Eagle Shield has helped over 30,000 homeowners be more comfortable and reduce their energy expense. Our customers love us! Read Northern California resident Marrianna Isaacs ’ story…

Eagle Shield: Tell us what it was that you were experiencing that resulted your investing in Eagle shield?

Marrianna: I have a condo that was built in 1984 with single pane windows. In the winter the downstairs portion of my condo would be least 15-20 degrees colder than upstairs. Trying to heat the downstairs to a comfortable temperature meant that the upstairs would be 100 degrees. And in the summer the upstairs would be stifling.

Eagle Shield: It sounds like you needed a way to achieve a consistent temperature throughout your home. After consulting with Eagle Shield, what service or products did you decide would get you the results you were looking for?

Marrianna: I decided to have Eagle Shield’s High Performance Reflective Insulation  installed. (Note: Reflective Insulation – sometimes called radiant barrier insulation –  is a patented, strong, thin aluminum foil sheet designed to block radiant heat transfer across open spaces. Installed on the rafters in your attic, it works with your existing insulation to boost the insulating power of your home.)

Eagle Shield: How did working with Eagle Shield meet or exceed your expectations? What was the ‘before and after’ difference?

Marrianna: Before having the High Performance Reflective Insulation installed I would wear several layers of clothing and turn on the heater and it would run for three hours. The downstairs temperature would raise only 5-10 degrees (not much to notice) and the upstairs would be at least 40-50 degrees hotter. In the summer the condo would be very hot when I got home.  Now with the Eagle Shield Insulation I do not have to wear several layers of clothing and the downstairs warms up much faster and stays warm after I turn off the heater. In the summer the condo stays fairly cool when I arrive home after 6pm.

Eagle Shield: How would you rate the competency and professionalism of the service, and follow-up provided by Eagle Shield?

Marrianna: An Eagle Shield staff member explained the value of Reflective Insulation and what it would do for me, and I decided to purchase it. The installers were great. They were professional, friendly and were informative. They were in and out of my home quickly and they cleaned up after themselves in a timely manner. The staff member followed up to see if the product was working like she had explained and if I was satisfied.

Eagle Shield: How do you feel about recommending Eagle Shield to others?

Marrianna: I have recommended the Eagle Shield High Performance Reflective  Insulation to my friends and family.

I don’t know if you have a similar issue, but keeping a consistent level of warmth in all of the rooms of our house is a problem. Our house is around 3500 sq. feet, and has four bedrooms on the upper level. The thermostat is located in the center of the second floor, in the hallway. I can set it at 78 degrees and it keeps the main floor and the middle of the second floor pretty-much at that temperature. The problem is that two of the bedrooms, which are located at the far end of the house, always feel cold in the winter. We felt that turning up the heat in order to keep those rooms warmer wasn’t a wise thing to do, since it might drive our heating bill through the proverbial ceiling, so we opted for getting a couple of electric space heaters for these rooms. Bad idea. Here’s why: kids live in these rooms.

We bought 1500 watt heaters with automatic temperature regulators (for obvious reasons-kids) with the idea that a portable heater would be a great way to ‘take the chill’ off the morning. We also thought that the kids would be vigilant about turning them off in the mornings when they left for school. Wrong again. What we didn’t think about was that these thermostatically controlled heaters would automatically turn on again when the room got cold, which it did during the day. Once the temperature of the room reached a certain temperature, the heater would shut down. The kids just forgot to turn them off, because they didn’t ‘hear’ them running.

Our energy consultant asked us if we had portable heaters and asked us why we thought they were a better idea than turning up the heat. Of course, we thought it was going to be a cheaper way to bring heat to those cold rooms. He asked us if we knew how much they actually cost us to operate. We didn’t really have a clue. Here’s the reality of how much these things cost to run: At $.17 a KWH a 1500 watt portable heater running three hours a day costs around $23.00 a month to operate. Take that times two and we were looking at $46.00 a month, just to ‘take the chill’ off. Amazing what escapes us. That’s if they only ran the three hours. I could just see the heaters kicking-on-and-off-again throughout the day…with no one home. Add this additional amount to what we paid for the heaters and we felt like idiots.

