This Is How We Cut Our Electric Bill In Half

You may remember a while back when we first moved into our condo.  When we moved in, we continued to use our electricity like we did when we were in Seattle (where either rates are much cheaper or we had more money and didn't pay as much attention to our bills...I think it was the latter) and a month later we got a HUGE electric bill which sent me into bill shock.  We immediately took a bunch of steps to lower our electric bill and as you can see from the photo above, we were successful.  Here's how we did it:

• We started tracking our daily electricity usage by reading the meter each day and recording it.
• We used these readings to track what things tended to make the meter speed up (mostly using the dryer and a lot of hot water).
• We changed our habits...a lot.
• Now I wash our clothes in cold water instead of hot so the water heater doesn't have to continuously heat up water.
• I also wash full loads of wash instead of a whole bunch of small loads because there are one or two particular items I want to wash.
• I try to take shorter showers (this works about half the time).
• I only dry clothes for about 30 minutes then let them sit in the dryer over night and the warmth and super low humidity tends to dry them the rest of the way.
• I can't wait until we move and I can dry my clothes outside so we won't have to use the dryer at all!
• Instead of heating the whole house we use a small space heater to heat the one room we are in.
• Now that it is getting warmer here, we only use the air conditioning when absolutely necessary (such as turning it on in the early evening when we get home to cool down the house then shutting it off and opening the doors to allow cooler evening breezes to cool off the house).
• We use ceiling fans...a lot.  They really help to keep the house cool.
• We only turn the light on in the room we are using and are careful to turn off any lights we aren't using.
• We unplug any electrical appliances we aren't using.
• We are gone most of the day (hubby playing poker and me at the library using free internet and free air conditioning).  This means no electrical usage at all while we are gone each day.
• We have very few electrical appliances in our house.  I use my blender quite a bit but for all other cooking I use elbow grease instead of a range of electrical appliances.
• We do use a convection toaster oven quite a bit which saves a lot of electricity over using the regular oven.

That's about all.  We don't really use a lot of electricity anyway as we are only home in the evenings but just by paying more attention we were able to slash our electricity bill in half!

An Update on the Electricity Experiment, Some Links, and My New Business

It's been kind of busy around here!  Here's what's been happening...

Electricity Experiment:
I have been watching our electricity consumption like a hawk this past week and unfortunately it looks like our super high electricity bill I blogged about a while back was our own fault.  We were pretty spoiled by Washington's electricity rates (plus by having a house that used natural gas as well which is much cheaper than electricity).  After reading our meter daily for the past week, we have a much better handle on how we ended up with such a high bill and a much better idea of ways that we can conserve electricity.  Here's the results of our meter reading:

• January 21--used 21 kwh (didn't use heat but did one load of laundry and baked)
• January 22--used 18 kwh (used the heat pump/central heat to heat the place)
• January 23--used 17 kwh (used space heaters to heat the place)
• January 24--used 23 kwh (did one load of laundry and used the space heaters)
• January 25--used 13 kwh (no cooking, no laundry, and only used the space heater for about 30 minutes)

So yes, the bill was probably correct as it showed that we averaged about 30 kwh per day.  Now because we are paying attention to our electricity used we are able to keep it at an average of about 20 kwh per day so we are hoping our next bill will be about 30% lower!  Tonight we should have higher usage because I plan to bake some granola, bake a pizza for dinner, and do about three loads of laundry so we will keep checking our meter each day probably for the next month or so and hopefully still be able to average about 20 kwh per day.

Links:
Here's some links you might enjoy...

• How we paid cash for our first home (this family rocks!)
• 1000 days after overnight success (some excellent business tips)
• Lists of note (I just came across this website and I LOVE lists so thought this was cool)
• A cash mob for a small town store (I LOVE this town! What a great thing to do for a small business!)
• Success books (I was feeling a bit aimless and needing some inspiration so I am now reading down my list of favorite success books which I listed here on my other blog)

My New Business:
I have been thinking abouts some business ideas (to me a real job seems like a prison sentence...I am much happier as a business owner) and since my friends moved down here recently and are in need of work, I have decided on a new business that I plan to start within the next month or so.  My friend's husband is a handyman/painter/all around useful guy and he has been working on and off doing carpet cleaning.  We talked about the idea of him having his own carpet cleaning business and after doing some research it looks like this would be a low cost (about $3000) kind of business to get started and once the machine is paid off, his only expense would be the carpet cleaning chemicals.  I will do a bit more research before I commit to this but I have done similar businesses in the past (started businesses for friends then sold the business to the person after a while) and it has worked out well.  I'll let you know how this goes.

