still must reduce bills

i got my electricity down to 7 to 8 kilawatts per days its summer and hot here. gas is 32 thats crazy per mointh 32 per month all i have is gas heater for water i turned off pilot light in furnace im a guy so i take like 1 minute showers or less 1 per day .i was going to have gas disconcted but i like to wash my dishes in hot water . water heater is at 130 i guess. water bill i dissoccnted leaky toliets i mean i turned off the water to em cause flaper leaks then i use water from my shopwer to flush toliet by dumping it in bowl its staneeeteny i never am in toliet water lol even when i cook i turn off burner before im done cooiking to use the heat from burner when off.any more ideas? i need to drop bills more i can make it as it is but i want to start to be better then makeing it lol

Did you ever get a roommate? That's the easiest way to reduce bills.

nah the one who was supsed to stay 2 weeks per month she came but since i dont have car.she didnt see car in driveway and she thought i wasnt home lol

Hmm. Not sure if you can do much more!! heh. Take cold showers... uh /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon3.gif Turn off all lights, uh, florecent lighting... hmmm. I give up!

Re: still must reduce bills

Hey Raggie /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink2.gif, you could always sell some of your lights to fund the bills...dooogh /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon15.gif Did I just say that /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/au.gif

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i wondewr if i can reduce my taxes that would help i pay 100 per month for this place.

Re: still must reduce bills

did you clean the refridgerator coils?
i looked at mine this week, and the poor thing must have been working 2X as hard. that compressor motor use a fair ammount of juice, and depending on how many openings the fridge gets, it might run for a long time. especially when the heat on the coils cant depart.

LID on the pan, when cooking, can save as much as 1/2 the power, or increase the speed of things like boiling points very fast. reduces the water evaporation cooling (and other cooling) that occurs.

Microwave calculations (if you have one) a 600W microwave uses actually 1200W of energy to make 600W of waves (read the specs on the back). the stove is more efficient even electric. and lots faster for wet items.

change up a coffee maker with a hot plate, to a coffee maker with a THERMAL caraf, it keeps the coffee hot for 4-5 HOURS, instead of running that 50+W hotplate to keep putting wasted heat back in.

wasted heat in ANYTHING, is also wasted air conditioning, if you are using AC. put 500W INTO the house, the AC will have to take that 500W back out, and it will probably take 1000W to do it.

Florescent (mentioned) not only for reduced consumption, but it drops the heat generated again.

Motion sencors , well for that you have to live with people who are less conscience of your use. like people who dont have to pay the power bill

they say all the loads of wall warts really add up, i find that to be untrue, and i have a LOAD of them.
but i still have them on switches, or surge protector switches anyways. (never turn them off but they are on switches

i find that the major consumers are the major consumers, as simple as that. the 15-1800W stovetop elements. 1500W space heaters, and 10,000W air conditioners.

but along the lines of wallwarts. some appliences not even ON, use 1/2 of thier total power just parked. i have all my VCRs rated, oops make that had. they were about 20W plugged in, clock running, antenna bypass. and 45W when turned on, and a mere pitiance more when actually running a tape with them.

A stereo can use small juice like a wall wart, but crank up the tunes and power is power and a lot of it is wasted as heat. big sub woofers, and major bass use more actual power than highs, because they have to move more air.

Televisions (like wall warts) can use 4W of power just waiting to turn on. some can have the "quick turn on" switch turned off, but not many.

all that last stuff is like a dripping faucet though, what really spins the wheel is heating elements (shorting the grid and large motors that have work to do.

HLT cooling, and power management on computers can reduce consumtion of the computers power , making that all work correctally is harder than cleaning the coils on the fridge but that is one more thing.

computer pereferials, scanners printers, wall warts for devices, can be put on an under the monitor switch. you can then shut them totally off, and of course its cool just for sheer lazyness to have the switches right there.

mabey asking What you GOT, that uses power , would be better, than going through the PG&E list of energy consumables.

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Nudity is cooler and cleaner.