O.K… so what were we to do? The rooms were still going to be cold if we didn’t do something.
Our issue was not wanting to increase our heating bill by turning up the furnace, but we didn’t want the additional $46.00 or more added to our heating bill, either. He told us that the ductwork in our house, because of the size, didn’t have the capacity to bring the needed heat to those out-lying rooms. If we turned up the heat, the rooms in the center of the house got warmer-too warm for us-even though the cold rooms did warm-up. Besides that, the additional heat seemed to want to kill these great fern plants that we have on the second story landing.

Our guy suggested something that did, in fact, work for us. In order to compensate for the inconsistent heat flow we could spend more money for a higher output furnace (which we weren’t going to do), or we could do the following (which we did):
• Select the temperature range on the thermostat that brought enough heat into the cooler rooms in order for them to be comfortable.
• In the rooms in the center of the house, close the heat registers so they would be less affected by the additional heat and subsequently, force more heat into the cooler rooms. We had to play with this a little in order to get the right balance, but it worked.
• Take the portable heaters out of the room and sell them on Craig’s list, which we did.

After a couple of months we noticed a couple of things:
• Our always-cold daughters stopped complaining about their rooms being cold.
• The overall house temperature seemed more balanced and comfortable.
• The increase in our heating bill increased only by around $20.00 a month-half of what we were unknowingly paying to heat those rooms.
• The ferns aren’t dying.
It’s amazing when one thinks about the concept of Hidden energy guzzlers. They really are hidden, and that’s what makes them so insidious when it comes to the impact that they have on our wallets. I have nothing against energy companies. I want to pay my fair share. Truth is, however, that I’d rather save what I can and spend it on something I enjoy. I figured that, with the amount of money we were going to save by being more energy efficient, I could eventually buy a new sea kayak. That didn’t go over all that well…

One of the appliances that I thought was in the ‘top 3’ hidden energy guzzlers, the clothes dryer, actually ended up using about the same amount of energy as my flat screen TV. That was a surprise. It would seem (to me) that the amount of energy required to generate the heat necessary to dry a load of clothes would be far greater than that needed to run a flat screen TV. Guess again. We figured our average monthly cost, when running 34 loads a month, to be $13.75. Not bad when you think about it. That’s the equivalent of a cup of Starbucks and a piece of banana nut loaf bread a week.
Our job here, however, is to see how we can reduce our energy expense, so here are some of the things we discovered that can reduce your clothes dryer expense considerably:
1. The ‘load:’ For some reason I have a tendency to pack my clothes dryer like luggage bound for Europe. I haven’t really stopped to think about it, but the inner logic may be that I’m getting more dry clothes for my money. Not true. I found that an over-loaded dryer costs more to operate. I also was told to separate the lightweight clothes from the heavier items and dry them separately. Here again, I would just dump everything in the dryer bin, turn it on for 45 minutes, walk away and let it roll. I found that drying the lighter items by themselves and turning the timer on for only 20 minutes resulted in most of the load being dry. In half the time. Putting the heavier clothes (towels, jeans, etc.) together and setting the time for 30 minutes gave us the same results. I ended-up with less wrinkles as well.
2. The lint screen: This is something that I’m pretty good about. I pull and clean the lint screen each time I use the dryer. I was told that dirty lint screens can cause a dryer to use up to 30 percent more energy-and it can be a fire hazard.
3. Outside exhaust: One thing I didn’t think about was to periodically check the outside exhaust filter. I was told to make sure that the cover fit tightly, so no cold air could leak in. Also, he recommended that I change my flexible vinyl duct with a metal one. Evidently, restricting the air flow can reduce the effectiveness of the dryer, and vinyl ducts have a tendency to get squashed. I went home, looked behind my dryer, and sure enough…my 6-inch ductwork was crunched into about half the size it’s supposed to be.
4. Moisture sensor: I had no idea what this was, or if I even had one. I was told to use it instead of a timed cycle. Interesting…some machines have a ‘moisture sensor option’ which automatically shuts off the machine when the clothes are dry. I went home and checked our dryer and, sure enough, we have one. Now..to figure out how to use it.
5. Spin option: How do these guys know so much about this stuff? If your clothes washer has spin options, choose a high spin speed or extended spin option to reduce the amount of remaining moisture, thus starting the drying process before you put your clothes in the dryer.
6. Solar clothes dryer: There’s always a wise-guy. I totally fell for it, asking him what a solar clothes dryer was. It’s a clothesline. He said that most people don’t need a dryer. They could save themselves the money and hang their clothes either outside (if the homeowners association permits) or inside on a rack. He seemed to think that clothes would last longer and look better, too.
He had some good suggestions that will save us enough money to pay for those weekly Starbucks visits. However, I just can’t see us hanging stuff around the house to dry….

