What's your electric bill like from pellets?

Didn't make a mistake on your last read did you?

Gary

 

Get that Kill-A-Watt meter....you might find more than just the old fridge at fault, although they are known to consume a lot of watts.

 

I bought a kill a watt a few years back. I was surprised to see how much juice a lot of small electronics burn up. One of the biggest offenders is my Dish Network DVR. That critter sucks almost 50 watts 24/7. It costs about the same to power the DVR as it costs to run a small chest freezer I have downstairs.

 

If you are running multiple fans 24/7 they don't have to draw a lot of watts to add up fast. This house has a base electrical load of close to 80 watts per hour, which is 1.92 KWh per day this is the next thing I intend to reduce.

The loads are from my router, cable modem, 3 portable phones, the cell transceiver, garage door opener, my dvd player, the microwave, the dishwasher, the stove, the smoke/co detectors, and the boiler controller.

My electrical bill last month was $52.06 for 321 KWh.

I have found the biggest energy slurper is the electric stove, the clothes dryer, and the bosses iron.

I use less electricity on the low heat delicate auto dry cycle on the dryer.

We do not have an electric water heater.

 

I'm well along in changing out to LED lights, but with the exception of the two outside floods plus three candelabra light blubs all very low usage, I was already CFL or Fluorescent.

When we moved in here I could almost heat the house using the lights. There were 6 lamp bathroom vanity fixtures in all three bathrooms, you made sure that you didn't turn those on if you walked into that room after dark, plus a ceiling fan and light fixture.

I still haven't replaced four of the three flood light fixtures, one of these days when the urge strikes I'll get some two light flush mount ceiling fixtures and do a little step ladder work.

 

Run a kill-a-watt test on the fantom power of your electronics. When I ran mine, it didn't even come up to a buck a month. So I gave up on the all off and rebooting issues.

 

Welp my cable modem eats 9 watts 24/7/365, my router eats 3 watts, my dvd player eats 0.7 watts off and 12 watts on, I haven't stuck a kill a watt on anything yet but would not be surprised that my TV chews a few watts off but no where near what the old one did, likewise the TWC cable box chewed a bit of juice. How do I know well my usage dropped when I replaced my tv and dumped the cable.

Libraries in Maine loan those meters out so I'll be getting one to check things out.

ETA: This year I'll have used 1600 KWh less than last year.

 

The way we got our. Bill down was to stop leaving lights on, Got rid of an upright freezer, and converted to LED lights except for the non dimmers which are mostly cfl's. I ihave five ourside dusk to dawn lights that are now all LEDs and collectively are less than one 60 watt incandescent light. Spreading the lights around was a successful way to achieve the outside area lighting I was looking for.

 

Prior to this year I had reduced my usage by replacing the blowers in the pellet stove with lower amperage ones.

We weren't here long enough running the incandescent to notice what it would cost, before the papers passed on this place I had started re lamping everything. We were in this place about a month before the closing took place. Even cash sales take paper work time, oh well.

 

I have yet to find a way to get the boss to turn off the lights when she leaves the room. So usually you can find 11 or more lights on by the end of the morning.

 

Motion detector switches?

 

I saw some ceiling retro fit LED ceiling lights at HD. Seems very simple to switch out.

 

Then you get them turning off if they sense no motion which isn't always after a person leaves the room as several folks have discovered. It has to be other than just motion.

 

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