My Summer Experiment

I am going to try a summer experiment this year. My husband moved his offices a few months ago, and went from a huge office for four to a single office for just him. In the move of all the computers and printers he has an abundance of surge outlet strips. They have been sitting in the garage for a few months now. I am going to put them to good use this summer.

We are going to connect everything that doesn't need to stay plugged in, into them. Every room in the house. Now, I live in a 4 bedroom two-story with 2 1/2 baths and an unfinished basement. We have a well & septic system, so the water is free, but it uses electricity to run the pump to get the water into the house. We also have gas appliances: stove, dryer & furnace. Thank goodness we haven't had to turn the air conditioner on yet this year, I guess thats one good thing about having a cool spring.

I am going to dig out May 2008 electric bill to use as a reference for how many watts we used that month. June will be a "training in" month with the kids. Hopefully after a few weeks, turning off power strips in their rooms will become habit. And July will be the first official month of turning off unnecessary appliances & such.

It will be interesting to see how much electricity we can save over the summer. I do not plan on using the air very much (we'll see), and if we are to hot, the kids & I can always clean out the basement. We do use fans at night in everybodys bedrooms when it is hot & humid to at least move the air around. Plus, I do also still have a few more CFL bulbs that need to be changed out.

At the beginning of July I will post the control bill (May) and we will see by the end of July if it has helped at all. I sure hope we can cut our bill even lower.