When we first started looking for hidden energy guzzlers in our house I was asked to list (what I thought) were the top three energy guzzlers. Here’s what we listed:
1. Air conditioner – this was, in fact, the number one guzzler at $80 per month.
2. Clothes dryer – This was not as big a culprit as we thought. We’ll discuss this in our next blog.
3. Hot water heater – This was more expensive than I thought it was going to be, as you’ll see.
Our hot water heater is electric, is a 50 gallon tank, and is around 8 years old. We discovered that our average usage runs around 375 kilowatt hours per month. At $0.17 per KWH, that puts our monthly average at around $68.00 a month, which makes it the number two energy-guzzler in our house. I remember buying it based on one thing: its price tag. What I found was this:
Every appliance has two price tags. The first is the price you pay when you purchase the appliance (I went cheap). The second is the cost of operating the appliance over its lifetime. You might be surprised if you consider how much it costs to operate an appliance compared to what seemed to be a good deal when you purchased it. I thought I got a good deal, but found that I’m paying through the proverbial ‘nose’ each month.

The utility guy said that there are a number of things I could do, which included spending $500 on a new, energy efficient unit. Not being inclined in that direction, I asked what we could do to reduce the bill on the unit we have. Here’s a list of things that he suggested:

1. Repair leaky faucets & showerheads. He said to check the faucets and showers in all three bathrooms for leaks. A leak of one drip per second can cost $1 per month. This doesn’t sound like much, but can add-up.
2. This was interesting. He asked if we used hot water when running the garbage disposal. We always used hot water. He said to use cold water to operate the garbage disposal. Cold water use saves energy and is the recommendation of most disposal manufacturers. Didn’t know that.
3. When washing dishes by hand, he said to use a sink stopper or dishpan so water – hot or cold – doesn’t rush down the drain. Remember, too, that hot water running needlessly not only wastes water, but it wastes energy as well. This was news to us, since we often washed dishes by hand so as not to use the dishwasher (see last week’s blog).
4. Set our water heater to 120 degrees, which will produce plenty of hot water and still save energy. I ran down to the basement and saw that ours was set at 160 degrees, which I promptly changed.
5. Wrap your water heater with a water heater blanket, and insulate the pipes where we can. We got these ready-made foam tubes that worked well and were easy to cut-to-size. He said we’d save around 10% on our bill just by doing this.
6. Conserve hot water by installing water-saving showerheads.
7. Last, but not least, this was the big eye-opener. He said to put a timer on the heater that shut it down at night. Candidly, I didn’t buy this. I thought we’d be showering in cool water in the morning, which I wasn’t excited about. Not to worry, he said, because the water in the tank would still be warm, and it wouldn’t take much to heat it up. He said that by turning off the water heater for 8 hours each day, we could save as much as 30% on our bill. To prove it to us he brought us outside the house to where the electrical meter was. He asked us to watch the dial, which was spinning quite fast. He then went into the basement and flipped-off the breaker for the hot water heater. Amazing. The dial (which measures the kilowatts being used) slowed-down to half of the speed as when the heater was on.
His point was this: Why continue to heat water at 120 degrees when no one is using it? A well insulated tank will keep water warm for quite a while. So we put the heater on a timer and decided to turn it off from 11pm to 6am, and from 9am to 4pm, when we are away at work and school. That’s 14 hours that we won’t be heating water at 4500 watts. We also decided that there won’t be any more 20 minute showers. Sorry ladies…

