I'm trying to save on my electric bill. IDEAS APPRECIATED!!!

[the nature boy]

Use fat people as firewood.

 

[Buddy_Christ]

Programmable thermostats help too...adjust the heat down when you're not there.

Lowe's and HomeDepot many times waive the rental fee on the blower if you buy X number of bags of insulation. However, if you can do fiberglas, it's generally regarded as better because of the higher R value, and it doesn't settle over time. More of a pain though.

I spent $500 insulating my attic, and I also replaced my furnace last year, and my gas bill dropped about $100 a month on level pay.

programmable thermostats rock. i put one in our last place and it paid for itself pretty quickly. the last place sucked balls for insulation. one year i had plastic over all the windows just to save some money.

if you've got a lot of old windows, you should look into replacing them. old windows seal like crap, so they'll do the opposite of what you want with the heat (keep it out in summer, let it out in winter). won't be cheap, but it'll pay for itself eventually.

i keep the house at 68-70 during the winter, 60 at night and when we aren't home. summer time i never set the AC lower than 74, and it had to be extremely humid for me to get it that low. normally i'd leave it at 76 and turn it up to 78 when we weren't home or sleeping. sure it gets cooler at night than 78 degrees, but with the house sealed up, the humidity stayed out.


first house my parents bought had a wood stove in the basement. there was a fan installed in the basement ceiling up through to the hallway on the ground floor (rancher, no 2nd floor). we'd get that woodstove kickin off heat then turn the fan on. my dad always kept the house at 68 degrees, but we could get the the upstairs to 74-75 degrees with the woodstove loaded up. saved a lot on heating bills, just a pain in the ass sometimes to stay stocked with wood.

 

[jerkbox]

Use fat people as firewood.

lol....oil lamps

 

[chesty]

don't use any

 

[TheProject]

programmable thermostats rock. i put one in our last place and it paid for itself pretty quickly. the last place sucked balls for insulation. one year i had plastic over all the windows just to save some money.

if you've got a lot of old windows, you should look into replacing them. old windows seal like crap, so they'll do the opposite of what you want with the heat (keep it out in summer, let it out in winter). won't be cheap, but it'll pay for itself eventually.

i keep the house at 68-70 during the winter, 60 at night and when we aren't home. summer time i never set the AC lower than 74, and it had to be extremely humid for me to get it that low. normally i'd leave it at 76 and turn it up to 78 when we weren't home or sleeping. sure it gets cooler at night than 78 degrees, but with the house sealed up, the humidity stayed out.


first house my parents bought had a wood stove in the basement. there was a fan installed in the basement ceiling up through to the hallway on the ground floor (rancher, no 2nd floor). we'd get that woodstove kickin off heat then turn the fan on. my dad always kept the house at 68 degrees, but we could get the the upstairs to 74-75 degrees with the woodstove loaded up. saved a lot on heating bills, just a pain in the ass sometimes to stay stocked with wood.

I've been told that you don't really want much more than a 5 degree swing in your temperature because the furnace has to work that much harder to come up to the higher temperatue, you lose some amount of energy benefit.

Also, as an aside, I did fiberglas myself in the walls and in the attic. The attic was easy because the spacing, for the most part, was the perfect size for the batts. I had to compress it a little in the walls because R19 didn't come close to filling up the gap, and in some cases, R30 was too thick. So I'm probably somewhere between the two in the walls I did this summer.

 

[gymrat]

cardboard boxes are a bitch to heat bro. jUst move.

 

[SoKlueles]

In the summer time, i turned my ac up to 76, it wasnt cold in there but it wasnt hot....and in the winter......id keep it on 68 and wear clothes

 

[gymrat]

during the day we have ours set to 65. IN the morning it's at 70