Ryandor.com

Why do so many people waste electricity?

Whenever I leave a room, I turn off the light. If I am not watching a TV, I turn it off. I do my laundry in the evening, make sure the air conditioner/heater is off whenever I am not home, and try my best to make sure as little heat/cool air leaves the house as possible when they are on.

Not to save money, but simply because it is completely unnecessary to waste energy when I am not using it. Granted, it will not make a significant dent of any sort in global warming, which is already doomed, but it certainly cannot hurt. Devices last longer, the electric company gets less demand, and if everyone did such simple acts, might even reduce the amount of pollution in the air. If everyone did this, there would be much less demand from pollution-causing electric plants, the price of oil would come down slightly (ha! Yeah, right), and the world would be a better place.

Do not even get me started about vehicles?

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Blog: http://www.sydius.org
Web: http://www.sydius.net

Both my computers are on 24/7, and the light in this room is only off when I'm sleeping or when I'm gone for longer than a day. I turn off all other lights in the house when I leave a room though. Unless there are people there. Then I try to avoid turning off the light.

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-= Ho Eyo He Hum =-

Russia have massive energy-producing resources(most of it - nuclear plants), probably having few points to spend it. So, our electricy payment is low and i'm not bothering if leave my computer on. Although, light is on only if anyone in there or can be there soon...

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"Be calm and silent, as Darkness care not of passions and lies. Be patient and cold, as Darkness exists out of borders of time and emotions. Just be yourself, as You are in the Darkness and Darkness is inside of you."
-Dark Ones Doctrine, 2001y (c)-

You wouldn't happen to have prostate cancer, would you?

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Blog: http://www.sydius.org
Web: http://www.sydius.net

I turn everything on and run a drop cord to my neighbors house...just to annoy Syd!

Actually I'm thinking of using motion sensing light switches in the common areas of the house such as the living room, kitchen, dinning room, halls and bathroom since my wife and kid never turn them off.

Personally I cut my utilities over 60% in the last two years with upgrades including a 97% energy efficent furnace and R-50 insulation. All the lights in my house use 15 watt or less bulbs to include outside lights which I leave on at night. Even in the dead of winter my bill for gas and electric together just barely hits $100 a month.

Its easy to save energy!

My next project after I finish the plumbing is to install solar panels to provide all the interior lighting, outside lighting and the work shop. 4 panels and 12 deep cycles will run it for the next 5-7 years (before I have to replace the battery) then I never have to worry about lights during power outages which happen a lot here and it will cut the utilities by another $30 a month at least.

Dev

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"So...if crazy people don't know their crazy...does that mean your only sane if your know your crazy?"

But how long will it take you to get a return on investment Dev?
Don't say instant, because the savings in your electric bill are not a savings until they exceed the cost of what you spent on the improvements.

And Syd, we all know that global warming has nothing to do with pollution and everything to do with the declining number of pirates. Yes, pirates. The flying spaghetti monster reached out and touched me with his noodly appendage and told me himself.

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Well considering I paid $37,500 for my home on a quarter acre lot and now its worth over $130,000 with only $18,000 in improvements I would say it is already paid for 10x over.

The new upgrades however cut my utilites by over $120 a month so just in the last 4 months of the winter last year it was almost $500 of the $3700 cost of the furnace.

The R-50 insulation had a lot to do with that but I installed it myself and it cost less that $800 to do so if everything keeps on track the furnace will pay for itself and the other upgrades in the next 3-4 years. Very quickly in other words.

The panels and batteries will pay for their self in 3 years as well and drop my utilities another $30 a month with no lose of lights, ever! Which to me makes any expense worth it. Right now for gas and electric both my bill is less than $100 a month and I keep it nice and warm in the house. That was after the 50% increase in utilites last month due to the cost of natural gas.

My next major upgrade will be switching from gas water heater to electric, the new ones use half the energy as the one I bought 4 years ago thus dropping the bill by another $10 a month. We are also able to file for a subsidy from the utilities office to actually pay for part of these bills for each appliance.

Dev

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"So...if crazy people don't know their crazy...does that mean your only sane if your know your crazy?"

Not to shabby Dev.
As someone who has had gas and electric (both for heating, cooking and hot water) I can't see why anyone would willingly switch to an electric water heater (or is gas going up THAT much?)

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Gas around here (upstate SC) has always been more expensive than electric (nuclear power station). Add that to the latest increases and gas just doesn't make sense. Some of my friends with gas appliances have literally tripled their gas bills over last year. One person swapped to an electric water heater, and it paid for itself in six months... Yeah, it's going up THAT much.

Ouch.
I only have propane right now (in the lowcountry SC) but then we only use it for the barbeque and the fireplace. Think it was 1.25/gal for my 100 gallon tank. I still don't think I save any on the water heater cause I gotta keep the thing cranked up to have hot water in a reasonable amount of time; so much for saving energy.

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Natural gas in Colorado went up over 50% in the last 3 months alone. It is due to go up again in January.

The new electric water heaters are more efficent than the gas ones anyway unless your willing to splurge on a newer tankless water heater but with gas going up like it is that will not be cost effective since they run almost $1000 bucks just for the units and then you have to replumb your pipes and gas lines which will add on another couple of thousand in expense.

The new electric tanks cost less than $220 a year to operate.

Dev

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"So...if crazy people don't know their crazy...does that mean your only sane if your know your crazy?"

Yeah, we were thinking about getting one of those instant hot type propane water heaters, but there is the front end cost besides the fuel.
That and our electric water heater is less than 2 years old so I think we'll be sticking with it.

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