If you have been following any of these recent blogs, you will have picked-up that we are on a mission to uncover and eliminate hidden ‘energy guzzlers:’ the appliances, equipment, and habits that, unknown to us, are wasting energy and causing us unnecessary expense. We have found that some appliances and equipment, much to our surprise, use much more energy than we would have guessed (flat screen TVs and hot tub pumps). But there are a couple of appliances that, at first blush, might seem to be energy-suckers, but in fact are not.
I asked a few people at work to identify the two appliances in their kitchens that they thought were the biggest energy-wasting culprits. To the person, each one listed both their dishwasher and their electric stove. By the way, none of these folks thought that their refrigerator was an energy-waster. I pointed them to blog number one. Like them, I really thought my dishwasher and electric stove used lots of electricity, so I try to use them sparingly. I was surprised to find that they actually use much less electricity than I thought. This was good news for me because I love to cook and hate to wash dishes.
First, the Dishwasher. I figured that we ran our dishwasher 18 times (cycles) a month. That’s a little more than every-other-day. At $0.17 per KWH, the dishwasher costs us an average of $6.62 a month. Huh. I spend more than that on breakfast. What about all that hot water? We were of the opinion that if we cut down on running the dishwasher and washed dishes by hand, we’d be saving money. Not so. I found that we use less energy washing dishes in a dishwasher than washing by hand! This is one of those counter-intuitive things. It’s like taking a bath versus taking a shower. With all that water running down the drain, it would seem that a bath would use less water than a shower, but just the opposite is true. Same with washing dishes by hand.

Even though there was a smile on my face when I found that the dishwasher wasn’t a true ‘energy-guzzler,’ I was given a couple of tips that can help reduce the energy usage even more.
First, run the dishwasher only when full. We found that this reduced our monthly usage from around 18 cycles to around 15. But here’s the tip that I thought was pretty cool. We were told to use the cool-dry cycle (on our dishwasher it’s called the ‘no heat’ button) rather than the hot cycle. Never thought about that. I guess I thought that they needed that cycle to make sure the germs were killed. The utility guy told me that, with 160 degree water, the germs were already dead and it just takes a little longer for the dishes to dry. For those of you who don’t have this feature on your dishwasher, you can turn it off after the final rinse and let the dishes air dry. I guess that this can reduce the dishwasher’s energy usage by 30-40 percent.

Next, the Electric Stove. We figured that we used the stove-top around 45 minutes to an hour a day. The average monthly cost, oddly enough, is only $7.25 a month. Not bad. Everyone I asked thought this one was the bad-boy of the kitchen, using much more energy than any other appliance. Interestingly enough, some of my friends have spent hundreds of dollars on counter-top appliances that they purchased just so they wouldn’t use their stove. One friend, who just spent $135 on a convection-type, dome-shaped oven, upon hearing how little his electric stove was really costing him, gave me the “thanks a lot” look. Should have saved his money.

In closing, here are a couple of tips we picked-up regarding how we can reduce the stove usage even more.
• Foods cook faster at lower temperatures if you use pots with flat bottoms and tight-fitting lids.
• Pans that are bigger or smaller than the heating coil waste energy. (Weird. I thought that by putting the smaller pan on a larger coil would cause it to heat-up faster)
• You can also save energy by using your microwave oven, slow-cooker, toaster oven, and electric skillet instead of the larger oven or stove.