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Raggie, have you looked into any additional low income assistance? For an instance my parent's get fuel help which is pretty common but another thing we didn't know about it until we looked into to it is that they get a low income credit towards their phone bill.

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Don't know if your city will cover it but old gas lines often develop leaks somewhere between the street and your house which will waste gas and $$. See if there's an affordable way to have it looked into and fixed if there is a leak.

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[ QUOTE ]
nerdgineer said:
Don't know if your city will cover it but old gas lines often develop leaks somewhere between the street and your house which will waste gas and $$. See if there's an affordable way to have it looked into and fixed if there is a leak.

[/ QUOTE ]

That would not register on his gas meter.

Chuck

I keep the water heater set down to it's lowest level ALL the time, except when I need hot water. It only takes about 10 minutes to warm up enough to take a shower. I get up, and turn up the water heater first thing. After about 10 minutes, I turn it way down again. At the lowest setting, it's warm enough to wash my hands. You could wash dishes after taking a shower; the water stays hot for quite a while.

I have compact fluorescent lamps on the main level of my house; in the basement and attic, I installed those 'smart bulbs' that turn themselves off after 30 minutes. And I don't leave lights on I don't need, either. Got NiMH AA cells? Very cheap to recharge them. If you need to run to the bathroom, for exapmle, no need to turn on all the the lights on the way there; I use a MiniM*g with an Opelec module.

Keep the shades/curtains pulled where the sun shines in during the summer; it makes a big difference in how hot it gets.

[ QUOTE ]
TRC said:
Got NiMH AA cells? Very cheap to recharge them. If you need to run to the bathroom, for exapmle, no need to turn on all the the lights on the way there; I use a MiniM*g with an Opelec module.


[/ QUOTE ]

Keep in mind that you lose a lot of electricity in the process of recharging a battery - any battery. That transformer generates a lot of heat to charge the battery, which is lost energy. I don't know the exact energy loss for charging a battery, but I would bet that it is considerable. It is only economical when compared to a disposable battery.

Chuck

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If you are worried about your hot water consumption and showering is one of the main uses of hot water, check to make sure that you have a low flow shower head. Most sold in the last 10 or 15 years will be rated at a flow rate of 2.5 gallons per minute (GPM), but a lot of older ones consume double or triple that. You could also take a navy shower (turn on water to get wet, turn off water to soap up, turn on water again to rinse).

Good luck.

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Sounds like you need to figure out how to make about $100 a month on the side doing something because if you are already squeezing pennies till they squeek chances anything other than drastic measures won't result in more than perhaps $5-10 a month savings which may not make a ton of difference. I recall you have some knowledge of computers, perhaps you could put a sign up offering to clean and/or repair them for a supplemental income.

As for the water savings, I would guess you are probably not wasting water as it is and if your water company charges like our city does you have to use 500 gallons less to see any savings in less than 3 months anyway and the savings most likely will be in the $5-10 dollar range. Electricity is cheap and if you are already using fluorescent lighting and flashlights only air conditioning savings will amount to more than a few dollars a month.

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Raggie, if you got your power consumption down to about 7 to 8 Kwh's a day then you are doing good. The only other way to signficantly reduce your power even more is to unplug your VCR and or TV or any other device that is on standby when normally turned off. Also turn off computer when not in use.

One thing to know about your gas bill. Most companies have a minimum charge for a specific volume of gas. If you do not use all of it you still get charged for it.

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Lynx-arc has a good point about directing your effort toward making more money in addition to saving it. I'm all for squeezing a nickel, but at some point you will not be getting much more return on your effort.

I think you posted once before on how you could make usable computers out of scrapped computers. I'll bet you could make some money doing that and selling them.

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if gas is to high nect month ill cut it off .lol im no winp i can take cold shower.i wash dishes by hand in stead of my dishwasher i hope it saves water and gas and electicity food will be next month im sure

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o ps so a micorwave cost more to use then stove?

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If you are cooking with a microwave probably. But to quickly zap something to heat it up I don't think it would. If you needed to do that it would take time to conduct heat from a burner to food to warm it up, and then you got a hot stove heating your house afterwards...