes can reduce your heat loss caused by wind. In extreme cases it could pay to have another layer of glass put over windward windows for the winter. There are storm windows designed for just this situation. Large trees are poor wind protection and they drop leaves or needles on your roof. Some trees have the unfortunate habit of falling on houses when they mature.
10) Insulation is critical to your energy management. If you are unable to survey your own insulation needs and status, get a building inspector to do this. Some public utilities furnish free inspection service for this purpose. It may pay to have additional insulation blown over the attic insulation you now have if it is thin or partially destroyed by cats, squirrels, raccoons, or other animals. Be sure to block entrances to your attic with screens to keep animals out.
11) Unused rooms should be shut out of the heating area if there are no water pipes in them. Cover the heating vent or turn off the baseboard heater if possible. Water baseboard heaters can be covered safely, but DO NOT cover electric baseboard heaters or you WILL cause a fire!
12) Bathrooms can be heated for a few minutes with a ceiling heat lamp. -
Step 6
1) Buy a new energy saving computer with a high speed modem and an energy compliant monitor. It saves electricity and “on-line” time charges.
2) Consider buying software from a second hand source. This is older technology but it worked two or three years ago and is 1/4 price today. Be careful of viruses in the old software. Use a virus checker!
3) Use a DOZE-MODE printer.
4) Enter the BIOS or CMOS setup feature of the computer then enter POWER MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS to take advantage of the energy saving features that are built in to the software.
5) Take advantage of the SCREEN SAVER “POWER SHUT-OFF TO MONITOR” feature.
6) Do you have a pet that sleeps outside? He will be much warmer if you put flat newspapers under his bed and keep the bed protected from the wind. A dog house is preferable with the newspaper lining the bottom.
7) Your pet will be happier outside for more of the day if there is a pet house for him to use for his naps. This reduces your open door time and the number of times he tracks in fresh dirt. Treat this outside house for fleas every month.
8) Carpets don’t need to be cleaned everywhere quite so often if you use a product like “Resolve” to spot clean once a month or just when the stain occurs.
9) Learn which clothes to wash in warm or cold water. Save those hot water washes for the proper materials.
10) It doesn’t make sense to dry clothes in the dryer when you are low on humidity during the winter season. If you heat up your laundry and then hang some of the larger things such as towels on their towel rack you will add needed humidity to the house and save energy at your dryer by air drying.
11) Do you close your drapes in the winter? It saves energy by reducing the air flow over the cold windows.
12) Make sure your fireplace damper is closed when there is no fire. Just don’t close it too soon and invite carbon monoxide into your house from hot ashes. If you don’t use the fireplace at all, you should seal up the chimney with fiberglass insulation because the normal damper is designed to allow some air to pass through and that is air you have paid to heat.
13) If you defrost something in the microwave you have not only used energy to melt it, you have wasted the cold you paid for with the freezer. Put the item in the refrigerator to thaw over 3 days and you save the microwave energy AND you recycle the cold that was in the item you thaw. Your refrigerator will use less energy to keep co