In our first blog dealing with hidden energy guzzlers, we discovered how to save energy by cleaning the coils and checking to see that the refrigerator and freezer compartment seals were, in fact, sealing correctly…which they weren’t. I thought we were through with anything dealing with cooling or freezing. Not so fast, I was told…

My next discovery really falls into the “hidden” category because it’s one of those appliances that are described by the phrase: ‘out-of-sight, out-of-mind.’ It’s our freezer. Not the little one over the refrigerator, but the big one in the garage. And…the one in the basement. Why have two freezers, you might ask? Good question. Especially since neither of them is full. Our thinking, upon reflection, was to have more freezer space for those periodic trips to Costco, when we found ourselves buying more stuff than our little freezer (above the refrigerator) could hold. However, we have never really filled both of these freezers. The big one in the garage is a 16 cubic feet upright and the one in the basement is a 7 cubic foot chest model.

By the way, I grew-up in a small community in northern Minnesota, where we used large freezers to store vegetables grown in the garden and for sides of beef or venison. As a kid I remember that someone was into the freezer almost every day. That’s just the way it was. Everyone had a freezer. But my life is different now. I don’t have a large garden where I grow my own vegetables. I don’t hunt large animals where I need to store hundreds of pounds of game. My only hunting is done at Costco and it just feels like we’re supposed to have one.

We have found that the foods we use most often go into the freezing unit of the refrigerator. When we run out of room there, we put the overflow into the 7 cubic foot freezer in the basement, which on any given day, is around ¾ full. The big one in the garage? Well… it’s ½ full of stuff that we rarely eat, but don’t feel right about throwing away. We might just need it someday. The reality is that we have thrown a lot of food away due to freezer burn.

Here’s what I discovered regarding the economics of having this extra freezer space in my life. At $0.17 per KWH, the large freezer is costing me around $24.00 a month. The small one is costing me around $12.00 a month. That’s $36.00 a month for freezing mostly air. We were told that the fuller a freezer is, the more efficient it is. We were also told to make sure the coils in the back of the freezer were clean. Another thing was to check for ice. Check for ice?? It’s a freezer! Of course there’s going to be ice! What he meant was this: If we had ¼ inch of ice in our freezer (which we did on the big one), it’s acting as an insulator and is causing the freezer to work harder and use more electricity. Talk about adding freezer insult to injury.

It was recommended that we get rid of one of the freezers. If we wanted to keep the big one, then make sure the empty space is filled with sturdy plastic jugs filled not quite to the top with water. If we decided to keep the small one, it would cost us less electricity, but we felt it might limit us in terms of space.

It’s amazing the clarity that can come with a bottle of wine and a pizza. We decided to get rid of the large freezer. Here’s why:
• It would cut our ‘extra’ freezer costs from $36 down to $12 a month
• It would free-up needed space in the garage.
• It would cause us to use more discretion when shopping at Costco, and buy only what we have room for.
• It would eliminate the waste of freezer-burnt food.
• The utility company offered to haul the big freezer away for free if we couldn’t sell it on Craig’s list.
Another $24 a month saved, plus garage space gained as well as some needed changes in our shopping habits. Who knew that our utilities energy efficiency ‘coach’ would turn-out to be a financial advisor as well.

