Our Home Energy Saving Tips | North Carolina

by Christine
(Concord, NC)

I wanted to share our home energy saving tips. We've kind of started from scratch with our energy conservation, in that we just moved to a new apartment.

Our previous residence was a home which consumed (a lot of) gas for heat and water heating. The central air conditioning was electric powered, this made the electric bill during the spring and summer months hard to unbearable.

We are now in an apartment with plenty of windows, which allows us to use natural sources for heating and cooling, not too mention plenty of natural lighting as well. I rarely turn on the overhead lights or lamps during the day.

We only had the option of central electric air conditioning, but our apartment is somewhat "insulated" by the other surrounding units that provide cool air to the ducts of the surrounding apartments. But again with 8 windows, facing north, east and west, we rarely use the air conditioning.

We've also replaced all our bulbs with Cfl bulbs (the LEDs are still too expensive for us). My husband recently closed the hot water valve to the washing machine, and we open it only when I'm washing something which I feel needs hot water. Almost all our washing cycles use cold water and the dryer is generally set to tumble dry low.

Since I’m the only one who cooks around here, I turn off the burner on the stove when the food is almost finished, and use the left over heat to finish the cooking process. I never use the preheat setting on the oven.

We’ve all practiced these for quite some time now, and feel that saving energy is important. I no longer leave my laptop plugged in at night, as this waste a lot of energy, I've heard.

Christine,
Concord, NC