I hope you are all having a wonderful week!
p.s. It's near 70 degrees and sunny this week in Las Vegas.  I think this is the best January we have ever experienced--nice weather will do that for a person.

The Great Electricity Experiment

My last post was lamenting our super high electricity bill (p.s. thanks everyone for your good input on this!).  Since we got the bill we decided to do a little experiment.  Every day we write down the electric meter reading in the morning when we leave and in the evening when we return.  We are making notes on what electric appliances we use each day and we are also experimenting with the use of these appliances. 
On the 21st, the reading was 1842 in the morning and 1843 in the evening.  It looks like the condo uses one kwh (kilowatt hour) while we are gone for the day.  That evening I baked some cornbread in the regular oven and did one load of laundry.  The next morning (the 22nd) the morning reading was 1863 (a total of 20 kwh used mostly, I think, by the dryer and the oven).  That afternoon (on the 22nd) the reading was 1864 so again, the condo only used 1 kwh while we were gone.  On the evening of the 22nd, we decided to use the central heating/heatpump system to heat the place instead of the space heaters.  This morning (the 23rd) the meter read 1881 (a total of 17 kwh) used since yesterday.  We shut the central heat off this morning when we left and tonight when we get home I won't do laundry but we will use the space heaters to see if they use more electricity then the central heating system does.
An interesting way to approach the problem but I really want to see why our electric bill was so high.  Judging by the amount of electricity used on the first day, and thinking back to how many loads of laundry we did when we first moved in (a lot--all of our sheets, towels, clothes, etc that were in storage) I am pretty sure the bill was correct and we just used a ton of electricity with the dryer and by washing all of the laundry in warm water. Eeekkk
...This must be why EVERYONE in Japan hangs their clothes to dry--even the very wealthy.  Electricity costs A LOT!

I Just Got My Electricity Bill and Nearly Fainted!

I was kind of eager to get our first electricity bill, blissfully thinking that with a such a small place and with the fact that we are hardly ever home, I would have a small monthly bill to rave about.  Turns out I was wrong (see bill above).
That amount is more than double what we used to pay for electricity in our hold house which was like five times bigger than the small condo we are living in now.  Color me shocked (and appalled, and unhappy...). 
This is what I am doing about it:

• I am going to contact our cousin who lived in the condo before us to see what her average bill was (she should be back next week).
• I also posted this question on a local Las Vegas bulletin board to find out if this was indeed an average bill and the consensus was that for the small space and only having two people live there it was pretty high.
• I went out to read the meter today and will read it every day for a month to keep track of our own usage and see if it measures up with what the electricity company says we use.
• I will call the electric company and ask them about this and see if they have any idea why it was so high (I'm kind of dreading this because it is a minimum 30-40 minute wait on hold just to talk to someone).
• I am now washing our clothes in cold water.  Right after we moved in I did a ton (literally) of laundry, all in warm water.  Plus with the use of the dryer I am thinking that racked up a lot of electricity usage.  I'm even pondering hanging our clothes outside to dry (a practice frowned on by the condo board I think.  Maybe I can hang clothes at night so they won't see it).
• I checked this website and found that electricity rates are much higher in Nevada than what we paid in Washington.  Bummer.
• We already switched to a low-flow shower head (that last thing I want to part with is my hot showers in the morning).
• We have been using a small space heater in whatever room we are in so we didn't use the furnace to heat the entire place but now I am wondering if these draw more electricity than a heat pump system.  Don't know where I would find out if this is true or not...
• I went around and unplugged everything we aren't using (computer printer, DVD player, etc).  Not sure how much this will help.
• I guess I need to wrap my head around the fact that an all electric house is just going to cost more.  In our last house we used natural gas for heating and hot water so I think this made our electricity bill there significantly lower.
• I am kind of dreading summer time when we will need to run the AC 24/7. Yikes!

Does anyone have any other thought on this?