So far, on our journey toward the reduction of unnecessary energy use, we have dealt with three of our ten energy guzzlers: the refrigerator, the flat-screen TV, and the air conditioner. This blog deals with an energy guzzler that, to me, came out of left field: the notorious swimming pool and hot tub filter pumps. No kidding. How often do you stop and consider just how much energy it takes to keep your pool and hot tub clean?
My answer? Never. That’s because we hardly use them, yet pay the same amount as if we were using them 7 days a week! Here’s how it breaks down for me:
• Swimming pool filter pump: Runs approximately 8 hours a day and costs me an average monthly cost of $37.00
• Hot Tub filter/pump: This is an older unit (115 volt) which is set at 100 degrees, and found that it is costing me $43.00 a month, even with an insulated cover. That’s in a warm climate.
So both units are running me around $77.00 a month. In the summer months we use the pool on a daily basis and rarely use the hot tub. In the winter months (gets down into the 40’s) we often use the hot tub but rarely use the pool. When we considered the “ROI” (return on investment) for these appliances, based on their usage, we decided to make some changes.
First of all, the hot tub. How can something so much smaller than the pool cost more to run?? I have a buddy who used an infra-red gun and showed me that heat is leaking out from my tub onto the deck. In other words, the deck lit-up. I’m unintentionally heating my outside deck. Upon inspection, we found that the Mickey-mouse insulation that originally came with the tub was mouse-fodder. He helped me take two-inch foam block and glued it to the insides of the tub housing, which made a huge difference in keeping the heat in. No more heating the deck.
We also decided to just shut-off the hot tub during the summer months. Finally, we were told when we did use the tub, to not leave the jets on unless we were using the tub. It seems that the jets like to inject COLD water into the tub which, in turn, needs to be heated. We think that we can shave around 50% off our hot tub energy bill.
Next, the pool. I found that running the pump 8 hours a day doesn’t significantly improve the cleanliness of my pool, but it does significantly increase my energy bill! I set my pump to run no more than 4 hours a day during the summer and we’re still trying to decide if we want to shut it off completely, or run it for only a couple of hours in the winter. Also, I have an older model, power-hungry, single-speed pump and am considering moving to one of the newer variable speed ones. I have found that the cost of the new pump would be well worth the investment, and along with shutting the pool down in the winter months, will save me around 40-50% of my annual pool bill.
So…if I can reduce this energy use by 40%, that’s a $30 monthly savings. I’d rather spend that on lunch after church one Sunday than give it to PG&E! Come to think of it…the money I will be able to save by reducing the energy usage of all 10 of these energy guzzlers could be enough to buy us lunch every Sunday!

If you have been following our latest blogs, you have seen that have we discovered 10 appliances that are hidden energy-guzzlers for the average home owner. The next energy-guzzler we tackled is our air conditioner. We have a 3-ton unit that, when running only four hours a day, costs us a whopping $80.50 a month, which is considerable portion of our $258.00 monthly electricity bill. In our part of the country, we NEED air conditioning-it’s really not an option. Our local utility expert, however, gave me some great tips on how to reduce our monthly bill. Here are fifteen (Yes…15!) areas I was told to check that could shave-off a considerable amount of air conditioning expense:
1. Raise the temperature: It was suggested that I not turn on my AC unless it’s more than 90 degrees outside. Each degree below 78 will increase my energy use by 3-4%. We currently set it at 80 and let it run, a practice which is going to stop.
2. Install ceiling fans and make sure they are spinning the right direction: I didn’t realize that fans can actually make you feel 3 to 8 degrees cooler, allowing you to dial your AC to a higher temperature and still feel just as cool. I was told to make sure my fan is blowing DOWN, to send air past one’s body, removing the hot air that surrounds the body. If your fan is blowing up, it won’t do any good. In fact, it’s worse than no fan, because it moves the warm air at the ceiling back down towards the living area. Who knew?
3. Use a timer: My thermostat has a built-in timer, which I have never used. I was told to program it to turn-off both during those times when we were away from home, and at night.
4. Close registers in unused rooms: It was suggested that we close registers in rooms we’re not using so as not to pay to cool them, but was warned that if I closed too many of them, the pressure in the system could cause leaks in the ducts! I was told to check with an AC professional first to see how many & which registers are safe to close at the same time.
5. Replace an old air conditioner: My AC unit is 8 years old, so I’m good. I was told that the newer units use 30-50% less electricity than 15-year-old models.
6. Make sure the condenser unit is not being blocked: This was something I wasn’t watching. I learned that tall grass and other debris on or around the condenser can restrict air flow and use more electricity. I have bushes growing around mine (to hide it) and the bushes have been trimmed back.
7. Clean the condenser coils at the start of each AC season: I was told that I could wash the fin coils on the outside with a garden hose, but unless I knew what I was doing, have the coils on the inside serviced by an AC specialist.

8. Check my attic insulation: Poorly insulated attics can lose up to 40% of a house’s cool air. The average home built in 1985-90 has R-11 to R-15 insulation but needs up to R-49. Mine was built in 1995 and has around an R-30, so I need some help here. But the following suggestion made even more sense.
9. Install a reflective barrier: This is a high-tech, high performance reflective insulation (sometimes called radiant barrier insulation) which is a strong, thin aluminum foil sheet designed to block radiant heat transfer across open spaces. Installed on the rafters in my attic, it works with the existing insulation to boost the insulating power of my home. Besides decreasing the amount of attic heat that radiates into the living space, it might reduce the heat enough that I could consider turning the attic space itself into a living space. Not a bad idea for the future.
10. Test my AC ducts for leaks: Check this out: Austin Energy tested thousands of home duct systems and found that the average home loses 27% of its heating or cooling from leaky ducts. And over 86% of homes had ducts which lost more than 10%. Leaking ducts and insufficient insulation meant that the average home used 162 kWh/mo. extra electricity per month, or 18% more than normal. This is an extra $233 a year at average electrical rates.
11. Use shades or blinds on my windows: I like a well-lighted home, so I have a habit of leaving the drapes open. But I was told to keep direct sunlight out. Direct sunlight can raise the temperature of a room by 10-20 degrees. The less heat gets into my home, the less I have to pay to remove it. Again, see the following suggestion, which is even better.
12. Install reflective film on my windows: I found that according to the California Energy Commission, 30% of a structure’s cooling requirements are due to solar energy entering through glass. Reflective film reflects the sun’s heat from my windows, and can block 40-60% of heat and modern films reflect heat away without blocking the light too, so I can still have nice, bright rooms. Good idea.
13. Reduce heat by changing my light bulbs: This is interesting. Lights create a lot of heat which my AC system has to remove. I was shown that I could replace my normal lights with (CFL) bulbs, which use 75% less energy and create 70-90% less heat at the same time. Regular lights give off 10% light and 90% heat, while CFL’s give off 90% light and 10% heat. They are more expensive, but are guaranteed to last ten years or more, and will save me in the long-run.
14. Use storm windows and doors: He said, “If you’re ambitious, install storm windows and doors.” Not being in an area that gets snow, I wondered about the logic of this suggestion, but found that they can reduce the amount of cooling or heating lost through single pane glass by 50%.
15. The best suggestion: Get an energy audit by a reputable company who are experts in this area. An energy audit will assess my home’s current and desired comfort levels, energy expenditure, utility bills, and where I’d like to see improvements. It’s like going to a reputable mechanic for a check-up and reduces the guess-work.
I like the idea of an energy audit. Coupled with the above tips and suggestions, it will give me the assurance of covering all bases when it comes to significantly reducing the $80.50 monthly air-conditioning bill that I’ve been paying.

In our last blog (3/14/11) we discovered 10 appliances that are hidden energy-guzzlers for the average home owner. We discovered that out of our average monthly electricity bill of $258.86, our refrigerator ate-up around $30.00 a month, and with a little effort, will be able to eliminate any unnecessary energy-guzzling for that unit.
The next area that we looked at was something near and dear to my heart: the flat-screen TVs, DVD players, and game consoles. I have to admit that I didn’t even want to look at this one. This electronic equipment feels like a life necessity, not an option. If you have children, you know what I mean. These flat-screen TVs, DVDs and game consoles are great tools for occupying children’s time and keeping them out of your hair-for hours on end. But at what cost?
We have three flat-screen TVs. One 50 inch screen in our family room, a 36 inch screen in our bedroom, and a 36 inch screen in our downstairs game-room. Each has a DVD player and the one downstairs has a game console hooked-up to it. For one month I kept track of the amount of time each screen was in use and here’s what I discovered…
The 50 inch TV ran for an average of 6 hours a day. No kidding. Even when no one was watching it, it was left on for ‘background noise,’ I guess. At $0.17 a KWH, that screen alone is costing around $14.00 a month. The 36 inch screen in our bedroom averaged around 4-6 hours a day. That TV is costing me around $10.00 a month. Now… for a trip downstairs. The game-room TV averaged 6 hours a day, costing us around $10.00 a month. The kids leave it on, even when they come upstairs to watch TV in the family room. So far I’m up to $34.00 a month and Add in the hours spent on the game-console and the cost for entertainment has just jumped to around $48.00 a month. Add-in my monthly Netflix bill and I’m paying close to $55.00 a month for ‘entertainment.’ That’s over $600.00 a year! I had no idea. What I found, however, was that we could cut our costs with very little effort. Here are the tips I got that resulted in some  new rules:
• All TVs are turned off when people leave the room (except for potty-breaks). We figured this would cut down the running time by at least one-third. No one needs that much background noise.
• The downstairs flat-screen TV with the game console is costing us around $200 a year in electricity expense. We discovered that if we swapped the flat-screen with a 36 inch CRT (translation: old TV in the closet) it would only cost us around $60.00 year, even running the same amount of hours! In other words, the cost of running a CRT TV is one-third the cost of running a flat-screen TV.
• We dropped Netflix because we weren’t using it that much and went with Hulu, which has free movies and back TV episodes. We also discovered that the local library rents movies for free. Our kids discovered that they even have BOOKS there!

Our goal is to reduce our ‘entertainment’ expense by 30-40 percent over the next year, and it’s possible if we stick to the plan. By the way, here’s a tip from our utility company: if you are looking to move-up to a large, flat-screen TV, make sure it has an Energy Star qualified rating. Also, remember that running that flat-screen TV will cost you about three times what your old CRT TV cost, and plasma screens are even more expensive to run.

Ouch.  Cool can be expensive.

$256.86 a month. That’s my average electricity bill. That’s not counting my gas bill. And, like most people, I had little clue as to where it was really going. That was until I took the advice of a colleague and made a list of every major appliance in my house, made a trip down to my utility company and, through that discussion, got a dose of reality. I discovered that I had a number of ‘energy-guzzlers’ in my house that, unknown to me, were costing me more than I would have imagined. They were hidden ‘energy-guzzlers.’

I listed 10 major appliances and estimated the average number of hours each one was run on a monthly basis. I was able, through my energy company, to determine what each appliance was costing me, and received some great tips on how I could significantly reduce my monthly electricity bill.
The average ‘cost per kilowatt’ in my area runs $0.17 per KWH (kilowatt hour), which doesn’t seem like much, until you start adding-up all the kilowatt hours generated by all your appliances. In this and subsequent blogs, I’ll share what I discovered and what I’m doing about cutting my costs.
The first ‘energy-guzzler’ I discovered was my refrigerator. I found that, running 30 days a month, this beloved appliance was costing me around $30.00 a month. That’s a dollar a day. It’s about 7 years old and seems to do the job. When I was asked how often I moved the beast out and cleaned the ‘coils,’ I had to think about it. I think the last time was when we put in new flooring, which was…3 years ago. I was told that not cleaning the coils, especially during the summer, was causing it to work harder and burn more electricity. Something I didn’t know. I was next asked if the ‘seals’ on both the refrigerator and

freezer compartment were airtight. Again, I wasn’t sure. He told me to take a dollar bill, put it in the door of each compartment, and close it. If I was able to pull the bill out easily, I had a ‘seal’ problem and might need a door adjustment or have to replace the seals.
As soon as I got home I pulled-out the refrigerator from the wall and found that the coils were completely covered with lint, which had attracted a fair amount of dust, and that a dish cloth had somehow fallen behind the refrigerator and was covering part of the coils. I still am wondering how a kid can lose one of his toys back there. Next, I tried the dollar-bill trick in both the cooler and freezer unit. Guess what? The bills didn’t even stay in the same spot, but just slid down the edge of the seal. Not even close to being airtight. It was leaking cold air out the seals, and we are in the process of getting new seals.
So…I have discovered the first of 10 energy-guzzlers in my house, and am now on a mission to search and destroy these ‘energy-guzzlers’ and reduce my electricity costs.